wouldbestar
-
Posts
3,670 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Posts posted by wouldbestar
-
-
{font:Times New Roman}Oh, my! I had no idea what I was starting but I’m enjoying the lively discussion. Now that the fog has lifted I can enjoy it all. {font}
{font:Times New Roman}I was going to move into a better complex this weekend but things fell through due to a government regulation. I had already given notice here and faced having no residence. The same regulation had a loophole so I am still here for three weeks or longer. The conditions are still the same-not too good-but I still have a roof over my head. I guess if God intends for me to move, I will. If not, that’s okay, too. I have friends who are glad I’m staying and that helps. {font}
-
JackFavell wrote: I hope you are feeling better now. You should know that there are those here who look forward to your posts and enjoy what you write very much. We don't want you to be in that black hole.
It's the Federal Government; what can I say? They give you one rule to follow then the other party one that contradicts the first one. They seem to have no idea of how this effects the folks they say they're trying to help or the binds this puts them in. That's all I'll say as I don't want to get left and right at each other on my account.
Thank you, Jack, for your kind words. They are very much appreciated.
-
{font:Times New Roman}
I have been in a situational black hole since Friday and today did not start out so well either. At three o’clock the clouds began to lift and I now see some daylight. I turned on TCM just in time for *The Long Gray Line;* if that doesn’t lift your spirits I don’t know what will. This is our side of the pond’s version of *Goodbye, Mr. Chips* and it leaves with the same lump in your throat. That beautiful final line from *Chips;* “I have thousands of children, all boys”, applied to Marty Maher as well and he was a real person. Things are looking up as is my mood; thank you TCM for a much needed pick-me-up.{font}
-
> {quote:title=willbefree25 wrote:}{quote}I don't marvel at it.
>
> I think he should have gracefully withdrawn from the public spotlight. He doesn't need the money.
>
It is not always about money. This man is a veteran of a 65-year film career and despite his infirmities has a sharp mind and still has plenty to say. I can take time to listen as I know it's worth it. His books are never boring and he is not afraid to share his mistakes as well as his triumphs. My respect for him as a person has grown these last few years. Remember, folks, some of you might make it to 95 too. Would you want to be told to sit down and shut up when you weren't used up yet?
-
RowanMartin68 wrote:
What are your thoughts on the 23 year old Hollywood actress Karyn Kupcinet, who was murdered days after the Kennedy assassination. The case remains unsolved to this day. Some theories link her with the assassination, claiming that she had learned of the events through her father's various connections, and a mere twenty minutes before Kennedy is shot she placed a long distance call from the Los Angeles area. Ray Sheehan, manager of the Oxnard division of General Telephone Co., said the caller "stumbled into our operator's circuits," perhaps by misdialing. According to reports, the long distance operator heard Miss Kupcinet scream into the telephone that President Kennedy was going to be killed. There was an Associated Press dispatch printed in the Chicago Daily News of November 23, 1963, originating from Oxnard, California, which told approximately the same story.
