Winston-Salem's John Ehle and Rosemary Harris watched the Oscars on Sunday night to see how "The King's Speech" fared, although their actress daughter, who's in the movie, was not attending the ceremony in Los Angeles.
Jennifer Ehle didn't have one of the major roles in the film and wasn't up for an award, but that didn't keep her parents from tuning in to the Oscars.
"She's not there — she is working actually on a movie in Ohio," said John Ehle, her father. That movie will feature actor George Clooney.
Jennifer Ehle's role in "The King's Speech" was not substantial enough for an Oscar nomination, but the actress, who was born in Winston-Salem, has two Tony awards for her work onstage.
"The King's Speech" is about England's King George VI and his efforts to overcome stuttering. He hires an Australian speech therapist to help, and Ehle plays the wife of the therapist.
John Ehle is a North Carolina writer who has authored 17 books. He has received a number of awards, including the N.C. Award for Literature, the Thomas Wolfe Prize and the Lillian Smith Award for Southern Fiction.
Rosemary Harris is a well-known actress of the film and stage who has won a Tony herself as well as an Emmy. She said she was particularly pleased with the way her daughter picked up the Australian accent for her role in "The King's Speech."
"We are terribly proud of her," Harris said. "They think of her as an English rose or a Southern American girl, but people say it is the strongest Australian accent they have heard."
Harris said that while her daughter was in England during the filming, she had a coach to teach her the Australian accent.
Harris said she thought her daughter would take more after her father as she was growing up.
"I always thought she would be a writer like her father, and maybe one day she will be," Harris said. "Acting seemed to come first so she ran with it."
John Ehle has a background of especial interest to North Carolinians.
He was a special assistant to Gov. Terry Sanford in 1963-64. Sanford later called him "a one-man think tank."
The Sanford-Ehle collaboration helped spark the N.C. School of the Arts in Winston-Salem and planted the idea much later for the N.C. School of Science and Math in Durham.
It led to the creation of the N.C. Governor's School for academically gifted students and the N.C. Film Board to encourage the creation of movies in North Carolina.
Sanford and Ehle largely funded their projects with money from New York foundations, bypassing the state legislature.
The N.C. Fund, a nonprofit organization financed by a grant from the Ford Foundation to fight poverty in the state, served as a model for part of President Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty.
Ehle said he has enjoyed watching his daughter's career progress.
"She has been rather consistently spectacular," Ehle said.
wyoung@wsjournal.com
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