Gene Shalit spent more than four decades as the face of film criticism on NBC’s Today show — a fixture recognizable by two things before he ever opened his mouth: an enormous handlebar mustache and hair that defied any sensible description. He died at 100, NPR reported Friday, June 13, 2026.
Background
Shalit joined Today in 1970, a time when television critics were largely an afterthought. By 1973 he’d been named arts editor — a title that gave him a formal platform for the pun-heavy, wit-forward reviews that set him apart from the more austere critics of the era. He wasn’t a slash-and-burn contrarian, and he wasn’t a pushover either. Middle-of-the-road was the description that stuck, which in broadcast television turned out to be exactly what the audience wanted.
His look was impossible to miss. The oversized mustache alone made him one of the most recognizable faces on morning television for decades – and the hair, puffed out in a style that belonged to no particular era, only sharpened the impression. He was, in short, a character. Audiences noticed. So did publicists, who learned quickly that a Shalit pun in a movie review could do real work at the box office.
The format he worked in – 30-second to two-minute television reviews wedged between news segments and celebrity interviews – demanded compression and speed. Shalit made the constraints look easy. His reviews leaned on language: the double meaning, the unexpected rhyme, the groan-inducing wordplay that viewers either loved immediately or grew to love over time. His wit was the throughline, but people who worked with him pointed to his intelligence as the foundation beneath it.
He remained with Today long enough to see the program transform around him – anchors came and went, formats shifted, the show expanded – and was still appearing on-air well into the 2000s. NPR didn’t immediately report the date or location of his death, and no details about survivors were available as of Friday morning.
Reporting from NPR. Read the original report.
