Flashback Friday: Gael Greene, Dismissed Insatiable Critic for New York, Was Once Pitchwoman for Magazine

Matt Haber — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 18:15:29 -0400

On the eve of Thanksgiving, The New York Times' Glenn Collins sat down with Gael Greene, New York Magazine's dismissed "Insatiable Critic."

Mr. Collins called Ms. Greene, "The priestess of radicchio, beurre blanc and arugula," but also noted that the critic had "become an attenuating natural resource at New York since giving up her weekly chief reviewer’s role eight years ago."

It wasn't always so. Ms. Greene was once so closely associated with the magazine that she appeared in a 1986 television commercial touting New York.

Ms. Greene appeared in the above commercial with theater critic John Simon (himself let go by New York's editor Adam Moss in 2005) film critic David Denby (who left the magazine in 1998 to become a critic at The New Yorker), and Dan Dorfman (who left the magazine in 1986 and went on to become a commentator for CNBC and a controversial writer for Money, followed by a stint at The New York Sun).

Of course, in the annals of commercials for magazines, this is nothing compared to The National Enquirer's ads from the same period or this great one for People that somehow name-checks Truman Capote and The Official Preppy Handbook. It also lacks the awesome jingle of Time Magazine's ads.

Observer » Flashback Friday: Gael Greene, Dismissed Insatiable Critic for New York, Was Once Pitchwoman for Magazine

Flashback Friday: Gael Greene, Dismissed Insatiable Critic for New York, Was Once Pitchwoman for Magazine