Jean Shepherd - "A Christmas Story"
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- čas přidán 19. 12. 2013
- On Christmas Eve of 1974, Jean Shepherd reads from the story that would later become the movie, "A Christmas Story", live on his long-running WOR-AM radio show. The short story was then called (in Playboy), "Duel In The Snow, Or, Red Ryder Nails the Cleveland Street Kid" -- also a chapter from Shepherd's 1966 book, "In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash". [Audio is public domain. Photo © by Fred W. McDarrah, used with permission.]
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Jean Shepard was such an amazing story writer and narrator!! I seen the movie "A Christmas Story" for the 1st time when I was about 5yrs old, I always loved this movie and to this day I still do!! There has never been a yr yet that I missed it once!! But always while watching it and listening to Jean narrate the movie I always wished if there was a way to go bk in time it would be then!! He made it sound so amazing!! And just how ppl dressed, the toys, the cars of that time, the music, how ppl acted towards one another bk then, and just how families stayed strong and stuck together more then they do these days...it truly must have been just as amazing as this story!! I'm so glad u had this to recording so I sincerely ty so much for sharing this!! This was just so amazing and truly awesome!!
Welcome Friend !
EXCELSIOR!!
I would also say to you friend,please don't Romanticize the past.I lived thru those times.You will find videos of Shep discussing this very topic.
To quote Ken Burns..." We don't repeat the past but we mimic it"
Flick Lives 😎
You must not be black.
Shepherd's "A Christmas Story" is an all time classic work of purely American literary and cinematic art. The movie is vaguely set either in the post- Depression or the post WWII era, take your pick. For those of us who are old enough to remember those days, Shep's own gritty childhood experiences powerfully resonate with our own. My parents who had lived through the hard times of the Depression and WWII were still doggedly climbing out of the economic darkness of those two cataclysmic events. They, and most of the parents of my friends, were still poor in the late '40s and early '50s, but the times were getting kinder, and they had hope of a brighter future. They wanted almost desperately to give us, their kids, the things they had been cruelly denied by economic circumstances beyond their control. In my case that was a Marx electric train set, and later, a heavy die-cast genuine Lionel steamer, racing around our Christmas tree. Such largesse was a sign of the times. Parents slowly allowed themselves to believe that things would continue to get better, and we kids became the spoiled generation. Oh well, it's not a perfect world, but this year my grandson sent me the greatest Christmas gift any kid would ever receive, a commemorative Red Ryder 200-shot Range Model air rifle, with a compass in the stock and this thing that tells time! My happiness is at its Zenith. Merry Christmas everyone, and to all a good night.
Perhaps -The- middle American epic…
TuneIn has a Jean Shepherd channel. Shows from the 60s until 1975 and after are run, nonstop. This is what I fall asleep to, just as I did in the 70s.
I wonder have you heard Joe Pera, maybe a contemporary equivalent in fall-asleep radio ( but on YT here )
I was lucky enough to listen to Jean Shepard when I was a boy on WOR in NY
Me too. And Long John Nebel after Shep. Excelsior!
There was no one else like Jean Shepherd. I used to listen to him every night, and even jerry-rigged a combination clock radio and reel-to-reel tape recorder to automatically switch on and record it if I knew I wasn't going to be home.
Do you still have the tapes? An eager listening world awaits!
I grew up listening to Jean Shepherd on WOR in the sixties. I had a little transistor radio that I would put under my pillow at night and listen to him tell stories. It’s one of the fondest memories of my childhood.
Same - and I suspect (or at least hope) millions others did the same.
Same and I got to tell him so.
@@ducksinarowpatience3670 My brother knew him, having recorded some of the music he played on the show. We grew up listening to every show. I just learned recently that he lived in the next town over in NJ. I wish I had known that at the time. He was brilliant. And I think ALL of his stuff is online.
Same here. I spent my allowance on 9 volt batteries.
