• 8/6/2003
  • Chicago
  • Associated Press

Pulitzer Prize winning film critic Roger Ebert will undergo radiation treatment for cancer next month.

The treatment will be for a cancerous tumor in Ebert’s salivary gland, the Chicago Sun-Times reported in its Wednesday editions.

The 61-year-old critic underwent surgery twice in February 2002 for cancer in his thyroid and salivary gland.

He said treatment for the malignant tumor will begin later this month after he returns from a family trip to France.

“I will, however, continue to see movies, write reviews and do the ‘Ebert & Roeper’ television show,” Ebert wrote in an e-mail message to friends on Tuesday. The treatments are a follow up to earlier surgery, and I look forward to a complete recovery; this is not considered to be a life-threatening form of cancer.

“P.S. By the way, my thyroid cancer has been completely vanquished.”

Ebert said he has had a tumor in his salivary gland “in one form or another” for 16 years. He said the treatments will take 20 minutes a day, five days a week for eight weeks.

Ebert has been a film critic at the Chicago Sun-Times since 1967. He won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 1975, the same year he teamed up with the late Gene Siskel of the rival Chicago Tribune to launch their movie-review show.