{"id":637692,"date":"2026-06-14T04:10:17","date_gmt":"2026-06-14T04:10:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/637692\/"},"modified":"2026-06-14T04:10:17","modified_gmt":"2026-06-14T04:10:17","slug":"gene-shalit-dead-today-show-movie-critic-was-100","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/637692\/","title":{"rendered":"Gene Shalit Dead: ‘Today’ Show Movie Critic Was 100"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tGene Shalit, the fun-loving film critic on the Today<\/a> show known for his oversized mustache, out-of-control mop of black hair and lively use of puns in his movie reviews, died Friday. He was 100.<\/p>\n

\n\tShalit, a mainstay on the NBC morning show for four decades until his retirement in November 2010, \u201cpassed away peacefully today after 100 years of an amazing life,\u201d his family said in a statement to NBC News<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tShalit started as a book reviewer on Today<\/a> in 1970 and went on to replace Joe Garagiola<\/a> on the desk three years later. Working alongside the likes of Hugh Downs<\/a>, Tom Brokaw, Barbara Walters<\/a>, Bryant Gumbel, Jane Pauley, Matt Lauer and Katie Couric, Shalit proved to be a spirited counterbalance to the heavier news of the day, entertaining audiences with celebrity interviews and insights into moviegoing choices during his \u201cCritic\u2019s Corner\u201d segment.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHe is the Today show,\u201d Meredith Vieira said during a 2011 tribute to Shalit after he announced his retirement.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe quick-witted Shalit, fond of bow ties, aimed to make his segments fun. He summed up his 1987 review of Ishtar with, \u201cTwo words, Ishtar ish horrible.\u201d For 1997\u2019s Face\/Off, Shalit opined<\/a>, \u201cNow, if wild improbabilities are your cup of tea, let\u2019s face it, you\u2019ll find Face\/Off a compelling acted, totally absurd, unbelievable, thoroughly entertaining movie.\u201d His take of the eventual 1992 Oscar best picture winner got the full pun treatment \u2014 The Silence of the Lambs may be all wool, and a yard wide, but it makes a terrific yarn.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWith a deep love and understanding of the film medium, Shalit had a reputation as an engaging interviewer. He knew how to put celebrities at ease. When Richard Burton came on, Shalit made use of the actor\u2019s rich Shakespearean voice by having him read names out of a phone book. Carol Channing<\/a> reduced Shalit to tears of laughter with her tale of a London dinner party with Lady Astor and Sir Benjamin Harrison by imitating the latter. Sophia Loren, Paul Newman, Robin Williams, Steven Spielberg, Mel Brooks and Burt Reynolds<\/a>, to name just a few, were among those who sat with him. He interviewed Drew Barrymore and Christian Bale when they were kids.<\/p>\n

\n\tHowever, it was Shalit\u2019s larger-than-life personality and disheveled look that made him a star in his own right. It also opened him up to imitation. Eugene Levy\u2019s Shalit was a recurring character on SCTV. Horatio Sanz mimicked Shalit on Saturday Night Live. Even The Muppets got into the act with a felt version of him, complete with oversized hair and mustache. Animated Shalits showed up on The Critic and SpongeBob SquarePants \u2014 both voiced by the man himself. On Family Guy, a cartoon Shalit mugged Peter Griffin, telling him, \u201cDon\u2019t Panic Room, I\u2019m not going to William Hurt<\/a> you. I only want your Tango & Cash. So, just Pay It Forward and we\u2019ll all be Happy Gilmore.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tShalit was born in New York City on March 25, 1926. Six years later, he and his family moved to Morristown, New Jersey, where his father bought a drugstore. He began his journalistic ways in his grammar school, creating its first newspaper, The Spotlight. To prove he was a serious newsman, he wore a fedora. When he got to Morristown High School, he wrote the school paper\u2019s humor column, \u201cThe Broadcaster.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 1943, Shalit headed to the University of Illinois and took a leisurely six years to earn his degree. Perhaps that was because he spent so much time at The Daily Illini,\u00a0where he was the\u00a0sports editor. The columns \u201cWhat Shalit Be?\u201d and \u201cCampus Scout\u201d carried his byline. When he wasn\u2019t busy turning out school news, Shalit took on gigs as a reporter for The Champaign-Urbana Courier and as a sports stringer writing about the Big Ten for the Associated Press.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor a time, Shalit earned his living as a PR agent. In the late 1950s and early \u201860s, he was a partner in Barkas, Shalit and Schiller, a New York\/Los Angeles-based firm, and Dick Clark<\/a> was one of his clients. When the American Bandstand host was swept up in a radio payola scandal in 1959 and called to testify before Congress, Shalit dropped him. Clark was cleared, but the two never spoke again. In a 2011 story in The New York Times, Clark called Shalit a \u201cjellyfish.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the early \u201860s, Shalit became an entertainment columnist for McCall\u2019s, contributing mostly book reviews. By 1968, he was the senior film critic for Look. He wrote the \u201cWhat\u2019s Happening\u201d column for Ladies\u2019 Home Journal. Sport magazine hired him for a \u201cSports Talk\u201d column. And he was contributing movie reviews to the local news programs for WNBC in New York and KNBC in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

