I was listening to NPR and they had a piece on it, with Eva Marie Saint
and her husband (who's name I didn't catch). The minute the name
Ernest Lehman's name was mentioned, I thought "but he was a ham", and
indeed Saint's husband actually did go into Ernie's interest in amateur
radio, said in a way that it clearly was an important part of his life.

Doing a websearch, he died, of a heart attack, on July 2nd, but it
just hit the news today.

The first time I heard of Ernest Lehman was in QST, in the October 1971
issue, when I was 11. I wouldn't be licensed for eight months, but there
towards the back was one thing I could mostly understand, "How to Make
A Jewish Movie", by Mel Shavelson. Basically a piece about setting up
a station while he was in Israel to make a movie, "Cast a Giant Shadow",
he mentions Ernest Lehman, and if I'm remembering properly (I can't find the
issue at the moment), something about competition between the two when
it came to amateur radio. (The same issue had a story from a yearbook
from the thirties entitled "Radio Robert", a fictional story about a teenager
who saved the day with amateur radio.)

I don't think I'd seen any of the films Ernest Lehman had been involved in
at that point, but if you look at his entry at http://www.imdb.com he
has a string of films to his credit that most people have either seen, or
at the very least know about. Such as "West Side Story" and "The Sound of
Music" and "North By Northwest". It's not that long a list, but it's
obviously a pretty important list.

Oddly, considering the first time I read about him it was in reference
to amateur radio, I know nothing about his involvement in the hobby, other
than that it clearly was important to him.

But in the late seventies, he wrote "The French Atlantic Affair" which
used amateur radio in a key scene, and then turned around and turned
it into a mini-series in 1979.

Michael VE2BVW