Ernest Paul Lehman[1] (December 8, 1915 – July 2, 2005) was an American screenwriter and film producer.[2] He was nominated six times for Academy Awards for his screenplays during his career, but did not win.[2] At the 73rd Academy Awards in 2001, he received an Honorary Academy Award in recognition of his achievements and his influential works for the screen. He was the first screenwriter to receive that honor.
Lehman was born in 1915 to Gertrude (Thorn) and Paul E. Lehman.[3] Their Jewish family was based on Long Island.[4] Lehman attended the College of the City of New York (The City College of New York), from which he earned a bachelor's degree.[2]
During World War II he was trained at the New England Radio Institute, then worked as a radio operator for the aviation industry.[5]
After graduation, Lehman started working as a freelance writer. Lehman felt that freelancing was a "very nervous way to make a living", so he began writing copy for a publicity firm that focused on plays and celebrities. He drew from this experience for the screenplay of the film Sweet Smell of Success (1957), which he co-wrote with playwright Clifford Odets.
Lehman also published many short stories and novellas in magazines such as Colliers, Redbook and Cosmopolitan. These attracted the attention of Hollywood managers, and in the mid-1950s Paramount Pictures signed him to a writing contract. His first film, Executive Suite (1954), was a success.
Lehman was asked to collaborate on the romantic comedy Sabrina (1954), which was released the same year and also became a hit. Some of his most notable works are the screenplay adaptations of the musical West Side Story (1961)[2] and the mega-hit film version of The Sound of Music (1965), another musical.[2]
In 1958, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer had hired Hitchcock to make a film called The Wreck of the Mary Deare, based on Hammond Innes' novel of the same name. Collaborating with Lehman, Hitchcock produced North by Northwest (1959) instead. This was one of Lehman's few original screenplays (rather than adaptations). The film starred Cary Grant as Roger O. Thornhill, a Madison Avenue advertising executive who is mistaken for a government agent by a group of menacing spies (led by James Mason and Martin Landau). Lehman later said he intended North by Northwest to be "the Hitchcock picture to end all Hitchcock pictures." The writing process took Lehman a year, including several periods of writer's block, as well as a trip to Mount Rushmore to do research for the film's climax.
North by Northwest was one of Lehman's greatest triumphs in Hollywood and a huge hit for Hitchcock. For his efforts, Lehman received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay, as well as a 1960 Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best Motion Picture Screenplay.
In 1972, Lehman directed Portnoy's Complaint, based on the novel by Philip Roth; this was his only directorial work.[2] Later, he earned another Edgar Award for his screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock's final movie, Family Plot (1976).
In 1977, Lehman published the bestselling novel The French Atlantic Affair, about a group of unemployed, middle-class Americans who hijack a French cruise ship for a $35 million ransom. It was adapted as a TV miniseries in 1979.