Gene Shalit, whose towering pompadour and elaborate handlebar mustache made him one of television's most visually distinctive personalities, died Friday. He was 100. For four decades on NBC's Today show, the movie critic and arts reporter built a following through wordplay, accessible taste, and a refusal to spoil plots for viewers.
His family announced the death to NBC News, saying he "passed away peacefully today after 100 years of an amazing life."
Shalit joined Today in 1970 as a contributor and became arts editor three years later, eventually anchoring a segment called Critic's Corner. When he departed in 2010, the network had largely abandoned the role of high-profile film critic on air. His 40-year run made him a relic of a different media landscape, yet one whose influence on how movies reached the masses proved substantial.
His arrival at NBC came after a successful magazine career. He had written for McCall's as an entertainment columnist before climbing to senior film critic at Look magazine in 1968 and later contributing to Ladies' Home Journal. Network executives took a calculated risk. According to his longtime producer Guy Ludwig, one NBC executive allegedly told Shalit upon first meeting him: "Mr Shalit, have you ever thought of radio?" The remark captured the network's anxiety about his unconventional appearance in an era when television personalities conformed to narrower visual templates.
The skepticism proved unfounded. Shalit's intelligence and wit came through clearly, and his humor never condescended. Ludwig wrote that what ultimately mattered 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."
Shalit occupied the middle ground of critical taste. He championed Stand By Me for being "engrossing" rather than gross, embraced Spielberg's The Color Purple as unmissable, and called Frozen "very cool." His reviews were stacked with puns, some groan-worthy by design. He described The Men Who Stare at Goats as having a title "heard to bleat," reviewed The Lovely Bones with "There's no bones about it," and hailed King Kong as "fabularious" with "brilliantological humongousness of marvelosity."
Yet he could turn critical when warranted. He dismissed Brokeback Mountain as "wildly overpraised, but not by me," and sparked backlash from GLAAD by characterizing Jake Gyllenhaal's character Jack as a "sexual predator." Shalit later apologized for the remark.
One constant principle governed his work. "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. That restraint earned respect among viewers who valued recommendations without spoilers.
The Plain Dealer called him "Daniel Boone in a bow tie and Groucho glasses" and credited him with fundamentally altering American film criticism. "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 noted in 2010. Shalit's presence on network television signaled that film reviewing could reach mass audiences during morning broadcasts, a shift that rippled across the industry.
His visibility made him a target for parody. Horatio Sanz of Saturday Night Live regularly impersonated him on Weekend Update, delivering barely coherent rants stuffed with puns on movie titles. Shalit also appeared in cameos on Sesame Street, Family Guy, and SpongeBob SquarePants, turning his distinctive look into a recognizable cultural asset.
Working alongside anchors from Edwin Newman and Barbara Walters to Tom Brokaw, Katie Couric, and Al Roker, Shalit became a morning television institution. Bryant Gumbel once griped in what he believed was a confidential memo that Shalit's reviews "are often late and his interviews aren't very good," a critique that leaked but did little to diminish the critic's foothold on air.
Shalit was born in New York and raised in Morristown, New Jersey, where he started his grammar school newspaper and later wrote a humor column for his high school paper. He graduated from the University of Illinois in 1949 and eventually edited "Laughing Matters: a Celebration of American Humor" in 1987, assembling work from Mark Twain, James Thurber, and Russell Baker to showcase American comic traditions.
He is survived by his daughter, Willa Shalit.
Author James Rodriguez: "Shalit proved that a critic could be entertaining without being frivolous, and that television audiences were hungry for personality alongside substance."
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