Ernest Lehman

Ernest Lehman began his career as a Broadway press agent and short-story writer before turning to screenwriting in the 1950s, bringing an insider's eye for showbusiness cynicism to his early scripts. His novella "Tell Me About It Tomorrow" became the basis for "Sweet Smell of Success" (1957), which he co-wrote with Clifford Odets, a portrait of a vicious Broadway columnist widely regarded as one of the sharpest American screenplays of its decade. Lehman worked across an unusually wide range of genres and tones — adapting Tennessee Williams for "The Sweet Bird of Youth" era, writing the espionage thriller that became "North by Northwest" (1959) directly for the screen at Alfred Hitchcock's request, and later adapting large-scale musicals including "West Side Story" (1961) and "The Sound of Music" (1965), both of which he also produced. He received Academy Award nominations for "Sabrina" (1954), "North by Northwest" (1959), "West Side Story" (1961), and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" (1966), which he also produced and which was the first film he directed. In 2001 he became the first screenwriter to receive an Honorary Academy Award for career achievement, recognition of a body of work that moved fluently between comedy, thriller, and musical.