Kristin Marguerite Doidge - Nora Ephron: A Biography

ALL ROADS lead to Nora.

I have said this many times over the years as I dug into the life and work of Nora Ephronfirst as a graduate student and later as a reporter. When I first came across a quote from Noras 1996 Wellesley commencement speechDont be frightened. You can always change your mind. I know: Ive had four careers and three husbandsI wondered: how could this fascinating woman have been the same person who wrote both the scathing novel Heartburn and the warm and earnest film Sleepless in Seattle?

The answer? As her dear friend and longtime collaborator Dianne Dreyer said to me, She would always surprise you. During the past seven years I spent working on this book, one way or another an inevitable connection to Nora would emerge: an actor or actress shed worked with early on or whod sought her advice or counsel, a writer shed mentored, a book or show shed adapted or had ultimately inspired. (For some recent examples, see such diverse productions as the hit AppleTV+ show Ted Lasso, Hulus Only Murders in the Building, and HBOs Succession.)

But one of the most delicious things about writing a biography, as Nora might have put it, is that youre still living your own life right alongside the person youre studying, learning about, and writing about. As you change and grow and evolve, so too does your understanding of what that person went through in various stages of her life, and how she must have felt when she faced decisions both small and large as a feminist, filmmaker, foodie, writer, friend, sister, daughter, wife, and mother.

I discovered that new Nora sources, stories, and materials would emerge. Details became clearerand at the same time, somehow more complicated. Embrace the mess and the complications, shed once said, but also, seek out joy in the simplicity of lifes greatest treasures: good books, good friends, good food. Most of all, find what makes you happy and give it all youve got.

What she found in husband Nick Pileggi was a real-life love story, and I think she wanted women (and men) to know that true love is out there. And its possible their Sam Baldwin is not a husband but rather beautiful children who warm the house with their stories, music, or jokes, or sisters who fill your soul with memories and speak a language only you understand.

I was naive and perhaps ignorant enough to have the blind ambition necessary to take on a task of this magnitude. I approached it with the love, admiration, and critical eye of what communications scholar Henry Jenkins calls an aca-fan. And I hope that in doing so, I have captured in the pages of this book a nuanced portrait of a woman who taught us how to livewho reminded us not to take ourselves too seriously, no matter how many punches life may throw at us.

So why does Nora Ephron still matter? Because she gives us hope.

The intelligent, self-described cynic was the one who helped us see that its never too late to go after your dreams, or to change direction in the pursuit of reinvention: she was thirty-two when she got her first column with Esquire, and she was fifty when she became a film director in an industry and an era that often rewarded youth over talent. Drawn to chef Julia Childs work as a young woman, she realized that Child, too, came to be who she was later in life. (Child didnt publish her book or get her first cooking show until she was fifty as well, and Julie Powell, the blogger who made up the other half of the biopic Julie & Julia, was thirty when she started blogging about Child.)

As the writer Meg Wolitzer so poignantly explained, Noras legacy lives on because in the great rushing loneliness of the world, when a writers voice makes you feel befriended, you want more of it even after the person is gone.

Nora shared the same anxiety about death we all do: she wanted to have a good death as much as she wanted to have a good life. She spoke about her friend having organized a file on the computer labeled EXIT, and how hed died in his sleep peacefully after living a full life.

She once said that she hoped to die at eighty-four years old, peacefully in her sleep, after dinner at LAmi Louis in Paris. But Nora didnt get that chance, at least not at eighty-four years oldbut after living a full life, yes. As much as Nora had shown us how to live, she also showed us how to die.

One of the things you discover about parents is that you learn things about them after they die, her son Jacob said at a 2019 talk called All About Nora at the TCM Festival in Los Angeles. [Things] that you didnt know about them when they were alive. And thats both sad and...

And like a gift, actress and friend Rita Wilson added.

Thank you so much for reading Nora Ephron: A Biography. It has been the gift of a lifetime to get to write it.

Theres a reading guide in the back of the book that should be both fun and useful for book clubs and students alike. I also invite you to visit my website at www.kristinmarguerite.com.

As you rewatch her films, read or reread her essays and articles, and consider her unique point of view, you might find that many, if not all, roads worth taking somehow lead back to Nora.

Nora called on us to make a little trouble on behalf of women; I hope this book will help galvanize us all to be a little braver. And to order more than one dessert.

IT ALL STARTED with a telephone call between a father and his daughter in 1987.

Nora?

Yes, Dad, hello.

Nora, did I tell you I finished my memoirs?

Thats great, Dad.

I just called Kate Hepburn and I told her the name of my memoirs, he added. She loved it.

On this particular day, screenwriter Henry EphronNora Ephrons ailing father, who by that time had some forgetfulnesshad another, juicier tidbit to add to one of his trademark brief but colorful phone calls: Uncle Halthe estranged brother of Noras late mother and a once-left-leaning government official who had caused problems during the days of the House Un-American Activities Committee and the Red Scare in Hollywoodwas going to leave her a fortune in his will.

Nora was going to become an heiress. Shed never have to write again.

The twice-divorced newlywed was happily embracing her new career as a screenwriter following the success of famed director Mike Nicholss Silkwood, starring Meryl Streep and Cher, which earned Nora and cowriter Alice Arlen an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay in 1984. (Pulitzer Prizewinning playwright and screenwriter Horton Foote took home the trophy that year for