CHICAGO (AP) — Roger Ebert, the nation’s best-known film reviewer who with fellow critic Gene Siskel created the template for succinct thumbs-up or thumbs-down movie reviews, died today. He was 70.
Ebert, a film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times since 1967, was also the first journalist to win a Pulitzer Prize for movie criticism. He died today at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, his office said.
Only a day earlier, Ebert announced that he was undergoing radiation treatment after a recurrence of cancer.
“So on this day of reflection I say again, thank you for going on this journey with me. I’ll see you at the movies.” Ebert wrote on his blog.
He had no grand theories or special agendas, but millions recognized the chatty, heavy-set man with wavy hair and horn-rimmed glasses. Above all, they followed his thumb — pointing up or down. It was the main logo of the televised shows Ebert co-hosted, first with Siskel of the rival Chicago Tribune and — after Siskel’s death in 1999 — with his Sun-Times colleague Richard Roeper.
Although criticized as gimmicky and simplistic, a “two thumbs-up” accolade was sure to find its way into the advertising for the movie in question.
On the air, Ebert and Siskel bickered like an old married couple and openly needled each other. To viewers who had trouble telling them apart, Ebert was known as the fat one with glasses, Siskel as the thin, bald one.
Despite his power with the movie-going public, Ebert considered himself “beneath everything else a fan.”
“I have seen untold numbers of movies and forgotten most of them, I hope, but I remember those worth remembering, and they are all on the same shelf in my mind,” Ebert wrote in his 2011 memoir, “Life Itself.”
He was teased for years about his weight, but the jokes stopped abruptly when Ebert lost portions of his jaw and the ability to speak, eat and drink after cancer surgeries in 2006. He overcame his health problems to resume writing full-time and eventually even returned to television. In addition to his work for the Sun-Times, Ebert became a prolific user of social media, connecting with fans on Facebook and Twitter.
