It was a rainbow synthesis of words that made Ernest Paul Lehman’s genius an integral part of his artful dexterity — more so, because his cinematic chemistry mirrored his silky-smooth and built-in delightful ability to entertain multiple pairs of seemingly opposite ideas simultaneously. In other words, of seeing the whole picture, while integrating the larger elements, including their intrinsic and extrinsic details, with consummate élan.
To highlight just two examples: Lehman wrote Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), soon after he had worked on The Sound of Music (1965). Well, if anybody watches the two films back-to-back, it would be quite difficult to imagine a greater contrast between any two movies. This is not all. Lehman, with as much fervour, felicity, and snappy finesse, had earlier written King & I (1956), Sweet Smell of Success (1957) and North By Northwest (1959) — a quintessential Alfred Hitchcock film with its indelible stamp, through-and-through, yet it is also, in essence, a Lehman movie. The reason is simple — in other words, it is a simile as complex and engaging as the body of work that Lehman scripted.
While it is agreed that Lehman worked in much greater detail, and rapport, with Hitchcock than any other movie director, there’s more to his versatility than what meets the eye, or ear. As he once put it, “Absolutely. There were seldom any differences between the screenplay, and finished film. Take this example. In North By Northwest, I wanted the opening of the crop duster sequence to be shot from a helicopter. Instead, art director Robert Boyle constructed a tower for the camera to show Cary Grant standing all by himself, with nothing in sight… for 360 degrees. But, that whole sequence, almost shot-for-shot, is in the script.” A point proved.
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