{"id":863839,"date":"2026-06-13T05:23:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-13T05:23:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/863839\/"},"modified":"2026-06-13T05:23:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-13T05:23:14","slug":"gene-shalit-beloved-longtime-film-critic-on-the-today-show-dies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/863839\/","title":{"rendered":"Gene Shalit, beloved longtime film critic on the \u2018Today\u2019 show, dies"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Gene Shalit<\/a>, the fast-talking funnyman who reviewed films, plays and books for NBC\u2019s \u201cToday\u201d show has died. He was 100. <\/p>\n

Shalit\u2019s family confirmed the longtime critic\u2019s death Friday, telling NBC that he \u201cpassed away peacefully after 100 years of an amazing life.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to a 2010 interview with Guy Ludwig, Shalit\u2019s producer for more than 20 years, Shalit was hired as a contributor at \u201cToday<\/a>\u201d in 1968. He reviewed books once a month or so, but audiences were so fascinated by his eccentric personality and equally unconventional looks that NBC ramped up the critic\u2019s on-air appearances. <\/p>\n

In January 1973, on the same day he was promoted to arts editor, Shalit debuted \u201cCritic\u2019s Corner,\u201d the segment that would ultimately make him a household name. In 2010, Shalit retired as one of the last regular film critics on a major network. <\/p>\n

Ludwig referred to Shalit as the \u201cfoxy grandpa\u201d of the \u201cToday\u201d show. <\/p>\n

While Shalit\u2019s quirky film reviews cemented his TV star status, his interview style made him a favorite among Hollywood\u2019s biggest figures. Warren Beatty, Barbra Streisand and Robert De Niro were among the A-listers whom Ludwig said \u201conly would talk to Gene.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Shalit\u2019s longtime former producer, Sophia Loren \u201cso trusted Gene as a television personality\u201d that after she\u2019d gone through legal troubles and a scandal, she went to Shalit exclusively. <\/p>\n

\u201cShe knew her story would be fairly told but also that Gene would be sensitive to some of the things about it that were sensitive to her,\u201d Ludwig said. \u201cGene was articulate and sensitive, but also got the story.\u201d<\/p>\n

In March, \u201cToday\u201d posted a 100th birthday tribute to Shalit narrated by Al Roker, who said, \u201cEven Sophia Loren couldn\u2019t resist putting her hands into Gene\u2019s hair. I mean, just a legend.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eugene Shalit was born March 25, 1926, in New York City and grew up in Morristown, N.J. He launched his elementary school\u2019s first newspaper, \u201cThe Spotlight,\u201d and purchased a fedora to seal his fate as a journalist. In Morristown High School he wrote the school newspaper\u2019s humor column \u201cThe Broadcaster.\u201d In 1949, he graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.<\/p>\n

Shalit cut his teeth in media as an entertainment columnist for McCall\u2019s magazine, eventually landing the role of senior film critic for Look magazine in 1968 and writing a humor column for Ladies\u2019 Home Journal. His quick wit, punchy puns and unique voice came through even on the page, and NBC took notice. <\/p>\n

\u201cNo one at NBC had seen him. They\u2019d only read his stuff. So he walked into this executive\u2019s office and the executive took one look at him and said, \u2018Mr. Shalit, have you ever thought of radio?\u2019\u201d Ludwig told \u201cToday.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cThey didn\u2019t know how the public would react to someone who looked so different from people who were typically on TV in 1967.\u201d<\/p>\n

On \u201cCritics Corner,\u201d Shalit favored humor over the highfalutin. He was an everyman\u2019s critic. Of 1997\u2019s action-thriller \u201cFace\/Off,\u201d he said<\/a>, \u201cNow, \u2018Face\/Off\u2019 is a literal title, because both of their faces are taken off. Then each face is put onto the other\u2019s head. Even their voices are switched with microchip implants. In other words, this is an entirely reasonable, rational movie!\u201d <\/p>\n

During his tenure, he was known to bust up his colleagues, and \u201cToday\u201d anchors ranging from Edwin Newman, Barbara Walters and Jane Pauley to Tom Brokaw, Bryant Gumbel, Katie Couric, Meredith Vieira and Roker.<\/p>\n

But not everyone appreciated Shalit\u2019s style. In 1989, a leaked in-house memo<\/a> from Gumbel, then a \u201cToday\u201d show co-host, to Marty Ryan, the former executive producer of the NBC program, complained that Shalit\u2019s film reviews \u201care often late and his interviews aren\u2019t very good.\u201d<\/p>\n

During an interview<\/a> promoting his 1987 book \u201cLaughing Matters: A Celebration of American Humor,\u201d Eileen Prose asked Shalit who he respected as a reviewer. <\/p>\n

\u201cGene Shalit,\u201d he responded. <\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think there\u2019s any critic that believes a word that any other critic says, because you have to be so individualistic when you\u2019re a critic,\u201d he continued. \u201cSometimes you\u2019ll read somebody else, but I rarely do.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Shalit brought a sense of humor to his reviews and interviews with stars \u2014 some of which would go haywire because Shalit would keel over laughing \u2014 he took the critic gig seriously. He told Prose that while most people see only a handful of movies a year, and often only the buzziest ones, he sees \u201cthe stuff that\u2019s the stuffing, that they wouldn\u2019t want to see.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI have to suffer through that, and I will never leave a movie before it\u2019s over, no matter how bad it is,\u201d he said, noting that he only does it because he loves it. <\/p>\n

Shalit\u2019s larger-than-life persona was parodied in popular culture \u2014 not just by Jon Lovitz and Horatio Sanz<\/a> on \u201cSaturday Night Live<\/a>,\u201d but by Shalit himself, who voiced his own parody \u201cGene Scallop\u201d on \u201cSpongeBob Squarepants<\/a>.\u201d Eyebrow doppelganger Eugene Levy<\/a> also took a crack at the critic on \u201cSecond City Television,\u201d and Shalit was parodied in multiple episodes of \u201cFamily Guy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shalit was married to Nancy Lewis for 28 years until her death in 1978 and never remarried. The couple had six children: Peter, Willa, Emily, Amanda, Nevin and Andrew. Emily died from ovarian cancer in 2012. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gene Shalit, the fast-talking funnyman who reviewed films, plays and books for NBC\u2019s \u201cToday\u201d show has died. He…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":863840,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5123],"tags":[161679,352160,1582,276,49747,94028,17827,351970,352110,352158,2961,301381,224,5337,1030,352159,352157,4370,20644,1628],"class_list":["post-863839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-bryant-gumbel","tag-bushy-film-critic","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-critic","tag-emily","tag-face","tag-gene-shalit","tag-guy-ludwig","tag-humor-column","tag-la","tag-look-magazine","tag-los-angeles","tag-losangeles","tag-nbc","tag-rational-movie","tag-shalit","tag-show","tag-today","tag-year"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116741131744644467","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=863839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863839\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/863840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=863839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=863839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=863839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}