Jean Shepherd
Jean Shepherd (Shep) was born on July 26, 1921 in Chicago, Illinois and had a career in show business that went on for decades. His first foray was in radio, but he was also well-known as a television personality, writer and actor.
Shepherd began his radio career in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1948 as a broadcaster and later landed a late night show broadcast in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Jean got the nickname, Shep, when he was working at WOR radio in New York City.
At his overnight radio gig in New York City, Shep told stories, read some poetry and also organized stunts for fans who listened every night. One of his most remembered stunts was about a book he “made up” called, I, Libertine by a (also) fake writer, Frederick R. Ewing.
Shep suggested that his readers purchase the bogus book from local bookstores. Demand for the fake book was so great that it was eventually listed on the New York Times Best Seller list – which was exactly the point of the hoax. Later, Shepherd, Betty Ballentine and Theodore Sturgeon actually wrote a book of the same name and it was published by Ballantine Books.
Close friends of Shepherd included Shel Silverstein, Herb Gardner and Lois Nettleton. The four friends starred in a revue that Shepherd had created called Look, Charlie. Nettleton and Shepherd were married later and the marriage lasted for six years.
Shepherd was a huge fan of the radio comedy vignette, Vic and Sade - considered a radio landmark in 1932. The show was on the air until 1946 and starred Art Van Harvey, Bernardine Flynn as Vic and Sade. Uncle Fletcher was also a character on the show, Vic and Sade. Fletcher was the object of novelist, Ray Bradbury’s, summary of the show decades later. He wrote that Uncle Fletcher was “an amazing man.”
Uncle Fletcher had lived through the San Francisco earthquake and constantly talked about people who were dead or missing from the quake’s devastation. Jean Shepherd and Ray Bradbury wrote glowing forewards to the writer of the Vic and Sade scripts, Paul Rhymer.
Shep’s final radio show was an extremely popular Sunday night program during the mid-1990s called Shepherd’s Pie. The show featured Shepherd reading his stories – unabridged and uninterrupted by commercials or breaks.
Later in his life, Shepherd said that he considered his radio years as “unimportant” compared to his writing and work on movies. This statement greatly saddened his legions of fans that followed him during his radio years.
Shepherd was married four times – his last wife was Leigh Brown who passed away in 1998. Jean Shepherd died on October 16, 1999 at age 78 in Sanibel, Florida.
Happy listening my friends,
