Charles Shyer, who has died aged 83, co-wrote a string of bubbly and often female-focused comedies with his second wife, Nancy Meyers. The couple, so closely linked that they were known affectionately in the industry as the Shmeyers, were not yet married when their first script together turbo-boosted Goldie Hawn’s career: the star found her biggest success playing a pampered young widow duped into joining the army in Private Benjamin (1980), which Shyer and Meyers also produced.
The screenplay, co-written with Harvey Miller and nominated for an Oscar, had been turned down by most of Hollywood. In the wake of its success, an executive at Paramount, which had rejected the script, sent Shyer a letter admitting: “When we fuck up, we fuck up big.”
