When fair weather wasn’t a friend it became a plot-shift collaborator in the beloved movie.

INTERVIEW WITH OSCAR-WINNING SCREENWRITER ERNEST THOMPSON BY COLIN W. SARGENT

Can you tell us about your family’s place on Great Pond in Belgrade Lakes that inspired your Oscar-winning movie On Golden Pond?

When my grandparents first settled on Great Pond in 1908, they lived in a tent. They built the original house in 1914, but that house burned in a famous fire in 1958, when lightning went up
a water pipe after striking the lake. Things got really dark then, because we didn’t build the next house until 1968. But many houses on the lake had ice houses, so between 1958 and 1968 my father, who was a carpenter by avocation, remodeled our ice house in- to what we called the Nice House. It was rustic. Then the new house came, right on the water, grandfathered—very open. It’s my brother’s now, but I spend time there every year. Until the pandemic came along, I never missed a summer there.

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PHOTO BY 3SIXTY/BRUCE LUETTERS