CBS Sunday Morning remembers Gene Shalit and other notable figures who died this week

Gene Shalit, the pun-loving film critic whose bushy hair and oversized mustache made him one of morning television’s most familiar faces, died Friday at 100. His death closes the book on a broadcaster who turned movie criticism into a national appointment, with commentary that was as much a personality act as a review.

Shalit spent more than four decades on NBC’s Today show, appearing regularly from January 15, 1973, until he retired on November 11, 2010. In an era when a network morning show could still make a critic into a household name, Shalit stood out for his pun-filled takes and the instantly recognizable look that made him easy to spot even in a crowded television lineup. He became one of the nation’s most recognizable television critics, a figure who linked entertainment coverage to the rhythm of everyday breakfast television.

His death arrived as CBS Sunday Morning continued its Passage: In memoriam segment, the network’s weekly roundup of recently deceased notable figures. The June 7 edition highlighted singer Peabo Bryson and veteran TV game-show host Wink Martindale, part of a recurring feature that compresses the week’s losses into a few minutes of broadcast time. That recurring memorial frame has become a quiet marker of how many public figures once familiar to broad audiences are now passing out of view.

Together, Shalit, Bryson and Martindale point to a fading broadcast-era culture in which a small number of television personalities could reach millions at once and shape shared national reference points. Shalit’s perch on Today belonged to a time when a critic’s face, voice and verbal style mattered almost as much as the films he reviewed. Martindale’s long run in game shows and Bryson’s crossover career in music came from the same mass-audience system, one built around a handful of channels and a larger common public life.

That system is gone, but its figures still carry weight because they helped define how Americans once watched, listened and argued together. Shalit’s death, and CBS Sunday Morning’s ongoing memorial roll, underscores how much of that legacy television era is now moving from memory into history.