{font:Times New Roman}This is news to me. A few weeks before the murder some of the fan magazine columnists reported that Andrew Prine wanted to break things off with her but she did not with him. This led to his being a major suspect. As you said, he was questioned but never arrested or charged with her murder. I know he had a long on/off marriage to Brenda Scott but I can’t remember any other criminal trouble. He’s had a long and fruitful career.{font}
{font:Times New Roman}The Kennedy story seems to be another in the list of strange ones regarding his assassination that keeps “conspiracy theorists” going. It’s a crime that, like Elizabeth Short’s murder, will probably never be solved. {font}
-
{font:Times New Roman}Those last two swashbucklers, especially *The Warriors*, were hard to watch. (There was another Italian one, *Crossed Swords,* that was mercifully left out of the mix). Both were fairly well made; had they been even ten years earlier we could have enjoyed a Flynn in his prime. It’s obvious that the decline began-or became noticeable-around the time of *Don Juan* and by the mid-50s was complete. I stuck with it to see if it had a historically correct ending; it did as the real Prince Edward and Lady Joan became the parents of Richard II. {font}
{font:Times New Roman}Flynn was supposed to have wanted to do other things besides costume pictures but even away from WB kept making them when he was far too dissipated in appearance to be believable in them. The script he wrote for a movie he starred in, *The Adventures of Captain Fabian,* was a pirate film and one of his worst. *The Screen Director’s Playhouse* episode he starred in was another. I love Flynn’s earlier work-one of the few things my Mother and I have in common-but it hurts to see the squandered life that he’d made of his by then.{font}
-
{font:Times New Roman}*Rocky Mountain* was on a few weeks ago. There's another thread about it on the Westerns Forum and the TV version that that was the first *Cheyenne* episode. I didn’t see that “space needle “rock in it but the other scenery was familiar as well as other things.{font}
{font:Times New Roman}I agree that Flynn was very convincing in this role. He didn’t have to be the young romantic lead and his face was covered with stubble so it didn’t show what his lifestyle was doing to it. When he talked with Joanna about his pre-war life you saw he hadn’t always been so hard bitten and wished he weren’t so then. As he said what happens is inevitable and you are saddened by that. The ending reminds me of *They Died with Their Boots On.* I liked the movie too.
{font}
-
What a way to start the Summer! Not only Mr. Flynn but two Oscar winners and other great actors besides. Thoroughly enjoying the day. -
> {quote:title=JakeHolman wrote:}{quote}
>
> Lake Ponchatrain Causeway or Bridge. It's the longest bridge in the world over a continuous
> body of water. New Orleans La to St Tammany Parish. 1956.
>
> Jake in the Heartland
{font:Times New Roman}I’ve been over this bridge via Greyhound bus and can’t believe humans were able to do this. How did they get those pillars to stand so solidly in the water and how did they get them out there in the first place? If this doesn’t qualify as a “Wonder of the World” I don’t know what will. Beautiful as that Charleston church is, the bridge beats it hands down. Thank you, Jake, for the photo. {font}
-
> {quote:title=mongo wrote:}{quote}
http://s592.photobucket.com/albums/tt8/MovieJoe/silver/bronze/Platinum/?action=view¤t=00000000000aacoke.jpg> I betcha that the Coca Cola was 10 cents in 1950?
> Reminds me of me and my late brother Ralph.
{font:Calibri}Mongo, in 1950 a 6 1/2 oz bottle of Coke-the only size they then had-was 5 cents. A year or so later it became 6 cents and I remember being in tears because I didn’t have that extra penny. A 20% increase overnight; my first taste of economics and it was not tasty. {font}
-
"The last thing in the picture is ole Coop putting the United States marshal’s badge under his foot and stepping on it.”
I read the interview and can verify that Wayne said this about the *High Noon* ending. I know because the next time I saw it I made a point of checking the ending. Cooper/Kane took off his badge and dropped it in the street but did not stomp on it. After the way he had been left on his own except for the town drunk and a teen-age boy, he gave it the same respect the townspeople did.
After this I never really respected Wayne or trusted his words for quite some time. Jake, that has changed with time so I'm close to being on your page.
-
{font:Times New Roman}I still think that Veda Ann Borg’s short but dynamic screen time as Nell Robertson in *The Alamo* was more deserving of a Best Supporting Actress nomination that the Best Supporting Actor one Chill Wills so heavily campaigned for in the same movie. Justice prevailed as it did him little if any good, he lost.{font}
{font:Times New Roman}As for *The Shootist,* I realize Book chose the way he checked out of life but disapproved with how he involved the boy in his death making him an accomplice to it. Other than that I found him appealing and his performance worthy of a nomination. {font}
-
TomH: Cooper would first enter the list as one of America's top ten stars in 1936, the year of Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, winning his first Oscar five years later in the biggest box office film of 1941, Sergeant York. Coop would receive a total of five Oscar nominations, winning twice, with his second award for High Noon, the film by which he remains most identified today.
