Portland Center Stage

The Man Behind The Story- The Legend of Jean Shepherd

Posted by cynpdx | 01 November 2010 | Comments (1)

Ralphie, Schwartz, Flick and the terrifying Scut Farkas may be beloved the world over thanks to a certain classic holiday film, but did you know that they began as recurring characters in the ramblings of a nonconformist late-night New York area radio DJ?

Jean Shepherd, the man behind the stories in A Christmas Story, spent the majority of his career as a radio raconteur, spinning yarns for a rabid cult audience of late night listeners he called “the Night People.” He claimed to prepare for 3 to 4 hours for each night’s broadcast, but his sound engineers said that he often showed up with just a few scraps of paper or some newspaper clippings.

The topic of his broadcasts? His memories of growing up in the Lake Michigan industrial town of Hammond, Indiana… with occasional side trips into topics as varied as the chief exports of Bolivia, the inner workings of a steel mill, how ham radio works, the aggression of man, King Tut and antique cars.

He was notorious for involving his listeners in pranks, the most famous of which succeeded in getting an imaginary book called I, Libertine onto the New York Times bestseller list. His listeners, which included transatlantic airline pilots, press agents and reporters, helped come up with the title and a fairly detailed fake biography for the author… then spread the rumor to gossip columnists and bookstores throughout the world. Ultimately, one of his listeners, a Wall Street Journal reporter, convinced Shepherd to let the world in on the joke- but by then the book was so “popular” that Ballantine Books asked Shepherd to make the hoax real. He complied, writing a real I, Libertine, with the assistance of science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon and Betty Ballantine.

The stories Shepherd told on his radio broadcasts often found later publication in magazines like Car and Driver, Playboy and Mad Magazine and were ultimately 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. One of these short stories, “Duel in the Snow, or Red Ryder Nails the Cleveland Street Kid,” became the kernel from which A Christmas Story grew into one of the most beloved holiday films of all time.

Was there ever a real Flick? Although Shepherd claimed all the characters in his stories were inventions, he did have childhood friends named Flick and Schwartz, and routinely referred to his real life father (a Borden Milk Company cashier) as his “old man.” No word on whether his house ever received a major award delivery marked “Fra-jee-lay.”

As a cross between Garrison Keillor and Spaulding Gray (and a precursor to both), Shepherd inspired a whole generation of comic writers and performers. Jack Kerouac reportedly modeled the DJ character in On the Road after him, and Jerry Seinfeld paid homage to Shepherd’s comic legacy by naming his third child “Shepherd.”

What makes Jean Shepherd’s story of a kid in a middle-American town, dreaming of very middle-American Christmas joy, so timeless? Shepherd would say that it was the storyteller’s voice, at once wryly aware of life’s small oppressions and defiantly joyous about the unspoiled childhood wonder of it all.

What about you? What were your childhood holiday high points? Looking back, can you still feel the joy (even as you recognize some of the silliness of it all?)