Gene Shalit, a film critic and humanities reporter for the “Today” present over 4 a long time who was recognized for his puffy hair, outsized handlebar mustache and affection for groan-inducing puns, has died. He was 100.
Shalit’s household introduced the loss of life Friday to NBC News, saying in a press release that he “passed away peacefully today after 100 years of an amazing life.”
Shalit joined “Today” as a contributor in 1970 and have become arts editor in 1973, later settling in for his section, “Critic’s Corner.” When he left the present in 2010, he was one of many final high-profile movie critics on a significant community.
“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 greater than 20 years, wrote in an essay of his time.
It was no coincidence that Chicago critics Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel’s native “thumbs-up, thumbs-down” movie-review program, “Sneak Previews,” went nationwide on PBS within the late Nineteen Seventies and that “Today” present’s ABC rival, “Good Morning America,” employed Joel Siegel to be its film critic in 1981.
“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 Plain Dealer wrote in 2010, calling Shalit “Daniel Boone in a bow tie and Groucho glasses.”
Shalit began as an leisure columnist for McCall’s journal, finally turning into senior movie critic for Look journal in 1968 and writing for Ladies’ Home Journal. His recognition in magazines led to a proposal 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 basic “Stand By Me,” he stated it was totally different from different motion pictures 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 instructed The Associated Press in 1993.
He preferred “Defiance” starring Daniel Craig and Jude Law, calling it “a vivid dramatization of one of history’s titanic turning points.” But he referred to as “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 referred to as “Frozen” “very cool.” He stated the oddball title of “The Men Who Stare at Goats” was “heard to bleat,” and his overview of “The Lovely Bones” learn partly: “There’s no bones about it.”
He started reviewing on the air the 12 months of “Patton” and “Love Story” and ended his run with a critique of “Shrek Forever After,” of which he famous that the “bellow fellow is now a mellow fellow.” One spotlight of this tenure was his descent right into a match of giggles whereas interviewing Carol Channing.
He referred to as a remake of “King Kong” so “gargantuan that I must create new words to describe it: fabularious … a brilliantological humongousness of marvelosity.” His tackle 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 stated Shalit’s hair appeared like “an ant farm on fire.” Nevertheless, he peppered his visitor with so many questions on their every day life that it felt like remedy. He requested each comedians what their final meals could be. “What do you want to be doing 10 years from now, John Belushi?” Shalit requested. “‘Fiddler on the Roof’” Belushi replied.
During his tenure, he traded quips with anchors starting 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 at all times a fan, as soon as saying Shalit’s critiques “are often late and his interviews aren’t very good.” The critique got here in what was purported to be a confidential memo to Marty Ryan, the present’s govt producer on the time.
In 1994, whereas in St. Pete Beach, Florida, to cowl Major League Baseball spring coaching, a automobile hit Shalit as he was crossing a road and broke his leg. After that, “Today” started recording his film critiques in his residence studio.
He was born in New York and grew up in Morristown, New Jersey, beginning his grammar college’s first newspaper earlier than writing a humor column for the newspaper whereas a scholar at Morristown High School. He graduated from the University of Illinois in 1949.
Shalit performed the bassoon, however he stated he began out on the clarinet.
“I didn’t practice for a few weeks and the teacher got furious,” he recalled in 1988, earlier than taking part in 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 ebook referred to as “Laughing Matters: A Celebration of American Humor,” saying he wished to introduce and reintroduce such outdated and new masters of American humor as Mark Twain, James Thurber and Russell Baker.
Shalit was commonly mocked on “Saturday Night Live” by forged member Horatio Sanz, who would seem on the Weekend Update desk dressed as Shalit and go on an prolonged, barely coherent rants that punned the title of each film he reviewed. Shalit additionally made cameos on “Sesame Street,” “Family Guy” and “Spongebob Squarepants.”
He is survived by a daughter, Willa Shalit.
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