The film dominated the 1995 Academy Awards, winning six Oscars including best picture, best director for Robert Zemeckis and best actor for Hanks. “It touched a nerve,” Groom told the Tuscaloosa News in 2014. The movie, which also starred Robin Wright and Mykelti Williamson, became deeply embedded in the American psyche and has remained an enduring television staple and huge cultural phenomenon since. “But ‘Forrest Gump’ is really actually quite a fine novel. “You can make a lot of money as a comic writer, but you can’t get no respect,” Noble said. Don Noble, University of Alabama professor emeritus of English, and a 40-year friend of Groom’s told The Tuscaloosa News that the novel was “darker” and “richer” than the movie. The novel is considerably different from the film. It was “Forrest Gump” - and the success of the 1994 movie starring Tom Hanks in the iconic role of Gump, as well as Sally Field and Gary Sinise - that earned him widespread fame and some financial success. One, “Conversations with the Enemy,” about a American prisoner of war in Vietnam accused of collaboration, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist, according to the university. He wrote 16 books, fiction and nonfiction. His service included a tour in Vietnam - one of the settings for “Forrest Gump.” Groom served in the Army’s Fourth Infantry Division from 1965 to 1969, the university said.

It was the best known book by Groom, who grew up in Mobile, Alabama, and graduated from the University of Alabama in 1965, according to a biography posted by the university.

George Wallace’s “stand at the schoolhouse door,” to meetings with presidents. “Forrest Gump” was the improbable tale of a slow-witted but mathematically gifted man who was a participant or witness to key points of 20th Century history - from Alabama segregationist Gov.

Forrest gump de winston groom