I had no idea he was that old.
I loved watching his movie reviews on NBC. I realize now that a lot of his pokes were kind of time-worn even then, but they were new to me.
“It seems that the worse [actress] acts, the better she looks. She has never been lovelier.”
“Watching Nicholas and Alexandra is like reading an issue of Classics Illustrated.”
and so on.
Of Siskel and Ebert he said “If you cut off their thumbs, they wouldn’t be able to do reviews.”
I thought he was damn old when I was a kid, just astonished that he is still alive! Good for him.
Which reminds me, my dad would be 100 this year as well. And he died 26 years ago. Those depression era/ WW2 folks will soon be just a memory.
I also didn’t realize that he was still with us. That’s good to hear.
As a kid, I alternated between thinking “Why does Gene Shalit look just like Gabe Kaplan?” and “Why does Gabe Kaplan look just like Gene Shalit?”
His puns were so, so awful. But as a kid, I liked them!
I associate him with watching the Today Show with my grandmother, in the last years of her life (circa 1980).
In one broadcast, another Today Show host mentioned that an elderly viewer thought for years that his name was “Green Salad.”
It’s that symbiote mustache of his keeping him alive. Kinda like Shatner’s hair.
I saw a comic, maybe in Nat Lampoon or similar, probably from the 80s, where there was a picture of a movie poster with a picture of a guy that looked like Shalit with snakes for hair and the caption “Why Gene Shalit is suing the producers of Mr Medusa.”
I had no idea he was still alive!