1967: 'Ebert Named Film Critic' made page 57
We -- the Chicago Sun-Times -- gave you Roger Ebert.
How cool is that?
(Sun-Times Library)
But the big news -- "Ebert Named Film Critic" -- wasn't so big at the time, buried on page 57 of the paper on April 5, 1967.
Ebert had been editor of the Daily Illini at the University of Illinois in the early 1960s when, at the direction of legendary Chicago Daily News editor Herman Kogan, he wrote an article on the death of Irish writer Brendan Behan.
That led to a job for Ebert at the Sun-Times in 1966, where he was a reporter and feature writer.
But Ebert had a particular interest in film and moved that way. For example, he visited the set of "Camelot."
When movie critic Eleanor Keane left, features editor Robert Zonka offered Ebert the job.
In his first review after being named critic -- of the film "Galia" -- Ebert had this to say about French "New Wave" films: "We have been treated to a parade of young French girls running gaily toward the camera in slow motion, their hair waving in the wind in just such a way that we know immediately they are liberated, carefree, jolly and doomed."
Good as that is, he kept getting better.