Nora Ephron ( ; May 19, 1941 – June 26, 2012) was an American writer, playwright, journalist, and filmmaker. Known for writing and directing romantic comedy films, she received numerous accolades including a BAFTA Award as well as nominations for three Academy Awards, a Tony Award, a Golden Globe Award, and three Writers Guild of America Awards.
Ephron started her career writing the screenplays for Silkwood (1983), Heartburn (1986), and When Harry Met Sally... (1989), the last of which earned the BAFTA Award for Best Original Screenplay, and was ranked by the Writers Guild of America as the 40th greatest screenplay of all-time. She made her directorial film debut with the comedy drama This Is My Life (1992), and was followed by the romantic comedies Sleepless in Seattle (1993), Michael (1996), You've Got Mail (1998), Bewitched (2005), and the biographical film Julie & Julia (2009).
Ephron's first produced play, Imaginary Friends (2002), was honored as one of the ten best plays of the 2002–03 New York theatre season. She also co-authored the Drama Desk Award–winning theatrical production Love, Loss, and What I Wore. In 2013, she received a posthumous Tony Award nomination for Best Play for Lucky Guy, her last play. She also wrote columns for Esquire, Cosmopolitan, and The New Yorker.
Early life and education
Ephron was born in New York City on May 19, 1941, to a Jewish family. She was the eldest of four daughters, and grew up in Beverly Hills, California. Her parents, Phoebe (née Wolkind) and Henry Ephron, were both East Coast-born playwrights and screenwriters. Her parents named her Nora after the protagonist in the play A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen. Nora's younger sisters, Delia and Amy, are also writers. Her sister Hallie Ephron is a journalist, book reviewer, and novelist who writes crime fiction. Ephron's parents based the ingenue character in the play and film version of Take Her, She's Mine on the 22-year-old Nora and her letters from college; Sandra Dee played the character based on Nora in the film version, with James Stewart portraying her father. Both her parents became alcoholics during their declining years. Ephron has cited her high school journalism teacher, Charles Simms, as the inspiration for her pursuit of a career in journalism.
Career
1966–1979: Work as a journalist
After graduating from Wellesley, Ephron worked briefly as an intern in the White House of President John F. Kennedy. She also applied to be a writer at Newsweek. After she was told they did not hire women writers, she accepted a position as a mail girl.
After eventually quitting Newsweek because she was not allowed to write, Ephron participated in a class action lawsuit against the magazine for sexual discrimination, described in the book The Good Girls Revolt: How the Women of Newsweek Sued Their Bosses and Changed the Workplace by Lynn Povich, and both the lawsuit and Ephron's role were fictionalized in a 2016 Amazon series by the similar main title Good Girls Revolt.
After a satire in Monocle she wrote lampooning the New York Post caught the editor's eye, Ephron accepted a job at the Post, where she worked as a reporter for five years. After becoming a successful writer, she wrote a column on women's issues for Esquire. While at Esquire, she took on subjects as wide-ranging as Dorothy Schiff, her former boss and owner of the Post; Betty Friedan, whom she chastised for pursuing a feud with Gloria Steinem; and her alma mater Wellesley, which she said had turned out "a generation of docile and unadventurous women".
1980–1998: Romantic comedy stardom
In 1983, Ephron co-scripted the film Silkwood with Alice Arlen. The film, directed by Mike Nichols, starred Meryl Streep as Karen Silkwood, a whistleblower at the Kerr McGee Cimarron nuclear facility who dies under suspicious circumstances. Ephron and Arlen were nominated for the Best Original Screenplay Oscar in 1984 for Silkwood.
Ephron's novel Heartburn was published in 1983. Ephron's script was nominated for the 1990 Oscar in Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen.
In 1993, Ephron directed and wrote the script for the romantic comedy Sleepless in Seattle. The film stars Tom Hanks as Sam Baldwin, a recently widowed father whose son calls into a Chicago-based radio talk show in an attempt to find his father a new partner. After hearing this call, Baltimore resident Annie Reed, played by Meg Ryan, becomes infatuated with Sam, and sets up a rendezvous for the two to meet in New York City. The film received positive reviews with Michael Wilmington of Los Angeles Times describing it as a "real charmer ... a romantic comedy about an ultimate long-distance relationship. Emphasize 'romantic.' Emphasize 'comedy.' It delivers both", adding that it "almost makes us forget our modern-day cynicism". The film was a box office success becoming one of the highest-grossing films of 1993. Ephron was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay losing to Jane Campion for The Piano (1993).
