America's Favorite Critic
After Ebert graduated from the University of Illinois he took a Rotary Scholarship in Cape Town, Africa that lasted a year. Following the scholarship, he began a graduate program in English at the University of Chicago. During his first semester in the fall of 1966, Ebert became a features writer for the Chicago Sun-Times. The following spring he was offered the position of film critic, ultimately taking the position and dropping out of his graduate program. Ebert was excited about the opportunity to have his own column in a major newspaper, but he had never reviewed film before. Despite his experience, Ebert quickly fell into his new position and published seventy film reviews by the end of his first year. By the 1970s Ebert was already regarded as a respectable and well known film critic. In 1975, at the age of 32, Ebert won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism. He was the first film critic to receive this honor.
Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert were film critics for competing newspapers, the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times. In 1975, they brought that competitive spirit to a film review show on public television, a project they co-hosted together for nearly 25 years. They were known for their passionate disagreements and thumbs up or down rating system. The show, called At the Movies, Siskel & Ebert at the Movies, and finally Siskel & Ebert was popular with audiences because of the critics’ willingness hold divergent opinions and engage in heated debates about films. Between 1984 and 1997, they received seven prime-time Emmy-award nominations for the show. After Siskel died from complications related to cancer, Ebert continued the show with other guests hosts, eventually taking on Chicago critic Richard Roeper as a permanent co-host until Ebert’s own problems with cancer led to his retirement from television in 2008.