Born On This Day- October 2nd... Rex Reed

The Dakota

I was standing in front of The Dakota, an apartment building on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The Dakota is one of my favorite buildings in the world & the one time home of: Lauren Bacall, Leonard Bernstein, Rosemary Clooney, Lillian Gish, William Inge, Boris Karloff, Rudolf Nureyev, Jason Robards, Jack Palance, Gilda Radner, & of course, John Lennon & Yoko Ono. As I studied the famous building & prayed for a glimpse of Bacall, out the front door & sliding into a waiting town car was Rex Reed! A minor celebrity sighting!

Rex Reed is one of my guilty pleasures because he is such an old school gay. He continues to live in the Dakota, in a small upper floor turret apartment. Reed turns 72 years old today.

Reed in Malibu 1968

Rex Taylor Reed was born in Fort Worth, Texas, & grew up in Louisiana. Being a daily columnist has always been on my short list of avocations & Reed, for decades has written an entertainment column for The New York Observer- On The Town with Rex Reed. He is a prolific film critic & the former co-host of the TV show At the Movies.

In 1970, Rex made his movie debut, playing Myron, the young man whose post sex-change operation persona was played by Raquel Welch in Myra Breckinridge, a truly demented choice from a demented era. But Reed;s success would come in reviewing movies, not starring in them. Movie stars may come & go, but movie reviews by Rex Reed go on forever.

His columns & reviews were avidly read & reviled by me when I was young. I would see him on The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson ripping apart the character & foibles of the personalities of the day, with his signature: “oh puh-leeze.” Not everybody loved Rex Reed but I could hardly resist his zingers. 

In 1978, I used Reed as the basis of a character, a critic, I played in a terrific play- The Real Inspector Hound by Tom Stoppard. Thanks, Mr. Reed, I am told that I was absolutely terrific... oh puh-leeze.

Reed & I agree on one point of view, Reed: “There’s a great history that young people today have not even bothered to investigate. I just feel sad that these people have been ignored because these are much more interesting people than anybody today. I’m going to tell stories & personal anecdotes about Tennessee Williams, Bette Davis, Marlene Dietrich& Tallulah Bankhead. … Young people today don’t even know who Tallulah Bankhead was, & she was one of the most interesting women who ever came out of the South. (Bankhead was named for Tallulah Falls in north Georgia; Bankhead Highway in Atlanta was named for her grandfather, John Hollis Bankhead.) What Reed doesn’t say is that he does a mean impression of Bankhead. I am of an age when most gay men were required to. It’s a lost gay art.