NEW YORK — Gene Shalit, the longtime “Today” show film critic and arts reporter whose trademark look included wild hair, a sweeping handlebar mustache and a fondness for pun-filled reviews, has died at 100.
His family confirmed the news to NBC News on Friday, saying in a statement that Shalit “passed away peacefully today after 100 years of an amazing life.”
For four decades, Shalit was a familiar presence on morning television, bringing movie and arts coverage to a mass audience at a time when film criticism was still largely rooted in newspapers and magazines. He joined “Today” as a contributor in 1970, became the program’s arts editor in 1973 and eventually became a fixture through his “Critic’s Corner” segments. By the time he left the show in 2010, he was among the last nationally prominent film critics regularly appearing on a major broadcast network.
Shalit’s style was unmistakable, both in appearance and delivery. Beneath the flamboyant image was a critic known for sharp intelligence and an ability to entertain without sounding self-important. “What resonated above his unusual appearance was his incredible wit, his remarkable intelligence. But he didn’t pound you over the head with it. He amused you. He enlightened and amused whatever subject he was on,” Guy Ludwig, Shalit’s producer for more than 20 years, wrote in an essay reflecting on their time together.
His rise also marked a broader shift in where Americans encountered movie criticism. In the years after Shalit became a television mainstay, film reviewing expanded beyond print and onto the screen. Chicago critics Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel saw their local review show “Sneak Previews” go national on PBS in the late 1970s, and ABC’s “Good Morning America” brought in Joel Siegel as its movie critic in 1981.
Looking back on Shalit’s influence, The Plain Dealer wrote in 2010 that he helped reshape the landscape of American criticism. “Shalit was instrumental in changing the balance of critical power in America. When he began his ‘Today’ tenure, newspapers and magazines were the primary sources for movie reviews. That’s where cinematic opinion was sparked and shaped,” the paper wrote, memorably describing him as “Daniel Boone in a bow tie and Groucho glasses.”
Magazine work led to NBC offer
Shalit started as an entertainment columnist for McCall’s magazine, eventually becoming senior film critic for Look magazine in 1968 and writing for Ladies’ Home Journal. His popularity in magazines led to an offer from NBC.
“No one at NBC had seen him. They’d only read his stuff. So he walked into this executive’s office and the executive took one look at him and said, ‘Mr. Shalit, have you ever thought of radio?’” wrote Ludwig. “They didn’t know how the public would react to someone who looked so different from people who were typically on TV in 1967.”
On the air, Shalit was a middle-of-the-road critic. Of 1986’s classic “Stand By Me,” he said it was different from other movies about youth “because of instead of grossing you out, ‘Stand by You’ is engrossing.”
“Many critics will give so much of the plot of a movie away that they destroy the movie for the viewer… I just don’t give away the story,” he told The Associated Press in 1993.
Highlights in words
He liked “Defiance” starring Daniel Craig and Jude Law, calling it “a vivid dramatization of one of history’s titanic turning points.” But he called “Brokeback Mountain “wildly overpraised, but not by me” and drew condemnation from GLAAD for calling Jake Gyllenhaal’s character, Jack, a “sexual predator.” Shalit apologized.
He called “Frozen” “very cool.” He said the oddball title of “The Men Who Stare at Goats” was “heard to bleat,” and his review of “The Lovely Bones” read in part: “There’s no bones about it.”
He began reviewing on the air the year of “Patton” and “Love Story” and ended his run with a critique of “Shrek Forever After,” of which he noted that the “bellow fellow is now a mellow fellow.” One highlight of this tenure was his descent into a fit of giggles while interviewing Carol Channing.
He called a remake of “King Kong” so “gargantuan that I must create new words to describe it: fabularious … a brilliantological humongousness of marvelosity.” His take on Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple”: “It should be against the law not to see it.”
In a 1981 interview with John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, Belushi said Shalit’s hair looked like “an ant farm on fire.” Nevertheless, he peppered his guest with so many questions about their daily life that it felt like therapy. He asked both comedians what their last meals would be. “What do you want to be doing 10 years from now, John Belushi?” Shalit asked. “‘Fiddler on the Roof’” Belushi replied.
During his tenure, he traded quips with anchors ranging from Edwin Newman, Barbara Walters and Jane Pauley to Tom Brokaw, Bryant Gumbel, Katie Couric, Jane Pauley, Al Roker and Meredith Vieira.
Gumbel was not always a fan, once saying Shalit’s reviews “are often late and his interviews aren’t very good.” The critique came in what was supposed to be a confidential memo to Marty Ryan, the show’s executive producer at the time.
In 1994, while in St. Pete Beach, Florida, to cover Major League Baseball spring training, a car hit Shalit as he was crossing a street and broke his leg. After that, “Today” began recording his movie reviews in his home studio.
Early life
He was born in New York and grew up in Morristown, New Jersey, starting his grammar school’s first newspaper before writing a humor column for the newspaper while a student at Morristown High School. He graduated from the University of Illinois in 1949.
Shalit played the bassoon, but he said he started out on the clarinet.
“I didn’t practice for a few weeks and the teacher got furious,” he recalled in 1988, before playing bassoon in a New York City fundraiser. “He took away my clarinet and as punishment he said, ‘From now on, you’re gonna play THIS.’”
In 1987, he edited a book called “Laughing Matters: A Celebration of American Humor,” saying he wanted to introduce and reintroduce such old and new masters of American humor as Mark Twain, James Thurber and Russell Baker.
Shalit was regularly mocked on “Saturday Night Live” by cast member Horatio Sanz, who would appear on the Weekend Update desk dressed as Shalit and go on an extended, barely coherent rants that punned the title of every movie he reviewed. Shalit also made cameos on “Sesame Street,” “Family Guy” and “Spongebob Squarepants.”
He is survived by a daughter, Willa Shalit.
