Sorry to hear of the passing of Ernest Lehman, a very nice man and a very accomplished screenwriter and producer. Ernie had many credits but it was hard to mention his name and not allude to North by Northwest, Sabrina, Sweet Smell of Success, and the film versions of West Side Story, The King and I, The Sound of Music, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Hello, Dolly. Yes, he was the person who decided to cast (or, rather miscast) Barbra Streisand in the movie of Dolly, rather than give the starring role to Carol Channing or anyone in the right age bracket. But during this career, Lehman did more than enough things right. There are those who, having studied the evidence, think it's a misattribution to speak of "Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest." Ernie Lehman, they say, was the creative force behind that much-honored movie.
(Ernie had a fascinating book which he allowed me to examine one day when I was visiting him and he had to leave me for about a half-hour to do a phone interview. He took all of his correspondence and paperwork relating to North by Northwest and had it bound into a book about three inches thick. As he and Hitchcock did a lot of their collaboration by mail, it was a rich and invaluable record of that movie and of Hitchcock's — and Lehman's — approach to filmmaking. Ernie told me he was looking into getting the whole thing published, and I don't know what happened after that. That was around ten years ago. I sure hope that book is preserved for historians.)
The next to the last time I saw Ernie, it was because a friend of mine wanted to meet him. It was Mike Peters, the brilliant/crazy cartoonist, and we drove up to Ernie's lovely Brentwood home for the afternoon. The whole visit consisted of two accomplished men — neither of them, me — complimenting each other's work. I just sat there nodding in agreement with both of them.