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Gene Shalit, the longtime film critic for NBC’s “TODAY” show whose walrus mustache and exuberant wordplay made him one of television’s most recognizable reviewers, died Friday, his family said. He was a fixture on the program for four decades.
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Shalit “passed away peacefully today after 100 years of an amazing life,” his family told NBC News in a statement.
Shalit started as a part-time “TODAY” show contributor in 1970 before moving to a full-time role three years later. He earned national fame as the program’s go-to movie analyst, offering his take on summer blockbusters, awards contenders and other big-screen projects until his retirement in 2010.
“The ‘TODAY’ show was an extraordinary era for him,” his family said in its statement.
He stood out from the broadcast television crowd with his colorful bowties and puffy hair. He often studded his reviews in the “TODAY” show “Critics Corner” with puns and other cheeky turns of phrase, endearing him to millions of viewers.
“‘The Silence of the Lambs’ may be all wool and a yard wide, but it makes a terrific yarn,” he said in his review of the 1991 horror classic, which won best picture at the Academy Awards the following year.
He rarely minced words when a movie left him cold. In panning “X-Men,” he said the first entry in the hit superhero franchise “should not be taken seriously. In fact, it should be taken with two aspirin.” Judd Apatow’s “Funny People” is “passable,” he said — “speaking colonically.”
In addition to surveying Hollywood releases, Shalit interviewed some of the biggest stars of the day, from Oprah Winfrey to Harrison Ford. His questions ranged from the serious to the silly, such as when he asked Kermit the Frog whether he planned to marry Miss Piggy.
“What resonated above his unusual appearance was his incredible wit, his remarkable intelligence. But he didn’t pound you over the head with it. He amused you. He enlightened and amused whatever subject he was on,” Guy Ludwig, Shalit’s producer for more than 20 years, wrote in an essay published on the “TODAY” website in 2010.
Shalit started his career as a print journalist. He was the senior film critic for Look Magazine and wrote the “What’s Happening?” page for Ladies Home Journal for a dozen years. He published articles in The New York Times, Cosmopolitan, TV Guide, Seventeen, Glamour and McCall’s.
He composed and broadcast a daily “Man About Anything” essay on NBC’s coast-to-coast radio network from 1969 to 1982, according to his profile on the “TODAY” show website. He was also a regular panelist on the game shows “What’s My Line?” and “To Tell The Truth.”
Eugene Shalit was born on March 25, 1926, in New York. He was raised in New Jersey, where his father purchased a drug store. When the younger Shalit was in elementary school, he created the school’s first newspaper, The Spotlight, and bought a fedora so he looked the part, according to his “TODAY” profile. He later wrote his high school newspaper’s humor column.
He graduated in 1949 from the University of Illinois, where he proved his journalistic bona fides as a sports editor, columnist and humor writer for The Daily Illini.
He later became a reporter and writer for the Twin Cities’ daily newspaper and filed dispatches on Big Ten sporting events as a freelancer for The Associated Press in Chicago.
Shalit reached national fame as an on-air personality for the “TODAY” show, where he interspersed his entertainment coverage with offbeat in-the-field reports and improvisational hijinks on set.
He said farewell to viewers in 2010. In a tribute, former co-host Meredith Vieira said: “It’s hard to imagine not having him here. He is the ‘TODAY’ show.”
In more recent years, Shalit largely retreated from the public eye.
Shalit was married to Nancy Lewis for 28 years, from 1950 until her death in 1978.
Daniel Arkin is a senior reporter at NBC News.
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