Gene Shalit - Career

Career

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. He lives in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, with his cat Fellini. Shalit's children include the artist and entrepreneur Willa Shalit.

According to his official MSNBC bio, "Shalit was born in a New York on March 25, 1926, and eight days later arrived in Newark, New Jersey, in company of his mother. In 1932 he accompanied his family when they moved to Morristown, New Jersey. In Morristown High School he wrote the school paper’s humor column (prophetically called "The Broadcaster"), and narrowly escaped expulsion."

Born of Jewish parents, Shalit attended Morristown High School, where he wrote a humor column for the school newspaper.

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

Shalit announced that he would leave The Today Show after 40 years, effective November 11, 2010. Of his decision, he was quoted as saying: "It's enough already". Shalit, according to a NY Times Magazine interview of Dick Clark, was Clark's press agent in the early 1960s. Shalit reportedly "stopped representing" Clark during a Congressional investigation of payola. Clark never spoke to Shalit again, and referred to him as a "jellyfish", an informal term for 'a person without strong resolve or stamina'.