Ernest Tidyman was born in 1928 to Catherine and Benjamin Ralph Tidyman, a crime reporter for The Plain Dealer. Tidyman married 5 times. He adopted two sons, Ben and Nathaniel, with his third wife Ruth Rayle Tidyman. With his fourth wife, Susan Gould, he fathered two children – Adam and Nicholas.

Tidyman enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1946 serving in public relations. He worked as a journalist and crime reporter for the next two decades in a number of cities, including a stint as editor of Diners Club magazine, and writing for The New York Times (1960–66), The New York Post (1957–60), male magazines and black newspapers. In 1968 he wrote his first novel, Flower Power about hippies. He then decided to write about a black detective, Shaft.

However he was not happy with the final films, particularly Shaft, and decided to move into producing as well, establishing Ernest Tidyman Productions in 1971. Ernest Tidyman Productions was changed to Ernest Tidyman International, Ltd., in 1971 and back to Ernest Tidyman Productions in 1979. Tidyman also established Shaft Productions in 1972 to handle Shaft’s sequels, Pilgrim Productions to handle Big Bucks, and Family Trouble Productions to produce an unmade film Family Trouble.

He wrote the screenplay for the 1973 film High Plains Drifter, directed by and starring Clint Eastwood. Tidyman also wrote the sequel to Shaft, Shaft’s Big Score, which appeared in theaters in 1972.

In 1974, he published Dummy, a non-fiction account of the story of Donald Lang, an accused deaf-mute murderer. It was nominated for an Edgar in the Fact Crime category.

He co-wrote A Force of One in 1979, one of Chuck Norris’s earlier films.

In 1980, he wrote the teleplay for the TV movie Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones, which he also had a hand in producing, which got him an Emmy nomination. For creating the Shaft books, he became one of the few white individuals to win an NAACP Image Award.

“I write for money”, Tidyman said in a 1980 interview. He got up at six am and wrote for 12 hours a day.

In 1982, after Gould’s death, he married former Motown soul singer Chris Clark, who had co-written the screenplay for Lady Sings the Blues (1972).

Tidyman died in 1984 in Westminster Hospital in London, England, from a perforated ulcer; Tidyman was in London for a production meeting about a film to be made in Europe.