Nora Sayre

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 at Columbia University for many years. She specialised in the Cold War and authored books such as Running Time: Films of the Cold War (1982, Dial Press) in which she examined Hollywood movie-making in the 1950s.

Personal life

Born in Hamilton, Bermuda, her father was Joel Sayre of The New Yorker; and her childhood friends were A. J. Liebling and Edmund Wilson.

She attended Friends Seminary, and was a graduate of Radcliffe College.

She married Robert Neild in 1957 but the marriage was dissolved four years later. She died 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.

Partial works

• (1996), Sixties going on seventies