Well, this is a fine how-do-you do

I wasn't even sure I wanted to start another blog yet;, and I certainly didn't want to start one with another obit. But I just learned on Mark Evanier's blog that Ernest Lehman has died and I didn't want to let that pass without expressing my sorrow.

Lehman, the author of North by Northwest and the screen versions of The Sound of Music and The King and I to name a very few, was something of a screenwriter's screenwriter. William Goldman and Larry Gelbart, niether of them exactly unknown themselves, both devoted chapters of their books Which Lie Did I Tell? (Goldman) and Laughing Matters (Gelbart) to praising Lehman. In his, Goldman reports that he once had a crew member point out Lehman to him on a set with the words "Even his flops are hits."

As for me, I said over on my late, lamented blog The Sound of the Crowd two or three months ago of North by Northwest that:

For all that the famous action sequences get praised, I'm in love (or at
least wildly infatuated) with Ernest Lehman's dialogue,
which is sheer pleasure.

I've got little to add to that. Sheer pleasure.