Gene Shalit, who served as a film critic and interviewer for “The Today Show” for 40 years, died Friday at the age of 100.
The beloved critic “passed away peacefully today after 100 years of an amazing life,” his family told NBC.
Shalit was a critic from a bygone era, a period where televised movie reviewers occupied space in the public consciousness. Shalit joined “The Today Show” on NBC part-time in 1970 before becoming a full-time film and literature critic in 1973 — two years before Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert began their TV criticism partnership in 1975.
Like that movie-critiquing duo, Shalit was a well-known figure, evoked and parodied in various cartoons and sketch programs as a go-to standing for the field of criticism. He had a lengthy tenure of more than 37 years in his full-time gig on “The Today Show,” appearing in the “Critic’s Corner” segment with big glasses, fun bowties and bushy hair.
Shalit was an accessible critic, though not one to give automatic praise for films he didn’t like. NBC pointed to the critic’s review of the original “X-Men,” where he said, years before the superhero boom truly took off, the film “should not be taken seriously. In fact, it should be taken with two aspirin.” On “The Today Show,” he honed skills first demonstrated in an early career of print criticism and journalism, where he gained bylines writing reviews for such outlets as Look magazine, Ladies Home Journal, TV Guide and The New York Times.
Shalit officially retired from “The Today Show” in 2010, leaving the public eye after decades on TV screens. “The ‘TODAY’ show was an extraordinary era for him,” his family told NBC News in a statement Friday.
Shalit and his wife, Nancy Lewis, were married for 28 years from 1950 until her death from cancer in 1978.
