Godspeed Gene Shalit

Gene Shalit, best known as the resident movie and book critic on Today on NBC, died on June 12 at the age of 100. Gene Shalit was born in New York City on on March 25, 1926. He grew up in Morristown, New Jersey. In grammar school he ws responsible for the school's first newspaper, The Spotlight. He attended Morristown High School, where he wrote the humour column for the school newspaper. He attended the University of Illinois, where he was the sports editor of The Daily Illini and also wrote the columns "What Shalit Be?" and "Campus Scout" for the newspaper. He also wrote for The Champaign-Urbana Courier and was a stringer for the Associated Press, writing about the Big Ten conference. He began his career as a PR agent and was a partner in the firm Barkas, Shalit and Schiller. Among his clients was Dick Clark. It was in the early Sixties that he became an entertainment columnist for McCall's, and wrote primarily book reviews. In 1968, he became the senior movie critic at Look. He…