Born in 1926, Gene Shalit is a movie critic renowned for his frequent application of puns, with his colorful bowties and handlebar mustache. He worked for NBC for almost 40 years and wrote a TV guide for the Cosmopolitan and New York Times. He made appearances on the Sesame Street during the 1970s and also in 1974 with Muppet’s appearing in a Bert puppet show that was dressed resembling him.
Besides the Today show, he carried out a brilliant interview with Jim Henson concerning the pipes at NBC. In 1983, Shalit made an appearance on the famous look a-like Muppet contest featured in the Muppet Magazine volume 1. He was paired together with a Swedish chef. Shalit made contributions to famous movie Crum Cake from Miss Piggy’s in 1996 recipe book.
He announced his departure from the popular Today Show in November, 2010. He was very much loved by fans who loved his humor and his candid review which some times left him in controversies regarding some of the critics he made. In 2006, he was involved in a controversy with the Lesbian and Gay community after reviewing the movie Brokeback mountain, which he criticized Jake Gyllenhall, one of the characters in the movie, as a twisted sexual pervert who tracks down Heath Ledger referred to as Ennis in the film and makes her to do sporadic sexual acts. This made the gay community up in arms with Shalit and they condemned him everywhere they could get a platform.
The irony was that Shalit, son was gay and he wrote about his son’s gay preference. He spoke highly about him and emphasized that children should be left alone to make up their minds regarding their sexuality or whatever they wish to do with their lives. He stated children have their own destinies to leave out and people should not discriminate on the gay and lesbian community. The son later wrote a candid letter to the gay community defending his father’s criticism of the film and put it straight that they had defamed his fathers name falsely and his father is not a bigot.
Peter Shalit (Gene Shalit son) said that even though his father had a not so popular opinion of the film, he did not wrong any one and he is not anti-gay. Gene wrote to the gay community explaining that the words he used like ‘sexual predator’ has hurt, agitated and angered many people, and he did not mean to be disrespectful to them and he was very apologetic about the whole issue relating to Brokenback mountain movie.
Apart form that he made special appearances in Family Guy, the TV series, talking about movies, his career has had it’s ups and downs but in the end many recognize him as a great movie critic and there not many people out there who can come close to his reputation. Some movie directors and producers used to present him with the movies during production for him to give pointers as to what can be improved on and what can be done away with. He will be very much respected and praised by many.