Cooper's acting has been getting trashed in another thread so your remarks are welcome by his fans. He's getting a tribute on *Encore Westerns* next week-end and in the promo he is quoted as saying "The general consenus is that I don't act at all". One nomination might be a fluke but five with two wins is not.
Wayne got two with one win but I agree that he was cheated out of at least one for *The Searchers* and probably another for *Red River* had it not been released the same year as *Sands of Iwo Jima* for which he was first nominated. Some fans think he deserved one for *The Shootist* as well.
Perhaps Cooper was more confident in himself and didn't need the public acclaim in his later years as much as Wayne who was a lightning rod for the papers. Strangely both became spiritual in their later years. The posts have all given reasons why Cooper is not as popular as Wayne make sense. I'm trying to figure out why nobody remembers *The Association's* music anymore after a half-dozen hits and a Grammy-nominated album so I know where you are at here.
-
> {quote:title=FrankGrimes wrote:}{quote}Here is a western I just watched last evening (and really enjoyed):
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47K7KI-K30A&feature=related
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> I think you'd like it Quiet Gal. I also believe Jackie would enjoy the performances and most of the story.
Thank you, Frank. I can also use this link to see *Go for Broke* which I've been wanting to fot years. I find a lot of films like this so folks like you give us more than we expected.
{font:Times New Roman}Frank, I am forever in your debt. This was so worth the wait.{font}
{font:Times New Roman}It is a typical war movie and in this case that is no insult; in fact that's why it works and gets its point across. The roles could have been played by any young Anglo actors in any other movie of the genre; that these men were first or second generation Japanese-Americans, as loyal as any other of any transplanted nationality you could think of, is what makes it kick prejudice where it hurts. These soldiers had to deal with families in the camps and the possibility of facing relatives in “the old country” in combat. Fortunately the military chose to take that burden from them and let them fight in Europe. They were rewarded with units that were among the best sent there.{font}
{font:Times New Roman}Several veterans of the units appeared in the film and like the actors were likable and believable. Our old friend from *Westward the Women,* Henry Nakamura, will steal your heart and choke you up in a scene with his pet pig. It sums up what these men did for our country and the people they made proud.{font}
{font:Times New Roman}As for me, that long-ago first post just keep paying dividends I could not have imagined back then. I hope I’ve returned some as well. I’m now going to watch *The Purple Heart* which somebody else gave me access to.{font}
-
This is the kind of stuff I don't need or want to read about. Thank you all for alerting me to the subject matter of the book before I did. Bowers just lost whatever it would have taken out of my pocketbook.
-
Ginnyfan wrote:
James Garner said that there were times when all the WB westerns would be shooting in different directions on the same street. That's how he and Jack Kelly became friends even though they weren't in that many episodes together.
So you read the book too. I found it just as interesting as his interviews. My only complaint was it wasn't long enough.
When I did the WB tour that was one set I didn't see. In the feature films it looks to be an outdoor one but on the TV series I'm not sure. There was always a shot of both streets and that octagon-shaped island in between which looked like the same set but I wondered if they had an similar indoor one for TV as the pace was so much faster for them. My fantasy is if I ever make it to another festival and the set's still there is to see it myself. Imagine walking in the footsteps of Scott, Cooper, Garner, Walker and the rest.
-
> {quote:title=MaryLyn2 wrote:}{quote}Last night I watched a preview of Goodbye Mr Chips - 1939 on TCM. It was the scene with Greer Garson and Robert Donat are saying goodbye at the train station. I rushed home from work today to watch it. And I just turned it on - it is the Peter O'toole version. I am sad.
That's happened to me with a couple of other films with duplicate titles. It is annoying. The one you want to see often runs on TCM so your turn will come in time.
