Crist, Judith

Judith Crist, film critic, wrote primarily for New York Magazine and TV Guide during this period.

From the guide to the Judith Crist press books, 1969-1982, (The New York Public Library. Billy Rose Theatre Division.)

Judith Crist, film critic.

From the guide to the Interview with Burt Lancaster, 1975, (The New York Public Library. Billy Rose Theatre Division.)

Judith (Klein) Crist (1922- ) is an American film and drama critic. Born on 22 May 1922 in New York, she attended high school in New York City and graduated at the age of fifteen and received a B.A. from Hunter College in 1941. After teaching briefly at Washington State College, she completed work on an M.S. at the Columbia University School of Journalism in 1945. In the same year, she was hired by the New York Herald-Tribune as a general assignment reporter. Judith Klein married William B. Crist, a New York public relations executive, in 1947.

In 1958 Ms. Crist became associate drama critic under Walter Kerr, and in 1960 she was named editor for the arts for the Herald-Tribune . After the newspaper strike of 1962-1963, Judith Crist emerged as film critic and associate drama critic of the short lived New York World Journal Tribune . Beginning in 1965 she delivered short television film reviews on the NBC Today Show, as well as serving as a critic-at-large for the Ladies Home Journal from 1966 to 1967.

Ms. Crist conducted the Judith Crist Film Weekends at Tarrytown House, New York, from 1971 to 2006, and she has been an adjunct professor at Columbia's School of Journalism since 1958. She is a regular contributor of articles to various other national magazines and reviews network movies for TV Guide magazine and first-run films for New York magazine.

Judith Crist has received numerous awards, including the Page One Award of the New York Newspaper Guild (1955), the George Polk Award (1951), five N.Y. Newspaper Woman's Club awards (1955, 1959, 1963, 1965, 1967); Edn. Writers Association award (1952); and the Columbia Graduate School Journalism Alumni Award (1961). She is a member of the New York Film Critics and National Society of Film Critics associations and Sigma Tau Delta. A collection of her best pieces was published in an anthology entitled The Private Eye, The Cowboy and the Very Naked Girl (1968).

From the guide to the Judith Crist Papers, 1851-1971, (Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries)