CHICAGO (AP) – Before we got our movie reviews from the Internet, we looked at Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel’s thumbs.

They voted thumbs up or thumbs down depending on how they felt about the latest films on their TV series “Siskel and Ebert: At the Movies.” The show helped make Ebert the most famous reviewer of his time.

Ebert was asked by AP Radio in 2002 what made a movie great and he quoted a British reviewer who said: “a great movie is a movie I cannot bear the thought of never seeing again.”

Ebert died the day after he announced the return of the cancer that caused him to lose parts of his jaw and temporarily the ability to speak, eat and drink. His movie partner, Gene Siskel, died 14 years earlier. Ebert was 70 years old.