Gene Shalit, Mussed-Up Movie Critic of the ‘Today’ Show, Dies at 100

Gene Shalit, the fun-loving film critic on the Today show known for his oversized mustache, out-of-control mop of black hair and lively use of puns in his movie reviews, died Friday. He was 100.

Shalit, a mainstay on the NBC morning show for four decades until his retirement in November 2010, “passed away peacefully today after 100 years of an amazing life,” his family said in a statement to NBC News.

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Shalit started as a book reviewer on Today in 1970 and went on to replace 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 news of the day, entertaining audiences with celebrity interviews and insights into moviegoing choices during his “Critic’s Corner” segment.

“He is the Today show,” Meredith Vieira said during a 2011 tribute to Shalit after he announced his retirement.

The quick-witted Shalit, fond of bow ties, aimed to make his segments fun. He summed up his 1987 review 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 best picture winner got the full pun treatment — The Silence of the Lambs may be all wool, and a yard wide, but it makes a terrific yarn.”

With a deep love and understanding of the film medium, Shalit had a reputation as an engaging interviewer. He knew how to put celebrities at ease. When Richard Burton came on, Shalit made use of the actor’s rich Shakespearean voice by having him read names out of a phone book. Carol Channing reduced Shalit to tears of laughter with her tale of a London dinner party with Lady Astor and Sir Benjamin Harrison by imitating the latter. Sophia Loren, Paul Newman, Robin Williams, Steven Spielberg, Mel Brooks and Burt Reynolds, to name just a few, were among those who sat with him. He interviewed Drew Barrymore and Christian Bale when they were kids.

However, it was Shalit’s larger-than-life personality and disheveled look that made him a star in his own right. It also opened him up to imitation. Eugene Levy’s Shalit was a recurring character on SCTV. Horatio Sanz mimicked Shalit on Saturday Night Live. Even The Muppets got into the act with a felt version of him, complete with oversized hair and mustache. Animated Shalits showed up on The Critic and SpongeBob SquarePants — both voiced by the man himself. On Family Guy, 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 City on March 25, 1926. Six years later, he and his family moved to Morristown, New Jersey, where his father bought a drugstore. He began his journalistic ways in his grammar school, creating its first newspaper, The Spotlight. To prove he was a serious newsman, he wore a fedora. When he got to Morristown High School, he wrote the school paper’s humor column, “The Broadcaster.”

In 1943, Shalit headed to the University of Illinois and took a leisurely six years to earn his degree. Perhaps that was because he spent so much time at The Daily Illini, where he was the sports editor. The columns “What Shalit Be?” and “Campus Scout” carried his byline. When he wasn’t busy turning out school news, Shalit took on gigs as a reporter for The Champaign-Urbana Courier and as a sports stringer writing about the Big Ten for the Associated Press.

For a time, Shalit earned his living as a PR agent. In the late 1950s and early ‘60s, he was a partner in Barkas, Shalit and Schiller, a New York/Los Angeles-based firm, and Dick Clark was one of his clients. When the American Bandstand host was swept up in a radio payola scandal in 1959 and called to testify before Congress, Shalit dropped him. Clark was cleared, but the two never spoke again. In a 2011 story in The New York Times, Clark called Shalit a “jellyfish.”

In the early ‘60s, Shalit became an entertainment columnist for McCall’s, contributing mostly book reviews. By 1968, he was the senior film critic for Look. He wrote the “What’s Happening” column for Ladies’ Home Journal. Sport magazine hired him for a “Sports Talk” column. And he was contributing movie reviews to the local news programs for WNBC in New York and KNBC in Los Angeles.

All this caught the eye of NBC News president Reuven Frank, who decided to bring Shalit to the Today show to handle book and music reviews. “He was passionate about books,” Frank said in Stephen Battaglio’s From Yesterday to TODAY: Six Decades of America’s Favorite Morning Show. “There were years when Gene Shalit sold more books than any other American.”

During his tenure at Today, Shalit continued to write his column for Ladies’ Home Journal. His byline also appeared in Cosmopolitan, TV Guide, Seventeen, Glamour and The New York Times. From 1969-82, Shalit broadcast “Man About Anything,” a daily segment for NBC’s coast-to-coast radio network featuring essays he had penned. He served as a panelist on What’s My Line? and made a cameo in Tootsie (1982).

Of the thousands of reviews that Shalit delivered over the years, perhaps none was more controversial than his 2005 segment on Brokeback Mountain in which he described Jack, Jake Gyllenhaal’s character, as a “sexual predator.” That angered the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, which said 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 organization accused Shalit of using his review to “promote defamatory antigay prejudice to a national audience.”

Shalit’s son Peter, who is gay, rose to the defense, penning a letter to GLAAD saying that it had falsely accused his father of bigotry. But perhaps the best 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 no doubt where Shalit stood on the issue.

In 1962, he joined forces with illustrator Jack Davis to put out Khrushchev’s Top Secret Coloring Book (Your First Red Reader), a satirical swipe at the Russian leader. His books also included Laughing Matter — A Treasury of American Humor (1989), a collection of stories, cartoons, essays and scripts featuring Woody Allen, Russell Baker, Gary Trudeau and Garrison Keillor, among others.

Shalit married Nancy Lewis in 1950. In addition to Peter, the couple had five other children — Willa, Andrew, Nevin, Emily and Amanda. Nancy died of cancer in 1978, and Shalit never remarried. Emily died in 2012 of ovarian cancer. Willa is a theatrical and television producer (The Vagina Monologues).

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