Jean Shepherd Popular Books

Jean Shepherd Biography & Facts

Jean Parker "Shep" Shepherd Jr. (July 26, 1921 – October 16, 1999) was an American storyteller, humorist, radio and TV personality, writer, and actor. With a career that spanned decades, Shepherd is known for the film A Christmas Story (1983), which he narrated and co-scripted, based on his own semiautobiographical stories. Early life Shepherd was born in 1921 to Jean Parker Shepherd and his wife, Anna, on the South Side of Chicago. He briefly lived in East Chicago, Indiana, and was raised in Hammond, Indiana, where he graduated from Hammond High School in 1939. A Christmas Story is loosely 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 (W9QWN) at age 16, sometimes claiming he was even younger. He sporadically attended Indiana University, but never graduated. During World War II, he served stateside in the U.S. Army Signal Corps. Shepherd then had an extensive career in a variety of media. Career Radio After his military service, Shepherd began his broadcast radio career in early 1945 on WJOB in Hammond, Indiana, later working at WTOD in Toledo, Ohio, in 1946. He began working in Cincinnati, Ohio, in January 1947 at WSAI, later also working at Cincinnati stations WCKY and WKRC the following year, before returning to WSAI in 1949. From 1951 to 1953, he had a late-night broadcast on KYW in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, after which he returned to Cincinnati for several different shows on WLW. After a stint on television there, he returned to radio. "Shep", as he was known, settled in at WOR radio New York City on February 26, 1955, where he would remain until spring 1977. On an overnight slot in 1956, he delighted his fans by telling stories, reading poetry (especially the works of Robert W. Service), and organizing comedic listener stunts. I, Libertine Hoax The most famous stunt was a hoax he created about a nonexistent book, I, Libertine, by a fake author "Frederick R. Ewing", in 1956. During a discussion on how easy it was to manipulate the best-seller lists based on demand, as well as sales, Shepherd suggested that his listeners visit bookstores and ask for a copy of I, Libertine, which led to booksellers attempting to order the book from their distributors. Fans of the show planted references to the book and author so widely that demand for the book led to claims of it being on The New York Times Best Seller list. Shepherd, Theodore Sturgeon, and Betty Ballantine wrote the long-awaited book, with a cover by illustrator Frank Kelly Freas, published by Ballantine Books. Sweetheart Soap When he was about to be released by WOR in 1956 for lack of sponsors, 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. Former 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. Shepherd preferred the engineer to watch and listen to his stories. That left little time to load the turntables and cue the appropriate cuts. That was when he started complaining about "too many commercials". His last WOR broadcast was on April 1, 1977. His subsequent radio work consisted 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 had him 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 humorous anecdotes and commentaries about the human condition, observations about New York City life, accounts of vacations in Maine, and travels throughout the world. One striking program recounted his participation in the March on Washington in August 1963, during which Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I Have a Dream" speech, and another program that aired on November 25, 1963, covered the burial of assassinated President John F. Kennedy. Throughout his radio career, he performed without scripts. His friend and WOR colleague Barry Farber marveled at how he could talk so long with so few notes. During a radio interview, Shepherd claimed that some shows took weeks to prepare, but this may have been in the planning rather than the writing of a script. On most of his Fourth of July broadcasts, he did 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 synchronized to many New Jersey and New York local town fireworks displays, which would typically 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 storytelling. Print Shepherd wrote a series of humorous short stories about growing up in northwest Indiana and its steel towns, many of which were first told by him on his programs and then published in Playboy. The stories were later assembled into books titled In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash, Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories: and Other Disasters, The Ferrari in the Bedroom, and A Fistful of Fig Newtons. Some of those situations were incorporated into his movies and television fictional stories. He also wrote a column for the early Village Voice, a column for Car and Driver, numerous individual articles for diverse publications, including Mad Magazine ("The Night People vs. Creeping Meatballism", March/April 1957), and introductions for books such as The America of George Ade, American Snapshots, and the 1970 reprint of the 1929 Johnson Smith Catalogue. When Eugene B. Bergmann's Excelsior, You Fathead! The Art and Enigma of Jean Shepherd was published in 2005, Publishers Weekly reviewed:This prismatic portrait affirms Shepherd's position as one of the 20th century's great humorists. Railing against conformity, he forged a unique personal bond with his loyal listeners, who participated in his legendary literary prank by asking bookstores for the nonexistent novel I, Libertine (when publisher Ian Ballantine had Shepherd, author Theodore Sturgeon, and illustrator Frank Kelly Freas make the fake real, PW called it "the hoax that became a book"). Storyteller Shepherd's grand theme was life itself ... Novelist Bergmann (Rio Amazonas) interviewed 32 people who knew Shepherd or were influenced by him and listened to h.... Discover the Jean Shepherd popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Jean Shepherd books.