LEHMAN, ERNEST

LEHMAN, ERNEST (1915– ), U.S. film producer and screen-writer. Born in New York, Lehman graduated from City College. He went to Hollywood in 1951. He won Writers' Guild awards for his screenwriting of Sabrina (Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay, 1954), The King and I (1956), North by Northwest (Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay, 1959), West Side Story (Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay, 1961), and The Sound of Music (1965). As a producer, he made his debut in 1966 with Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? for which he also wrote the screenplay (Oscar nomination for Best Picture and Best Screenplay). He was also the writer-producer of Hello, Dolly\! (Oscar nomination for Best Picture, 1969). Other Lehman screenplays include The Inside Story (1948), Executive Suite (1954), Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956), From the Terrace (1960), The Prize (1963), Portnoy's Complaint (1972), Family Plot (1976), and Black Sunday (1977). In 2002 Lehman's 1951 novella Sweet Smell of Success (and 1957 film) was turned into a Broadway musical and was nominated for three Tony Awards. He was president of the Writers' Guild of America from 1983 to 1985. In 2001 he won an Honorary Academy Award "in appreciation of a body of varied and enduring work." Books by Lehman include The Comedian and Seven Other Stories (1957); the novels The French Atlantic Affair (1977) and Farewell Performance (1982); Screening Sickness and Other Tales of Tinseltown (1982); and Sweet Smell of Success and Other Stories (2000). -BIBLIOGRAPHY: J. Brady, The Craft of the Screenwriter (1982). (Jonathan Licht / Ruth Beloff (2nd ed.)