Birdland Theater is proud to announce that critic Rex Reed will be holding court on its new stage on Tuesday, November 27, with shows at 7pm and 9:45 pm.
Reed is best known as a film and theatre critic, but people who really know Rex are well aware of his first love—classic songs from the Great American Songbook, especially the people who wrote them and the stars who played and sang them first. Yes, he sings, too!
Reed is a critic, columnist, journalist, author and lecturer whose film reviews appear every week in the New York Observer. He has been a film critic for Vogue, GQ, Holiday and Women’s Wear Daily. For 13 years, he was an arts critic for the New York Daily News and for five years was the film critic for the New York Post. His articles and essays on the arts have appeared in almost every national magazine and newspaper in London and the United States. He is the author of eight books about the movies and his first novel, Personal Effects, sold 75,000 copies in its first printing and was optioned by NBC-TV for a four-hour miniseries.
As an actor, he appeared in the films Myra Breckinridge with Mae West and John Huston, Inchon! with Laurence Olivier and Superman with Christopher Reeve and Marlon Brando. He also appeared with Melina Mercouri, Laurence Olivier, Lillian Hellman, Edward Albee and other notables in Jules Dassin’s antiwar film The Rehearsal. He has been a member of the juries at the Montreal, Venice and Berlin film festivals and is proud to be the only film critic in the world to have a movie review (of the Oscar-winning anti-Vietnam film Hearts and Minds) read aloud in both houses of Congress, thus becoming a permanent part of the Congressional Record. He is a member of the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Society of Film Critics.
He has appeared for several years at the country’s oldest and most successful fund-raising benefit for AIDS, the S.T.A.G.E. Benefit in Los Angeles. For five years, he starred in the nationally syndicated television show, “At the Movies” and in 1993 he was inducted, along with James Carville and Supreme Court Judge, Minor Wisdom, into the Louisiana Hall of Fame in his native state. As a music critic and as an ardent supporter of Broadway show music, he shares the distinction, with Kitty Carlisle Hart, of being one of the longest-running host-narrators of the popular Lyrics and Lyricists series at the 92nd St. Y in New York City. He’s also written liner notes for Liza Minnelli, Lena Horne, Tony Bennett, Mel Torme, Eileen Farrell, Barbara Cook and many others. and has been nominated for two Grammy awards. He holds a journalism degree from Louisiana State University and an honorary degree from Brandeis University.
Rex Rees SINGS, Tuesday, November 27 at 7pm and 9:45pm, $30 cover, $10 food/drink minimum. For tickets call 212-581-3080 or visit www.BirdlandJazz.com
Birdland Theater – 315 West 44th Street, NYC, NY 10036
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