Judy Crichton (1929–2007)

Judy Crichton, née Feiner, was born in New York City, a daughter of Ben and Edith Lansburg Feiner. Her father was a news producer in the early days of television and as a teenager in 1944, she assisted him with the first television coverage of a presidential election. She graduated from high school at age 15 and went to college, but dropped out after only two months. She took a job as a file clerk at The New York Herald Tribune. After that, she worked for the DuMont Television Network as a researcher, writer, and associate producer of the game show "What's the Story?" In 1952, she became a writer and producer of the CBS game show
"I’ve Got a Secret," a position she held until 1968. During this period, she also wrote and produced a radio series for Betty Furness called Dimensions of a Woman's World.

In 1974, she became the first woman producer for the CBS News documentary unit, CBS Reports. She produced, co-wrote, and co-directed "The Nuclear Battlefield," (1981) an examination of the arms race, which won three Emmy Awards. She moved to ABC News to work as a producer and writer for ABC Close-Up, where she won a DuPont Award and a Christopher Award. In 1988, she became the executive producer of American Experience under the auspices of WGBH, the Boston affiliate of PBS. During her eight-year tenure, the series made 100 documentaries and won numerous awards, including six Peabody Awards and two Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Journalism Awards. In 2000, Crichton received the National Humanities Medal from President Bill Clinton. She was married to author Robert Crichton, with whom she had four children.