- Born
- Died
- Birth nameJean Parker Shepherd Jr.
- Nickname
- Shep
- Raised in Hammond, Indiana, Jean Shepherd went on to work in the steel mills and was a veteran of the Army Signal Corps before entering the arts. In the 1950s, he began a long career as a radio personality telling stories of his youth, commenting on current topics and performing silly songs. While at WOR-AM in New York, he also broadcast live night club acts from the Limelight in Greenwich Village. He wrote for Playboy and other magazines. His articles were published in a series of books including "The America of George Ade", "In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash", "Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories, and Other Disasters", "A Fistful of Fig Newtons" and "The Ferrari in the Bedroom". During the 1970s, he did two series of humorous programs as well as several American Playhouse (1980) episodes for PBS. In 1983, he wrote his first feature film, A Christmas Story (1983), putting together many tales of his semi-autobiographical character "Ralphie". A sequel, "My Summer Story" (aka My Summer Story (1994)) was made in 1994.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Jim Sadur <jsadur@keyflux.com>
- SpousesLeigh Brown(March 2, 1977 - July 16, 1998) (her death)Lois Nettleton(December 3, 1960 - 1970) (divorced)Joan Laverne Warner(September 9, 1950 - 1957) (divorced, 2 children)Barbara Olive Mattoon(March 29, 1947 - June 14, 1948) (divorced)
- Provided the voice of the Narrator/Father character in the "Carousel of Progress" attraction at Walt Disney World in Orlando, FL.
- Shepherd had two children, a son Randall and a daughter Adrian, by his second wife, Joan Warner, but according to them, had virtually no contact with them after he divorced their mother. In fact, Jean Shepherd's last will and testament falsely stated that he had no children.
- Peter Finch's famous rant in Network (1976) was inspired by Shepherd's radio diatribes.
- Is mentioned in the "Dictionary of American Slang" in the entry for "Night People", which is defined as "People who work or live at night, sleeping during the day" and "Noncomformists". The dictionary goes on to credit Shep: "Pop. by N.Y. City disk jockey and social commentator Jean Shepherd, c.1956".
In his early years of radio on WOR in New York, during his late night broadcasts, Shep referred to his listeners as "Night People" often explaining how they differed from "Day People". The phrase caught on an credit for the phrase was given in the Dictionary of American Slang. - Early in his tenure at WOR, he and his listeners decided to play a prank on the New York Times best-seller list; he suggested that they go to bookstores around the city and start asking for a book that didn't even exist; the listeners suggested the title (I, Libertine!), an author name (Frederick Ewing), and even gave this fictitious author a fairly detailed biography (former British civil servant, lived in South Africa, spoke on the BBC about 18th-century erotica, was married to Marjorie "a horsewoman from the North Country"). As his radio listeners included airline pilots who traveled overseas and press agents who fed information to leading gossip columnists in the city, The phony book and its phony author were soon a hot topic in transatlantic publishing circles, appearing on best-seller lists, getting mentioned in Earl Wilson's syndicated gossip column, and even getting Banned in Boston. Finally, one of his listeners, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal persuaded him that it was time to let the rest of the world in on the joke - by then, the book was such a big deal that Ballantine Publishing asked Shepherd to actually write a book called I, Libertine!, and with the help of science-fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon, he did. Needless to say, the Times didn't take kindly to having been fooled, and when they reviewed the book, they implied that Shepherd had misled his fans into asking for the book, when in fact the listeners were part of the hoax from the very beginning.
- Can you imagine four thousand years passing and you're not even a memory? Think about it, friends. It's not just a possibility. It is a certainty.
- I don't make the news, I just report it.
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