Emmy-nominated television serial writer
Van Nuys, CA –Raymond Goldstone, an Emmy-nominated writer for a number of daytime dramas, died recently of a heart attack in Van Nuys, Calif.
In 1978 and 1979 Goldstone and the rest of the Days of Our Lives writing staff—which included his sister Ann Marcus—were nominated for Daytime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series.
Goldstone would also later go on to co-write the 1983 Irwin Allen movie The Night the Bridge Fell Down, in addition to writing episodes of Knots Landing and Falcon Crest.
Goldstone was born on July 23 in Little Falls, N.Y. before earning a scholarship to Cornell, where he co-edited the school newspaper. After graduation, Goldstone took a reporter job at the Newark Morning Ledger in 1940. A year later he joined the Army, writing training films and earning the Army specialty of Cryptographic Clerk.
He ended up in the Ninth Army Force, 48th Fighter Bomber Group and saw service in France, Germany, Belgium and Holland. In 1945 Goldstone and his superiors witnessed the liberation of the largest remaining concentration camp in Buchenwald, Germany.
After the war Goldstone worked as a book editor at Simon and Schuster in New York before securing work as a story analyst at Warner Brothers in Los Angeles in 1950.
By the early ‘60s Goldstone had earned advanced degrees from Cal State Northridge and UCLA, which led to five years as a professor of English Literature at UC Santa Barbara from 1965 to 1970.
In 1970 Goldstone secured his first TV writing gig as a staff writer on the daytime drama Love Is a Many Splendored Thing, a job that lasted three years before he moved on to Search For Tomorrow (1973-1976), where he and the writing staff won a Writer’s Guild Award for Daytime Serial.
Goldstone would go on to become the head writer on both General Hospital in 1981 and Rituals, another daytime drama, in 1984.
Goldstone is survived by Marcus, his sister, and his wife, actress Mary Ellen Jennings Goldstone.
Bob Makela