In 1994, Nora Ephron was awarded the Women in Film Crystal Award. That year, she directed the dark Christmas comedy Mixed Nuts (1994) which starred Steve Martin, Madeline Kahn, Rita Wilson, Rob Reiner and Adam Sandler. The film was based on the French comedy Le Père Noël est une ordure (1979). She co-wrote the screenplay with her sister Delia Ephron. The film received mixed reviews and was a box office flop. She then directed the comedy fantasy film Michael (1996) starring John Travolta, Andie MacDowell and William Hurt. The film received mixed reviews but was a box office success. David Ansen of Newsweek praised the film as being "charming...quirky...[and] a Christmas stocking stuffer".
In 1998, Nora Ephron directed the film You've Got Mail, which she co-wrote with her sister Delia Ephron. The story is a loose adaptation of the Ernst Lubitsch film from 1940 The Shop Around the Corner. In 2007, Ephron received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement presented by Awards Council member George Lucas.
Ephron directed and co-wrote the screenplay for her final film Julie & Julia (2009).
Personal life
Ephron was married three times. Her first marriage to writer Dan Greenburg ended in divorce after nine years, from 1967 to 1976. British journalist Margaret Jay, the daughter of former British prime minister James Callaghan, who was at the time married to the British ambassador to the United States, Peter Jay. Ephron was inspired by the affair to write the novel Heartburn (1983), which was then made into a 1986 Mike Nichols film starring Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep. In the book, Ephron wrote of a fictional husband who was "capable of having sex with a Venetian blind".
Ephron's friend Richard Cohen said of her, "She was very Jewish, culturally and emotionally. She identified fully as a Jewish woman." However, Ephron was not religious. "You can never have too much butter – that is my belief. If I have a religion, that's it", she quipped in an NPR interview about her 2009 movie Julie & Julia.
Ephron's son, Jacob Bernstein, directed an HBO movie on her life titled Everything Is Copy. As of 2021, he was a reporter for The New York Times. Another son, Max, is a keyboard and guitar player.
For many years, Ephron was one of the very few people who knew the identity of Deep Throat, the anonymous informer for articles written by her ex-husband Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward uncovering the Watergate scandal. Ephron read in Woodward and Bernstein's book All the President's Men that in Bernstein's notes, he referred to Deep Throat as "MF"; Ephron was invited by Arianna Huffington to write about the experience in The Huffington Post, for which Ephron was a regular blogger and part-time editor. She chose not to disclose her diagnosis to friends or colleagues, fearing that the knowledge that she was ill would have impeded her career. On June 26, 2012, Ephron died at Weill Cornell Medical Center in Manhattan from pneumonia, as a complication of leukemia, at the age of 71.
Ephron's memorial service, called A Gathering for Nora, was held at Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center in New York City. The invitation-only event was attended by actors Alan Alda, Lauren Bacall, Christine Baranski, Annette Bening, Candice Bergen, Matthew Broderick, Sally Field, Jon Hamm, Tom Hanks, Joel Grey, Nicole Kidman, Shirley MacLaine, Bette Midler, Meg Ryan, and Meryl Streep; comedians Joy Behar, Billy Crystal, Larry David, Steve Martin, Rosie O'Donnell, and Martin Short; directors Woody Allen, James L. Brooks, Stanley Donen, Ron Howard, Elaine May, Mike Nichols, Rob Reiner, Martin Scorsese, and Steven Spielberg; singer Paul Simon; Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter; activist Larry Kramer; Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels; columnist Frank Rich; fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg; talk show host Regis Philbin; playwright Tony Kushner; New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg; Senator Al Franken; and journalists Carl Bernstein, Ben Bradlee, Tom Brokaw, Gayle King, Charlie Rose, Diane Sawyer, and Barbara Walters, among others.
At that year's Karlovy Vary Film Festival, the lifetime achievement award honorees Helen Mirren and Susan Sarandon paid tribute to Ephron during their acceptance speeches.
The 2014 memoir Not That Kind of Girl, written by Lena Dunham, and the 2017 film The Post, directed by Spielberg, are both dedicated to Ephron.
