Academy Award-winning screenwriter Robert Towne, 89, died at his Los Angeles home Monday while surrounded by his family, publicist Carri McClure announced without commenting on his cause of death.
His screenplay "is widely recognized as the gold standard for movie scripts," The Hollywood Reporter said.
He also earned Academy Award nominations for his screenplays for The Last Detail in 1973 and Shampoo in 1975.
Towne also worked as a specialist who could improve scripts, such as his penning the garden scene near the end of Oscar-winner The Godfather, which played in theaters in 1972, and lending his talents to Bonnie and Clyde in 1967.
Francis Ford Coppola won an Oscar for writing The Godfather screenplay with Mario Puzo and thanked Towne while accepting that award on stage.Towne's work had a transformative effect on American cinema in the 1970s by "bringing reality to an industry built on fantasy," Variety said of Towne's accomplishments.
"His instinct was to make films that reflected the world he knew -- to write characters who swore and stumbled and seduced the way real people did," Variety reported.
His screenwriting career earned Towne recognition among the all-time best screenwriters as Vulture listed third behind Billy Wilder and the duo of Joel and Ethan Coen.
Towne was born in San Pedro, Calif., on Nov. 23, 1934, and attended Redondo Union High School and studied English literature and philosophy at Pomona College, where he graduated in 1956.
Towne also studied acting and made friends with Richard Chamberlain and Jack Nicholson before any of them made any significant impacts in the film world.
He said Nicholson supported his idea to develop a detective story set in 1930s Los Angeles and had a "revelation" while reading Southern California Country: Island on the Land by Carey McWilliams.
A chapter in that book called "Water, Water, Water" inspired Towne to make Chinatown about Los Angeles city officials dumping water into the ocean to force farmers in the Owens Lake area off of their land by depriving them of water.