Wow. I'm 30 and trying not to be jealous of those that grew up listening to it. My grandpa, Pop always said this story was exactly like his childhood. I miss him. Glad this whole portfolio of work is available here. I'll be slowly devouring it.
I lived in the D.C. area in 1974 and I remember listening to this story on the radio.
I really feel that radio has lost a lot. I would love to have radio shows again. I love to listen to these old shows. Talk shows that we have, are kind of lame.
They are. This was real radio.
We have podcasts and audiobooks now that Im sure you would enjoy 😂
Podcasts more than fill the void.
@@ChristopherSobieniak I know.I was there
Excelsior 😄
Amen, simple universal low cost low energy, true broadcast. (I mean, it’s here now but online, live streams in 4D so to speak and tailored to your interests 🙆🏻♀️♾️…
I always laugh to myself when Shep says " I feel sorry for those listening tonight who have nothing better to do "
I was in show businessin the 70s and after the last show we always listened to Shep 😂😂😂
One of the great story tellers, of radio times like this we will never have again. R.I.P. Gene 73's
This story, his narration, and the movie did such a magical job of capturing what the weeks leading up to Christmas morning was like for a little boy.
Jean Shepherd, one of America's greatest writers of humor. I've watched "A Christmas Story maybe 100 times. I know every line in the movie. My kids gave me the DVD of it where Shepherd, the director, Bob Clark, and most of the actors reminisce about things that happened during the shooting of the film. It's a classic!
The great storytellers know the second fundamental thing man discovered was "Tell me a story." Besides family tales, books and radio served us well in the Great Depression.
The Christmas season has always been a very grim and painful time for me as my family never celebrated. At school, it was especially challenging to see other kids exchanging gifts or retelling their wonderful Christmas experiences of opening gifts that Santa had brought and enjoying the love and happiness of their families. I was even forbidden from watching Christmas-themed movies or TV shows. Once I defied my parents and watched 'A Christmas Story'; for my sins, I was punished with a beating and sent to bed without dinner. I never regretted watching that amazing film though, it kinda made up for all those miserable Christmasses I spent alone in my room wishing I too could be a part of that Christmas Spirit.
I'm sorry. That had to be horrible.
That could make a movie or story. Take care.
All these years later, I've only just come across this recording. Shepherd is a fabulous story teller.
I absolutely love Jean Shepard's reading of a Christmas story
As a child in Seattle our public radio station , KUOW I think, had Jean Shepherd on in the evenings. My brother and I would get under the covers and listen softly because my father would complain when we would have the radio on after our bed time. Getting to listen to all of these again is great fun and they are just as good now as I remember the stories from their original broadcasts. Thank you.
Every home should own a copy of In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash. He was everywhere for a while there. Radio commercials had his voice. His short stories were in everything from TV Guide to Playboy.
I hear it now... his narration during the original movie is amazing but just sounds different. But now I hear it. This is true talent, pure oratory ability
Jean Shepherd was nothing if not a bona-fide genius!! Listening to this reminds me of how much I loved listening to radio. I've missed it.
Theater of the mind!
Yes, too bad real radio is long gone.
listened to Shep every night in high school. when I went to college my English 101 teacher accused me of plagiariing my first piece. he forced me to reproduce such work in his office. I did. he was impressed. "Who are your influences," he asked.
""Jean Shepherd, I boeasted.
"Never heard of him."
Tom Vardin I was in elementary school and listened to him every night on my transistor radio; 10:15pm on WOR. Went to see him at the Limelight Cafe and got his autograph for my 11th birthday.
Love that we get at least a glimpse in this story of the life of the adult “Ralphie”
Thank you Wil Wheaton for unearthing this again. And thank you to everyone who has archived terrific radio recordings! They are priceless! Shepherd has one of the best reading / narrating voices, ever. It really takes you back to the '30s / '40s.
Wil Wheaton? What does he have to do with it???
He must have posted it somewhere.
