Roger Ebert, 1942–2013
The critic who gave cinema a big thumbs-up
Roger Ebert could determine a movie’s fortunes with a thumbs-up or -down, but he liked to expand on his judgments with mordant wit. “No matter what they’re charging to get in, it’s worth more to get out,” he wrote of Armageddon, for instance. Ebert never lost his love for cinema in 46 years of reviewing, and once said he imagined an afterlife featuring “Citizen Kane and vanilla Häagen-Dazs ice cream.”
Ebert embraced journalism in childhood, said the Chicago Sun-Times, publishing a neighborhood newspaper from his parents’ basement. He edited newspapers in high school and at the University of Illinois before being offered a part-time job in 1966 at the Sun-Times; a year later he was named the newspaper’s film critic. Movie criticism had, until then, been a “backwater of journalism,” but Ebert’s appointment coincided with a “period of unprecedented creativity” in American cinema.
Despite a brief hiatus in 1970 to write the screenplay for notoriously breast-obsessed director Russ Meyer’s Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, Ebert secured a reputation as a serious critic, said the Los Angeles Times. In 1975, he became the first movie reviewer to win a Pulitzer Prize; the same year, Chicago TV executives had the idea to put him and his “fierce archrival” Gene Siskel together on public TV. By 1978, the bickering duo’s show was the highest-rated in the history of public broadcasting. Even after Disney bought it in 1986, said The New York Times, the show’s format never changed: five films, each introduced with a clip, reviewed in a flurry of “knitted brows, are-you-serious head-shaking, and gentle (or not) barbs.” Then, the conclusion, “harking back to the Roman Colosseum”: thumbs-up or -down. The show continued until 1999, when Siskel died of a brain tumor. In 2006, Ebert left the air after he got cancer, too.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Cancer cost Ebert his lower jaw and his ability to speak, said Slate.com, but never silenced him. He became a “prolific blogger, tireless tweeter, and link-finder extraordinaire,” building a whole new audience of online fans. Until the end, he reviewed movies—306 in the last year—while writing about art, love, friendship, and, above all, life. “We are put on this planet only once,” he wrote, “and to limit ourselves to the familiar is a crime against our minds.”
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
-
Selfies ban in art galleries: a sign of the times?
Talking Point Priceless art has been damaged by visitors desperate to take a snap with star attractions, leading some galleries and museums to start fighting back
-
Quiz of The Week: 21 – 27 June
Have you been paying attention to The Week's news?
-
The Week Unwrapped: How do you turn plastics into paracetamol?
Podcast Plus, what is the Wagner Group doing now? And why is it so hard to find a job after university?
-
Brian Wilson: the troubled genius who powered the Beach Boys
Feature The musical giant passed away at 82
-
Sly Stone: The funk-rock visionary who became an addict and recluse
Feature Stone, an eccentric whose songs of uplift were tempered by darker themes of struggle and disillusionment, had a fall as steep as his rise
-
Mario Vargas Llosa: The novelist who lectured Latin America
Feature The Peruvian novelist wove tales of political corruption and moral compromise
-
Dame Maggie Smith: an intensely private national treasure
In the Spotlight Her mother told her she didn't have the looks to be an actor, but Smith went on to win awards and capture hearts
-
James Earl Jones: classically trained actor who gave a voice to Darth Vader
In the Spotlight One of the most respected actors of his generation, Jones overcame a childhood stutter to become a 'towering' presence on stage and screen
-
Michael Mosley obituary: television doctor whose work changed thousands of lives
In the Spotlight TV doctor was known for his popularisation of the 5:2 diet and his cheerful willingness to use himself as a guinea pig
-
Morgan Spurlock: the filmmaker who shone a spotlight on McDonald's
In the Spotlight Spurlock rose to fame for his controversial documentary Super Size Me
-
Benjamin Zephaniah: trailblazing writer who 'took poetry everywhere'
In the Spotlight Remembering the 'radical' wordsmith's 'wit and sense of mischief'