Actually, I've been wanting to see this newer version for some time. Peter O'Toole is the best thing about it-Oscar nominated-but the rest was just so-so. The 1939 is the better of the two and Robert Donat beat out Clark "Rhett Butler" Gable for the Best Actor award that year. You have a real treat ahead of you.
-
> {quote:title=skimpole wrote:}{quote}This doesn't seem too difficult. Cary Grant was only nominated twice (for Penny Serenade and None but the Lonely Heart ) so we can chose at least a dozen performances between The Awful Truth and Charade.
I didn't know he was nominated for *Penny Serenade* which I love. It's so unlike the light comedy he usually does and he's so convincing. If Irene Dunne, Beulah Bondi and Edgar Buchanan weren't as well they should have been. I saw this when I was 16 and never forgot it.
A believe -it-or-not: My boss knew I like "old movies", found a DVD of this in a Dollar Tree store and stuck it in my Christmas gift bag with no idea how much I love it. She wasn't always easy to work for but this certainly helped her cause.
I also agree about John Wayne in *The Searchers*. He is so convincingly hostile that when he tells Debbie "Let's go home" you almost don't believe his change of heart yet you like him and understand his feelings. That's acting.
-
{font:Times New Roman}Regarding: Four Jacks and a Queen.
At age ten I had the *Sir Walter Raleigh* comic book and remember wondering why the movie had two titles. I also remember asking my mother why Elizabeth was called “The Virgin Queen” when she was anything but and being rightly told “not to talk about anything I don’t understand”. Having only the Catholic side of history and totally uninformed about sex I considered Elizabeth pretty evil and equated that with virtue and virginity. As a later student of anything Tudor I figured it out. Great cover of my man Richard Todd. {font}
-
An A&E biography of Dean talked of his interest in directing and that he often spent non-shooting time watching how his worked or asking them about their techniques. Broken romance or not, this does not sound like a man who would kill himself but like many young men thought death was still far away and took unwise chances. This is what makes me sad; the thought of "what might have been" for him and us as an actor and filmmaker.
Had it been Brando who died young-would he be so idolized today?
-
> {quote:title=FredCDobbs wrote:}{quote}It is titled "For Greater Glory" and previews make it look like a high quality film. Will be distributed in June.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1566501/
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJYNcb0k0g8
I just saw this movie and am so shaken I can't begin to talk about it now except to say it is one great and powerful film that just might finally win Peter O'Toole the Oscar he so richly deserves. That beautiful smile is in my mind right now. I'll post something tomorrow when I can be coherent.
{font:Times New Roman}I knew from the trailers that this was based on a true story but not much else. The Romans of 2000 years ago facing Caligula’s lions was one thing but just the other side of our southern border less than 100 years ago was something else. Of course I knew there had been conflict between the Church and some of the civil governments but not to this extreme. All of this really “hit me where I live.”{font}
{font:Times New Roman}Andy Garcia got a number of respected actors involved in this film as well as some unknown –at least to most of us-who do themselves proud. James Horner scored it. The production values are first rate. {font}
{font:Times New Roman}
Garcia stars as a former military officer, now a wealthy soap maker, who is not very religious. His wife is and becomes alarmed at the closing of churches and persecution of the clergy, especially those who emigrated from other countries. One is an elderly priest, there from childhood, who aids the Cristeros and will not run when the government comes for him. A young boy who ridiculed him before coming to work for him witnesses his execution and joins the movement. The Vatican puts the Mexican Church under interdict which means there can be no Masses or other church functions performed until the matter is resolved. {font}
{font:Times New Roman}Cristeros leaders ask the officer to be their military commander. Still a Catholic in name only, he agrees because he believes in their right to be devout. His wife fears for his life but realizes this might be a necessary sacrifice to gain religious freedom and encourages him to take the job. It slowly changes him in ways that surprise him but not us and we love watching happen. {font}
