Fire this Jean Shepherd guy--he talks too much.

[raccoonradio]

...A crummy commercial!

http://cincinnati.com/blogs/tv/2012/12/12/a-look-at-jean-shepherds-cincinnati/

 

[LKellerIII]

Are you joking? Jean Shepherd died 14 years ago. I'm sick to death of A Christmas Story, which he wrote and narrated. But in the late 70s, Shephed did radio essays that were syndicated to stations around the country. I always found them witty and entertaining.

 

[rnigma1]

I remember his books "A Fistful of Fig Newtons" and "Excelsior, You Fathead!"

In 1976 (four years before "A Christmas Story"), Shepherd wrote and narrated a PBS TV-movie, "Phantom of the Open Hearth," the further adventures of the Ralphie character as a teenager on his first date.

And back in his earlier radio days, Shepherd ranted at length about a book he read called "I, Libertine," and how salacious he thought it was. Soon people were asking for the book at libraries and bookstores. The only problem? The book existed only in Shepherd's imagination...at first. Then an enterprising publisher hired famed SF author Theodore Sturgeon to write "I, Libertine" and it soon hit bookshelves.

 

[sack]

Actually Shep had a few books. In God We Trust (all others pay cash), Wanda Hickeys Night of Golden Memories (and other disasters). A Ferarri in the Bedroom and Fist Full of Fignewtons.
Excelsior, You Fathead was a recent biography by Eugene Bergman. Apparently he has another one on the way.
Also on PBS there was a series called Shepherds Pie, a typically Shepherd look at "Americana" (as he called it).
There are also recordings available of some of his radio shows, and a set of short stories he recorded also called Shepherds Pie. Not sure if they are still available.
Everyone knows "The Christmas Story" but there is another movie which never was popular, "My Summer Story" or sometimes called "It Runs in the Family". Different cast, set years later, but its Sheps stories narrated by himself,,, gotta love it.

 

[News6397]

Remberance of Jean Shepherd by Donald Fagen (of Steely Dan)
[[url]http://www.slate.com/articles.../the_man_who_told_a_christmas_story.html/url]

 

[rnigma1]

Actually Shep had a few books. In God We Trust (all others pay cash), Wanda Hickeys Night of Golden Memories (and other disasters). A Ferarri in the Bedroom and Fist Full of Fignewtons.
Excelsior, You Fathead was a recent biography by Eugene Bergman. Apparently he has another one on the way.

Oh, so "Excelsior, You Fathead!" was about Shepherd, not by him.... (note to self: must not post when tired)

 

[LKellerIII]

Thanks for all that info on Jean Shepherd, above. As I mentioned, I stumbled into his radio essays in the late 70s and became a fan. But other than those essays and A Christmas Story, I knew nothing much about him.

 

[pqgeorge]

A lot of people truly enjoy Shep's wit and wisdom to this day. Shep's original WOR broadcasts from 1953 through 1974 are heard every Sunday night at 11:00 PM Eastern on WXRB-FM/95.1, a non-commercial educational FM station from Dudley, MA. You can hear 'XRB on-line at http://wxrbfm.com or just check out http://tunein.com and specify "WXRB". The rest of the week it's all-oldies in Stereo from 1954-1980.

 

[FreddyE1977]

Ranks right up there with Rush Limbaugh being fired for using the word "therefore" too often and
confusing the audience. And Myron Cope getting hired because the station manager told him that
"we see a trend in this industry towards lousy voices".

 

[Ultimajock]

And back in his earlier radio days, Shepherd ranted at length about a book he read called "I, Libertine," and how salacious he thought it was. Soon people were asking for the book at libraries and bookstores. The only problem? The book existed only in Shepherd's imagination...at first. Then an enterprising publisher hired famed SF author Theodore Sturgeon to write "I, Libertine" and it soon hit bookshelves.

...actually, the I, Libertine hoax started as a conspiracy between Shep and his WOR New York listeners in the summer of 1956, just over a year after Shep had moved his show from KYW Philadelphia to WOR. Shep thought the best-seller lists of books and records that newspapers published in the mid-'50s were fraudulent, and to prove it he had his "Night People" listeners phone in ideas on a bogus volume of some sort that, come the morning, they'd try to order from bookstores to see if the demand for the title would place it on any of the best-seller lists. Between Shepherd and the listeners, the title I, Libertine, the name and personae of the author (BBC lecturer Frederick R. Ewing), and the general outline of the book's content (a collection of erotic stories dating to 17th and 18th Century England, supposedly causing its being banned in Boston), were concocted by the end of that night's show. Sure enough, it popped up on the New York Times list simply from the requests made at dozens of bookstores in the New York City metropolitan area. By the end of the summer, even newspaper columnists like Earl Wilson and Dorothy Kilgallen were running blurbs about having allegedly had lunch in NYC with Ewing and chatting about the book. Sturgeon and publisher Ian Ballantine, both listeners of Shep's program and in on the gag early on, met with Shep and agreed to put a book together that would become the actual novel I, Libertine, with a photo of Shep on the back identified as Ewing and the text written by Sturgeon. Betty Ballantine, the publisher's wife, completed the novel's text after Sturgeon, during a marathon writing session at the Ballantines' home, fell asleep at the typewriter hours before the editing deadline. The novel was finally published in both hardcover and paperback on 13 September 1956...

 

[rnigma1]

Thanks, King Daevid, for refreshing me with the details on the "I, Libertine" hoax... sounds like a precursor of the stunts Howard Stern would later pull.