Born in New York City, grew up on Long Island; educated at City College of New York. One of his early jobs was as a copywriter for a Broadway publicist. This experience would later be reflected in his novel and screenplay, The Sweet Smell of Success. He also worked as a radio comedy writer and as editor of a financial magazine. He freelanced short stories for the likes of Collier's magazine, and one of these fiction pieces, "The Comedian," led to his first job in Hollywood as a screenwriter for Paramount in the mid-1950s. He had to his credit a number of outstanding scripts and four Oscar® nominations for screenwriting. From the mid-1960s until the early 70s he was also a producer (WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?, 1966; HELLO, DOLLY!, 1969 and PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT, 1972). Screenwriting credits (alone or in collaboration) include THE INSIDE STORY (1948), EXECUTIVE SUITE and SABRINA (1954), THE KING AND I and SOMEBODY UP THERE LIKES ME (both 1956), NORTH BY NORTHWEST (1959), FROM THE TERRACE (1960), WEST SIDE STORY (1961), THE PRIZE (1963), THE SOUND OF MUSIC (1965), WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? (1966, also producer), HELLO, DOLLY! (1969, also producer), FAMILY PLOT (1976) and BLACK SUNDAY (1977).
	In 1971 he made an inauspicious debut as director with a pallid film version of Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint. Novels: The French Atlantic Affair (1977), Farewell Performance. Non-fiction: Screening Sickness (1988). Lehman served as president of the Writers Guild of America (West) from 1983-85. Married to Jacqueline Shapiro Lehman from 1942 until her death in 1994; his second wife Laurie Sherman Lehman gave birth to a son in Los Angeles on January 31, 2002. Lehman won more Screenwriting Awards from the Writer's Guild than anyone else in the Guild's history. The University of Texas at Austin houses the Ernest Lehman Collection, which includes over 2500 items from his personal and professional files, many of them in his own handwriting. Although he never received a competitive Award, Lehman's Honorary Award in 2001 marked the first time that the Academy honored a screenwriter, not for an individual film, but for a body of work.
	Nominated for Writing (Screenplay) 1954: SABRINA (w. Billy Wilder & Samuel Taylor)  Nominated for Writing (Best Story and Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen) 1959: NORTH BY NORTHWEST  Nominated for Writing (Best Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium) 1961: WEST SIDE STORY  Nominated for Best Picture 1966: WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? - Producer at Chenault  Nominated for Writing (Best Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium) 1966: WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?  Nominated for Best Picture 1969: HELLO, DOLLY! - Producer at Chenault  Honorary Award 2000 6 nominations, 1 Honorary Award