Editing Roger Ebert (section)

== Early life and education ==
Roger Joseph Ebert<ref name=NYTObit/><ref name=YouTubeInterview>{{YouTube|kTYVnuKnJNo|"Roger Ebert – Archive Interview Part 1 of 3 "}}. May 20, 2008. Retrieved June 7, 2012.</ref> was born on June 18, 1942, in [[Urbana, Illinois]], the only child of Annabel (née Stumm),<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3069000035.html |title=Ebert, Roger (R. Hyde, Reinhold Timme) |website=encyclopedia.com |date=April 4, 2013 |access-date=August 31, 2012 |archive-date=December 15, 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121215122957/http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3069000035.html |url-status=live }}</ref> a bookkeeper,<ref name=SunTimesObit /><ref name=bookref1>{{cite book |title=Life Itself: A Memoir |url=https://archive.org/details/lifeitselfmemoir00eber |url-access=registration |last=Ebert |first=Roger |year=2011 |publisher=Grand Central Publishing |location=New York City |isbn=9780446584975}}</ref> and Walter Harry Ebert, an electrician.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-company-men-2011 |first=Roger |last=Ebert |title=What do you make at work, Daddy? |newspaper=[[Chicago Sun-Times]] |via=[[RogerEbert.com]] |date=January 19, 2011 |access-date=April 23, 2022 |archive-date=April 24, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220424123531/https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-company-men-2011 |url-status=live }}</ref><ref name=ChicagoMag /> He was raised [[Roman Catholic]], attending St. Mary's elementary school and serving as an [[altar boy]] in Urbana.<ref name=ChicagoMag />

His paternal grandparents were German immigrants<ref>{{cite web |url=http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20020412/REVIEWS/204120305/1023 |title=Maryam Movie Review & Film Summary |date=April 12, 2002 |last=Ebert |first=Roger | website=[[RogerEbert.com]] |access-date=January 2, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170316065612/http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/maryam-2002 |archive-date=March 16, 2017}}</ref> and his maternal ancestry was Irish and Dutch.<ref name=bookref1 /><ref>{{cite web|first=Roger|last=Ebert|url=http://www.rogerebert.com/rogers-journal/oh-say-can-you-wear|date=May 13, 2010|website=[[RogerEbert.com]]|title=Oh, say, can you wear?|access-date=January 3, 2017|archive-date=January 3, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170103094319/http://www.rogerebert.com/rogers-journal/oh-say-can-you-wear|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2013/02/what_was_my_aunt_martha_trying.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130226041411/http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2013/02/what_was_my_aunt_martha_trying.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=February 26, 2013 |title=What was my Aunt Martha trying to ask me? |author=Ebert, Roger |date=February 22, 2013 |website=Roger Ebert's Journal }}</ref> His first movie memory was of his parents taking him to see the [[Marx Brothers]] in [[A Day at the Races (film)| ''A Day at the Races'']] (1937).<ref name=NPR>{{cite news| title=Roger Ebert: A 'Life' Still Being Lived, and Fully| author=Melissa Block | work=[[National Public Radio]]| url=https://www.npr.org/2011/09/13/140437328/ebert-a-life-still-being-lived-and-fully}}</ref> He wrote that ''[[Adventures of Huckleberry Finn]]'' was "the first real book I ever read, and still the best."<ref>{{cite book| title=Life Itself: A Memoir| author=Roger Ebert| page=11}}</ref> He began his writing career with his own newspaper, ''The Washington Street News'', printed in his basement.<ref name=NYTObit/> He wrote letters of comment to the [[science-fiction fanzine]]s of the era and founded his own, ''Stymie''.<ref name=NYTObit/> At age 15, he was a sportswriter for ''[[The News-Gazette (Champaign–Urbana)|The News-Gazette]]'' covering [[Urbana High School (Illinois)|Urbana High School]] sports.<ref>{{cite book |title=Life Itself: A Memoir |last=Ebert |first=Roger |location=New York |publisher=Grand Central Publishing |page=30}}</ref> He attended Urbana High School, where in his senior year he was class president and co-editor of his [[Student newspaper|high school newspaper]], ''The Echo''.<ref name=ChicagoMag /><ref name="Ebert My old man">{{cite web |last1=Ebert |first1=Roger |title=My old man |url=https://www.rogerebert.com/rogers-journal/my-old-man |access-date=July 11, 2019 |date=March 18, 2010 |quote=I always worked on newspapers. Harold Holmes, the father of my best friend Hal, was an editor at The News-Gazette, and took us down to the paper. A linotype operator set my byline in lead, and I used a stamp pad to imprint everything with "By Roger Ebert." I was electrified. I wrote for the St. Mary's grade school paper. Nancy Smith and I were co-editors of the Urbana High School Echo. At Illinois, I published "Spectator," a liberal weekly, my freshman year, and then sold it and went over to The Daily Illini. But that was after my father's death. |archive-date=July 11, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190711003048/https://www.rogerebert.com/rogers-journal/my-old-man |url-status=live }}</ref> In 1958, he won the [[Illinois High School Association]] state [[Individual events (speech)|speech]] championship in "radio speaking," an event that simulates radio newscasts.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.ihsa.org/SportsActivities/IndividualEvents/RecordsHistory.aspx?url=/data/ie/records/index.htm |title=Roger Ebert in the IHSA list of state speech champions, 1957–58 |publisher=Ihsa.org |access-date=April 5, 2013 |archive-date=February 16, 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120216235334/http://ihsa.org/SportsActivities/IndividualEvents/RecordsHistory.aspx?url=/data/ie/records/index.htm |url-status=live }}</ref>

