Oscar winner, screenwriter for ‘One Flew Over Cuckoo’s Nest’ Founding Eagles bassist sang high harmonies on hit songs
NEW YORK — Bo Goldman, who penned the Oscar-winning scripts to “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “Melvin and Howard” and whose textured, empathy-rich screenplays made him one of Hollywood’s finest writers, has died at 90.
Goldman died Tuesday in Helendale, Calif., his son-inlaw, the director Todd Field, said. No details on the cause of death were given.
It wasn’t until Goldman was in his 40s, after years of struggle as a playwright, that he found success in Hollywood. In 1975, he adapted Ken Kesey’s “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” for his first film credit. The film, directed by Miloš Forman and starring Jack Nicholson as a patient in a psychiatric ward, won best picture at the Oscars and best adapted screenplay for Goldman and Lawrence Hauben.
Five years later, Goldman won again for Jonathan Demme’s “Melvin and Howard,” based on a luckless Utah gas station owner named Melvin Dummar who claims to be a beneficiary of Howard Hughes after the billionaire’s death.
Those screenplays and more — the family drama “Shoot the Moon”; “The Rose,” with Bette Midler; “Scent of a Woman,” with Al Pacino — made Goldman a widely considered a master of screenwriting along with contemporaries like Billy Wilder and Paddy Chayefsky.
Goldman said he thought of himself as a dramatist who happened to write screenplays.
“I’m a screenplaywright,” he said.
Robert Spencer Goldman was born Sept. 10, 1932, in New York, the son of a wealthy businessman, Julian Goldman. His father’s clothing (410) 504-6151 chain at one point had nationwide locations. He produced Broadway shows. Franklin Roosevelt was his attorney. But the Wall Street crash of 1929 wiped him out. At his death, he had only one store. As a young adult, Goldman learned that his father had another family and never wed his mother.
“My father was a ghetto kid who went from rags to riches, then lost everything, and having committed my life to mimic him in nothing, I am convinced I will equal him in this one respect: his ending, a downward spiral into two dingy rooms in a residential hotel and bankruptcy,” Goldman wrote in a 1981 essay in The New York Times.
Attending Princeton, Goldman wrote for the Princeton Triangle Club, a theater troupe. He dropped the second “b” in Bob after a college paper accidentally left it off. He liked Bo and kept the name.
After serving three years in the Pacific during World War II, Goldman’s first play, “First Impressions,” was produced when he was 25 (Goldman was a lyricist). It starred Farley Granger and Polly Bergen, but reviews were poor, and it was judged a flop.
Goldman worked intermittently
• $200 Value • 1 Coupon per Customer
• Must present at time of estimate
• Coupons cannot be combined
• Not valid on prior sales Expires 08/31/23
SINCE 1939 $125 OFF with any fence project of 200 ft. or more
• 1 Coupon per Customer
• Must present at time of estimate
• Coupons cannot be combined
• Not valid on prior sales Expires 08/31/23
OOPPENEN
As Rated in television, but the years were painfully lean. Things changed after Goldman wrote his first screenplay, “Shoot the Moon,” about a mother of four whose husband has an affair with a younger woman. Producers throughout Hollywood turned him down, but Forman read it and hired Goldman to rewrite “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”
“He said, ‘What would you do with this script?” Goldman recalled to the Writers Guild years later. “The first thing I remember saying is that McMurphy (Nicholson) should come in and kiss the admitting officers.”
The film’s massive success — it also won Oscars for Forman, Nicholson and Louise Fletcher — was the breakthrough Goldman had long awaited, but he considered it a qualified victory. “Even then I hung my head,” Goldman recounted in 1981. “After all, I had adapted somebody else’s work; was it really mine?”
“Shoot the Moon” was eventually made, directed by Alan Parker in 1982 and starring Diane Keaton and Albert Finney. But first Goldman wrote 1979’s “The Rose,” starring Midler in a loose adaptation of Janis Joplin’s life.