{font:Times New Roman}The movie is rated R because of the violence but since it’s about a revolution it is necessary. Also shot and beaten people bleed. There is one incident involving a burning of a train that is disturbing because it’s for revenge and the leader is a priest/soldier but it shows that, in like most wars, both sides do cruel things. The question is asked if warfare in the name of faith-WWJD- is right but these people felt it was.{font}
{font:Times New Roman}At the end you see pictures of the real persons along with the actors who played them and learned what happened to them afterwards. Several photos of real Cristeros are shown while the credits roll. {font}
{font:Times New Roman}There is beautiful mountain scenery, mansions, and religious imagery as well as seeing the poverty some live in. The thing is that the revolt transcended economic class and station but was about faith. {font}
{font:Times New Roman}Again, the actors are wonderful. Ruben Blades-who looks Asian at times-plays the President of Mexico and Bruce Greenwood our ambassador who is revolted by him but tries to deal with the situation diplomatically. Peter O’Toole as a Becket-like priest is only on screen about 15 minutes but when he is you see nothing but him showing why his talent and that smile will never die. I stand by last night’s comment about an Oscar.{font}
{font:Times New Roman}My main gripe-there are only 2 AMC theaters in town showing it and both are in North Tampa about 15 miles or more away. There are two big complexes nearby me, one within three blocks, in this very Hispanic neighborhood that would not because they thought it wouldn’t sell. I was at the afternoon showing but plenty were lined up for the evening show. It was worth the inconvenice and the $8.75. If you don’t think it too sectarian for your sensibilities, find your theater and go. {font}
-
> SansFin wrote:
> The image is labeled as being photographed in Khevsureti which is in the nation of Georgia. I was there in the early 1970s. The area is quite beautiful. I have no photographs of the area of my own as photography was greatly discouraged.
Thank you for that clarification. I can now go back to being a proud Gator without reservations. The photo is still beautiful.
-
From that bio it sounds like you all lost a first class human being as well as a talented designer. That the family wants charitable donations rather than flowers says a lot about the kind of people they were. He was younger than I am, this doesn't seem fair. RIP, sir.
-
Movieman1957 wrote: I read it was shot in Romania.
It was. I'm guessing neither Kentucky nor West Virginia looks much like it did in the 1800s today. Cost might also have had something to do with it.
The ending was somewhat abrupt as if they ran out of time to finish it. They did post some placards telling what happened to the parties still alive but ran them so fast you could barely read them. Treaties were finally signed in 2003 by the descendants.
The McCoys seemed to fare the worst as nearly all of Randall's family died before he did. Having crooked lawyer Perry Cline and that disgrace for a law enforcement officer Frank Phillips did not help their cause. They really seemed to have started it and although Anse Hatfield's hands were not clean he did seem to have more right on his side. Randall didn't wait for Hell to burn as he went when his house caught fire while “Devil” Anse died in bed a Christian.
One thing the series did was show how this affected the women. They gave birth to these men and then had to watch them die or be executed. Mare Winningham's Sally McCoy, who ended up addled from an attack, was especially heartbreaking but you'd expect nothing less from her. That they stayed by their husbands despite it and seemed to love and respect them was touching.
Nancy McCoy was the exception and you kept hoping she'd get what was coming to her but she didn't, at least not in this world.
I wish it had been broadcast on another network than Lifetime as they had way too many commercial interruptions. The six hour series was probably one hour's worth of ads.
This was a strange world with strange mores and certainly not the black and white of most frontier stories. It was worth the watch but you might want to wait for a DVD version without all the ads. {font}
I have been in a situational black hole since Friday and today did not start out so well either.
What a way to start the Summer! Not only Mr. Flynn but two Oscar winners and other great actors besides. Thoroughly enjoying the day.
