Gene Shalit, the fun-loving movie critic on the Today present identified for his outsized mustache, out-of-control mop of black hair and energetic use of puns in his film critiques, died Friday. He was 100.
Shalit, a mainstay on the NBC morning present for 4 many years till his retirement in November 2010, “passed away peacefully today after 100 years of an amazing life,” his household stated in a press release to NBC News.
Shalit began as a e-book reviewer on Today in 1970 and went on to interchange Joe Garagiola on the desk three years later. Working alongside the likes of Hugh Downs, Tom Brokaw, Barbara Walters, Bryant Gumbel, Jane Pauley, Matt Lauer and Katie Couric, Shalit proved to be a spirited counterbalance to the heavier information of the day, entertaining audiences with movie star interviews and insights into moviegoing selections throughout his “Critic’s Corner” phase.
“He is the Today show,” Meredith Vieira stated throughout a 2011 tribute to Shalit after he introduced his retirement.
The short-witted Shalit, keen on bow ties, aimed to make his segments enjoyable. He summed up his 1987 assessment of Ishtar with, “Two words, Ishtar ish horrible.” For 1997’s Face/Off, Shalit opined, “Now, if wild improbabilities are your cup of tea, let’s face it, you’ll find Face/Off a compelling acted, totally absurd, unbelievable, thoroughly entertaining movie.” His take of the eventual 1992 Oscar greatest image winner acquired the complete pun remedy — The Silence of the Lambs could also be all wool, and a yard vast, nevertheless it makes a terrific yarn.”
With a deep love and understanding of the movie medium, Shalit had a status as an enticing interviewer. He knew the best way to put celebrities comfortable. When Richard Burton got here on, Shalit made use of the actor’s wealthy Shakespearean voice by having him learn names out of a cellphone e-book. Carol Channing diminished Shalit to tears of laughter along with her story of a London banquet with Woman Astor and Sir Benjamin Harrison by imitating the latter. Sophia Loren, Paul Newman, Robin Williams, Steven Spielberg, Mel Brooks and Burt Reynolds, to call only a few, have been amongst those that sat with him. He interviewed Drew Barrymore and Christian Bale after they have been children.
Nevertheless, it was Shalit’s larger-than-life character and raveled look that made him a star in his personal proper. It additionally opened him as much as imitation. Eugene Levy’s Shalit was a recurring character on SCTV. Horatio Sanz mimicked Shalit on Saturday Evening Dwell. Even The Muppets acquired into the act with a felt model of him, full with outsized hair and mustache. Animated Shalits confirmed up on The Critic and SpongeBob SquarePants — each voiced by the person himself. On Household Man, a cartoon Shalit mugged Peter Griffin, telling him, “Don’t Panic Room, I’m not going to William Hurt you. I only want your Tango & Cash. So, just Pay It Forward and we’ll all be Happy Gilmore.”
Shalit was born in New York Metropolis on March 25, 1926. Six years later, he and his household moved to Morristown, New Jersey, the place his father purchased a drugstore. He started his journalistic methods in his grammar faculty, creating its first newspaper, The Highlight. To show he was a critical newsman, he wore a fedora. When he acquired to Morristown Excessive Faculty, he wrote the college paper’s humor column, “The Broadcaster.”
In 1943, Shalit headed to the College of Illinois and took a leisurely six years to earn his diploma. Maybe that was as a result of he spent a lot time at The Day by day Illini, the place he was the sports activities editor. The columns “What Shalit Be?” and “Campus Scout” carried his byline. When he wasn’t busy turning out faculty information, Shalit took on gigs as a reporter for The Champaign-Urbana Courier and as a sports activities stringer writing concerning the Huge Ten for the Related Press.
For a time, Shalit earned his dwelling as a PR agent. Within the late Fifties and early ‘60s, he was a accomplice in Barkas, Shalit and Schiller, a New York/Los Angeles-based agency, and Dick Clark was certainly one of his shoppers. When the American Bandstand host was swept up in a radio payola scandal in 1959 and known as to testify earlier than Congress, Shalit dropped him. Clark was cleared, however the two by no means spoke once more. In a 2011 story in The New York Instances, Clark known as Shalit a “jellyfish.”
Within the early ‘60s, Shalit became an entertainment columnist for McCall’s, contributing principally e-book critiques. By 1968, he was the senior movie critic for Look. He wrote the “What’s Happening” column for Women’ House Journal. Sport journal employed him for a “Sports Talk” column. And he was contributing film critiques to the native information packages for WNBC in New York and KNBC in Los Angeles.
All this caught the attention of NBC Information president Reuven Frank, who determined to carry Shalit to the As we speak present to deal with e-book and music critiques. “He was passionate about books,” Frank stated in Stephen Battaglio’s From Yesterday to TODAY: Six A long time of America’s Favourite Morning Present. “There were years when Gene Shalit sold more books than any other American.”
Throughout his tenure at As we speak, Shalit continued to jot down his column for Women’ House Journal. His byline additionally appeared in Cosmopolitan, TV Information, Seventeen, Glamour and The New York Instances. From 1969-82, Shalit broadcast “Man About Anything,” a day by day phase for NBC’s coast-to-coast radio community that includes essays he had penned. He served as a panelist on What’s My Line? and made a cameo in Tootsie (1982).
Of the 1000’s of critiques that Shalit delivered through the years, maybe none was extra controversial than his 2005 phase on Brokeback Mountain wherein he described Jack, Jake Gyllenhaal’s character, as a “sexual predator.” That angered the Homosexual & Lesbian Alliance In opposition to Defamation, which stated the “baseless branding of Jack as a ‘sexual predator’ merely because he is romantically interested in someone of the same sex is defamatory, ignorant and irresponsible.” The group accused Shalit of utilizing his assessment to “promote defamatory antigay prejudice to a national audience.”
Shalit’s son Peter, who’s homosexual, rose to the protection, penning a letter to GLAAD saying that it had falsely accused his father of bigotry. However maybe the perfect argument in Shalit’s favor was the loving tribute he had written to his son for The Advocate years earlier. The 1997 piece, “For the Love of Peter,” left little question the place Shalit stood on the problem.
In 1962, he joined forces with illustrator Jack Davis to place out Khrushchev’s High Secret Coloring E-book (Your First Purple Reader), a satirical swipe on the Russian chief. His books additionally included Laughing Matter — A Treasury of American Humor (1989), a group of tales, cartoons, essays and scripts that includes Woody Allen, Russell Baker, Gary Trudeau and Garrison Keillor, amongst others.
Shalit married Nancy Lewis in 1950. Along with Peter, the couple had 5 different youngsters — Willa, Andrew, Nevin, Emily and Amanda. Nancy died of most cancers in 1978, and Shalit by no means remarried. Emily died in 2012 of ovarian most cancers. Willa is a theatrical and tv producer (The Vagina Monologues).
