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Supported by SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Gene Shalit, Film Critic Bristling With Hair and Puns, Dies at 100 One of the nation’s most recognizable characters, he delivered his wacky commentary for more than 40 years on the “Today” show. Listen · 8:17 min By Robert D. McFadden Gene Shalit, the Muppet look-alike who reviewed movies and other cultural arts with a whimsical bent and a shtick for puns as the resident wit on NBC’s “Today” show for four decades, one of the longest tenures on an American television program, died on Friday at 100.

NBC reported the death, citing a family statement. No further details were immediately available. For millions of Americans tuned in to the “Today” potpourri of news, interviews, entertainment and weather, a dose of literate, wacky commentary from Mr. Shalit’s “Critic’s Corner,” often with cackles of appreciation for his own incorrigibility, was as much a part of the morning as a cup of coffee.

With his handlebar mustache, bushy hair, black horn-rimmed glasses and extravagant bow ties, he was one of the nation’s most recognizable characters, a composite caricature of Groucho Marx, William Howard Taft and a Jim Henson puppet. His punchy wry wit may have borrowed from Woody Allen and Mark Twain, but it played well in Peoria. “‘Ishtar’ ish tarrible!” Mr.

Shalit concluded in a review of Elaine May’s 1987 comedy about two lounge singers looking for work in Morocco and stumbling into Cold War machinations. After seeing “The Longest Yard,” a 1974 flick in which Burt Reynolds organizes a prison football team, he suggested: “This movie should be penalized half the distance to the goal — twice.” Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

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