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Ernest Lehman, Screenwriter (July 8, 2005) 
Master screenwriter Ernest Lehman just passed on at the age of 89, and in his honor I'll highlight some
favorite bits of his work. He wrote the scripts to many classic films--The Sweet Smell of Success, Sabrina,
Sound of Music, West Side Story, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and of course North by Northwest.
A great film is necessarily a collaboration, and one which must fire on all cylinders; poor casting, a lousy
soundtrack or bad editing can ruin even the best screenplay. In this Lehman was fortunate, working often with
master directors Alfred Hitchcock and Billy Wilder and one-of-a-kind actors like Cary Grant.
Indeed, it's difficult to imagine anyone but Cary Grant in North by Northwest's lead role as Roger Thornhill. But that doesn't subtract from the urbane wit of the dialog or the magic of Lehman's careful character- building touches. Of course no one caught in Thornhill's lethal predicament would be as cool as Grant, but that is part of the film's pleasure--seeing someone manage extreme duress with the sort of self-deprecating aplomb we would wish for ourselves. Consider this brief exchange between a baffled and increasingly annoyed Grant and an icy George Mason: GRANTThough there is broad comedy in Grant's line--he is, after all, a prisoner of thugs wielding guns--and in Mason's witty rejoiner, more than a hint of Mason's sinister disbelief shines through. In a lesser writer's hand, this would have been reduced to a heavy-handed threat or shopworn demand to be freed. Later, in one of his first scenes with Eva Marie Saint in the railcar, Grant lights her cigaret (how 60s). Lehman takes a mundane romantic cliche which we've seen a thousand times and transforms it into a telling character study. On each side of the match cover, we see three large letters: R O T.This play on the letter "o" and zero reveals his self-deprecation twice in only three lines. Try matching that, or finding such a similarly compressed exchange in lesser films. The next sequence makes wicked fun of his career in advertising, offers up a classic come-on and his witty reply in just two lines. MARIE SAINTA great film depends not on special effects but on dialog like this, where every exchange does triple-duty. Adieu, Ernest Lehman, and thanks for the great scripts you gave us over the years. * * * copyright © 2005 Charles Hugh Smith. All rights reserved in all media. I would be honored if you linked this wEssay to your site, or printed a copy for your own use. * * * |
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