Jean Shepherd

Jean Parker Shepherd was an American storyteller, radio and TV personality, writer and actor who was often referred to by the nickname Shep. He has been the voice of Father from 1993 to the present in Walt Disney's Carousel of Progress.

Personal life
Born on the south side of Chicago, Illinois, Shepherd was raised in Hammond, Indiana, where he graduated from Hammond High School in 1939. The movie A Christmas Story is based on his days growing up in Hammond's southeast side neighborhood of Hessville. As a youth he worked briefly as a mail carrier in a steel mill and earned his Amateur Radio license, sometimes claiming he got it at 16, other times saying he was even younger. Shepherd was a lifelong White Sox fan.

During World War II, he served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps. Shepherd then had an extensive career in a variety of media.

Radio
Shepherd began his broadcast radio career on WSAI in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1948. From 1951 to 1953 he had a late-night broadcast on KYW in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, after which he returned to Cincinnati for a show on WLW. After a stint on television, he returned to radio. "Shep," as he was known, settled in at WOR radio New York City, New York on an overnight slot in 1956, where he delighted his fans by telling stories, reading poetry (especially the works of Robert W. Service), and organizing comedic listener stunts. The most famous of the last involved creating a hoax about a non-existent book, I, Libertine, by the equally non-existent author "Frederick R. Ewing", in 1956. During a discussion on how easy it was to manipulate the best seller lists, which at that time were based not only on sales but demand, Shepherd suggested that his listeners visit bookstores and ask for a copy of I, Libertine which led to booksellers attempting to purchase the book from their distributors. Fans of the show eventually took it further, planting references to the book and author so widely that demand for the book led to it being listed on The New York Times Best Seller list. Shepherd, Theodore Sturgeon and Betty Ballantine later wrote the actual book, with a cover painted by illustrator Frank Kelly Freas, published by Ballantine Books. Among his close friends in the late 1950s were Shel Silverstein and Herb Gardner. With them and actress Lois Nettleton, Shepherd performed in the revue he created, Look, Charlie. Later he was married to Nettleton for about six years.

When he was about to be released by WOR in 1956 for not being commercial, he did a commercial for Sweetheart Soap, not a sponsor, and was immediately fired. His listeners besieged WOR with complaints, and when Sweetheart offered to sponsor him he was reinstated. Eventually, he attracted more sponsors than he wanted—the commercials interrupted the flow of his monologues. Ex WOR engineer, Frank Cernese, adds: The commercials of that era were on "ETs"—phonograph records about 14" in diameter. Three large turntables were available to play them in sequence. However, Shepherd liked the engineer to look at him and listen when he told his stories. That left little time to load the turntables and cue the appropriate cuts. That's when he started complaining about "too many commercials". He broadcast until he left WOR in 1977. His subsequent radio work consisted only of short segments on several other stations, including crosstown WCBS, and occasional commentaries on NPR's All Things Considered. His final radio gig was the Sunday night radio show "Shepherd's Pie" on WBAI in the mid-1990s, which consisted of his reading his stories uncut, uninterrupted and unabridged. The show was one of WBAI's most popular of the period. In addition to his stories, his shows also contained, among other things, humorous anecdotes and general commentaries about the human condition, observations about life in New York, accounts of vacations in Maine and travels throughout the world. Among the most striking of his programs was his account of his participation in the March on Washington in August 1963, during which Dr. Martin Luther King gave his "I Have a Dream" speech, and the program that aired on November 25, 1963—the burial day of President John F. Kennedy. However, his most scintillating programs remain his oftimes prophetic, bitingly humorous commentaries about ordinary life in America.

Throughout his radio career, he performed entirely without scripts. His friend and WOR colleague Barry Farber marveled at how he could talk so long with very little written down. Yet during a radio interview, Shepherd once claimed that some shows took several weeks to prepare. On most of his Fourth of July broadcasts, however, he would read one of his most enduring and popular short stories, "Ludlow Kissel and the Dago Bomb that Struck Back," about a neighborhood drunk and his disastrous fireworks escapades. In the 1960s and 1970s, his WOR show ran from 11:15 pm to midnight, later changed to 10:15 pm to 11 pm, so his "Ludlow Kissel" reading was coincidentally timed to many New Jersey and New York local town fireworks displays, which would traditionally reach their climax at 10 pm. It was possible, on one of those July 4 nights, to park one's car on a hilltop and watch several different pyrotechnic displays, accompanied by Shepherd's masterful storytelling.

Television and films
Early in his career, Shepherd had a television program in Cincinnati called Rear Bumper. He claimed that he was recommended to replace the resigning Steve Allen on NBC's Tonight Show. Shepherd was reportedly brought to New York City by NBC executives to prepare for the position, but they were contractually bound to first offer it to Jack Paar. The network was certain Paar would hold out for a role in prime time, but he accepted the late-night assignment. However, he did not assume the position permanently until Shepherd and Ernie Kovacs had co-hosted the show.

In 1960 he did a weekly television show on WOR in New York, but it did not last long. Between 1971 and 1994, Shepherd became a screenwriter of note, writing and producing numerous works for both television and cinema. He was the writer and narrator of the show Jean Shepherd's America, produced by Boston Public Television station WGBH for PBS, in which he told his famous narratives, visited unusual locales, and interviewed local people of interest. He used a somewhat similar format for the New Jersey Network TV show Shepherd's Pie. On many of the Public TV shows he wrote, directed and edited entire shows.

He also wrote and narrated many works, the most famous being the 1983 MGM feature film A Christmas Story, which is now considered a holiday classic. Shepherd narrates the film as the adult Ralph Parker, and also has a cameo role playing a man in line at the department store waiting for Santa Claus.

Ten years later, Shepherd and A Christmas Story director Bob Clark returned to the same working-class Cleveland neighborhood to film a sequel, It Runs in the Family (later known as My Summer Story), released by MGM in 1994 and featuring an almost entirely different cast from the previous film.

PBS aired several television movies based on Shepherd stories, also featuring the Parker family. These included The Phantom of the Open Hearth (1976), which aired as part of the anthology series Visions; The Great American Fourth of July and Other Disasters (1982) and The Star-Crossed Romance of Josephine Cosnowski (1985), both as part of the anthology series American Playhouse; and Ollie Hopnoodle's Haven of Bliss (1988), a co-production with The Disney Channel. All were narrated by Shepherd but otherwise featured different casts.

Live performances and recordings
On Saturday nights for several years, Shepherd broadcast his WOR radio program live from the Limelight Cafe in New York City's Greenwich Village, and he also performed at many colleges nationwide. His live shows were a perennial favorite[citation needed] at Rutgers to wildly enthusiastic standing room only crowds, and Fairleigh Dickinson Universities (he often referred to the latter as "Fairly Ridiculous University" on his WOR show). He performed at Princeton University annually for 30 years, until 1996. He performed before sold-out audiences at Carnegie Hall and Town Hall. He was also emcee for several important jazz concerts in the late 1950s. Shepherd improvised spoken word narration for the title track on jazz musician Charles Mingus's 1957 album The Clown. Eight record albums of live and studio performances of Shepherd were released between 1955 and 1975. In 1993, Shepherd recorded the opening narration and the voice of the Audio-Animatronics Father character for the updated Carousel of Progress attraction at Walt Disney World Magic Kingdom.

Trivia

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