As a kid I used to listen to Shep every night at 10:14 on WOR Radio. Once a fan always a fan.
Jean was a treasure chest of the human experience!
Shep has been in my life since 1973. . . He always takes me there. . . God Bless You , Jean !
I was probably 10 when, at bed time I would discretely hide my Zenith Shortwave radio under the bed-covers and carefully tune in WOR. (I was living in Miami). That wonderful theme would come on, then those marvelous stories, told with amazing fluidity and turn of phrase. No one then, or since has matched the great Jean Shepherd...a MASTER.
Best raconteur ever! I began listening to Jean on WOR as a kid in the mid to late 60's. Still a huge fan!
You must have had a Trans World. With the whip fully extended. But it was the only station on 710. Did you know that Shep was a ham?
Barry Farber and Jean Shepherd thrummed the soothing lullabye of my life's juvenile sound track, droning out in AM ecstasy over the radio of our family Ford station wagon (ran on premium!), growing up on Long Island. Today, it seems like a mythical land, a virtual Narnia, a fantastical place that only wafts in and out of my conscious memory making me doubt it was ever there. But it was! What a GREAT time to grow up a kid in New York. We had Bob and Ray too! And Marty Glickman trumpeting out the weekly heroics of Joe Namath's NY Jets.
I am older but loved A Christmas Story. Listening to Jean Shepherd's recordings proves he was quite the story teller, with a special insight into a boy's heart. I find myself more nostalgic as time passes, for those childhood days of the 50s and 60s. They did exist, if now only in my heart and mind. I wonder if kids today will look back on these days as simpler times. Hard to imagine.
I snuck backstage at one of his Princeton performances. I introduced myself and thanked him. He shook my hand repeating, poor Jennifer. Freaked me out still does.
What did he mean by "poor Jennifer?"
@jamesmacrandal7578 THAT'S the mystery. I was a very young and pretty lady at the time. I think he was just being a joker, my mom at that time said he was just being flirtatious. The weird thing is I have had a rather difficult life. My big brother kids me all the time whenever anything goes wrong for me ( which is often ) and he refers to it. I'll never know. I didn't ask. I was speechless. He said, poor Jennifer, poor poor Jennifer,. Yeah he freaked me out and jinxed me.
I listened to Shepherd as both a high school and college student. I so enjoyed his monologues as I labored over my art table doing art class assignments. He was a one-of-a-kind storyteller. My wife and I watch "A Christmas Story" whenever it comes on. I continue to laugh as much as ever. The humor and humanity in the movie never grow old. It is indeed a classic.
The radio commercials on here are almost as entertaining as Jean reading the story!
my parents used to listen to Jean together on the radio in Boston when I was born in 1964. What a wonderful memory thinking of my mom and dad together back then...thanks!
Between his delivery and his amazing vocabulary, he told a story like no one else.
ah, what a great story, no one will ever match Jean Shepherd-this is better than the movie! RIP Jean
A classic !
Shep's story is forever part of Christmas, and no one told this story better than he did.
As a young ham,, I used to check into to 75 meters just to talk to and more often listen to Jean hold court and tell stories.
I didn't realize what a unique treat it would be... Great Memories !!
Apart from my Elmer, Shep was one who inspired me to get my ticket. WV2ECZ.
this is amazing👍🏻his voice is just amazing.
I was just a kid when I listened to Jean Shepherd. I so wish I'd been able to record his broadcasts. Listening to his stories bring back such good memories.
They are all online.....
This would make a good movie.
Would never translate!
It was the greatest movie e er !! Rent it. Buy it.
And now a sequel
Wise up, smartass!
I love that the commercials are left in, since heaven know, Shepherd could have a field day with even the simplest live tag. As far as the General Tire spots, *somewhere* I have a multitude of cassettes with his shows, including the night he opened the live copy with "so when are you gonna' get rid of those baldies you've been riding around on for months?" - I got to to meet him and get an autographed copy of Ferrari In The Bedroom when he did a signing at (the late, lamented) A&S in Hempstead. He was mock-amazed that a 12 year old would really actually read the book. I heard it in his voice.
