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January 12, 1989

Alan Colmes Show

Station: WMCA

Alan Colmes interviews Shep at his home in Florida, over the phone. Shep tells how he came to New York to do Broadway by Leonard Silman for "New Faces" and while they were in rehearsal, he took a job at WOR to "make some bread" in the meantime. He talks about radio being in the advertising business. He considers his work as kind of an art and commercials tend to be distracting, but he did the best he could to weave them in. They take calls from listeners. One is Bob Gafney, a friend of Shep who worked with him on "Light Fantastic". Bob made the movie "Frankenstein Meets The Space Monster" He talks about preparing for his show, working on new ideas, and the making of "A Christmas Story" Shep was approached by George Skinner of NBC regarding working for them. He remembers this because it was the day President Kennedy was shot and they were sitting in the restaurant when news hit. Talks about writing for Village Voice and the Realist. He was part of the Hippie movement. Said he is the "Angel Haired Hippie" in John Kerouac's book "On The Road" Some dialog regarding radio: AC: "How many years was the WOR show in production?" JS: "Uh... we stareted uh...let me think here now... we started, uh ..during the time of Kennedy...about '63...'62 something like that....'60.....'61.... and left the air there in 1977." AC: "That's a pretty good run, huh?" JS: "Well, I... yeah,.... you know, I could have continued, but at that point I started to get involved with movies and I was doing the TV show on PBS, and it was just getting to be too much..... You know, it was like I was running around ..... uh, you can't scrape yourself too thin Alan, and if you do, some of your work has got to suffer and I just didn't want my radio work to suffer.... I said look, I've done a good run on it, I've done it, and that was it....." AC: "Did WOR make entreaties to get you to stay?" JS: "Oh yeah, they wanted.... of course, you know, we'd been there for years, but it was... they understood, and it was one of those things....that just finally came to the point where I just simply said 'Loook, uh.....' In fact they said 'Are you gonna spend more time here in town doing the show, or do you want to go out to the coast to do those movies?....' I said 'Well, I'd better move on.' " AC: "And have other stations since then come across with offers to lure you back?" JS:"Oh yeah, there's been a couple of NY stations that wanted me to do .... you know they were... they gave me a blank check for ideas and all that stuff... I don't want to get back into that grind, you know, every day having to be there ......"
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