{{quote box
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| width = 25em
| bgcolor = Bisque
| quote = "I learned to be a movie critic by reading ''[[Mad (magazine)|Mad]]'' magazine&nbsp;... ''Mad''{{'s}} parodies made me aware of the machine inside the skin&nbsp;– of the way a movie might look original on the outside, while inside it was just recycling the same old dumb formulas. I did not read the magazine, I plundered it for clues to the universe. [[Pauline Kael]] [[I Lost It at the Movies|lost it at the movies]]; I lost it at ''Mad'' magazine"
| source = — Roger Ebert, ''Mad About the Movies'' (1998 parody collection)<ref>{{cite book |editor1-first=Nick |editor1-last=Meglin |editor2-first=John |editor2-last=Ficarra |title=Mad About the Movies |year=1998 |publisher=Mad Books |location=New York City |isbn=1-56389-459-9 |url=https://archive.org/details/madaboutmovies00edit}}</ref>
}}

Ebert began taking classes at the [[University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign]] as an early-entrance student, completing his high school courses while also taking his first university class. After graduating from Urbana High School in 1960,<ref>{{cite news |author=<!--Staff writer(s); no by-line.--> |title=Milestones in the life of Roger Ebert |url=http://www.news-gazette.com/news/local/2013-04-05/milestones-life-roger-ebert.html |work=The News-Gazette |location=Champaign, IL |date=April 5, 2013 |access-date=January 20, 2019 |archive-date=January 21, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190121064858/http://www.news-gazette.com/news/local/2013-04-05/milestones-life-roger-ebert.html |url-status=live }}</ref> he attended the University of Illinois and received his undergraduate degree in journalism in 1964.<ref name=NYTObit/> While there, Ebert worked as a reporter for ''[[The Daily Illini]]'' and served as its editor during his senior year while continuing to work for the ''News-Gazette''.

