Gene Shalit Dies at 100 After Four Decades on TODAY
Gene Shalit, the longtime TODAY show film critic, died Friday at 100. He spent four decades on the program, where his pun-heavy reviews and bowties made him one of daytime TV’s most recognizable movie voices.
His family told News that he passed away peacefully after 100 years of an amazing life. Meredith Vieira said in 2010, when Shalit left the show, “It’s hard to imagine not having him here. He is the ‘TODAY’ show.”
1970 to 2010 on TODAY
Shalit joined TODAY in 1970 as a part-time contributor and moved into a full-time role three years later. He retired in 2010, ending a run that put film criticism in front of millions of viewers instead of keeping it inside print pages or trade columns.
That reach helped make his review style part of the show’s identity. He could dismiss X-Men as something that “should not be taken seriously. In fact, it should be taken with two aspirin,” then turn around and praise The Silence of the Lambs with the line, “The Silence of the Lambs may be all wool and a yard wide, but it makes a terrific yarn.”
Oprah, Ford, and Streep
Shalit also interviewed Oprah Winfrey, Harrison Ford and Meryl Streep, and he asked Streep, “Is there one day you’d like to live over again?” Those appearances gave TODAY a film segment with actual star access, not just a weekly review slot.
Before television, he worked in print journalism, including as senior film critic for Look Magazine and as the writer of the What’s Happening? page for Ladies Home Journal. He also published in, Cosmopolitan, TV Guide, Seventeen, Glamour and McCall’s, a paper trail that helped explain why his TV commentary sounded like it had already been edited once before it reached the camera.
From radio to print
Born March 25, 1926, in New York and raised in New Jersey, Shalit graduated from the University of Illinois in 1949. He later worked as a reporter and writer for the Twin Cities’ daily newspaper, then broadcast a daily Man About Anything essay on NBC’s radio network from 1969 to 1982.
He was married to Nancy Lewis for 28 years; she died in 1978. In more recent years, Shalit largely stayed out of the public eye, which left TODAY as the place most viewers still associated with his name when the bow ties and wordplay came up.