\n\tAll this caught the eye of NBC News president Reuven Frank, who decided to bring Shalit to the Today show to handle book and music reviews. \u201cHe was passionate about books,\u201d Frank said in Stephen Battaglio\u2019s\u00a0From Yesterday to TODAY: Six Decades of America\u2019s Favorite Morning Show. \u201cThere were years when Gene Shalit sold more books than any other American.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDuring his tenure at Today, Shalit continued to write his column for Ladies\u2019 Home Journal. His byline also appeared in Cosmopolitan, TV Guide, Seventeen, Glamour and The New York Times. From 1969-82, Shalit broadcast \u201cMan About Anything,\u201d a daily segment for NBC\u2019s coast-to-coast radio network featuring essays he had penned. He served as a panelist on What\u2019s My Line? and made a cameo in Tootsie (1982).<\/p>\n

\n\tOf the thousands of reviews that Shalit delivered over the years, perhaps none was more controversial than his 2005 segment on Brokeback Mountain\u00a0in which he described Jack, Jake Gyllenhaal\u2019s character, as a \u201csexual predator.\u201d That angered the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, which said the \u201cbaseless branding of Jack as a \u2018sexual predator\u2019 merely because he is romantically interested in someone of the same sex is defamatory, ignorant and irresponsible.\u201d The organization accused Shalit of using his review to \u201cpromote defamatory antigay prejudice to a national audience.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tShalit\u2019s son Peter, who is gay, rose to the defense, penning a letter to GLAAD saying that it had falsely accused his father of bigotry. But perhaps the best argument in Shalit\u2019s favor was the loving tribute he had written to his son for The Advocate years earlier. The 1997 piece, \u201cFor the Love of Peter,\u201d left no doubt where Shalit stood on the issue.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 1962, he joined forces with illustrator Jack Davis to put out Khrushchev\u2019s Top Secret Coloring Book (Your First Red Reader), a satirical swipe at the Russian leader. His books also included Laughing Matter \u2014 A Treasury of American Humor\u00a0(1989), a collection of stories, cartoons, essays and scripts featuring Woody Allen, Russell Baker, Gary Trudeau and Garrison Keillor, among others.<\/p>\n

\n\tShalit married Nancy Lewis in 1950. In addition to Peter, the couple had five other children \u2014 Willa, Andrew, Nevin, Emily and Amanda. Nancy died of cancer in 1978, and Shalit never remarried. Emily died in 2012 of ovarian cancer. Willa is a theatrical and television producer (The Vagina Monologues).\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gene Shalit, the fun-loving film critic on the Today show known for his oversized mustache, out-of-control mop of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":637693,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[96,3879,15455,391,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-637692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-obituaries","tag-today","tag-tv","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637692","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=637692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637692\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/637693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=637692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=637692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=637692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}