Born and raised in New York City, Ernest Lehman worked as a publicity writer for The Hollywood Reporter columnist Irving Hoffman and utilized his experience in scripting Alexander Mackendrick's "Sweet Smell of Success" (1957). Though the screenplay bears the stamp of Lehman's co-writer Clifford Odets, this dark and cruel tale originated as a story published by Lehman in Cosmopolitan (1951). This and other stories, one of which became Allan Dwan's "The Inside Story" (1948), brought him to the attention of Hollywood, where he settled in 1953.That year began his association with Robert Wise on
