Gene Shalit, beloved longtime film critic on the ‘Today’ show, dies

Gene Shalit, the fast-talking funnyman who reviewed films, plays and books for NBC’s “Today” show has died. He was 100.

Shalit’s family confirmed the longtime critic’s death Friday, telling NBC that he “passed away peacefully after 100 years of an amazing life.”

According to a 2010 interview with Guy Ludwig, Shalit’s producer for more than 20 years, Shalit was hired as a contributor at “Today” 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’s on-air appearances.

In January 1973, on the same day he was promoted to arts editor, Shalit debuted “Critic’s Corner,” 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.

Ludwig referred to Shalit as the “foxy grandpa” of the “Today” show.

While Shalit’s quirky film reviews cemented his TV star status, his interview style made him a favorite among Hollywood’s biggest figures. Warren Beatty, Barbra Streisand and Robert De Niro were among the A-listers whom Ludwig said “only would talk to Gene.”

According to Shalit’s longtime former producer, Sophia Loren “so trusted Gene as a television personality” that after she’d gone through legal troubles and a scandal, she went to Shalit exclusively.

“She 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,” Ludwig said. “Gene was articulate and sensitive, but also got the story.”

In March, “Today” posted a 100th birthday tribute to Shalit narrated by Al Roker, who said, “Even Sophia Loren couldn’t resist putting her hands into Gene’s hair. I mean, just a legend.”

Eugene Shalit was born March 25, 1926, in New York City and grew up in Morristown, N.J. He launched his elementary school’s first newspaper, “The Spotlight,” and purchased a fedora to seal his fate as a journalist. In Morristown High School he wrote the school newspaper’s humor column “The Broadcaster.” In 1949, he graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

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

“No one at NBC had seen him. They’d only read his stuff. So he walked into this executive’s office and the executive took one look at him and said, ‘Mr. Shalit, have you ever thought of radio?’” Ludwig told “Today.”

“They didn’t know how the public would react to someone who looked so different from people who were typically on TV in 1967.”

On “Critics Corner,” Shalit favored humor over the highfalutin. He was an everyman’s critic. Of 1997’s action-thriller “Face/Off,” he said, “Now, ‘Face/Off’ is a literal title, because both of their faces are taken off. Then each face is put onto the other’s head. Even their voices are switched with microchip implants. In other words, this is an entirely reasonable, rational movie!”

During his tenure, he was known to bust up his colleagues, and “Today” anchors ranging from Edwin Newman, Barbara Walters and Jane Pauley to Tom Brokaw, Bryant Gumbel, Katie Couric, Meredith Vieira and Roker.

But not everyone appreciated Shalit’s style. In 1989, a leaked in-house memo from Gumbel, then a “Today” show co-host, to Marty Ryan, the former executive producer of the NBC program, complained that Shalit’s film reviews “are often late and his interviews aren’t very good.”

During an interview promoting his 1987 book “Laughing Matters: A Celebration of American Humor,” Eileen Prose asked Shalit who he respected as a reviewer.

“Gene Shalit,” he responded.

“I don’t think there’s any critic that believes a word that any other critic says, because you have to be so individualistic when you’re a critic,” he continued. “Sometimes you’ll read somebody else, but I rarely do.”

While Shalit brought a sense of humor to his reviews and interviews with stars — some of which would go haywire because Shalit would keel over laughing — 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 “the stuff that’s the stuffing, that they wouldn’t want to see.”

“I have to suffer through that, and I will never leave a movie before it’s over, no matter how bad it is,” he said, noting that he only does it because he loves it.

Shalit’s larger-than-life persona was parodied in popular culture — not just by Jon Lovitz and Horatio Sanz on “Saturday Night Live,” but by Shalit himself, who voiced his own parody “Gene Scallop” on “SpongeBob Squarepants.” Eyebrow doppelganger Eugene Levy also took a crack at the critic on “Second City Television,” and Shalit was parodied in multiple episodes of “Family Guy.”

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.