Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was an American film critic, journalist, and screenwriter born on June 18, 1942, in Urbana, Illinois. He was the longtime film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times and the first film critic to win the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.

Ebert attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he edited The Daily Illini, and later studied as a Ph.D. candidate in English at the University of Chicago, though he did not complete the doctorate. He joined the Chicago Sun-Times as a film critic in 1967 and remained associated with the paper for the rest of his life.

He won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1975, the same year he began co-hosting a televised film review program with Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune. The show evolved through several titles including Sneak Previews, At the Movies, and Siskel & Ebert & the Movies, popularizing the thumbs-up and thumbs-down rating.

Ebert wrote the screenplay for Russ Meyer's Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970) and authored more than twenty books, including annual movie yearbooks and The Great Movies series. After surgeries for thyroid and salivary gland cancer in 2006 left him unable to speak, he continued writing prolifically online and on his blog. He died on April 4, 2013, in Chicago.

The name Roger derives from the Old Germanic Hrodger, combining hrod, meaning fame, with ger, meaning spear. The Normans introduced it to Britain after the eleventh century.