IN MEMORIAM (Obit Thread)
in Hot Topics
Posted
*{font:}NEW YORK (AP) — Nora Ephron, the essayist, author and filmmaker who challenged and thrived in the male-dominated worlds of movies and journalism and was loved, respected and feared for her wit, died on Tuesday of leukemia. She was 71. {font}*{font:}{font}
{font:}Ephron's son, Jacob Bernstein, confirmed her death. Her book publisher Alfred A. Knopf also confirmed it in a statement. {font}
{font:}Born into a family of screenwriters, she was a top journalist in her 20s and 30s, then a best-selling author and successful director. Ephron was among the most quotable and influential writers of her generation. She wrote and directed such favorites as "Julie & Julia" and "Sleepless in Seattle," and her books included the novel "Heartburn," a brutal roman a clef about her marriage to Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein; and the popular essay collections "I Feel Bad About My Neck" and "I Remember Nothing." {font}
{font:}She was tough on others — Bernstein's marital transgressions were immortalized by the **** spouse in "Heartburn," a man "capable of having sex with a Venetian blind" — and relentless about herself. She wrote openly about her difficult childhood, her failed relationships, her doubts about her physical appearance and the hated intrusion of age. {font}
{font:}"We all look good for our age. Except for our necks," she wrote in the title piece from "I Feel Bad About My Neck," published in 2006. "Oh, the necks. There are chicken necks. There are turkey gobbler necks. There are elephant necks. There are necks with wattles and necks with creases that are on the verge of becoming wattles. ... According to my dermatologist, the neck starts to go at 43 and that's that." {font}
{font:}Even within the smart-talking axis of New York-Washington-Los Angeles, no one bettered Ephron, slender and dark-haired and armed with a killer smile. Friends from Mike Nichols and Meryl Streep to Calvin Trillin and Pete Hamill adored her for her wisdom, her loyalty and turns of phrase. {font}
{font:}As a screenwriter, Ephron was nominated three times for Academy Awards, for "Silkwood," ''When Harry Met Sally ..." and "Sleepless in Seattle," and was the rare woman to write, direct and produce Hollywood movies. Meg Ryan was among the many actresses who said they loved working with Ephron because she understood them so much better than did her male peers. {font}
{font:}The eldest of four children, Ephron was born in New York to screenwriters Harry and Phoebe Ephron, who moved to Beverly Hills, Calif., when she was 4 years old. Words, words, words were the air she breathed. Regular visitors included "Casablanca" co-writer Julius J. Epstein, "Sunset Boulevard" collaborator Charles Brackett, and the team of Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich, who worked on "The Thin Man" and "It's a Wonderful Life." {font}
{font:}Everyone was in movies, "the business." {font}
{font:}"People who were not in the business were known as civilians," Ephron wrote in "I Remember Nothing." {font}
{font:}If the best humor is born out of sadness, then Ephron was destined for comedy. She was 15, she recalled, when her mother became an alcoholic, finishing off a bottle of scotch a night. Her father, too, was a heavy drinker, "sloppy, sentimental," although "somehow his alcoholism was more benign." {font}
{font:}Determined by high school to be a journalist, Ephron graduated from the single sex Wellesley College in 1962, moved to New York and started out as a "mail girl" and fact checker at Newsweek. A newspaper strike at the end of the year gave her a chance. Victor Navasky, the future editor of The Nation, was then running a satirical magazine called the Monacle. He was working on a parody of the New York Post, "The New York Pest," and asked Ephron for a spoof of Post columnist Leonard Lyons. {font}
{font:}She succeeded so well that the newspaper's publisher, Dorothy Schiff, reasoned that anyone who could make fun of the Post could also write for it. Ephron was asked to try out as a reporter. Within a week, she had a permanent job and remained there five years. {font}
{font:}Ephron began writing for Esquire and The New York Times and developed a national following as a throwback to the prime of Dorothy Parker and S.J. Perelman and a worthy peer of such "new" and hip journalists as Gay Talese and Tom Wolfe. She covered political conventions, the feminist movement and Wellesley, which she labeled a factory for "docile" women. Part of her gift was her fresh takes on such traditional subjects for women as food and fashion, like in the essay "The Food Establishment: Life in the Land of the Rising Souffle (Or Is It the Rising Meringue)." {font}
