Cecelia Ager ( Rubinstein; January 23, 1902 – April 3, 1981) was an American

film critic Film criticism is the analysis and evaluation of films and the film medium. In general, film criticism can be divided into two categories: journalistic criticism that appears regularly in newspapers, magazines and other popular mass-media outlets ...

and star

reporter A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalism ...

for ''Variety'' and the ''

New York Times Magazine ''The New York Times Magazine'' is an American Sunday magazine supplement included with the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times''. It features articles longer than those typically in the newspaper and has attracted many notable contributors. ...

''.

Life and career

Ager was born Cecelia Rubenstein in

Grass Valley, California Grass Valley is a city in Nevada County, California, United States. Situated at roughly in elevation in the western foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountain range, this northern Gold Country city is by car from Sacramento, from Sacramento ...

, a mining town, the daughter of Fannie (Meyer) and Zalkin H. Rubenstein. Her parents were Polish Jewish immigrants. She married Milton Ager four months after meeting him; Mayor

Jimmy Walker James John Walker (June 19, 1881November 18, 1946), known colloquially as Beau James, was mayor of New York City from 1926 to 1932. A flamboyant politician, he was a liberal Democrat and part of the powerful Tammany Hall machine. He was forced t ...

of New York, also a songwriter, presided at the wedding in his office. Ager was the first female reporter for ''Variety'', and was known as one of the best dressed women in America. Ager was the movie critic for the New York newspaper '' PM'' and a contributor to ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' and several national magazines. Her sense of style became an asset to advance her work as a writer. It has been said that "she used fashion as her entry into examining the constricting roles women were asked to play, in real life and onscreen.” Her astute and often wittily-written articles and reviews of films showed her a champion for quality and a keen-eyed observer of American culture. Among the first critics to take notice of the importance of Orson Welles's 1941 film ''

Citizen Kane ''Citizen Kane'' is a 1941 American drama film produced by, directed by, and starring Orson Welles. He also co-wrote the screenplay with Herman J. Mankiewicz. The picture was Welles' first feature film. ''Citizen Kane'' is frequently cited ...

,'' she wrote for ''PM'': “Before ''Citizen Kane'', it's as if the motion picture were a slumbering monster, a mighty force stupidly sleeping, lying there…awaiting a fierce young man to come kick it to life, to rouse it, shake it, awaken it to its potentialities.... Seeing it, it's as if you never really saw a movie before.” Cecelia's aunt was

Anzia Yezierska Anzia Yezierska (October 29, 1880 – November 20, 1970) was a Jewish-American novelist born in Mały Płock, Poland, which was then part of the Russian Empire. She emigrated as a child with her parents to the United States and lived in the ...

, known for her sensitive writing about the immigrant Jewish experience in New York. Anzia's uncle, Meyer Yeziersky/Max Mayer was the first of his family to immigrate to the US. Anzia arrived in 1901 after the rest of the family had joined him in adopting his first name as their surname in the US. Her success with novels and a film encouraged her niece and grandniece. Ager died in Los Angeles in 1981 after suffering a stroke.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ager, Cecelia 1902 births 1981 deaths American film critics American people of Polish-Jewish descent 20th-century American non-fiction writers American women film critics 20th-century American women writers Variety (magazine) people People from Grass Valley, California Writers from California American women non-fiction writers