Trivia

Actually tried to climb Mount Rushmore after writing the monument into his La Mort aux trousses (1959) plot. Halfway up, he realized he could die if he slipped and came down.

Was eighty-six years old at the time of his son Jonathan's birth.

An enthusiastic cyclist who could often be seen traveling around Beverley Hills on his bicycle, rather than in a limousine.

His first collaboration with Alfred Hitchcock was supposed to be an adaptation of Hammond Innes' well-known novel, The Wreck of the Mary Deare, which MGM wanted to film. Hitchcock was not keen on the novel, feeling that all its best scenes were at the beginning and that it would be difficult to avoid an anti-climax as the story progressed. Lehman agreed and said that it would be impossible for him to adapt the book into a workable script. Instead, they devised an original story which became the classic La Mort aux trousses (1959). However, MGM ignored Hitchcock's advice about The Wreck of the Mary Deare and instead hired Eric Ambler to write and Michael Anderson to direct a film version, Cargaison dangereuse (1959), which appeared in cinemas only a few months after North By Northwest's release. This film was, however, the flop Hitchcock and Lehman had predicted.

(January 31, 2002) His wife Laurie gave birth to son Jonathan Maxwell Lehman in Los Angeles.

He was paid a salary of $600 per week for his first Hollywood screenwriting credit, La Tour des ambitieux (1954).

Asked about his experiences as a press agent in the late 1940s, he admitted to having done "several moderately disgraceful things", but would not elaborate.

He had originally hoped to direct Le Grand Chantage (1957), based on his own novella, but fell ill and relinquished the task to Alexander Mackendrick. He did not direct for another fifteen years, his one and only film as director, Portnoy et son complexe (1972), a catastrophic flop.

He has written six films that have been selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant: Sabrina (1954), Le Grand Chantage (1957), La Mort aux trousses (1959), West Side Story (1961), La Mélodie du bonheur (1965) and Qui a peur de Virginia Woolf? (1966).

He was first introduced to Alfred Hitchcock by the composer Bernard Herrmann, a friend who had already worked on famous Hitchcock films.

(1983-1985) President of the Writers Guild of America, West (WGAw).

In his book "Laughing Matters," award-winning writer Larry Gelbart admits that he admires Lehman's talent and uses a quote from Lehman about working in Hollywood.

In the late 1930s, he used to hunt down gossip for Walter Winchell and other gossip columnists. His novella "Tell Me About It Tomorrow" had a backdrop similar to his experiences from this period of his life.

Held amateur radio operator call sign K6DXK.