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Gene Shalit (born March 25, 1932; New York City) is a film and book critic. He has filled these roles on NBC's The Today Show since January 15, 1973. He is known for his frequent use of puns, his oversized handlebar moustache, and for wearing colorful bowties.

He is known to have had a rocky relationship with former Today Show co-host Bryant Gumbel. He 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 1970-1982 he had a daily essay on NBC Radio "Man About Anything", that was carried on more stations than any other NBC network radio feature. In 1987, he published Laughing Matters...A Treasury of American Humor, a critically praised humor anthology. As of 2009, he lives in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, with his cat Fellini. Shalit's children include the artist and entrepreneur Willa Shalit, and he is the godfather of radio producer/personality Gary Dell'Abate.

According to his official MSNBC bio, "Shalit was born in a New York hospital ever so long ago, and eight days later cut out for Newark, New Jersey, to be with his mother. In six years he fled to Morristown, New Jersey, where he was columnist for the high school paper and narrowly escaped expulsion.".

Born of Jewish parents, Shalit attended Morristown High School, where he wrote a humor column for the school newspaper. He often would refer to himself as a "Jewy Jew".

Gene Shalit wrote for The Daily Illini in his six years preceding his graduation from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1943-1949).

This author page uses material from the Wikipedia article "Gene Shalit", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0