Upon graduation from Princeton, Goldman had a three-year stint in the U.S. Army stationed on Enewetak as personnel sergeant,[4] an atoll in the Marshall Islands of the central Pacific Ocean used for nuclear bomb testing.

[2] After leaving the service, Goldman found work on Broadway as the lyricist for First Impressions (1959), a musical based on Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.

[2] Produced by composer Jule Styne, directed by Abe Burrows, and starring Hermione Gingold, Polly Bergen, and Farley Granger, the play received decent reviews but closed after a brief, 92-show run.

Now married, and with four small children at home, he soon found a steady income working in the new world of live television at CBS.

[5] Goldman was mentored by Fred Coe (the "D.W. Griffith of dramatic television") and became part of the twilight of The Golden Age, associate producing and script editing Coe's prestigious Playhouse 90's, Days of Wine and Roses directed by a young John Frankenheimer, The Plot To Kill Stalin starring Eli Wallach, and Horton Foote's Old Man.

After working together at NET Burt Lancaster encouraged Goldman to try his hand at screenwriting, which resulted in an early version of Shoot the Moon.

[6] After reading Shoot the Moon, Miloš Forman asked Goldman to write the screenplay for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

[2] Goldman's calling card, Shoot the Moon, was then filmed by Alan Parker and starred Diane Keaton and Albert Finney.

Mr. Pacino's contribution, in the sort of role for which Oscar nominations were made, is to remind viewers that a great American actor is too seldom on the screen.

"[16] Roger Ebert – Chicago Sun-Times declared, "The screenplay is by Bo Goldman (Melvin and Howard), who is more interested in the people than the plot.

Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "Where Meet Joe Black runs into most of its trouble is that everything happens so terribly slowly.

Ordinarily the most charismatic of actors, with an eye-candy smile and a winning ease, Pitt approaches this role largely on a leash, hanging around more like the protagonist of I Walked With a Zombie than a flesh-and-blood leading man.

He has the most varied and intelligent credits, from Cuckoo's Nest to Shoot the Moon, the best divorce movie ever made, to Scent of a Woman, to the great satire Melvin and Howard.

Here Roth writes, "The man whose work made the biggest impression on me, because of his audacious originality, his understanding of social mores, his ironic sense of humor, and his outright anger at being human, and all with his soft spoken grace and eloquent simplicity is Bo Goldman.

[2][21] In April 2023, Goldman moved to Helendale, California, to live with his son Justin, until his death three months later on July 25, 2023, at the age of 90.