“Melvin and Howard,” though, was one of Goldman’s greatest accomplishments. The comedy, directed by Demme, was a critical smash (Jason Robards was nominated for an Oscar; Mary Steenburgen won for best supporting actress) and remains a cult favorite. Goldman also wrote “Little Nikita” (1988), with Sidney Poitier and River Phoenix.
Goldman, who lived in Rockport, Maine, lost a son, Jesse, in 1981, and his wife died in 2017. He is survived by four daughters, a son, seven grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
NEW YORK — Randy Meisner, a founding member of the Eagles who added high harmonies to such favorites as “Take It Easy” and “The Best of My Love” and stepped out front for the waltz-time ballad “Take It to the Limit,” died Wednesday in Los Angeles. He was 77.
Meisner died of complications from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, the Eagles said in a statement.
The bassist had endured numerous afflictions in recent years and personal tragedy in 2016 when his wife, Lana Rae Meisner, accidentally shot herself and died. Meanwhile, Randy Meisner had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and had severe issues with alcohol, according to court records and comments made during a 2015 hearing in which a judge ordered Meisner to receive constant medical care.
Called “the sweetest man in the music business” by former bandmate Don Felder, the baby-faced Meisner joined Don Henley, Glenn Frey and Bernie Leadon in the early 1970s to form a quintessential Los Angeles band and one of the most popular acts in history.
“Randy was an integral part of the Eagles and instrumental in the early success of the band,” the Eagles’ statement said. “His vocal range was astonishing, as is evident on his signature ballad, ‘Take It to the Limit.’ ”
The band said funeral plans were pending.
Meisner backed Ricky Nelson, played on James Taylor’s album “Sweet Baby James” and befriended Henley and Frey when all were performing in Linda Ronstadt’s band. With Ronstadt’s blessing, they formed the Eagles, were signed by David Geffen to his Asylum Records label and released their self-titled debut album in 1972.
Evolving from country rock to hard rock, the Eagles turned out a run of hit singles and albums over the next decade, starting with “Take It Easy” and continuing with “Desperado,” “Hotel California” and “Life In the Fast Lane” among others. Although chastised by many critics as slick and superficial, the Eagles released two of the most popular albums of all time, “Hotel California” and “Their Greatest Hits (1971-1975),” which with sales at 38 million the Recording Industry Association of America ranked with Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” as the No. 1 seller.
Led by singer-songwriters Henley and Frey, the Eagles were initially branded as “mellow” and “easy listening.” But by their third album, the 1974 release “On the Border,” they had added a rock guitarist, Felder, and were turning away from country and bluegrass.
Leadon, an old-fashioned bluegrass picker, was unhappy with the new sound and left after the 1975 album “One of These Nights.” He was replaced by another rock guitarist,
Joe Walsh. Meisner stayed on through the 1976 release of “Hotel California,” the band’s most acclaimed record, but was gone soon after. His departure, ironically, was touched off by the song he co-wrote and was best known for, “Take It to the Limit.”
Born Randall Herman Meisner in Scottsbluff, Nebraska, on March 8, 1946, he started practicing music at a young age.
He got his first acoustic guitar around 12 or 13 years old, and shortly after, he formed a high school band, according to a 2016 interview with Rock Cellar Magazine. “We did pretty good, but we didn’t win anything,” Meisner said.
He was still a teenager when he joined another band and moved to Los Angeles in 1964 or 1965, Meisner told the magazine.
“We couldn’t find any work because there were a million bands out here,” he said.
Years later, Meisner would find plenty of work with the Eagles.
“From Day One,” he told Rock Cellar, “I just had a feeling that the band was good and would make it.”
As a solo artist, Meisner never approached the success of the Eagles, but did have hits with “Hearts on Fire” and “Deep Inside My Heart” and played on records by Walsh, Taylor and Dan Fogelberg among others.
He rejoined group members past and present in 1998 when they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and performed “Take It Easy” and “Hotel California.”
Meisner was married twice, the first time when he was still in his teens, and had three kids.