The Wrap
Hollywood and Publishing Elite Turn Out to Remember Nora Ephron
Published: July 09, 2012 @ 11:35 am
By Brent Lang
( NEW YORK, NY – JULY 09: Actress Bette Midler (R) attends the Nora Ephron Memorial Service on July 9, 2012 in New York City. (Photo by Ilya S. Savenok/Getty Images)
Hollywood stars and luminaries from New York media and publishing world gathered Monday at Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center to honor Nora Ephron, who died June 26 of pneumonia brought on by acute myeloid leukemia. She was 71.
The memorial for the women behind such romantic comedy classics as “When Harry Met Sally” and “Sleepless in Seattle” stretched for more than an hour and included tributes from Tom Hanks and Mike Nichols in a ceremony that her longtime friend Arianna Huffington told TheWrap was “beautiful.”
Included in memorial program for Ephron, who was a noted cook, was a recipe for “Esther Fein’s Brisket.”
Also read: Nora Ephron: From ‘When Harry Met Sally’ to ‘Julie & Julia,’ She Made It OK to Eat
Crowds gathered at Lincoln Center to catch glimpses of some of the top names in entertainment and publishing, two areas in which Ephron excelled as a film director-screenwriter and reporter-essayist and author.
Among those attending the memorial from entertainment were director Steven Spielberg; producer Scott Rudin; Meryl Streep, who starred in Ephron’s last film, “Julie and Julia“; Meg Ryan, who appeared with Hanks in Ephron’s “Sleepless in Seattle” and “You’ve Got Mail”; Sally Field; Jon Hamm and Jennifer Westfeldt; media mogul Barry Diller and his wife, designer Diane Von Furstenberg; Joel Klein, the head of News Corp.’s education division; playwright-screenwriter Tony Kushner; writer-director James L. Brooks; Bette Midler; Barbara Walters; Steve Martin; Mayor Michael Bloomberg; Larry David; Kristen Chenoweth; Diane Sawyer, Matthew Broderick and Martha Stewart.
The media world also was well represented with Charlie Rose, author Gay Talese; Tina Brown; Gayle King; and Gail Collins and David Carr of the New York Times among the attendees.
“The whole thing was very moving,” New York Times editor Jill Abramson told TheWrap as she left the ceremony.
