REX REED IS ALIVE AND WELL
A premature obit for the prolific critic
Rex Reed is alive and well and living at the Dakota, the oldest surviving luxury apartment block in New York, and the spot where John Lennon was shot.
At 87 years old, Reed continues to contribute film reviews to the New York Observer, a regular occurrence since its launch in 1987. He remains at the 8th floor apartment he bought in 1969 for $30,000, refusing to sell to the highest bidder, even when it’s Andrew Lloyd Webber offering a hefty $8 million. The year Reed moved to the building on New York’s West 72nd Street he made his film debut as a leading man in Myra Breckinridge, an adaptation of the Gore Vidal novel, published the previous year. Reed was cast as Myron, a pre-op transexual, with Raquel Welch taking it from there as the post-op Myra (‘whom no man will ever possess’). Farrah Fawcett Majors features at the start of her career, with a bewildered Mae West, way beyond what should have been the end …