Gene Shalit, the fast-talking comedian who reviewed movies, plays and books for NBC's “Today” show, has died. He was 100 years old.
Shalit's family confirmed the longtime critic's death on Friday, telling NBC that he “passed away peacefully after 100 years of an incredible life.”
According to a 2010 interview with Guy Ludwig, Shalit's producer for more than 20 years, Shalit was hired as a “Today” contributor in 1968. He reviewed books about once a month, but audiences were so fascinated by his eccentric personality and equally unconventional appearance that NBC increased the reviewer's on-air appearances.
In January 1973, the same day he was promoted to art editor, Shalit premiered “Critic's Corner,” the segment that would ultimately make him a household name. In 2010, Shalit retired as one of the last regular movie critics at a major network.
Ludwig referred to Shalit as the “sly grandpa” of the “Today” show.
Shalit got his start in the media as an entertainment columnist for McCall's magazine, eventually landing the role of senior film critic for Look magazine in 1968 and writing a humor column for Ladies' Home Journal. His quick wit, punchy wordplay, and unique voice were evident even on the page, and NBC took notice.
“No one at NBC had seen him. They had only read his material. So he walked into this executive's office and the executive looked at him and said, 'Mr. Shalit, have you ever thought about radio?'” Ludwig told “Today.”
“They didn't know how the public would react to someone who looked so different from the people who normally appeared on television in 1967.”
In “Criticism's Corner,” Shalit preferred humor to bombast. He was a critic of everyone. Of the 1997 action thriller “Face/Off,” he said, “Now, 'Face/Off' is a literal title, because they both have their faces removed. Each face is then placed on the other's head. Even their voices are changed with microchip implants. In other words, this is a completely reasonable and rational movie!”
“Many critics reveal so much of a film's plot that they destroy it for the viewer… I simply don't reveal the story,” he told the Associated Press in 1993.
During his tenure, he was known for blowing up his colleagues and “Today” anchors, from Edwin Newman, Barbara Walters and Jane Pauley to Tom Brokaw, Bryant Gumbel, Katie Couric, Al Roker and Meredith Vieira.
But not everyone appreciated Shalit's style. In 1989, a leaked internal memo from “Today” show co-host Bryant Gumbel to Marty Ryan, a former executive producer of the NBC show, complained that reviews of Shalit's films “are often late and his interviews are not very good.”
Eugene Shalit was born on March 25, 1926 in New York City and grew up in Morristown, New Jersey. He launched his elementary school's first newspaper, “The Spotlight,” and bought a fedora to seal his destiny as a journalist. At Morristown High School he wrote the humor column for the school newspaper “The Broadcaster.” In 1949 he graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Shalit was married to Nancy Lewis for 28 years until her death in 1978 and never remarried. The couple had six children: Peter, Willa, Emily, Amanda, Nevin and Andrew. Emily died of ovarian cancer in 2012.
