Roger Ebert

Ebert married at the age of 50 in 1992 to Charlie Hammelsmith. He explained why he got married at an odd age by saying that he always wanted to get married after his mother died.

Ebert was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 2002. Also, he underwent surgery for cancer in his salivary gland. Four years later, he had surgery to remove cancerous tissue near his right jaw and after that his carotid artery burst.

In 2007, he lost his speech and adopted a computerized voice system to communicate and went through surgeries to restore his voice and address the complications from his previous surgeries.

Roger Ebert was born in Urbana, Illinois to Annabel and Walter Elbert. His father worked as an electrician. He grew up in a middle-class environment, but his father was ambitious for him to have a better future.

He attended the Urbana High School and became the editor-in-chief for his high school newspaper. His interest in journalism ignited while he worked as a sports journalist for The News-Gazette. He also became a part of science fiction fandom.

With his extra-ordinary achievements, he was allowed to take early classes at the University of Illinois while he was still at school. Soon after, he joined Daily Illini as an editor and got his first film review published in 1961.

He attended University of Cape Town on a Rotary Scholarship for a year and then returned back to do PhD at the University of Chicago. To support himself, he became a feature writer at the Sun-Times in 1966.

Working as a writer alongside the PhD studies proved to be a very time consuming process for Ebert and in 1967, he left University of Chicago in the middle to pursue his dream of becoming a film critic.

Keeping his eye on the goal, Ebert joined Chicago Sun-Times as a full time film critic in 1967 and started flourishing as a writer. He published ‘Illini Century: One Hundred Years of Campus Life’.

In 1969, Reader’s Digest published his review on ‘Night of the Living Dead’ and he co-wrote the screenplay of ‘Beyond the Valley of the Dolls’. Around the same time, he was appointed as a guest lecturer at the University of Chicago.

In 1975, he began co-hosting a weekly film review TV show ‘Sneak Previews’ produced by the Chicago public broadcasting station WTTW. Sometime later, Gene Siskel joined him and the duo became famous for their film reviews.

Ebert co-wrote screenplays with Russ Meyer from 1976–79. These included: ‘Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens’ which was a satirical sexploitation movie, ‘Up!’ which was a sex comedy, and ‘Who Killed Bambi?’ which was intended to star ‘Sex Pistols’—a British punk rock band—but was shelved.

Ebert was famous for television film reviewing with Siskel in the PBS’s ‘Sneak Previews’ which started airing in 1975. From there on, discussing the movies verbally on the television became in-vogue and they co-hosted variously named ‘At The Movies’ shows.