{font:}"The typical member of the Food Establishment," she wrote, "is given to telling you, apropos of nothing, how many souffles he has been known to make in a short period of time. ... He gossips a good deal about his colleagues, about what they are cooking, writing, and eating; and whom they are talking to, about everything, in fact, except the one thing everyone else in the universe gossips about — who is sleeping with whom." {font}
{font:}By the 1970s, she had met and mated with Carl Bernstein, who teamed with fellow Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward on prize-winning coverage of the Watergate scandal that brought down President Nixon. They married in 1976, and had two children, but love soon turned to hate — and matured into art. Ephron was pregnant with the second child when she learned Bernstein was having an affair, a betrayal that had its rewards, once she stopped crying. {font}
{font:}She wrote "Heartburn," later a film starring Streep and Jack Nicholson and directed by Nichols, with whom she collaborated often. The book was so close to her life that Bernstein threatened to sue. Decades later, the memory of the book's birth was easily summoned. {font}
{font:}"Yes, totally, completely, absolutely, sitting at the legendary and long-gone Smith Corona electric typewriter that I once had," she told The Associated Press in 2010. "I was working on a screenplay and wrote the first 10 pages of a novel, and I knew the title, knew there were going to be recipes in it. This I remember, exactly where I was, working and knowing, 'Oh, I see, enough time has passed that I'm ready to do this.'" {font}
{font:}Another perk from her time with Bernstein: She sussed out that "Deep Throat," the unnamed and unknown Watergate source, was in fact FBI official Mark Felt. She would allege that she told countless people about Felt, who did not acknowledge his role until years later. {font}
{font:}Her screenwriting credits included "Heartburn," the nuclear power drama "Silkwood" and the romantic comedy "When Harry Met Sally ..." She twice directed the team of Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks, in "Sleepless in Seattle" and "You've Got Mail," and also worked with John Travolta (in the fantasy "Michael"), Steve Martin ("Mixed Nuts") and Nicole Kidman ("Bewitched"). {font}
{font:}Ephron had a great nose for nonsense, but was enough a child of Hollywood to fall, and fall hard, for a happy ending. "Sleepless in Seattle," in which Ryan and Hanks play long-distance admirers who meet at film's end, was itself a tribute to how movies might tell us how to live. "Sleepless" was not only a remake of the sentimental "An Affair to Remember." Ryan and her best pal, played by Rosie O'Donnell, are seen watching "Affair to Remember," which inspires Ryan to suggest to Hanks that they meet on top of the Empire State Building, on Valentine's Day. {font}
{font:}Ephron was married three times: to Dan Greenberg, Bernstein and, quite happily, to Nicholas Pileggi, who survives her and whose book "Wiseguys" was adapted into the Martin Scorsese film of the same name. Sisters Delia, Amy and Hallie Ephron also are writers and Nora and Delia collaborated on the screenplay for "This Is My Life." {font}
{font:}In her essay "The O Word," Nora Ephron anticipated growing too old to make jokes about her age. She would be "really old," beyond sex in a hotel room, or even a frozen custard at Shake Shack. It would be nice if she believed in a higher being, but the phrase "everything happens for a reason" is a sermon that only annoys her. {font}
{font:}Ephron wrote of summers in the Hamptons on Long Island when her children were little, of fireworks on the Fourth of July and picnics on the beach. She loved the sound of geese in mid-July — "one of the things that made the summers out there so magical." As she aged, the geese reminded her that summer will end, and so will everything else. {font}
{font:}"I especially began to hate their sound, which was not beating wings — how could I have ever thought it was? — but a lot of uneuphonious honks," she writes. "Now we don't go to Long Island in the summer and I don't hear the geese. Sometimes, instead, we go to Los Angeles, where there are hummingbirds, and I love to watch them because they're so busy getting the most out of life." {font}
{font:} {font}
{font:Calibri} {font}