Wisecracking veteran US movie critic Gene Shalit has died aged 100, his family has confirmed to his former network NBC.<\/p>\n
The moustachioed reviewer became known for his playful humour, celebrity interviews and animated reviews in his personalised segment Critics Corner on NBC’s flagship morning programme the Today show.<\/p>\n
Shalit’s family wrote that he “passed away peacefully today after 100 years of an amazing life”. No cause of death was provided.<\/p>\n
“The ‘TODAY’ Show was an extraordinary era for him,” his family said in a statement shared with NBC News.<\/p>\n
Shalit became a popular fixture in American households from the 1970s through to his retirement in 2010, stylistically standing out with his thick-framed spectacles, polkadot bowties and frizzed hair, suffusing his segments with pun-filled wordplay.<\/p>\n
Marking his 100th birthday earlier this year, the Today programme compiled a montage of famous celebrity interviews over his years, including Hollywood stars like Carol Channing and Liza Minelli, and director Steven Speilberg.<\/p>\n
Presenters remarked that he would eek out personal confessions and emotional reactions from his guests through his skilful questioning.<\/p>\n
He also interviewed the leading cast of Star Wars, Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford and Mark Hamill, at the crescendo of the sci-fi franchise’s popularity in the 70s.<\/p>\n
Prior to his TV career, Shalit was a senior film critic for Look Magazine, and continued to spend years penning columns in the New York Times, Ladies’ Home Journal and TV Guide.<\/p>\n
In 2002, his book Great Hollywood Wit was published, an anthology he wrote features a “glorious cavalcade of Hollywood wisecracks, zingers, japes, quips, slings, jests, snappers, & sass from the stars”, as teased on the front cover featuring a caricature in his unique likeness.<\/p>\n
Shalit planned to write a book titled Procrastination is a Full Time Job upon retiring from the Today show, according to his network profile. It was never published.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wisecracking veteran US movie critic Gene Shalit has died aged 100, his family has confirmed to his former…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":635988,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-635987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=635987"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635987\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/635988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=635987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=635987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=635987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}