American writer and critic Rex Reed was BOTD in 1938. Born in Fort Worth, Texas, he studied journalism at Louisiana State University. In 1960 he moved to New York City to pursue a writing career, finding work in the publicity department of 20th Century Fox. He became a film critic for American Vogue, GQ, The New York Times and The New York Daily News. His blunt, gossipy celebrity profiles were collected in the bestselling book Do You Sleep in the Nude?, and his profile of Ava Gardner was included in Tom Wolfe’s seminal anthology The New Journalism. Openly gay since forever, his 1968 profile of Matt Crowley’s gay-themed play The Boys in the Band for the New York Times was a landmark for positive reportage about homosexuality. In 1970, he appeared in Myra Breckinridge, a schlocky adaptation of Gore Vidal’s novel about a sociopathic trans woman, now considered one of the worst films ever made. In 1974, his criticism of Frank Sinatra as vocally washed-up led to a long war of attrition as Sinatra made gay jokes about Reed in public. Reed spent 25 years as a film critic and gossip columnist for The New York Observer, regularly creating controversy with his caustic and offensive comments in his column “Talk of the Town”. He described Deaf actress Marlee Matlin’s 1986 Oscar win as “a pity vote”, dismissed South Korean film Oldboy with “What else can you expect from a nation weaned on kimchi?” and drew widespread criticism in 2013 after calling Bridesmaids actress Melissa McCarthy “tractor-sized”, “humongous”, “obese”, and a “hippo”. He lives in a studio apartment in the attic of the Dakota Building in New York City, and is, by his own account, single, stating “In Hollywood, if you don’t have happiness you send out for it”.