Famed Movie Critic "Roger Ebert" Has Died

Famed movie critic Roger Ebert dies at age 70

[Thank you. Forty-six years ago on April 3, 1967, I became the film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times. Some of you have read my reviews and columns and even written to me since that time. Others were introduced to my film criticism through the television show, my books, the website, the film festival, or the Ebert Club and newsletter.  However you came to know me, I'm glad you did and thank you for being the best readers any film critic could ask for - Roger Ebert on April 2, 2013 9:37 PM]

 The Pulitzer Prize-winning movie critic for the Chicago Sun-Times for more than 45 years and for more than three decades the co-host of one of the most powerful programs in television history (initially with the late Gene Siskel, the movie critic for the Chicago Tribune, and, following Siskel’s death in 1999, with his Sun-Times colleague Richard Roeper), Ebert died Thursday, according to a family friend. He was 70 years old.  

Tributes to Ebert came on Thursday from the White House and Chicago City Hall.President Barack Obama issued a statement that "movies won't be the same without Roger." The president stated, "Even amidst his own battles with cancer, Roger was as productive as he was resilient -- continuing to share his passion and perspective with the world."

Mayor Rahm Emanuel released a statement praising Ebert for championing Chicago "as a center for filmmaking and critiques ... The final reel of his life may have run through to the end, but his memory will never fade." 

Roger Joseph Ebert, an only child, was born on June 18, 1942, in Urbana, Ill., to Walter Ebert and the former Annabel Stumm. The first movie he saw was the 1937 Marx Brothers comedy, “A Day at the Races,” at the Princess Theater in Urbana.

As a critic, Mr. Ebert quickly gained traction. In 1970 Time magazine called him “a cultural resource of the community.” In 1973 the Chicago Newspaper Guild cited him as “ushering in a new era of criticism in Chicago.”

Mr. Ebert spoke out against the Motion Picture Association of America’s rating system, saying it lurched between being too restrictive and too lenient. He criticized Hollywood for not supporting documentaries and relying too much on digital effects and what he called gimmicks, like 3-D.

Mr. Ebert’s struggle with cancer, starting in 2002, gave him an altogether different public image — as someone who refused to surrender to illness. Though he had operations for cancer of the thyroid, salivary glands and chin, lost his ability to eat, drink and speak (a prosthesis partly obscured the loss of much of his chin, and he was fed through a tube) and became a gaunter version of his once-portly self, he continued to write reviews and commentary and published a cookbook he had started, on meals that could be made with a rice cooker.

“When I am writing, my problems become invisible, and I am the same person I always was,” he told Esquire magazine in 2010. “All is well. I am as I should be.”

In recent years, Mr. Ebert had written extensively about his illness and talked with friends via Twitter, on Facebook and in his blog.

In 1975 he became the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize, for his Sun-Times reviews. His columns were syndicated to more than 200 newspapers in the United States and abroad, and he wrote more than 15 books, many by skillfully recycling his columns. In 2005 he became the first critic to be honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

“In the century or so that there has been such a thing as film criticism, no other critic has ever occupied the space held by Roger Ebert,” Mick LaSalle, movie critic for The San Francisco Chronicle, wrote in 2010. “Others as influential as Ebert have not been as esteemed. Others as esteemed as Ebert have not had the same direct and widespread influence. And no one, but no one, has enjoyed the same fame.”

The thumbs-up-or-down approach drew scorn from some critics, who said it trivialized film criticism. Speaking to Playboy magazine in 1991, Mr. Ebert agreed that his program at the time was “not a high-level, in-depth film-criticism show.” But he argued that it demonstrated to younger viewers that one can bring standards of judgment to movies, that “it’s O.K. to have an opinion.”

Ebert and his wife Chaz

With Mr. Siskel, Mr. Ebert essentially defined television film criticism. Their collaboration began in 1975, the year he won his Pulitzer. Mr. Ebert was asked to appear on WTTW, the public broadcasting station in Chicago, as co-host of a new movie-review program. He was intrigued, but then taken aback when told that Mr. Siskel, the film critic of The Chicago Tribune, would be his partner.

In July 1993 Mr. Ebert married Chaz Hammelsmith, who has been by his side every since and survives him.

Since 1999 he had been host of Ebertfest, a film festival in Champaign, Ill. It is sometimes called Roger Ebert’s Overlooked Film Festival.

Mr. Ebert — who said he saw 500 films a year and reviewed half of them — was once asked what movie he thought was shown over and over again in heaven, and what snack would be free of charge and calories there.

“ ‘Citizen Kane’ and vanilla Haagen-Dazs ice cream,” he answered.