You should upload those cassettes for preservation same at bare minimum. Please!
@@captainyoni If I can ever find them...
I was 12 as well when I met him. By then I had been listening to him for years, initially under my bed covers with my radio pressed to my ear as it was past my bedtime. My mother and stepfather eventually gave up trying enforce the "Go to Sleep!!" thing after I made them listen to the show one night. This led to my stepfather writing an article about him for the Princeton Packet and consequently my getting to go back stage at Alexander Hall to meet him after his performance. Fond memories.
@@ibgreen1998Please let me know if you ever find those Jean Shepherd cassettes! I have all the equipment necessary to convert them to digital format.
An American Classic. Right up there with Mark Twain and Dorothy Parker.
And a little Will Rogers.
Timeless voice!
The movie had gotten a little stale for me but this radio program has made this story fun again. Mr. Shepherd was a real performer. Thank you sir, wherever you are, for making this special again.
Great comment!! I think that I was feeling the same way.
He's gotta be in Heaven. God surely has a great ironic sense of humor, and He gave us the great story tellers and humorists like Mark Twain and Jean Shepherd to make life endurable, even enjoyable. God said, "Go forth and make people laugh." Shepherd heard Him, and delivered. We are all grateful and blessed for it!
I saw jean at alexander hall princeton u around this time.There were no restrooms in alexander hall.He said thats why the shrubs were so tall........
I snuck backstage at one of his Princeton performances. I introduced myself and thanked him. He shook my hand repeating, poor Jennifer. Freaked me out still does.
He was and is an American Classic. Every Christmas, I thank him for his gift to us of A Christmas Story. I was first introduced to him on Jean Sheperd's America on PBS around 1970. His style instantly hooked me. He is more than a wordsmith.
I recall, many years ago, reading, "Leopold Doppler & The Great Orpheum Theater Gravy Boat Riot", thinking then(and, now)it was one of the finest pieces, ever, I'd read. I can't wait to hear Mr. Shepherd read this!
czcams.com/video/pqGNj9563-Q/video.htmlfeature=shared
Can you believe he wood be one hundred years old this year!!!
And his broadcasts and wonderful stories are still so current.
Playboy books left in the bathroom were my introduction. Lived for his stories. Not many. So sad.
what other books did he write? want to biy all, great literary writer.
@@deeramone6328 "Wanda Hickey's Night Of Golden Memories: And Other Disasters" (1970) is another of Jean's brilliant books.
Every Friday nite I would listen to him on wAMC Albany medical college radio I think.i was around 12 at the time that was 1971 then Sunday at 7pm he was on public TV wgbh Boston I love to hear and see his shows. I'm glad I grew up when I did I was the last an era when you could really be a kid and enjoy it.
Thank you for uploading this.
Phantom of the open hearth was his "exile on main st" his peak!
Thank You for posting this on You Tube!! I listened to Shep as a kid with my Dad on good old WOR 710 AM out of NYC.He was one of America's greatest story tellers. It makes me so happy that Shep's "A Christmas Story" will mean his memory will continue on. Excelsior!
Merry Christmas 2020!!
Wow, I had no idea this was on CZcams till just now. Thanks for posting it.
During my kiddom years I would go to bed with my transistor radio listening to Jean under my covers. Later on I would not miss Jean Sheperd's America on TV. Years later my husband came home and announced he had hired my favorite storyteller to write a piece for his company's magazine! I wanted desperately to meet him but it never happened...
Also listened to Jean Sheppard on my little transistor radio in bed- I get chills when I hear the opening theme to the show-
I did I snuck backstage at one of his Princeton performances. I introduced myself and thanked him. He shook my hand repeating, poor Jennifer. Freaked me out still does.
