Entertainment columnist to Movie Critic: How did Gene Shalit, longtime 'Today' show movie critic, land an NBC offer?

Gene Shalit Dies at 100: Gene Shalit, a movie critic and arts reporter for the “Today” show over four decades who was known for his puffy hair, oversized handlebar mustache and affection for groan-inducing puns, has died. He was 100. His family announced the death Friday to NBC News. Shalit joined “Today” as a contributor in 1970 and became arts editor in 1973, later settling in for his segment, “Critic’s Corner."

When he left the show in 2010, he was one of the last high-profile film critics on a major network. He “passed away peacefully today after 100 years of an amazing life,” his family said in a statement. Shalit married Nancy Lewis in 1950. She died in 1978. They had six children, including artist Willa Shalit and Peter. He is survived by a daughter, Willa Shalit.

Beginning as an entertainment columnist for a magazine, Gene Shalit rose to prominence as one of America's most recognizable film critics.

Magazine work led to NBC offer

Shalit started as an entertainment columnist for McCall’s magazine, eventually becoming senior film critic for Look magazine in 1968 and writing for Ladies’ Home Journal. His popularity in magazines led to an offer from NBC, according to news agency AP.

“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?’” wrote Ludwig, as quoted by AP. “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 the air, Shalit was a middle-of-the-road critic. Of 1986’s classic “Stand By Me,” he said it was different from other movies about youth “because instead [sic] of grossing you out, ‘Stand by You’ is engrossing.” “Many critics will give so much of the plot of a movie away that they destroy the movie for the viewer... I just don’t give away the story,” he told The Associated Press in 1993.

Gene Shalit Early life

He was born in New York and grew up in Morristown, New Jersey, starting his grammar school’s first newspaper before writing a humor column for the newspaper while a student at Morristown High School. He graduated from the University of Illinois in 1949. Shalit played the bassoon, but he said he started out on the clarinet.

In 1987, he edited a book called “Laughing Matters: A Celebration of American Humor,” saying he wanted to introduce and reintroduce such old and new masters of American humor as Mark Twain, James Thurber and Russell Baker.