(NYTimes) Judy Crichton, Producer of 'American Experience', Dies at 77
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Judy Crichton, one of the first women to produce news on network
television and the first executive producer of "American Experience,"
the acclaimed public television history series, died in Manhattan on
Sunday. She was 77 and lived in Manhattan.
The cause was complications of leukemia, her daughter Sarah Crichton
said.
As executive producer of "American Experience" from 1988 to 1996,
under the auspices of WGBH, the Boston PBS affiliate, Ms. Crichton
oversaw the production of 100 documentaries. Her works ranged from in-
depth looks at the public and private lives of American presidents to
accounts of pivotal moments in the civil rights era to a foot-tap-
inducing biography of John Philip Sousa, the composer of America's
most stirring military marches.
"She was a world-class film doctor," said Margaret Drain, Ms.
Crichton's successor as executive producer of "American Experience"
and now WGBH's vice president for national programming. "She'd go into
the editing room, move things around and just keep sharpening the
language of the script."
During Ms. Crichton's tenure as executive producer, "American
Experience" won seven Emmys; six Peabody Awards; five Writers Guild
Awards; and two Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Journalism Awards. In 2000,
President Bill Clinton awarded Ms. Crichton the National Humanities
Medal.
There was a recurring theme to her work. "She had a powerful
compassion for people excluded from society," Ms. Drain said, pointing
out that one of Ms. Crichton's first documentaries, "Indians, Outlaws
and Angie Debo," recounts how a woman doing historical research at the
University of Oklahoma unearthed documents proving that Indian tribes
had been robbed of their lands.
In 1994 Ms. Crichton produced "Midnight Ramble," an examination of the
hundreds of films produced by black directors between World Wars I and
II, with characters contradicting the Hollywood stereotype of
shuffling, eyeball-rolling blacks. Called race movies, the films were
usually shown only in the South's segregated theaters after midnight.
Also in 1994, Ms. Crichton produced "America and the Holocaust,"
presenting evidence of how the State Department had played down known
facts about Nazi persecution of Jews.
Judy Feiner Crichton was born in Manhattan on Nov. 25, 1929, a
daughter of Ben and Edith Lansburg Feiner. Her father was a news
producer in the early days of television.
Besides her daughter Sarah, of Brooklyn, Ms. Crichton is survived by
another daughter, Jennifer Crichton Emil of Manhattan; a son, Rob, of
Bainbridge Island, Wash.; a sister, Margot Conte, of Chatham, N.Y.;
and five grandchildren. Her husband, Robert Crichton, the author of
the best-selling books "The Secret of Santa Vittoria" and "The Great
Impostor," died in 1993. Her companion, Sanford Katz, died in 2005.
Although Ms. Crichton graduated from high school at 15, she dropped
out of college after only two months and got a job as a file clerk at
The New York Herald Tribune. From 1952 to 1968, she was a writer and
producer of the CBS game show "I've Got a Secret."
In the 1970s, television networks and newspapers were facing class-
action lawsuits charging discrimination against women. At a funeral in
1974, Ms. Crichton approached Bill Leonard, a CBS news executive, and
said the network needed a woman as producer for its documentary unit,
"CBS Reports." Mr. Leonard gave her two weeks to come up with a story
idea. Her proposal, "Caution: Drinking Water May Be Dangerous to Your
Health," became the first of a series on cancer and carcinogens. At
CBS, Ms. Crichton also helped write, direct and produce "The Nuclear
Battlefield," an examination of the arms race in 1981, which won three
Emmys.
By DENNIS HEVESI
Published: October 17, 2007