Ernest Lehman, 89; Wrote Screenplays for Many Movies Destined to Be Classics

Ernest Lehman, the acclaimed screenwriter and six-time Oscar nominee whose credits included “North by Northwest,” “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and “The Sound of Music,” has died. He was 89.

Lehman died Saturday at UCLA Medical Center after a lengthy illness, the Writers Guild of America, West, said Tuesday.

In a screenwriting career that began with “Executive Suite” in 1954 and spanned a variety of genres, Lehman received four Academy Award nominations for screenwriting -- for “Virginia Woolf,” “West Side Story,” “North by Northwest” and 1954’s “Sabrina.”

Lehman also received two Oscar nominations as a producer -- for “Hello, Dolly!” and “Virginia Woolf.”

“A creative giant among writers and within the industry, Ernest possessed one of the most distinctive voices of the last half-century,” Daniel Petrie Jr., president of Writers Guild of America, West, said Tuesday. “Adept at tackling a wide range of genres, his unforgettable contributions to the craft of screenwriting helped define what we’ve come to know as American film.”

Among Lehman’s other screenwriting credits are “Sweet Smell of Success,” “The King and I,” “From the Terrace,” “The Prize,” “Hello, Dolly!,” “Portnoy’s Complaint” (which he also directed and produced) and “Black Sunday.”

Although his filmography consisted of adaptations of novels, plays and other source material, one of his best-known credits was his original screenplay for “North by Northwest,” Alfred Hitchcock’s 1959 romantic thriller starring Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint.

Saint told The Times on Tuesday that Lehman’s death was a “big loss in Hollywood. He was an incredible writer, very talented and very dear.”

Martin Landau, who also appeared in “North by Northwest,” told The Times that “Hitchcock always spoke very highly of Ernie, and I liked him as a guy. There was something very down to earth about him and very real.”

The idea for “North by Northwest” came out of Lehman’s relationship with Hitchcock.

“I arrived at his house one day and told him I was quitting” another project “and he said, ‘Don’t be silly. We get along so well. We’ll just do something else.’ So we just kicked ideas around,” Lehman told The Times in 2001.

Lehman believed in experiencing what he wrote about, so he tried to climb Mt. Rushmore, a key locale in the film, when he was writing “North by Northwest,”

“That was a ridiculous procedure for a screenwriter. Halfway up, I looked down and realized I could be killed if I slipped,” he said.

In addition to “North by Northwest,” Lehman wrote the screenplay for Hitchcock’s “Family Plot.” He also worked with director Robert Wise on four films: “West Side Story,” “The Sound of Music,” “Executive Suite” and “Somebody Up There Likes Me.”

Wise was unavailable for comment Tuesday, but through his wife, Millicent, he said, “There was nobody as good as Ernie Lehman.”

“He had a beautiful mind, a great mind,” Millicent Wise told The Times. “He was a very good friend of ours, and we’re very sad he’s gone.”

In 2001, Hollywood acknowledged Lehman’s long and distinguished career when he became the first screenwriter to receive a lifetime achievement award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

“I think ‘Sweet Smell of Success’ may be his calling card for many people, because it was so personal, so vivid and has stood up so well,” film critic Leonard Maltin told The Times on Tuesday. “People keep threatening to remake it, but I can’t imagine anyone topping what they did in 1957.”

“Sweet Smell of Success,” which was about a powerful and ruthless newspaper columnist played by Burt Lancaster and an unscrupulous press agent played by Tony Curtis, was adapted from Lehman’s novella and co-written by Clifford Odets.

Lehman considered Curtis’ performance one of the best.

“It still gets me,” he told The Times in 2001.

But, Maltin added: “When you look at his list of films, if he’d only written the screenplay to ‘The Sound of Music,’ he’d have contributed to one of the genuine [movie] phenomena of all time, because it was a real adaptation; it was not the stage play. And he had more input than simply screenwriter -- as with ‘Virginia Woolf,’ which he also produced. There again, ‘Virginia Woolf’ was a watershed movie.”

Upon accepting his honorary Oscar in 2001, Lehman told the audience:

“I accept this rarest of honors on behalf of screenwriters everywhere, but especially those in the Writers Guild of America. We have suffered anonymity far too often. I appeal to all movie critics and feature writers to please always bear in mind that a film production begins and ends with a screenplay.”

Born in New York City, Lehman grew up on Long Island and studied creative writing at City College of New York before working as a copywriter for a Broadway theater publicist, an experience he tapped in writing his novella and the screenplay for “Sweet Smell of Success.”

He sold his first story, “Double-Cross,” to Liberty magazine in 1943 and spent the next 10 years as a freelancer, writing stories, novellas and radio comedy, and editing a financial magazine.

After his short story “The Comedian” appeared in Collier’s in 1953, he was brought to Hollywood by Paramount.

“Paramount offered me this fabulous six-month contract and I had an infant son and I accepted,” Lehman told the Toronto Star in 1993. When his option was dropped by Paramount, he moved to MGM to write “Executive Suite.”

“Can you imagine a skinny kid walking on to the MGM lot and seeing all those stars?” he said. “And what a cast I was writing for: Barbara Stanwyck, Bill Holden, June Allyson, Shelley Winters, Fredric March.”

On working with Billy Wilder on the screenplay for “Sabrina,” Lehman told the Toronto Star: “We had to take the train to New York and Billy stopped talking to me because I didn’t like caviar. He was that kind of guy.”

On Hitchcock, he said: “Getting Hitch to work was always tough. He’d be talking about wine lists and I’d be talking screenplay. Or he’d say ‘Get the lovers trapped on Mt. Rushmore’ and leave the writing to me. Then he’d say, ‘I want them on ice,’ and I’d go off and finally tell him it didn’t fit.”

Lehman, who received five Writers Guild of America awards and nine WGA nominations, received the guild’s prestigious Screen Laurel Award in 1972.

“Ernie Lehman was one of the last and greatest screenwriters of Hollywood’s Golden Age,” writer and friend said Mel Shavelson, who worked with Lehman as a co-writer of several Academy Award telecasts. “The only special effects in his brilliant screenplays were human beings.”

Lehman was actively involved with the Writers Guild for several decades, serving as president of the guild’s Western branch from 1983 to 1985, in addition to serving on the guild’s board and as vice president of the screen branch. He also served on many guild committees and had a long stint on the Writers Guild Foundation’s board of directors.

Lehman is survived by his wife, Laurie; their son, Jonathan; and his sons Roger and Alan, from his late first wife, Jackie; and two grandchildren.

Instead of flowers, the family requests that donations be sent to the Writers Guild Foundation or the Motion Picture and Television Fund.

A private memorial service will be held Friday in Los Angeles.

Times staff writer Valerie J. Nelson contributed to this report.