I am going to have to really give this that old college try, for writing about a hero is indubitably the most daunting task a writer could ever assign themselves to. I wanted to start the new year off - and by the way I wish you, my faithful readers (all five of you that is) many happy returns - let me attempt this again, I wanted to start the year off by paying it forward to a certain someone that was a certain early influence of mine ; the inimitable Judith Crist. I may have, well yes I did mention before how each week, some moons ago, (not that many moons, I am younger than you think) I lived in anticipation of the delivery of my TV guide, because inside of the foregoing publication I would find her and her five hundred words of glory, how each critique caught my eye like a Broadway marquis at midnight.
Now truth be told, Lady Crist was at times little more than a hellion with one seriously irate quill - and gotta say good on her for being the only critic with the actual cojones to convey in print that The Sound of Music was 'Icky-sticky' I have oft wondered how ironic the Von Trapp claptrap was myself, but even when it was absolute murder she wrote - there was certainly no refuting, as a critic and writer she was hands down head of her class. And she would have a worthy opponent in her contemporary - Cleveland Amory ( I assure you it isn't an elk lodge in Ohio). and Amory was a dynamo true, and it is better to be second banana than no banana (sorry Cleve). Crist could also turn on the charms and if you happened to be James Coburn (how do I be objective about him too) and you were the leading lad of The President's Analyst you would be pleased as punch to know that there is a little speculation this was her favorite film. She even included on her late 1960s New School roster as one the most neglected films in cinema history on a billing that included Orson Welles' Falstaff - well we know where her loyalty lied.
Crist was also a regular house columnist for the New York Herald Tribune and New York Magazine respectively and was officially on the payroll for NBC's Today Show between 1963 and 1973. She helped carve out the careers of those up and coming in the film critics circle. And Crist was the first female in the field, and given she was of the fairer sex and the staunch societal attitude of women in journalism at the time - it miraculously never undermined her in this specialized field, not for a nanosecond Roger Ebert so lovingly memorialized her as being 'the best kind of role model, the kind you're not aware of.' I must agree with the late great Mr.E and guess that concludes this special mission, yikes.