Roger Ebert: Eight Things You Might Not Have Known

By Mark Deming

Roger Ebert was America’s best-known film critic – and arguably its best. But that was hardly his only accomplishment in a long and distinguished career. Ebert, who died Thursday at the age of 70, wasn’t just a critic, but a screenwriter, a music fan, an on-line activist, a historian, and even Oprah Winfrey’s date for an evening. As we remember Ebert’s life and work, here are eight things you might not have known about the man.

Ebert invented “Two Thumbs Up.” Ebert’s famous TV partnership with Gene Siskel began in 1975 with a local program aired once a month called “Coming Soon To A Theater Near You.” By 1978, it had become a weekly PBS show called “Sneak Previews,” and was a hit in the ratings. When Buena Vista Television (a division of Disney) offered Ebert and Siskel a more lucrative deal in 1986, they took it, but needed to make some changes so as not to seem like they were ripping off the old show. That meant no longer giving movies a “Yes” or “No” vote as they had before. “I came up with the idea of giving thumbs up and thumbs down,” Ebert later said. “And the reason that Siskel and I were able to trademark that is that the phrase ‘two thumbs up’ in connection with movies had never been used. And in fact, the phrase ‘two thumbs up’ was not in the vernacular. And now, of course, it’s part of the language.”


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Whitney Houston Dead at 48

Whitney Houston has died, her rep confirms to The Hollywood Reporter.

At a news conference, police officials said they received a call at 3:23 p.m. Saturday saying that someone was unconscious at the Beverly Hilton. Emergency crews summoned to the scene tried to resuscitate the singer in her room on the fourth floor. Houston was pronounced dead at 3:55 p.m. She was 48.

Beverly Hills Police Lt. Mark Rosen said that there were “no obvious signs of criminal intent” and that the cause of death was being investigated.

The R&B singer and six-time Grammy winner was due to make an appearance at Clive Davis’s Grammy eve gala on Saturday night at the Hilton. She was spotted in the hotel on Thursday morning, when she was overheard chastising an assistant.

Later that night, Houston got into an altercation with The X Factor finalist Stacy Francis at an R&B appreciation event, where she was said to be acting “belligerent.” On Friday night, as THR broke news that Houston had been approached for a seat on the judges’ panel on The X Factor, her publicist said the singer was at a spa.

Says a source close to Davis, “This is a sad day, and it will be a sad Grammys weekend.”

“Whitney Houston was one of the world’s greatest pop singers of all time, who leaves behind a robust musical soundtrack spanning the past three decades,” Recording Academy president Neil Portnow said Saturday. ”A light has been dimmed in our music community today.”

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