final credits - ernest lehman
When Ernest Lehman accepted his honourary Oscar in 2001, he said "I appeal to all movie critics and feature writers to please always bear in mind that a film production begins and ends with a screenplay." Lehman wrote some of cinema's best. He died July 2, 2005 at age 89 of a heart attack.
Lehman was born in New York City and studied creative writing before working as a copywriter for Broadway press agent Irving Hoffman. He frequented nightclubs, gathering juicy tidbits for gossip columnists like Walter Winchell. The pay for his tips supported his career as a freelance fiction writer for popular magazines, and his exposure to celebrity's seamy side supplied the material for his novella "Tell Me About It Tomorrow," which Lehman adapted for the 1957 film "Sweet Smell of Success."
In 1953, Lehman was brought to Hollywood by Paramount on a six-month contract. He then moved to MGM and adapted "Executive Suite" from Cameron Hawley's novel in 1954. Soon teamed with Alfred Hitchcock, Lehman wrote his only original screenplay, "North by Northwest." Lehman believed in experiencing what he wrote about, and went to the extent of climbing Mount Rushmore, a key locale in the film. "Halfway up, I looked down and realized I could be killed if I slipped," he later said. 
It was Lehman who suggested that Cary Grant be chased by a plane instead of Hitch's idea of a tornado in another memorable scene from the film. Lehman also scripted Hitchcock's final film, 1975's "Family Plot."
Lehman's work in the late 1950s and 1960s were for some of the most popular films of their decades. He wrote 1954's "Sabrina" which made a star out of Audrey Hepburn. In 1956, "Somebody Up There Likes Me" did the same for Paul Newman. In 1965, he adapted the story of the Von Trapp family, and was clever enough to retain 2 ½ percent of the most successful screen musical ever made, "The Sound of Music." Other notable films included "The King and I," "Black Sunday," and "Hello, Dolly!" Lehman's only outright failure was 1972's "Portnoy's Complaint," the only film he directed.
Lehman received five Writers Guild of America awards and nine WGA nominations, and received the guild's prestigious Screen Laurel Award in 1972. He received four Academy Award nominations for screenwriting ("Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf," "West Side Story," "North by Northwest" and "Sabrina"). He also received two Oscar nominations as a producer — for "Hello, Dolly!" and "Virginia Woolf." All told, the films Lehman worked on won more than 50 Academy Award nominations between them. "West Side Story," which got 11 nominations, won ten Oscars. It lost in the category of screenwriting. In 2001, he became the first screenwriter to receive a lifetime achievement award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Lehman was a writer for several Academy Award telecasts, and was a president of the WGA Western branch from 1983 to 1985, in addition to serving on the guild's board. He remained productive late in life, fathering a child in 2002 at the age of 87 with his second wife Laurie, 50 years his junior.