Rex Reed, Ultimate Bitch Critic, Dies at 87
In spite of his acerbic takes, Reed was a true lover of the medium
May 12, 2026
Rex Reed’s movie criticism was never boring.
The writer, who died at 87 Tuesday following a brief illness at his home in NYC’s fabled Dakota, established himself in the ‘60s as a new kind of film essayist.
For Esquire in 1967, he profile Ava Garner in such a way she was beside herself. Quote:
“Christ, after 17 years of slavery, you can ask that question? I hated it, honey. I mean I’m not exactly stupid or without feeling, and they tried to sell me like a prize hog. They also tried to make me into something I was not then and never could be. They used to write in my studio bios that I was the daughter of a cotton farmer from Chapel Hill. Hell, baby, I was born on a tenant farm in Grabtown. How’s that grab ya? Grabtown, North Carolina. And it looks exactly the way it sounds. I should have stayed there. The ones who never left home don’t have a pot to pee in but they’re happy. Me, look at me. What did it bring me? The only time I’m happy is when I’m doing absolutely nothing. When I work I vomit all the time. I know nothing about acting so I have one rule — trust the director and give him heart and soul. And nothing else.”
When Gardner loudly complained about how he depicted her, he blew it off, proclaiming her to have been “completely drunk.”
In 1974, he trashed his close friend Lucille Ball’s Mame, noting that it looked as if she had been shot “through chicken fat.”
In 2010, Reed wrote of a high-profile sequel:
“The only thing memorable about Sex and the City 2 is the number two part, which describes it totally.”
In 2013, he described Melissa McCarthy in Identity Thief as “tractor-sized” and a “female hippo” and refused to apologize. It didn’t have an impact on his job as The New York Observer’s chief film critic, a post he held from 1987-2025. Upon his passing, his friend and co-worker Merin Curotto eulogized him as “fearless.”
His 2017 raspberry for The Shape of Water attracted attention for a slew of inaccuracies.
But in the end, Reed always rose above, an institution, an indispensable bitch-queen, in spite of any flaws.
One thing that made Reed more than a two-dimensional movie assassin was his genuine love of film and popular culture. He was a close friend of Doris Day’s, and in 2023 lovingly introduced her work to a rapturous crowd in NYC. As unafraid as he was to rip a film to shreds, he was just as unabashed with his praise.
Reed even knew what it was like to be on the opposite end of criticism, acting occasionally. Most infamously, he was Myron in Myra Breckinridge (1970), the big-budget turkey that starred Raquel Welch as his female counterpart and that brought Mae West back to the movies for the second-to-last time.
That film, now a haltingly fascinating artifact of effort and failure, was a huge bomb, alienating Old Hollywood by using vintage film clips as parts of vulgar jokes. But never let it be said Reed was not objective — in spite of starring in it, his review of the film was a pan.
I was pleased to meet Reed at a 2021 screening of The Bad Seed at which star Patty McCormack appeared. He was giddy to have his photograph taken with her and couldn’t have been nicer.
But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t secretly hoping he’d scratch my eyes out.⚡️