Super Pan

Hollywood movies are all too often sitting ducks for sharpshooting critics, and one who delights in picking them off is the New York Herald Tribune's Judith Crist. The movie companies ought to be used to such sporadic bursts of fire by now, but once more they are indulging in their favorite form of retaliation: they are lifting their advertising from the offending newspaper.

Since the turn of the year, movie advertising in the Trib has dropped by more than 20%.

A veteran of 20 years as a Trib reporter, Mrs. Crist (rhymes with hissed) began her career as a film critic two years ago. In an early review, she blasted a much ballyhooed movie, Spencer's Mountain, then showing at New York's largest movie house, Radio City Music Hall. The movie's producer, Warner Bros., promptly canceled all advertising in the Trib, while the Music Hall reduced its linage. The Trib answered with an editorial denouncing the "inane" pressure tactics. "A newspaper whose comments and critiques can be controlled by advertisers," said the Trib, "cheats its readers and ceases to be an honest newspaper."

Mucked Down, Padded Out. Mrs. Crist is not only honest; she is blunt. She wrote of Where Love Has Gone: "A trashy dose of sex-and-soap . . . being palmed off on us on the premise that we go to the movies to see smuttied-up, padded-out, mucked-down television serials in Technicolor and Techniscope." Of Anne Bancroft's performance in The Pumpkin Eater, she said: "She seems a cowlike creature with no aspirations or intellect above her pelvis."

Cleopatra was "at best a major disappointment, at worst an extravagant exercise in tedium. The mountain of notoriety has produced a mouse."

Along the way, Mrs. Crist has also become a feature attraction on NBC-TV's Today show, where, she says, "My criticism comes across more strongly than in print." Last March, she managed to pan three super-spectaculars in one brief appearance: The Greatest Story Ever Told ("A kind of dime-store holy picture"), Lord Jim ("A lot of heavy five-cent philosophy"), and The Sound of Music (she found the children "strictly loathsome").

That was probably the most savage criticism The Sound of Music, a generally sunny film starring Julie Andrews, drew from anyone. Mrs. Crist acknowledged the ensuing uproar: "You can be against God; you can be against Conrad; but brother, if you're against The Sound of Music, you're the lowest of the low. If I had beaten my mother to a pulp, strangled my small child, and slit the throat of my little puppy dog, I wouldn't have seemed so odious."

Acerbic Speech. Naturally, Hollywood was anxious to see the Eastern Medusa, and the Hollywood Publicists' Guild invited Mrs. Crist to address a luncheon in Beverly Hills last month. If there was an outstretched hand, she not only disdained it; she bit it. Following Frank Sinatra's light and witty talk on his life and loves ("Must have had six gag writers," mused Crist), she plunged into an acerbic speech: "Back where I come from, Hollywood is a dirty word." Said an aggrieved 20th Century-Fox publicist: "She is a snide, supercilious, sour bitch. The thing she would hate most would be to be ignored." Said another: "If you want to attract attention, that's the way to do it. She's more Hollywood than Hollywood." Crist was unmoved: "The film companies think they are catering to a twelve-year-old mentality. I happen to think the American people are as smart as I am."

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