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Eugene Shalit (born March 25, 1926) is an American retired journalist, television personality, film and book critic, and author. After starting to work part-time on NBC's The Today Show in 1970, he filled those roles from January 15, 1973, until retiring on November 11, 2010. He is known for his frequent use of puns, his oversized handlebar moustache and fuzzy hair, and for wearing colorful bow ties.
Shalit, according to a Dick Clark interview in The New York Times Magazine, was Clark's press agent in the early 1960s. Shalit reportedly "stopped representing" Clark during a Congressional investigation of payola. Clark never spoke to Shalit again, and referred to him as a "jellyfish".
Shalit has been involved in reviewing the arts since 1967 and has written for such publications as Look magazine, Ladies' Home Journal (for 12 years), Cosmopolitan, TV Guide, Seventeen, Glamour, McCall's, and The New York Times. From 1970 to 1982, he broadcast a daily essay on NBC Radio "Man About Anything", that was carried on more stations than any other NBC network radio feature.
Shalit announced that he would leave The Today Show after 40 years, effective November 11, 2010. He was quoted as saying "It's enough already", about his retirement. He has largely stayed out of the public eye since then, only appearing once for Willard Scott's retirement from NBC in 2015.
Brokeback Mountain review controversy
Shalit was criticized by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) for his review of Brokeback Mountain in which he referred to Jake Gyllenhaal's character as a "sexual predator": GLAAD said Shalit's "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" and that he "used the occasion to promote defamatory antigay prejudice to a national audience." His son Peter, who is gay, wrote a letter to GLAAD defending his father and said the organization had defamed him by "falsely accusing him of a repellent form of bigotry."
Written works
Shalit has written and edited various books.
Somehow It Works; A Candid Portrait of the 1964 Presidential Election. 1965.
Shalit, Gene (2016) . Khrushchev's Top Secret Coloring Book. ISBN978-1936404636.
Personal life
Shalit was married to Nancy Lewis from 1950 until her death from cancer in 1978. For much of his career he lived in Leonia, New Jersey, although as of 2012 he was listed as a resident of Stockbridge, Massachusetts.
Nancy Lewis' and Gene Shalit's children include the artist and entrepreneur Willa Shalit. Another child is Peter Shalit, a physician and recognized authority on gay men's health and living with HIV. Their daughter Emily died of ovarian cancer in November 2012.
Shalit crashed his car in Lenox, Massachusetts, on October 24, 2012, after falling asleep at the wheel. Misdemeanor charges of negligent driving to endanger were later dismissed after he agreed to stop driving until the dismissal, and he was to follow a "safety condition" approved by his attorney and the police chief.
^Scherzer, Carl B. (October 1977). "Early Jewish History in Morristown". Morristown Jewish Center. Archived from the original on April 23, 2021. Retrieved April 23, 2021. Gene Shalit is not Morristown's first nationally known television personality of Jewish ancestry.
^"Morristown at a Glance". Gannett. Archived from the original on September 27, 2007. Retrieved January 27, 2008. Poet Joyce Kilmer once taught at Morristown High School, and film critic Gene Shalit got his start writing a humor column, 'The Korn Krib,' for the high school newspaper.