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She was born in New York in 1922 and would say that Charlie Chaplin's silent masterpiece "The Gold Rush" was her first and most vivid film memory. By age 10, she had decided she wanted to be a reviewer; movies became her passion and her vice. She would cut classes for a chance to visit a theater or two, including a cherished day in which she took in showings of "Gone With the Wind," "The Grapes of Wrath" and "Grand Illusion." Her edge was likely formed by her Dickensian childhood. The daughter of a successful fur trader, she lived in Canada until age 9, attending private school, enjoying the luxuries of multiple homes, live-in servants and the family's bulletproof Cadillac. But in the 1930s, her father's business was ruined by the Great Depression. "And then suddenly, our most gracious home was gone. The servants left," she wrote years later in Time magazine. "After we lost the last of our homes, we moved to New York to get some kind of assistance from my mother's family. Well, from both of my parents' families. We lived in a small, one-bedroom apartment while my father went out on the road, recouping things." She still managed to attend Hunter College and receive a master's degree from Columbia University's journalism school. In 1945, soon after graduation, she was hired as a feature writer by the Herald Tribune, where she remained until the paper closed, in 1966, and where colleagues included Jimmy Breslin and Tom Wolfe. In 1950, her education reporting brought her a George Polk Award, and she was honored five times by the New York Newspaper Woman's Club.
Crist reviewed film and theater for the "Today" show from 1964-73, and as a print critic worked for New York magazine, TV Guide and the New York Post. She was a longtime adjunct professor at Columbia and her essays, interviews and reviews have been compiled into three books: "The Private Eye, The Cowboy and the Very Naked Girl," "Judith Crist's TV Guide to the Movies" and "Take 22: Moviemakers on Moviemaking." Crist's husband, public relations consultant William B. Crist, died in 1993. Their son, Steven Crist, covered horse racing for The New York Times and later became publisher of the Daily Racing Form. According to Columbia, a private burial is planned, with a public memorial possible in September.
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