Bright lights, two big cities

Nora is the daughter of Nunnally Johnson, a legendary figure of the old Hollywood, one of the East Coast writers who followed Ben Hecht's advice to go west when the once-lucrative magazine market in New York shrank and declined in the Depression, trading in paychecks from The Saturday Evening Post for the fatter ones offered by MGM and Warner Bros. Nunnally not only wrote scripts for hit movies but went on to direct and produce as well as write into the '50s: ''The Mudlark," ''The Desert Fox," ''My Cousin Rachel," and ''How to Marry a Millionaire" (the first picture to be filmed in CinemaScope) were among his credits.

Nora grew up in what seems like a child's wonderland, going to Shirley Temple's birthday parties, playing croquet with Cesar Romero and Tyrone Power, looking up one evening at her parents' party ''to see Judy Garland standing in front of me, her eyes ablaze, her small swaying body lit up with some tragic fire. Her silent presence threw everything else into shadow."

Little Nora saw so many stars she was sometimes ''better off home" with Nursie than out with her parents. ''If I went out to Romanoff's with them and Groucho was there and the Bogarts and Coop and Rocky and all the rest, I'd just be a black hole in the bright tapestry anyway."

Maybe it was the early star glut that led Nora to later conclude, ''Deep in my heart I thought Hollywood wasn't really respectable -- with the notable exception of Nunnally." The most glamorous time of her youth did not take place on a movie lot or among the stars at Chasen's or the Brown Derby, but during a weekend in Boston with her father. ''We stayed at The Ritz-Carlton, we went to Locke-Ober and Durgin-Park. We saw the plays -- one was 'The Wisteria Trees' with Helen Hayes." Boston was still the mecca for Broadway tryouts, and all the top play doctors, composers, and producers were in town.