Mike Teacher
11-27-2003, 05:05 AM
"A Christmas Story" is a great movie, but that's not the way it went down.
Sadly, the name Jean Shepherd isn't the household name it once was. But back in the day; he owned the airwaves. WOR at night, baby. Too long of a tale for here.
Shepherd wrote too. And well. He was being printed in Playboy when other new authors named Plimpton and Capote and Michner and Chrichton. He had a best seller with a book titled "In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash."
"A Christmas Story" is actually the re-doing of a chapter from that book called "Duel in the Snow: or, Red Ryder Nails the Cleveland Street Kid" and all I will say is, it's exactly like the movie in some places, but a Completely different setting. Here, a guy in packed Manhattan shopping stops at an Automat for some food, and spaces out, and the entire story takes place in his head. Wonderful. And actually, not meant for a kid's audience at all. This was printed in Playboy, back when that meant something.
Anyway; Shepherd would read a condensed version of the story on WOR on some Christmas Eve nights. The voice will be familiar if you've seen the movie, as Shep narrates the movie.
Why all of this? Well; I have the MP3 of Shepherd reading this on-air on Christmas Eve 1974. Us old folks might note that's a shade under 30 years ago. He told it as only he could, with Awesomely un-PC 1974 radio commercials. This was a radio event people got the recorders out for in droves, hence its existence.
Sadly for the bandwidth challenged, it's a 45 minute long, 10 MB file. It's public domain; meaning it's anyone's for the asking; email me and its yours. I'll cut it up if you're on dial up, but that's still quite a download. So, in the spirit of things just PM me with your addy, and a CD-R is on the way.
[Edit: Not sure how the Mods feel about PMs and addresses going through the site. So if you want, go through my site and email me, I'm a teacher, I keep this kind of info private for a living]
www.miketheteacher.com (http://www.miketheteacher.com)
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This message was edited by Mike Teacher on 11-27-03 @ 9:12 AM
Sadly, the name Jean Shepherd isn't the household name it once was. But back in the day; he owned the airwaves. WOR at night, baby. Too long of a tale for here.
Shepherd wrote too. And well. He was being printed in Playboy when other new authors named Plimpton and Capote and Michner and Chrichton. He had a best seller with a book titled "In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash."
"A Christmas Story" is actually the re-doing of a chapter from that book called "Duel in the Snow: or, Red Ryder Nails the Cleveland Street Kid" and all I will say is, it's exactly like the movie in some places, but a Completely different setting. Here, a guy in packed Manhattan shopping stops at an Automat for some food, and spaces out, and the entire story takes place in his head. Wonderful. And actually, not meant for a kid's audience at all. This was printed in Playboy, back when that meant something.
Anyway; Shepherd would read a condensed version of the story on WOR on some Christmas Eve nights. The voice will be familiar if you've seen the movie, as Shep narrates the movie.
Why all of this? Well; I have the MP3 of Shepherd reading this on-air on Christmas Eve 1974. Us old folks might note that's a shade under 30 years ago. He told it as only he could, with Awesomely un-PC 1974 radio commercials. This was a radio event people got the recorders out for in droves, hence its existence.
Sadly for the bandwidth challenged, it's a 45 minute long, 10 MB file. It's public domain; meaning it's anyone's for the asking; email me and its yours. I'll cut it up if you're on dial up, but that's still quite a download. So, in the spirit of things just PM me with your addy, and a CD-R is on the way.
[Edit: Not sure how the Mods feel about PMs and addresses going through the site. So if you want, go through my site and email me, I'm a teacher, I keep this kind of info private for a living]
www.miketheteacher.com (http://www.miketheteacher.com)
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This message was edited by Mike Teacher on 11-27-03 @ 9:12 AM