Ernest Lehman: You will be missed, lump

Screenwriter Ernest Lehman—whose Sweet Smell of Success remains the single greatest New York film ever made—died Tuesday of a heart attack. He was 89.

Lehman was born and raised in Manhattan and spent the early part of his career as a copywriter for press agent Irving Hoffman. His nights on the town furnishing gossip to columnists like Walter Winchell, Ed Sullivan and Leonard Lyons provided the basis for his 1950 short story "Tell Me About it Tomorrow," which he adapted in the following years as Sweet Smell of Success. Clifford Odets polished the script, and Tony Curtis brought Lehman's lurid alter-ego Sidney Falco to the screen opposite Burt Lancaster in 1957.

Despite his withering Sweet Smell dialogue (has anybody ever written a better reaction to a crying woman than, "Looks like we'll have to call this game on account of darkness"?), Lehman is probably best known for writing Hitchcock's North by Northwest and adapting Broadway hits like The Sound of Music and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? ; he supposedly wrote a 200,000-word production diary of the latter film that still remains under lock and key with his collected writings at the University of Texas.

God only knows what this New York kid's stuff is doing in Texas—maybe we can pool our resources and organize a Lone Star jailbreak for both Lehman's and Don DeLillo's work all in one trip. Failing that, have another look at Sweet Smell and toast the last of a dying breed.