Which she eventually did, displaying the same kind of acidic wit and social acumen in her writings for influential magazines there, such as The New Yorker, as Parker had done more than a generation earlier. After which, like her idol, she began to write for the movies, although, whereas Parker moved west permanently to do so, Ephron stayed put. She had a hand in several impressive studio releases – as the writer of Silkwood, Heartburn and When Harry Met Sally… in the 1980s, and afterwards as the writer-director of This Is My Life, Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve Got Mail and Julie & Julia – although most of her others are best forgotten. And Parker, often working in collaboration with second husband Alan Campbell, was the co-writer of eight features as well as a script doctor on many more. Her most noteworthy efforts were the original A Star Is Born (1937), for which she was Oscar-nominated, Alfred Hitchcock’s Saboteur (1942), and Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman (1947), leading to a second nomination. Both women have, to varying degrees, been romanticised over the years. Ilana Kaplan’s book about Ephron provides a perfect example. Rather than offering a measured account of her life and work, it’s constantly guilty of gush, as in its celebration of the writer-director as the sole saviour of the modern-day romantic comedy (because of her work on When Harry Met Sally…, Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail), rather than simply as someone who made astute incursion into an established genre.