WOR was a great radio station back in the day. This is great radio. Jean was what he said he was...a performer!
The Gamblings, Long John Nebel..... and lots in between.
73's to a legend
Best Christmas story ever. I have been following Gene Sheppard since Junior Hich school back in the 1950s.
Upload your stories man. I'd love to hear it. I've been a huge talk radio guy for a long time...it would make for good listening.
I think I enjoyed this as much as if not more than the movie. I've read the book, but Jean's voice and delivery make it all the better.
Shepherd also narrates the film. That is one of the things I love about the film. I remember when he used to be on National Public Radio with Jean Shepherd's America. Loved the guy.
Still pranging ducks on the wing, and making spectacular hip shots
Merry Christmas
Back in the early 70's Jean did a stand up gig at Council Rock High School in Bucks County, PA. The school was located on Swamp Road. Well you can imagine, Jean had a field day making fun of this school on "Swamp" Road. It was here that he realized, once and for all, and finally, that he had hit the big time!
joewhlm I grew up in New Hope....graduated in ‘77
I was there. His opening line was “ Its great to be here at Council Rock High school on Swamp Rd., the only problem was that I had to go though New Jersey ro get here”. He always made fun of New Jersey. I got to go back stage and meet him and get his autograph.
And I thought he only made fun of Jersey!
Thank you for this!
This is a great listen. Yeah I grew up with the movie a Christmas Story...I just can imagine the father being an Oldsmobileman, and a Furnace Fighter.
Excited for this 😀💜🍭🎅❄🎄
This was great!
Thank you for posting this! I love Jean's reminiscences. I just listened to Dick Cavett read the stories that were cobbled together to make A Christmas Story, including this one and he didn't hold a candle to Shep.
Donald Fagen of Steely Dan was a big fan of Jean Shepherd. That tells you something right there.
He mentioned JS in an interview with David Dye on World Cafe. That is what brought me here.
twostikks1 "I'm Lester the Nightfly...hello Baton Rouge!"
Wow that fact that he is reading the book is amazing.
Reading WHAT book?
@@catholicdad "In God We Trust - All Others Pay Cash". THAT book. Merry Christmas!
@@nuwavedave I thought we were listening to "A Christmas Story"
Listen to the introduction again.
What a World of difference between then and now. Literally it has changed for the worst in just about every way. This broadcast was aired 5 weeks before my 7th birthday; one that I remember vividly. Christmas Carolers still went door to door. At least they did in my quaint small neighborhood in a northern Detroit suburb.
Brilliant
g-d this is wonderful, why couldn't this be in the movie!?
Ollie hopnoodles haven of bliss is a movie from Jean Shepard originally I watched it on pbs very funny!!
Flick lives!
SPOILER ALERT! Don't read this if you don't know Shep's story.
I got my Daisy BB gun for Xmas. My buddies, Junior and Jerry, regularly shot each other to know real impact. Although I recall bawling out of shock. Junior apologized by saying he was aiming at me!
Later I went out to target shoot. The target was a sieve (it had been a 45 mph sign) that grown-ups with grown-up guns that mutilated. Carefully aiming, I fired -- I SHOT MY EYE OUT. No, like Shep the BB came straight back hitting the bone a half inch from my eye. I don't believe my story, for all tea in China I couldn't repeat that shot. Nor would I want to.
If you like this check out Ollie Hopnoodle, the little known sequel movie by the same author!
None of the movies that followed "Christmas Story" had Shepherd's influence, and doth stinketh mightily.
Fun fact: Jean Shepherd is the voice of the Father in the current version of the Carousel of Progress.
czcams.com/video/CmrSiJTMf7s/video.html
Jean Shepherd passed a few years back.
@@Hespeakstruth Jean died in 1999. But the voice of the father in Walt Disney's Carousel of Progress that started in 1993 is Jean Shepherds voice to this day. And should ALWAYS be. ;)
Dani Tempest 0
Thanks. I didn't know about CoP. What the hell is it? Reminds me of Ned Flanders.
