The film critic whose thumb mattered

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Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert, the most famous and popular film reviewer of his time who became the first journalist to win a Pulitzer Prize for movie criticism and, on his long-running TV program, wielded America's most influential thumb, died Thursday. He was 70.

Ebert (whose reviews were also published in this newspapaper), who had been a film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times since 1967, died Thursday at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, his office said. Only a day earlier, he announced on his blog that he was undergoing radiation treatment after a recurrence of cancer.
America’s best-known movie reviewer “wrote with passion through a real knowledge of film and film history, and in doing so, helped many movies find their audiences,” director Steven Spielberg said. His death is “virtually the end of an era, and now the balcony is closed forever.”
Ebert had no grand theories or special agendas, but millions recognised 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 Gene Siskel of the rival Chicago Tribune and — after Siskel’s death in 1999 — with his Sun-Times colleague Richard Roeper.
Although criticised 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.
In early 2011, Ebert launched a new show, Ebert Presents At the Movies. It had new hosts, but featured Ebert in his own segment, Roger’s Office. He used a chin prosthesis and enlisted voice-over guests to read his reviews. While some called Ebert a brave inspiration, he told The Associated Press in an email in January 2011 that bravery and courage “have little to do with it.” “You play the cards you’re dealt,” Ebert wrote. “What’s your choice? I have no pain. I enjoy life, and why should I complain?”
Ebert joined the Sun-Times part-time in 1966 while pursuing graduate study at the University of Chicago and got the reviewing job the following year. His reviews were eventually syndicated to several hundred other newspapers, collected in books and repeated on innumerable websites, which would have made him one of the most influential film critics in America even without his television fame.
His 1975 Pulitzer for distinguished criticism was the first, and one of only three, given to a film reviewer since the category was created in 1970. In 2005, he received another honour when he became the first critic to have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.