John Bartlett Goodman III was born in 1901 in Denver, Colorado. When he was three years old, his family moved to Southern California, spending several years in San Diego before settling in Los Angeles in 1916. After graduating high school, he briefly worked as an aerial photographer for Kearney Photo Service in San Diego and as a draftsman for Southern California Blueprint Co. In 1920 he went to work in the art department at what was then Famous Players-Lasky. Though he also worked for Pathé, RKO Radio Pictures, Inc., and Warner Bros., he remained with Famous Players-Lasky, later renamed Paramount Pictures, Inc. for much of the next two decades, and by the 1930s had been promoted to the position of art director. His notable credits with the studio include IT’S A GIFT (1934), HIGH WIDE AND HANDSOME (1937), and WELLS FARGO (1937), and he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Art Direction, with Hans Dreier, for IF I WERE KING (1938). In the 1940s he went to Universal Pictures Company, Inc., eventually working his way up to supervising art director, and he worked on such films as SHADOW OF A DOUBT (1943), FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN (1943), and PHANTOM LADY (1944). He also earned Academy Award nominations for Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Black-and-White, shared with Jack Otterson, Russell A. Gausman, and Edward R. Robinson, for THE SPOILERS (1942) and for Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Color, shared with Alexander Golitzen, Gausman, and Ira Webb, for THE CLIMAX (1944). He won the Academy Award for Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Color, shared with Golitzen, Gausman, and Webb, for THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (1943).

After the end of his Universal contract in 1945, Goodman spent the rest of his career as a freelance art director, and he worked for such studios as Nat Holt Pictures, Paramount, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Republic, and the CBS Studio Center. His notable late-career credits include THE SEVEN LITTLE FOYS (1955), THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY (1955), THE MOUNTAIN (1955), and HOUSEBOAT (1958). He also ventured into television, serving as art director for nearly every episode of RAWHIDE, and for numerous episodes of GUNSMOKE. His final credit was for HANG ‘EM HIGH (1968), starring RAWHIDE’s Clint Eastwood. However, Goodman remained busy following his retirement from film and television in 1967. He was an avid book collector with a keen interest in California history and had been a member of the Los Angeles Corral of Westerners and the Zamarano club since the late 1940s. For the remainder of his life, he researched and wrote on California’s history in publications for Zamarano club members as well as for the Historical Society of Southern California. At the time of his death in 1991, Goodman had been working on “An Annotated Bibliography of California County Histories” and his book “The California Gold Rush Fleet” was published the following year.