His college mentor was [[Daniel Curley]], who "introduced me to many of the cornerstones of my life's reading: '[[The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock]]', ''[[Crime and Punishment]]'', ''[[Madame Bovary]]'', ''[[The Ambassadors]]'', ''[[Nostromo]]'', ''[[The Professor's House]]'', ''[[The Great Gatsby]]'', ''[[The Sound and the Fury]]'' ...  He approached these works with undisguised admiration. We discussed patterns of symbolism, felicities of language, motivation, revelation of character. This was ''appreciation'', not the savagery of deconstruction, which approaches literature as pliers do a rose."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Ebert |first=Roger |title=Life Itself |year=2011 |pages=94}}</ref> One of his classmates was [[Larry Woiwode]], who went on to be the Poet Laureate of North Dakota. At ''The'' ''Daily Illini'' Ebert befriended [[William Nack]], who as a sportswriter would cover [[Secretariat (horse)|Secretariat]].<ref>{{Cite web |last=Ebert |first=Roger |date=October 17, 2010 |title=The Storyteller and the Stallion |url=https://www.rogerebert.com/roger-ebert/the-storyteller-and-the-stallion |access-date=January 30, 2023 |archive-date=January 30, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230130044333/https://www.rogerebert.com/roger-ebert/the-storyteller-and-the-stallion |url-status=live }}</ref> As an undergraduate, he was a member of the [[Phi Delta Theta]] fraternity and president of the [[United States Student Press Association]].<ref>{{cite book |title=Life Itself: A Memoir |last=Ebert |first=Roger |location=New York |publisher=Grand Central Publishing |pages=92, 96}}</ref> One of the first reviews he wrote was of ''[[La Dolce Vita]]'', published in ''The Daily Illini'' in October 1961.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/la-dolce-vita |title=La Dolce Vita Movie Review & Film Summary |last=Ebert |first=Roger |date=October 4, 1961 |newspaper=The Daily Illini |via=[[RogerEbert.com]] |access-date=January 3, 2017 |archive-date=June 12, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160612112023/http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/la-dolce-vita |url-status=live }}</ref>

As a graduate student, he "had the good fortune to enroll in a class on [[Shakespeare]]'s [[Shakespearean tragedy| tragedies]] taught by [[G. Blakemore Evans]] ... It was then that Shakespeare took hold of me, and it became clear he was the nearest we have come to a voice for what it means to be human."<ref>{{cite book |title=Life Itself: A Memoir |last=Ebert |first=Roger |location=New York City |publisher=Grand Central Publishing |page=99}}</ref> Ebert spent a semester as a master's student in the department of English there before attending the [[University of Cape Town]] on a Rotary fellowship for a year.<ref>{{cite book |title=Life Itself: A Memoir |last=Ebert |first=Roger |location=New York |publisher=Grand Central Publishing |page=96}}</ref> He returned from Cape Town to his graduate studies at Illinois for two more semesters and then, after being accepted as a PhD student at the [[University of Chicago]], he prepared to move to Chicago. He needed a job to support himself while he worked on his doctorate and so applied to the ''[[Chicago Daily News]]'', hoping that, as he had already sold freelance pieces to the ''Daily News'', including an article on the death of writer [[Brendan Behan]], he would be hired by editor [[Herman Kogan]].<ref name="auto">{{cite book |title=Life Itself: A Memoir |last=Ebert |first=Roger |location=New York |publisher=Grand Central Publishing |page=139}}</ref>

Instead, Kogan referred Ebert to the city editor at the ''[[Chicago Sun-Times]]'', [[James F. Hoge Jr.|Jim Hoge]], who hired him as a reporter and feature writer in 1966.<ref name="auto"/> He attended doctoral classes at the University of Chicago while working as a general reporter for a year. After movie critic Eleanor Keane left the ''Sun-Times'' in April 1967, editor Robert Zonka gave the job to Ebert.<ref>{{cite news |title=Ebert named film critic |newspaper=[[Chicago Sun-Times]] |date=April 5, 1967 |page=57}}</ref> The paper wanted a young critic to cover movies like ''[[The Graduate]]'' and films by [[Jean-Luc Godard]] and [[François Truffaut]].<ref name=NYTObit/> The load of graduate school and being a film critic proved too much, so Ebert left the University of Chicago to focus his energies on film criticism.<ref>{{cite book |title=Life Itself: A Memoir |last=Ebert |first=Roger |location=New York |publisher=Grand Central Publishing |page=142}}</ref>