Ernest Lehman: The 'Star' of Family Plot?

The coming of Ernest Lehman to be the screenwriter of Alfred Hitchcock's final film is a rather rueful tale of a "Hollywood rise and fall."

Lehman was a rather prolific screenwriter of the 50's who adapted musicals like "The King and I" on the one hand, but developed a cutting speciality in "New York stories" as well: Executive Suite, Sweet Smell of Success, and, ultimately for Hitchocck, North by Northwest in 1959. A rare "original screenplay" for Lehman, "North by Northwest" grew in time as THE Lehman screenplay to be cherished. ("Sweet Smell of Success" comes in a close second, but that one was co-written by Clifford Odets; hard to tell who did what, though Lehman's tough wit seems to shine through.)

Came the 60's after "North by Northwest," Ernest Lehman's fortunes rose. He adapted two mammoth musicals -- "West Side Story" (with some more New York flavor) and "The Sound of Music" (with a PRODUCER credit for Lehman, and more Rogers and Hammerstein after "The King and I.") Those two alone gave Lehman the kind of clout that a "lowly screenwriter" in Hollywood didn't usually get, and he ended up producing two more major films as well as adapting them.

The first was a crucial New Hollywood film: Mike Nichols acrid and groundbreaking "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf," which was a hit, an Oscar winner, and yet another "sure winner" for Ernest Lehman.

And then his luck turned bad.

First: the gigantic and expensive blockbuster "Hello, Dolly" of 1969. Lehman was the big-billed producer and the adapter of the screenplay. On paper: boffo. Another big Broadway musical. But something went wrong, and "Hello Dolly" became a studio-endangering paeon to Old Hollywood...in a bad way.

Second, and lethal: "Portnoy's Complaint" in 1972. Ernest Lehman here made the perhaps insane decision to DEBUT as a director with extremely famous, extremely sensitive material about the sex life of an angst-ridden Jewish male, from a bestseller by Philip Roth that had all the intellectual book critics of New York watching Lehman try to make a movie out of it.

Lehman failed, and thus had a very bad one-two punch of collapse (1) The Old Hollywood debacle of "Hello, Dolly" followed by the Old Hollywood Screws Up New Hollywood debacle of "Portnoy's Complaint." With "Portnoy," Lehman drew that nastiest of Hollywood accusations: he was Old and Out of Touch.

I would expect that Ernest Lehman was wealthy enough to simply retire when "Hello Dolly" and "Portnoy" bombed. He wrote some columns and articles, and hung around, but nothing much changed in his career until 1974, when Universal announced that Alfred Hitchcock's next movie (untitled at the time), from Victor Canning's novel "The Rainbird Pattern," would be adapted for the screen by Ernest Lehman, the screenwriter of "North by Northwest."

I can tell you that this was exciting news in 1974. Hitchcock had recently come back with "Frenzy" (1972), using the playwright of the hit play "Sleuth", Anthony Shaffer, as his guide back to relevancy. Now, Hitchcock had managed to land -- as his lowly SCREENWRITER -- the producer of The Sound of Music,Virginia Woolf, Hello Dolly, and the DIRECTOR of "Portnoy's Complaint."

I'm hard-pressed to recall any Hollywood bigshot who started out as a writer going back to "just" writing.

But then again, it was for Alfred Hitchcock.

Hitchcock killed Lehman with kindess in the press: "I'm using him because he's available after "Hello, Dolly" and "Portnoy's Complaint" failed. Its unfortunate, but there you are."

Still, Hitchcock also rewarded Ernest Lehman with a major "co-credit" for all pre-release posters on "Family Plot" and when the movie "Family Plot" actually opens on screen, only two credits are listed: Alfred Hitchcock and Ernest Lehman. The cast names don't appear until the end of the picture. Lehman's name was also prominent in the trailer.

Despite some good actors in the cast, "Family Plot" can rather be seen as STARRING "Alfred Hitchcock and Ernest Lehman." Film buff audiences were promised a reunion of the men who created "North by Northwest," and a MERGER of TWO producer-directors on one project (albeit Hitchocck produced and directed a lot more movies than Lehman.)

Alas, as even Ernest Lehman himself noted, "Family Plot" could only be a letdown to fans of North by Northwest. It had no big stars. It had no big budget. The locations were sparse: no New York City, United Nations Building, Mount Rushmore. Just some San Francisco and LA stuff.

And, sadly, Lehman's script structure and witty dialogue was pretty far off the perfection of "North by Northwest." Though Family Plot still DID have some great structure (everything about Madame Blanche coming to Adamson's house was screenwriting perfection) and the screenplay DID have some wit.

Lehman was also evidently hamstrung in the writing process by an aged, ornery Hitchcock who fought with him a lot and demanded a LOT of exposition be written (leading to the fatal first 20 minutes of "Family Plot" in which we are told, over and over and over, the same plot information as if Hitchcock thinks we are children.)

Still, it was a bit of a Hollywood miracle: Hitchcock and Lehman reunited, with a producer-director(Lehman) agreeing to only a screenwriter's credit. Unheard of, then and now.