Cecelia Ager (née Rubinstein; January 23, 1902 – April 3, 1981) was an American film critic and star reporter for Variety and the New York Times Magazine.
Ager was born Cecelia Rubenstein in Grass Valley, California, a mining town, the daughter of Fannie (Meyer) and Zalkin H.
She married Milton Ager four months after meeting him; Mayor Jimmy Walker of New York, also a songwriter, presided at the wedding in his office.
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.”[2] 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, 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....