Bye-bye, Nora Ephron
The Best Mailgirl Ever
By GAIL COLLINS, NYT
When Nora Ephron graduated from college in 1962, she applied for a job as a writer at Newsweek, was told women weren’t allowed to be writers there, and settled for mailgirl. I used that story as a kind of centerpiece in a book I wrote about American women because it reminded me of one of those old movies about a Broadway musical with pompous stars played by actors you’ve never heard of, plus Judy Garland in the back of the chorus.
We talked about the grand saga of how the bad old days gave way to the women’s movement one afternoon while she was cooking lunch in the apartment on the East Side where she lived with her husband, Nick Pileggi. (She famously said that the secret to life was marrying an Italian, but, obviously, she meant the secret was marrying Nick.) When she worked as an intern at the White House, she recalled, she took a man who was her then-fiancé on a tour of the White House “past one fabulous room named after what color it was painted after another,” until at the end he looked at her and said: “No wife of mine is going to work in a place like this.”
The whole world is going to remember Nora for her books and essays and scripts and blogs and, of course, movie directing. A rather hefty chunk of the world is going to remember her as a dear friend, because she had armies and armies of friends. Really, you are talking Normandy Invasion of friendship. (Are there still going to be book parties in New York? It seems inconceivable. Nora defined New York book parties. She was really more the point than the actual books.)
I’m pretty sure she would also want somebody to point out that she was an ardent feminist. She could get a little wry about the more self-obsessed aspects of the movement at its height, like the meetings where everyone was required to bring mirrors and examine their private parts. (“It is hard not to long for the days when an evening with the girls meant bridge,” she wrote.) But she was a proud defender of the cause, supporter of younger women’s careers, and fearless in an industry that was not particularly welcoming of women in the director’s chair. Also, since she was so glamorous and stupendously witty, she was an excellent life lesson for some of the people who have been insisting for the last 90 years that feminists are dour and wear unattractive shoes.
(More here.)
By GAIL COLLINS, NYT
When Nora Ephron graduated from college in 1962, she applied for a job as a writer at Newsweek, was told women weren’t allowed to be writers there, and settled for mailgirl. I used that story as a kind of centerpiece in a book I wrote about American women because it reminded me of one of those old movies about a Broadway musical with pompous stars played by actors you’ve never heard of, plus Judy Garland in the back of the chorus.
We talked about the grand saga of how the bad old days gave way to the women’s movement one afternoon while she was cooking lunch in the apartment on the East Side where she lived with her husband, Nick Pileggi. (She famously said that the secret to life was marrying an Italian, but, obviously, she meant the secret was marrying Nick.) When she worked as an intern at the White House, she recalled, she took a man who was her then-fiancé on a tour of the White House “past one fabulous room named after what color it was painted after another,” until at the end he looked at her and said: “No wife of mine is going to work in a place like this.”
The whole world is going to remember Nora for her books and essays and scripts and blogs and, of course, movie directing. A rather hefty chunk of the world is going to remember her as a dear friend, because she had armies and armies of friends. Really, you are talking Normandy Invasion of friendship. (Are there still going to be book parties in New York? It seems inconceivable. Nora defined New York book parties. She was really more the point than the actual books.)
I’m pretty sure she would also want somebody to point out that she was an ardent feminist. She could get a little wry about the more self-obsessed aspects of the movement at its height, like the meetings where everyone was required to bring mirrors and examine their private parts. (“It is hard not to long for the days when an evening with the girls meant bridge,” she wrote.) But she was a proud defender of the cause, supporter of younger women’s careers, and fearless in an industry that was not particularly welcoming of women in the director’s chair. Also, since she was so glamorous and stupendously witty, she was an excellent life lesson for some of the people who have been insisting for the last 90 years that feminists are dour and wear unattractive shoes.
(More here.)
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