Dec
01
2008

In Praise of a Hollywood Scribe Past

In Memory of ERNEST LEHMAN (1915-2005)

I have a film professor who compares the viewing and studying of classic films from yesteryear as spending time with “old friends.” Just imagine, if you will, your list of favorite films, stars, directors…now imagine years passing without another thought of those treasured memories…would it not be a reunion when you discovered their existence again?

In this the first of a series, I wish to remember some Hollywood masters who you might only recognize by the titles.*

  1. Family Plot (1976) (writer)
  2. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) (screenplay) 
  3. The Sound of Music (1965) (screenplay) 
  4. West Side Story (1961) (screenplay)
  5. North by Northwest (1959) (written by) 
  6. Sweet Smell of Success (1957) (novella) (screenplay)
  7. Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956) (writer)
  8. The King and I (1956) (screenplay) 
  9. Sabrina (1954) (screenplay)                                 *PARTIAL LISTING
In a Hollywood career that spanned decades Ernest Lehman kept typing out the words in screenplay after screenplay, eventually becoming a producer, before being hailed as an all out legend with an Honorary Oscar® awarded him at the 73rd Annual Academy Awards® in 2001.
The titles above reveal close and repeat collaborations with 4 American Cinema Auteurs (Billy Wilder, Robert Wise, Mike Nichols, and the Master of Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock) and the films are all classics. Some are adaptation of the best plays/musicals of the day  while others are nothing but original. Lehman knew how to treat people so he’d work again but he also knew how to portray them memorably on the page.  
The next time you see William Holden and Humphrey Bogart woo Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina, Cary Grant triumph atop Mt. Rushmore in North by Northwest, watch a young Tony Curtis work his way up society’s ladder taking in the Sweet Smell of Success, or a see young Paul Newman prize fighting like it’ll be his last (Somebody Up There Likes Me) REMEMBER ERNEST LEHMAN because there is a little bit of him in all of them. 
Before his death in 2005, I got to meet this Hollywood master of the Golden Age at a 100th Anniversary tribute to Alfred Hitchcock in 1999. He was remarkably alert for a man in his eighties and was dressed elegantly. In some respects he was Roger O. Thornhill, the character Cary Grant portrays in North by Northwest.

I had two copies of an NxN card (see photo) and he said he had never seen the design before so I ripped one in half and gave the cover to him. How many times can you give a brilliant scribe, who just keeps on giving, a token of your appreciation? Makes me proud to this day whenever I see a clip of his work…and I know he made more of an impression on me, than I on him, but sometimes it is just nice to say thank you to an “old friend.”

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