Elgin native, Pulitzer Prize-winning TV critic Shales dead at 79

Pulitzer Prize-winning television critic Tom Shales, an Elgin native whose witty, incisive observations inspired both respect and fear, according to The New York Times, died Saturday from COVID-19 complications.

He was 79.

Born Nov. 3, 1944, to Clyde Shales (Elgin’s onetime mayor) and his wife Hulda Shales, Shales graduated from Elgin High School and attended Elgin Community College. He then graduated from American University in Washington, D.C. with a journalism degree and was hired by the Washington Post as a general assignment reporter in 1972, according to published reports.

Five years later, the Post named him television critic, a position he held until 2010 and one that earned him 1988’s Pulitzer Prize. He published a handful of books including 2002’s “Live From New York,” a history of “Saturday Night Live,” and 2011’s “Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN,” which he co-authored with James Andrew Miller.

His influence on critics who followed him is incalculable, said award-winning Daily Herald film critic Dann Gire, who called Shales “the best of the best” and “a joy to read.”

His wit, humor and intelligence set the standard, according to Gire, who described Shales’ writing as “incredibly funny, creative, inventive and smart.”

Most critics lecture, said Gire. Not Shales. He discussed television with his readers in a way “you imagined he’d talk to you if you were sitting at a bar.”

A sense of fun characterized Shales’ writing, said Gire, who considered him a mentor.

“I idolized him,” he said.

They never met in person, but Gire — founding director and longtime president of the Chicago Film Critics Association and an adjunct instructor of cinema and public speaking at Loyola University in Chicago — spoke with Shales on the phone in the mid-1980s.

Incensed after the Chicago Tribune edited one of Shales’ syndicated reviews, taking it from stunning to mediocre in Gire’s opinion, he called his fellow critic to let him know “someone had massacred his work” and stripped it of its “Tom Shales-ness.”

“Well, Dann, to tell you the truth, as long as they pay me, I don’t care,” Shales replied.

To Gire, it was a reminder that criticism comprises both business and entertainment.

“He was one of a kind and one of the best,” Gire said.