36 people didn't like this?
They were deaf...couldn't hear it :'(
I know right?
If I remember correctly he had a live radio show on Saturday nights from Greenwich village. Can recall the club it was in but I know me and a friend went several times A year to see him live. It may have been a club called "your father's mustache"
It was called The Limelight.
@@greenteablend Later known as Slimelight
Oh the graphics.
👍🎅
Has this been released on cd ?
Yes, just search on Ebay or Amazon. The MP3 collections on DVD are best.
For the record. The above description says that the story was written in 1966. It was in fact written well before that. It was published in 1961.
FALSE!... “Red Ryder Nails the Hammond Kid,” Playboy, 12/1965, then in IN GOD WE TRUST 1966 titled “Duel in the Snow or Red Ryder Nails the Cleveland Street Kid.” [Source: shepquest.wordpress.com/category/playboy/page/2/]
Jean Shepherd himself says that it was published in 1961 at the 18:12 mark
@@richpetitt and Jean Shepherd never stretched the truth ;)
I can't imagine a "millennial" writing such a story -- "...where only I, and I, alone, stood between our tiny, huddled family and insensate evil." And so on.
Awesome.
It's weird to hear Ralphie doing on-air spots.
+rabid rabbitshuggers I remember hearing a commercial about ice cream read by him that played on Chicago radio in the 80s. I should still have it somewhere. If I find it, I'll post it.
Jean Shepherd & Mason Addams has the exact voice.
You're high. They're both old men, but sound totally different.
Back when people had imagination.
Don’t ruin Jean Shepard with un-ironic “back when” talk.
If only the music was lower in the back
There was a reason...in the store as Ralphie heads to Santa, shaking with fear, the music to him, was LOUD, even though in the store, it wasn't. BTW, the NY Football Giants are the ones sing "Jingle Bells"..
Jean Shepherd takes artistic license in telling about his Red Ryder B-B gun. He would have been 18 or 19 at the time the rifle was manufactured. He was born in 1921 and the rife came out in 1938. Also, the rifle did not have a compass nor a sundial...However, the Buck Jones Daisy Air Rifle, which came out in 1934, did have these features. However the Red Ryder carbine, because of its wide popularity and advertising on the backs of comic books was more familiar to readers of that generation.
Mike Newton he says that this story isn’t about him. He says it in this very recording and almost every thing I’ve listened to. He is not Ralph Parker.
Artistic license (and really funny!)
It's a story. Not a complete biography.
Perfect attention to detail. Merry Christmas two years later.
@@cjmeano2184 Then again Ralphie was kind of based off of Jean Shepherd as a kid even if none of the events in his stories actually happened.
The 13 dislikes must be Stern fans. There all dead from the knees up!
No need for that.
100
Fra - JEE - lay.... must be Italian...
that Fra - JEE - lay was repeated by anyone reading fragile on a box for the next 20 years...what a tribute to a great movie
It happened to me this week. My apprentice saw it on a box and said it. I, in turn said that it must be Italian.
And still is, at least in our family!
I wonder if Stuart McLean is influenced by this guy?
Maybe. In Montreal he could have received WOR. A different kind of genius.
@@barrybogart5436 Can you explain “ WOR” please?
Thanks for the reply.
@@deanmccaskill5495 The answer is here:
@rossa31415
I grew up listening to Jean Shepherd on WOR in the sixties.
@@barrybogart5436 I see. You mean McLean could heard him on that station. Went right over my head. Thanks!
Where's Ralphie. And his dad,mon ,an his little brother. Oh well
Adult Ralphie is the narrator.
Wonder what Jean would have to say about the covidplandemic. Gosh I miss him.
Was Tom Leykis as talented as Jean Shepherd?
who?
You're funny!
Do you mean Tom Lehrer? A pretty close second, IMHO.
No