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WHEN HARRY MET SALLY, arguably Hollywood’s best romantic comedy ever, premiered in L.A. July 13, 1989, a time when rom-coms were very commercial, unlike today when they’ve mostly turned into streaming content.

SALLY had everything going for it. Rob Reiner, who directed & co-produced, had made THIS IS SPINAL TAP. The screenplay was by Nora Ephron, who wrote HEARTBURN. And it had the perfect cast with Billy Crystal, Meg Ryan, Carrie Fisher & Bruno Kirby — plus Reiner’s mother, Estelle, in a bit part that unexpectedly made the movie memorable.

The Columbia/Castle Rock Entertainment film, which cost $16M, grossed $93M. Ephron, who’d spent five years writing it, was happy with the movie, but didn’t like its title. What to call it had been a question mark from the start. Reiner, Ephron & co-producer Andrew Scheinman came up with many possibilities — “Harry, This Is Sally,” “Boy Meets Girl,” “Just Friends,” “It Had To Be You,” “Playing Melancholy Baby,” “Words of Love,” “Blue Moon” & “How They Met.”

With any of those titles, the results might have been different. Many actors were considered for the roles that, happily, went to Crystal & Ryan. Tom Hanks reportedly passed on playing Harry because the movie seemed too lightweight for what he wanted to be doing then. Bill Murray, Jeff Bridges, Michael Keaton & Harrison Ford were other could-be’s for Harry.

As for Sally, Reiner’s first choice was Susan Dey from THE PARTRIDGE FAMILY. When she passed, he approached Elizabeth Perkins and Elizabeth McGovern, neither of whom said yes. He also got nowhere with Molly Ringwald, who was too busy with other projects at the time, but did wind up playing Sally in a 2004 stage adaptation at London’s Theatre Royal Haymarket.

Ryan’s Sally is depicted in the movie as being ultra-fussy when ordering in restaurants, which Ephron has said she modeled after herself. Long after SALLY had opened, Ephron was on a plane ordering very precisely when the frustrated stewardess asked her, “Have you ever seen the movie WHEN HARRY MET SALLY?”

36 years later, SALLY is still remembered for one brief scene in New York’s Katz’s Deli where Crystal & Ryan are lunching and start debating whether women can fake orgasms. Ryan wins by proving they can, while attracting attention from everyone — especially an elderly lady at the next table, played by Estelle Reiner, who’s about to order and decides, “I’ll have what she’s having.”

The line originated as a suggestion by Crystal, according to Ephron, who credits Ryan for suggesting that they do it as a restaurant scene with her acting out an orgasm. Katz’s still has a plaque on that table, which reads:  “Where Harry met Sally…hope you have what she had!”