The Nora Ephron Prize is a $25,000 award by the Tribeca Film Festival for a female writer or filmmaker "with a distinctive voice". The first Nora Ephron Prize was awarded in 2013 to Meera Menon for her film Farah Goes Bang.
|-
| 1992
| style="text-align:left;"| This Is My Life
|
|
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| style="text-align:left;"| Directorial debut;<br />Co-written with Delia Ephron
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| 1993
| style="text-align:left;"| Sleepless in Seattle
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|
|
| style="text-align:left;"| Co-written with David S. Ward and Jeff Arch
|-
| 1994
| style="text-align:left;"| Mixed Nuts
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|
|
| rowspan="2"| Co-written with Delia Ephron
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| 1996
| style="text-align:left;"| Michael
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|
|
|-
| rowspan="2"| 1998
| style="text-align:left;"| All I Wanna Do
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|
|
|
|-
| style="text-align:left;"| You've Got Mail
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|
|
| rowspan="2"| Co-written with Delia Ephron
|-
| rowspan="2"| 2000
| style="text-align:left;"| Hanging Up
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|
|
|-
| style="text-align:left;"| Lucky Numbers
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|
|
|
|-
| 2005
| style="text-align:left;"| Bewitched
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|
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| style="text-align:left;"| Co-written with Delia Ephron
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| 2009
| style="text-align:left;"| Julie & Julia
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|
|
|
|}
Theatre
{| class="wikitable unsortable plainrowheaders"
|-
! scope="col" | Year
! scope="col" | Title
! scope="col" class="unsortable" | Notes
! scope="col" class="unsortable" |Theatre
|-
|2002
|Imaginary Friends
|Writer
|Ethel Barrymore Theatre, Broadway
|-
| rowspan="1" |2008
| Love, Loss, and What I Wore
|Co-writer
| Westside Theatre, Off-Broadway
|-
|rowspan="1"| 2013
| Lucky Guy
| Posthumous release;<br>Writer
|Broadhurst Theatre, Broadway
|-
|}
Bibliography
Books
- Crazy Salad: Some Things About Women (1975),
- The Boston Photographs (1975)
- Scribble, Scribble: Notes on the Media (1978),
- Heartburn (1983, a novel)
- I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman (2006)
- I Remember Nothing: And Other Reflections (2010)
- The Most of Nora Ephron (2013),
Essays and reporting
Critical studies, reviews and biographies
———————
;Bibliography notes
Accolades
{| class="wikitable unsortable"
|-
! Year
! Award
! Category
! Nominated work
! Result
!
|-
|1983
|rowspan=3|Academy Award
|rowspan=3|Best Original Screenplay
|Silkwood
|
|rowspan="3" |
|-
|2013
|Tony Award
|Best Play
|Lucky Guy
|
|
|-
|1983
| rowspan=5|Writers Guild of America Award
|Best Original Screenplay
|Silkwood
|
|rowspan="5" |
|-
|1989
|Best Original Screenplay
|When Harry Met Sally...
|
|-
|1993
|Best Original Screenplay
|Sleepless in Seattle
|
|-
|2003
|Ian McLellan Hunter Award
|
|
|-
|2010
|Best Adapted Screenplay
|Julie & Julia
|
|-
|}
Other awards
{| class="wikitable unsortable"
|-
! Year
! Award
! Category
! Nominated work
! Result
! Notes
|-
|1979
|Edgar Allan Poe Awards
|Best Television Feature or Miniseries
|Perfect Gentlemen
|
|rowspan="5" |
|-
|1994
|Women in Film Crystal Award
|Crystal Award
|
|
|-
|1999
|Satellite Awards
|Best Motion Picture, Comedy or Musical
|You've Got Mail
|
|-
|2003
|The Best Plays of 2002–03
|Ten Best Plays of the New York season
|Imaginary Friends
|
|-
|rowspan=2|2006
|Razzie Awards
|Worst Director
|rowspan="2" |Bewitched
|
|-
|Razzie Awards
|Worst Screenplay
|
|With Delia Ephron and Adam McKay
|-
|rowspan=2|2009
|Satellite Awards
|Best Adapted Screenplay
|Julie & Julia
|
|
|-
|Casting Society of America
|Golden Apple Award
|
|
|With Delia Ephron
|-
|}
See also
- List of American print journalists
- List of Jewish American authors
- List of playwrights from the United States
References
External links
- WNED Public Television (November 17, 1975), Interview with Nora Ephron for WNED's series "Woman"
- Neri Livneh (July 5, 2012), "Neri Livneh salutes her heroine, Nora Ephron"
- "Plays by Nora Ephron" . Doollee.
- Nora Ephron Video produced by Makers: Women Who Make America
- Movie clips: , compilation, 5 min.