Ephron was born in New York City on May 19, 1941, to a Jewish family.[9] She was the eldest of four daughters, and grew up in Beverly Hills, California.[10] 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.[11] 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.[12] Both her parents became alcoholics during their declining years.[10]
As a high school student, Ephron dreamed of going to New York City to become another Dorothy Parker, an American poet, writer, satirist, and critic.[13] Ephron has cited her high school journalism teacher, Charles Simms, as the inspiration for her pursuit of a career in journalism.[11] She graduated from Beverly Hills High School in 1958, and from Wellesley College in Massachusetts in 1962 with a degree in political science.[9]
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.[14] 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.[15]
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.[12] In 1966, she broke the news in the Post that Bob Dylan had married Sara Lownds in a private ceremony.[17] After becoming a successful writer, she wrote a column on women's issues for Esquire.[10] In this position, Ephron made a name for herself by writing "A Few Words About Breasts", a humorous essay about body image that "established her as the enfant terrible of the New Journalism".[18] 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".[12] A 1968 send-up of Women's Wear Daily that she wrote for Cosmopolitan resulted in threats of a lawsuit from WWD.[12]
Ephron rewrote a script for All the President's Men in the mid-1970s, along with her then husband, investigative journalist Carl Bernstein. While the script was not used, it was seen by someone who offered Ephron her first screenwriting job, for a television movie,[12] which began her screenwriting career.[19]
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.[20] Ephron and Arlen were nominated for the Best Original Screenplay Oscar in 1984 for Silkwood.[21]
Ephron's novel Heartburn was published in 1983.[11] The novel is a semi-autobiographical account of her marriage with Carl Bernstein.[11] The film adaptation was released in 1986, directed by Mike Nichols starring Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson. Ephron adapted her own novel into the screenplay for the film.[11] In the film, Ephron's fictionalized portrayal of herself, played by Streep, is a pregnant food writer who learns about her husband's affair.
In 1986, Ephron wrote the script for the romantic comedy When Harry Met Sally.... Released in 1989, the film was directed by Rob Reiner, and starred Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan. The film depicted the decade-long friendship between Harry (Crystal) and Sally (Ryan) as they navigate their own romantic relationships. Ephron claimed that she wrote this screenplay with Reiner in mind as the character of Harry, and herself as the character of Sally.[11] The film has become iconic in the romantic comedy genre, most notably for the scene in which Sally pretends to have an orgasm in the middle of Katz's Deli during lunch. Ephron said she wrote the part of Sally simulating an orgasm into the script per Ryan's suggestions. Additionally, the comment "I'll have what she's having" said by a deli patron (played by Rob Reiner's real-life mother Estelle Reiner) watching the scene unfold nearby, was an idea from Billy Crystal.[22] Ephron's script was nominated for the 1990 Oscar in Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen.[22]
Ephron's directorial debut was the film This Is My Life (1992). Ephron and her sister Delia Ephron wrote the script based on Meg Wolitzer's novel This is Your Life.[11] The film is about a woman who decides to pursue a career in stand-up comedy after inheriting a substantial sum of money from a relative.[11] In a conversation released by Criterion Channel between Lena Dunham, and Ephron, she stated "That movie I made completely for Woody Allen." She later stated in the conversation that he saw it and liked it.[23]
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".[24] 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 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.[11]You've Got Mail stars Meg Ryan as Kathleen Kelly, an owner of a small, independent children's bookstore in New York City. Her quiet life is then threatened by Fox Books, a Barnes & Noble-esque book selling chain, which opens near her shop. Fox Books is run by Joe Fox, played by Tom Hanks. Joe and Kathleen navigate a tumultuous business rivalry, while unknowingly forming an intimate connection with each other via email.
Her play, Lucky Guy was released posthumously. It was released a year after her death in 2013 on Broadway and starred Tom Hanks as a newspaper journalist Mike McAlary. Ephron and Hanks received Tony Award nominations for Best Play and Best Actor in a Play respectively. Alexis Soloski of The Guardian praised the production and Ephron's writing declaring, "She has a lively sense of the caffeine-addled cut and thrust of newsroom life, and can make you very nearly weepy for the past triumphs of the tabs, even as she shows what a closed, testosterone-heavy world they occupied".[32]
Personal life
Ephron was married three times. Her first marriage to writer Dan Greenburg ended in divorce after nine years.[10] In 1976, she married journalist Carl Bernstein with whom she had two sons. In 1979, Ephron was pregnant with their second son when she discovered Bernstein's affair with their mutual friend,[33] 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),[34] 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".[10] She also wrote that the character Thelma (based on Margaret Jay) looked like a giraffe with "big feet".[10] Bernstein threatened to sue over the book and film but never did.[12]
Ephron was married for 25 years to screenwriter Nicholas Pileggi from 1987 until her death in 2012. The couple lived in the Hollywood Hills in Los Angeles and in New York City.[35]
Ephron's friend Richard Cohen said of her, "She was very Jewish, culturally and emotionally. She identified fully as a Jewish woman."[36] 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.[37]
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.[40] Ephron read Bernstein's notes, which referred to Deep Throat as "MF";[40] Bernstein said it stood for "My Friend", but Ephron correctly guessed it stood for Mark Felt, the former associate director of the FBI.[40]
After Ephron's marriage with Bernstein ended, Ephron revealed Deep Throat's identity to her son Jacob and anyone else who asked. She once said, "I would give speeches to 500 people and someone would say, 'Do you know who Deep Throat is?' And I would say, 'It's Mark Felt.'"[10] Classmates of Jacob at the Dalton School and Vassar College recall him revealing to numerous people that Felt was Deep Throat. This revelation attracted little media attention despite Deep Throat's identity being publicly unknown. Ephron said, "No one, apart from my sons, believed me."[41] 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.[40]
Death and legacy
In 2006, Ephron was diagnosed with myelodysplasia.[42] She chose not to disclose her diagnosis to friends or colleagues, fearing that the knowledge that she was ill would have impeded her career.[43] 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.[6]
The Nora Ephron Prize is a $25,000 award by the Tribeca Film Festival for a female writer or filmmaker "with a distinctive voice".[50] The first Nora Ephron Prize was awarded in 2013 to Meera Menon for her film Farah Goes Bang.[50]
Filmography
Feature films
As an actress, Nora Ephron appeared in two films, both made by her friend Woody Allen: she is credited as being a wedding guest in Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), and as a Dinner Party Guest in Husbands and Wives (1992).
^"Nora Ephron Biography Photo". 2007. Awards Council member and famed filmmaker George Lucas presenting award-winning director and screenwriter Nora Ephron with the Golden Plate Award at the 2007 International Achievement Summit in Washington, D.C.
