Ernest Lehman

In the late 1930s, he used to hunt down gossip for Walter Winchell and other gossip columnists. His novella "Tell Me About It Tomorrow" had a backdrop similar to his experiences from this period of his life.

Asked about his experiences as a press agent in the late 1940s, he admitted to having done "several moderately disgraceful things", but would not elaborate.

One of the most critically and commercially successful screenwriters in Hollywood history, Lehman grew up on Long Island, graduated from NY's City College. One of his first jobs was as a copywriter for a Broadway publicist. This experience would later be reflected in his novel and screenplay, "Sweet Smell of Success. " He also worked as a radio comedy writer, and as editor of a financial magazine. He freelanced short stories for the likes of Collier's magazine and one of these fiction piece 'The Comedian' led to his first job in Hollywood as a screenwriter for Paramount in the mid 1950s. Nick Roddick, in Dictionary of Literary Biography, praised Lehman as "a champion of the well-crafted, what-happens-next screenplay.

He has written six films that have been selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant: Sabrina (1954), Sweet Smell of Success (1957), North by Northwest (1959), West Side Story (1961), The Sound of Music (1965) and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966).

Actually tried to climb Mount Rushmore after writing the monument into his North by Northwest (1959) plot. Halfway up, he realized he could die if he slipped and came down.

(1983-1985) President of the Writers Guild of America, West (WGAw).

(January 31, 2002) His wife Laurie gave birth to son Jonathan Maxwell Lehman in Los Angeles.