Judy Crichton
National Humanities Medal
https://www.amazon.com/America-1900-Turning-American-Experience/dp/0805053654/?tag=2022091-20
https://www.amazon.com/Freedom-Riders/dp/B00EDG4Z3U/?tag=2022091-20
Judy was born on November 25, 1929, in New York, United States, the daughter of Benjamin F. (a television producer) and Edith (Lansburgh) Feiner. As a teenager, she assisted her father with the first television coverage of a presidential election in 1944.
Although Ms. Crichton graduated from high school at 15, she dropped out of college after only two months.
Crichton's father, Ben Feiner, was a pioneering television producer in New York City, and by the late 1940s, she had followed in his footsteps. Judy worked at first on game shows for CBS, including I’ve Got a Secret and What’s the Story? During the 1970s, still, at CBS, Crichton began producing the documentaries for which she has become known. The CIA’s Secret Army, The American Way of Cancer, and The Defense of the United States are all part of her body of work for CBS. She moved to ABC to work on that network’s Closeup documentary series, where she was instrumental in the writing and production of such programs as To Save Our Schools, to Save Our Children and After the Sexual Revolution. In the mid-1980s, Crichton settled at PBS, working out of its large Boston affiliate, WGHB. There she served as the executive producer of The American Experience, a documentary series that “aims to do for our nation’s past what ‘Nova’ does for science,” in the words of Harry F. Waters in Newsweek.
When Crichton retired in 1996, she continued as a consultant and writer for The American Experience. She has garnered several Emmy Awards for her work in television, and two of the projects she has helped bring to the small screen have been turned into books - 1985’s To Save Our Schools, to Save Our Children: The Approaching Crisis in America’s Public Schools, which she helped write under the leadership of Marshall Frady, and 1998’s America 1900: The Turning Point.
While still working on Closeup, Crichton helped write and produce To Save Our Schools, to Save Our Children, which was the first broadcast in 1984.
America 1900: The Turning Point is the book version of a documentary Crichton wrote for PBS’s The American Experience after she retired as its executive producer. America 1900 in print found favor with critics; for instance, a Publishers Weekly reviewer hailed it as “a vivid, beautifully illustrated account of the U.S. at the turn of the century.” Brooks D. Simpson in the Library Journal was less effusive, affirming that the volume “is a pleasant ... overview of the nation as it stood on the verge of a new century.”
Judy Crichton died of leukemia on October 14, 2007.
Judy Crichton has had a career in television for over five decades. She was 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. During her tenure, the series won 6 Peabody Awards; 2 DuPont Award Awards); 5 Writers Guild Awards; 5 OAH Awards; and 7 Emmy Awards.
She also was the contributing writer for several television documentaries, including famous (with David Grubin) America - 1900.
Judy was married to Robert Crichton (a novelist) until his death in 1993.
