Short answers, pulled from the story.
Roger Ebert won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1975, becoming the first film critic to receive that award. Following the win, he was offered positions at The New York Times and The Washington Post but declined both, choosing to remain in Chicago.
Roger Ebert wrote for the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death on the 4th of April 2013, a span of 46 years. He was hired as a reporter in 1966 and became film critic in April 1967 after Eleanor Keane left the position.
Ebert was diagnosed with cancer of the salivary glands in 2002, and surgery in 2006 required removing a section of his lower jaw, leaving him unable to speak or eat. He continued to write prolifically online and in print until his death in 2013.
Siskel and Ebert began co-hosting a weekly film-review program called Opening Soon at a Theater Near You in 1975, produced by Chicago public broadcaster WTTW and later syndicated nationally on PBS as Sneak Previews. They moved to commercial syndication in 1982 with At the Movies With Gene Siskel & Roger Ebert, and in 1986 launched Siskel & Ebert & the Movies through Buena Vista Television.
The Great Movies is a series of essay collections drawn from a biweekly series Ebert began writing for the Chicago Sun-Times in 1996, revisiting important films of the past. The first hundred essays were published as The Great Movies in 2002, with two more volumes following during his lifetime and a fourth published posthumously. The first film he wrote about for the series was Casablanca.
Roger Joseph Ebert was born on the 18th of June 1942 in Urbana, Illinois. He was the only child of Annabel, a bookkeeper, and Walter Harry Ebert, an electrician, and was raised Catholic in Urbana.