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Nora Sayre

{{Use American English|date=October 2024}}

{{Short description|American film critic (1932–2001)}}

{{Use mdy dates|date=May 2015}}

{{Infobox person

| name = Nora Sayre

| birth_name = Nora Clemens Sayre

| birth_date = September 20, 1932

| birth_place = Hamilton, Bermuda

|nationality=American

| death_date = {{death date and age|2001|8|8|1932|9|20}}

| death_place = New York City, U.S.

| occupation = {{flatlist|

  • Writer
  • film critic}}

}}

Nora Clemens Sayre (September 20, 1932 – August 8, 2001) was an American film critic and essayist. She was a reviewer of films for The New York Times in the 1970s, and, from 1981, a writing teacher for many years at Columbia University.{{cite news|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/nora-sayre-9130356.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220621/https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/nora-sayre-9130356.html |archive-date=June 21, 2022 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live|title=Nora Sayre obituary|newspaper=The Independent|date=September 7, 2001|accessdate=January 15, 2011}} She specialized in the Cold War and authored books such as Running Time: Films of the Cold War (1982) in which she examined Hollywood movie-making in the 1950s.{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/09/movies/nora-sayre-film-critic-and-essayist-dies-at-68.html|author=Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher|title=Nora Sayre, Film Critic And Essayist, Dies at 68|newspaper=The New York Times|date=August 9, 2001|accessdate=January 15, 2011}}

Personal life

Born in Hamilton, Bermuda, her father was Joel Sayre of The New Yorker; family friends were A. J. Liebling and Edmund Wilson.{{Cite web|url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2001-aug-11-me-33090-story.html|title = N. Sayre; Essayist on Cold War Era|website = Los Angeles Times|date = August 11, 2001}}{{Cite web|url=https://www.theguardian.com/news/2001/aug/21/guardianobituaries.filmnews|title=Obituary: Nora Sayre|website=TheGuardian.com|date=August 21, 2001}}

She attended Friends Seminary,{{cite book|last1=White|first1=Elwyn Brooks|last2=Guth|first2=Dorothy Lobrano|title=Letters of E.B. White|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Qu78fN3GTZYC&pg=PA158|accessdate=January 16, 2011|date=November 16, 2006|publisher=HarperCollins|isbn=978-0-06-075708-3|pages=158–}} and was a graduate of Radcliffe College.{{cite book|last=Rathbone|first=Belinda|title=Walker Evans: A Biography|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zIfumzouw3UC&pg=PA228|accessdate=January 16, 2011|year=2000|publisher=Houghton Mifflin Harcourt|isbn=978-0-618-05672-9|pages=228–}} After graduation, she spent five years in England; and whenever she felt homesick she would pay a call on screenwriter Donald Ogden Stewart, a friend of the family who had scripted some of Hollywood’s most celebrated films.{{cite news |last1=Stern |first1=Alan |title=Nora Sayre comes in from the cold |url=https://archive.org/details/sim_boston-phoenix_1982-05-25_11_21/page/n57/mode/1up |access-date=August 31, 2024 |work=The Boston Phoenix |date=May 25, 1982}}

A mentor was the English critic and book reviewer John Davenport; he had become acquainted with the Sayre family while working as a screenwriter at MGM, when she was a child, and would later visit the adult Sayre with suggestions of things she should read and about which she should write. Sayre noted "after a dose of Davenport, one was all the more responsive to words—either to classical or contemporary prose, or to the random eloquence of the street... his conversation made one immediately want to go home and write. Hence he served as an igniter: He gave one momentum."{{cite news|title=John Davenport Remembered|first=Nora|last=Sayre|date=10 April 1977|work=The New York Times|page=6|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1977/04/10/archives/john-davenport-remembered-davenport.html?mcubz=0}}

She married the economist Robert Neild in 1957 but the marriage was dissolved four years later. She died in 2001, at the age of 68, in New York City.

Legacy

The Nora Sayre Endowed Residency for Nonfiction was created at Yaddo, an artists' community in Saratoga Springs, New York, to support her literary legacy.{{cite book|last=Weiner|first=Tim|title=Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vf9ZJx8WkjQC&pg=PA603|accessdate=January 16, 2011|date=May 20, 2008|publisher=Random House, Inc.|isbn=978-0-307-38900-8|pages=603–}}

Bibliography

{{Expand list|date=November 2017}}

References

{{Reflist}}

External links

  • [https://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/09/movies/nora-sayre-film-critic-and-essayist-dies-at-68.html New York Times obituary]
  • [https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/nora-sayre-729389.html Independent obituary]{{dead link|date=January 2025|bot=medic}}{{cbignore|bot=medic}}
  • [https://archive.org/details/sim_boston-phoenix_1982-05-25_11_21/page/n56/mode/1up Review of Running Time] The Boston Phoenix

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sayre, Nora}}

Category:1932 births

Category:2001 deaths

Category:20th-century American essayists

Category:20th-century American women

Category:American women film critics

Category:American film critics

Category:American women essayists

Category:People from Hamilton, Bermuda

Category:Radcliffe College alumni

Category:Columbia University faculty

Category:Friends Seminary alumni

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