Early life
Born on the south side of Chicago, Illinois, Shepherd was raised in Hammond, Indiana, where he graduated from Hammond High School in 1939. 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 life long 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 career
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 (see below), 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. Shepherd, Theodore Sturgeon and Betty Ballantine later wrote an actual book of this, 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 of only short segments on several other stations including crosstown WCBS. In later life he publicly dismissed his days as a radio raconteur as unimportant, focusing more on his writing and movie work. This distressed his legions of fans who fondly remembered nights with Shepherd on WOR. He once made such comments during an appearance on the
Tomorrow Show with Tom Snyder. This contrasts with his frequent criticisms of television during his radio programs.
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 day of President Kennedy's burial. However, his most scintillating programs remain his oftimes prophetic, bitingly humorous commentaries about ordinary life in America.
At the time of the WOR radio show, Shepherd rode a Vespa motor scooter and parked it in the lobby of the WOR building, while at other periods during his WOR years, he drove a Morgan, a Rover, a Goggomobil, a motorcycle, and a variety of other vehicles.
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 Fourths of July, 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 p.m. to midnight, later changed to 10:15 p.m. to 11 p.m., 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 p.m. 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.
The theme song used on his long-running radio show was "The Bahn Frei Polka" by Eduard Strauss. The particular version he used was recorded by Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops.
Print
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 hundreds of broadcast tapes, inserting transcripts of Shepherd's own words into a "biographical framework" of exhaustive research.
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 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 feature film
A Christmas Story, which is now considered a holiday classic. In the film, Shepherd provides the voice of the adult Ralph Parker. He also has a cameo role playing a man in line at the department store waiting for Santa Claus. Much to Ralphie's chagrin, he points out to him that the end of the line is much further away.
Ten years later, Shepherd and 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, with an entirely different cast from the previous film. The PBS series
American Playhouse aired a series of television movies based on Shepherd stories, also featuring the Parker family. These included
Ollie Hopnoodle's Haven of Bliss,
The Great American Fourth of July and Other Disasters, and
The Phantom of the Open Hearth.
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 at Rutgers to wildly enthusiastic standing room only crowds, and Fairleigh Dickinson Universities. 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 great Charles Mingus's 1957 album
The Clown. Eight record albums of live and studio performances of Shepherd were released between 1955 and 1975. Shepherd also 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.
Music
On some of his broadcasts he played parts of recordings of such novelty songs as "The Bear Missed the Train" (a parody of the Yiddish ballad "Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen") and "The Sheik of Araby". Sometimes Shepherd would accompany the recordings by playing the Jew's harp, nose flute, or kazoo, and occasionally even by thumping his knuckles on his head.
Ham radio
Shepherd held the ham radio call sign K2ORS. He was very active on ham radio until his death. When operating as an amateur, he was known to use his middle name, Parker. He was listed in the Amateur Radio Callbook and for a number of years, while married to Lois Nettleton, his address was on East 57th Street in New York City. His last residence in NYC was on West 10th Street in Greenwich Village where he lived for many years. He is also credited as the voice for the ARRL's tape series
Tune In the World with Ham Radio. This series of tapes helped many young people become ham radio operators.
