Trailer
Plot summary
Paula McFadden, a former Broadway chorus dancer, lives in a Manhattan apartment with her ten-year-old daughter Lucy and her boyfriend Tony De Forrest. She comes home one day to a letter from Tony: he has gone to Italy for a film role and has left her. He has also sublet the place to Elliot Garfield, an actor from Chicago who turns up late at night expecting to move in, three months' rent already paid. Paula sends him away, then lets him stay after he telephones from a payphone in the rain. They share the apartment. Paula tries to dance again but is out of condition and is passed over at an audition for younger women. Elliot wins the lead in Richard III, staged off-off-Broadway, and the production's director Mark wants an unconventional portrayal.
Cast
- Michael Shawnas Ronnie
- Gene Castleas Assistant Choreographer
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Goodbye Girl (1977)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Filming actually began on Bogart Slept Here before it became apparent that De Niro was not right for the role; Simon felt the humor he had written was getting lost, since De Niro's comedy came from nuances such as a bemused expression, and Nichols insisted on recasting him.
- The film began as a screenplay called Bogart Slept Here that was to star Robert De Niro and Mason for Warner Bros., the film De Niro would have made immediately after Taxi Driver, with Mike Nichols hired to direct.
- At age 30, Richard Dreyfuss became the youngest man ever to win the Academy Award for Best Actor, a record that stood for 25 years until Adrien Brody won in 2002, a month shy of turning 30 himself.
- At the box office The Goodbye Girl became the first romantic comedy ever to earn $100 million in grosses, a mark no film in the genre had reached before it.
- Dreyfuss was brought in to audition with Mason, and at the end of the reading Simon decided the chemistry was there but the script needed work; he rewrote the screenplay in six weeks.
