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Jean Shepherd (1921-1999) was a writer, humorist, satirist, actor, radio raconteur, TV & film personality, and an American original. He was a master story teller in the league of Mark Twain, S.J. Perlman and P.G. Wodehouse. Taking bits and pieces from his own life, he weaved tales of the joys, humor, intrigue and angst of growing up.
His youth in Hammond, Indiana, his adventures in the Army Signal Corps, and stories of the obscure and infamous were all fertile sources for his tales. For almost three decades he told these stories to eager radio audiences. In Cincinnati between 1950 and 1954, "Shep" did a DJ show from Shuller's Wigwam on WSAI and a nightly comedy show on WLW called "Rear Bumpers." This led to a television version at KYW in Philadelphia. In 1956, Shep moved to the Big Apple on WOR New York where, for 21 years, listeners all over the Northeast were treated to a nightly dose of genius. His shows were a menagerie of comments, silly songs, jokes and other digressions all orbiting around a central tale.
Shep always loved the stage. He began his entertainment career in Chicago as a performer at the Goodman Theatre. He did night club acts on Rush Street. Shep appeared on Broadway in Leonard Sillman's revue "New Faces" in 1962 and "Voice of the Turtle," and played a dance instructor in the film "The Light Fantastic" (1963). Jean was also a sportscaster doing baseball broadcasts for the Toledo Mudhens and Armed Forces Radio.
In the 1970s, he took his talents to television in a series of humorous narratives for PBS called "Jean Shepherd's America," which later continued on the PBS New Jersey Network as "Shepherd's Pie." Here, he was able to show us the more off-beat aspects of America and particularly the state he loved to ridicule. Shep actually lived in Washington Township, New Jersey during this time, and his commute up and down Route 22 yielded a unique perspective on modern American culture, which inspired a series of teleplays for PBS/WGBH's American Playhouse.
His most popular and well known work, of course, is the film "A Christmas Story," which he co-wrote and narrated. |