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The Rex Reed I Knew (1938–2026)

The legendary film critic, who died at 87, was so much more than the curmudgeon of his reputation.

The last time I saw Rex Reed in person was at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital on January 12, 2026. His friend Bill Kapfer had called three days earlier to tell me Rex had been there for several weeks—and that even from his hospital bed, he couldn’t stop worrying about his editor at the Observer. That was me. I had already planned to fly up from Richmond, where I work remotely, so the timing felt almost fated.

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It took nearly an hour to clear security, then another stretch of wrong elevator banks and unhelpful directions before I finally found his room. When I walked in, I had to steady myself.

He looked so small—this man who had always been larger than life.

We spoke again by phone a few weeks later. He had been back to the hospital since my visit—blood transfusions, liver complications, a cascade of problems that had begun when he fell at a gas station and hurt his foot. “I’ll either get better or I’ll die,” he told me, “and I’ll let you know which one.” Even facing his own mortality, Rex refused sentimentality.

Rex Taylor Reed, the legendary film critic whose sharp wit, uncompromising taste and distinctive prose made him one of the most recognizable voices in American cultural journalism for six decades, died in his sleep on May 12, 2026 in New York City. He was 87.

I was his editor at Observer for more than a decade. In that time, he became one of my closest friends—though I suspect he had that effect on more people than anyone realized. The Rex Reed I knew bore little resemblance to the curmudgeon of popular imagination. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say he was that, but he was so much else besides.

What I loved most about Rex was how he told stories. The kind of anecdote that most people deliver flatly, without drama or color, Rex transformed into something unforgettable. He seized every opportunity to tell a story. He chose his words with precision—never too many, always unmistakably his. He could transport you into a moment, make you feel exactly what he felt, yet somehow leave you looking back on it with laughter as if you’d been there with him.

Rex himself rarely laughed, but he seemed perpetually amused by the world—if that makes any sense. I laughed constantly in his presence. Mostly, I found myself exclaiming “What!” or sighing “Oh, Rex.”

He seldom asked about my life, but he remembered everything I ever told him—and made certain I knew it. That mattered to me. Rex had many friends, including many famous ones. That he kept track of what my husband did for work, where we lived, how old my children were, the things I mentioned enjoying—that generosity of attention meant something.

Whenever I came to New York, we’d have lunch at Michael’s in Midtown or Sardi’s in Times Square. He ordered the same thing every time: a Cobb salad, no blue cheese, iced tea. If the restaurant had hot fudge—and he was meticulous about the distinction between hot fudge and chocolate sauce, a point I watched him make more times than I can count—he’d finish with ice cream. Our last lunch came a few months after his first serious fall. I had never had to walk him to a cab or help him inside. After that, the injuries accumulated so quickly that I lost track.

At the hospital in January, after cataloging the terrible food and the slow response times from the striking nurses, Rex turned his head as far as he could manage and asked how I do it all. Before I could deflect, he pressed on: “How do you do this job with two little children and a husband?” 

It was such a simple question—and of course a loaded one. People don’t typically ask men this. For some women, it’s a sore point. For me, it wasn’t. I appreciated that he asked. More than that, I appreciated that he asked in a tone that conveyed the kind of awe I stop myself from indulging. What I didn’t expect was my own response: I burst into tears and told him I didn’t know.

That was Rex—always noticing, always remembering, always making you feel like you mattered. Even at the end.

A Southern Boy in the Movies

Rex Taylor Reed was born on October 2, 1938, in Fort Worth, Texas, to Jewell Smith Reed and James M. Reed, an oil company supervisor whose work kept the family in constant motion across the South. Rex attended 13 schools before high school graduation—an itinerant childhood that taught him to find permanence not in places or friendships but in the movies.

He saw Gone with the Wind at age two. “The things I remember most are what would affect a child,” he told me. “Bonnie dying on the horse. I was hysterical.” Around the same time, he saw Tarzan’s New York Adventure. “There was a terrible storm in that movie, and I kept tugging at my mother: ‘We have to roll up the car windows!’ She said, ‘It’s just a movie.’ But you see how impressionable I was.”

Rex was adopted—something I learned only during that January hospital visit. He had no siblings, though not for lack of opportunity. “I could have had a sister,” he said, with what I sensed was regret. “But I told my parents that if they adopted another child, I’d run away. I meant it. So they didn’t.”

His mother came from a sprawling Oklahoma clan whose second cousins included the Dalton Gang. She indulged her singular son in ways unusual for the time and place. “In the South, people were easily shocked, and many books were forbidden,” Rex recalled. “The library had a restricted section, but my mother would check things out for me. I read From Here to Eternity at twelve. She said, ‘If there’s anything you don’t understand, show me and we’ll discuss it.’ I never needed to. I already understood.”

Rex spoke of his mother with deep admiration. I once heard someone describe the difference between parents who are gardeners—providing what children need and tending them as they grow—and those who are architects, identifying what makes a child distinctive and building on it. Rex’s mother was an........

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