- Mother of Steve Crist.
- Film critic.
- When TV Guide decided to dismiss her in 1983 to replace her column with a computerized movie summary, executives told her that they might beg her to return in six months. The magazine was deluged with letters and asked her back three weeks later. She was given a raise and stayed until 1988.
- Her first job at The Herald Tribune was assistant to the women's editor.
- After becoming a general-assignment reporter, she won a George Polk Award in 1951 for her education coverage.
- She began writing theater reviews in 1957 while continuing to cover news.
- She was the "Today" show's first regular movie critic, a morning fixture on NBC from 1963 to 1973.
- A Harris Poll of moviegoers in the 1960s cited her as their favorite critic.
- Her family moved to Montreal when she was an infant, and she spent her first 12 years there before moving back to New York.
- Crist was age 5 when she saw her first movie, 7th Heaven (1927), a silent film with an Oscar-winning performance by Janet Gaynor.
- Crist said she might have made Phi Beta Kappa at Hunter College in Manhattan had she not cut class so many times to go to the movies. She went on to do graduate work in 18th-century English literature at Columbia, teach at Washington State University, become a civilian English instructor for the Air Force and attend the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia, finishing her degree in 1945.
- She saw her first "blue" movie as the only woman covering Senate hearings on pornography in New York in 1945.
- During a newspaper strike in 1963 she reviewed theater and movies for WABC TV.
- Crist, who taught at the Columbia journalism school for more than 50 years, continuing until this February, also held a small film festival in Tarrytown, N.Y.
- In the 1980s and 1990s, Ms. Crist reviewed films for Coming Attractions magazine. She continued to write on other topics, including an article on TV dinners for Gourmet magazine in 2000.
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content