NBC News<\/a> he \u201cpassed away peacefully today after 100 years of an amazing life.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\tShalit appeared on NBC\u2019s \u201cThe Today Show\u201d from 1970 until his retirement in 2010, sporting his signature bow ties and large glasses and working numerous puns into his film and book reviews in the \u201cCritic\u2019s Corner\u201d segments. <\/p>\n
\n\tIn addition to his reviews, he interviewed celebrities from Steven Spielberg to the Grateful Dead to Helen Hayes.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cIt was always magical for me to see Gene on the screen,\u201d CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric said upon his retirement in 2010. \u201cI think Gene was a master at doing celebrity interviews. He interviewed Sophia Loren and you could tell he was completed mesmerized by her.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tHis long tenure on \u201cThe Today Show\u201d made him one of the few recognizable film critics, which led to him being featured in several animated shows. \u201cSpongeBob Square Pants\u201d dubbed him Gene Scallop, a fish food critic for whom Shalit provided the voice. He was parodied in four episodes of \u201cFamily Guy,\u201d voiced a character playing himself on \u201cThe Critic\u201d and was portrayed in \u201cThe Muppet Show: Sex and Violence.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cSaturday Night Live\u201d also parodied the popular critic, with Jon Lovitz and later Horatio Sanz portraying Shalit. On \u201cSecond City Television,\u201d he was portrayed by the equally bushy-eyebrowed Eugene Levy.<\/p>\n
\n\tBorn in New York City, he graduated the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where like fellow critic Roger Ebert many years later, he wrote for the Daily Illini newspaper. Early in his career he was a press agent for Dick Clark, a job which ended during a Congressional investigation of payola.<\/p>\n
\n\tHe turned to writing about entertainment in the late 1960s for publications including Look, Ladies\u2019 Home Journal, TV Guide and The New York Times. He also authored four books of humor.<\/p>\n
\n\tShalit also broadcast daily essays called \u201cMan About Anything\u201d on the NBC Radio Network from 1970 to 1982. <\/p>\n
\n\tHe is survived by a son and a daughter. Another daughter and his wife, Nancy Lewis, pre-deceased him. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source variety.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shalit, the bushy-haired mustachioed television personality who reviewed books and movies on \u201cThe Today Show\u201d for 40 years, died Friday. His family told NBC News he \u201cpassed away peacefully today after 100 years of an amazing life.\u201d Shalit appeared on NBC\u2019s \u201cThe Today Show\u201d from 1970 until his retirement in 2010, sporting his signature bow […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2457156,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[451787],"class_list":["post-2457155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-gene-shalit"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Gene-Shalit-Dead-Today-Show-Critic-Was-100.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2457155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2457155"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2457155\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2457157,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2457155\/revisions\/2457157"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2457156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2457155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2457155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2457155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}