American playwright, actor, and director Samuel Shepard Rogers III made significant contributions to theater, cinema, and literature over the course of 50 years. Shepard, who comes from a line of teachers, fell in love with jazz, abstract expressionism, and Samuel Beckett during his college years. While residing in New York City in 1962, he was exposed to the Off-Off-Broadway theater community. In 1964, he finished writing his debut play, “Cowboys.” He spent the first several years of his career primarily working on stage productions, but in 1969, he co-wrote the script for the family drama “Me and My Brother.” Shepard started acting in 1970 and over the years became well-known as a character actor, first in movies and then on television. For his role in “The Right Stuff,” Shepard even received an Oscar nomination. As he developed as a writer and intellectual, his tremendous body of work underwent significant change, moving from the absurdism of his early plays to the realism of his later pieces. He is regarded as one of the most prominent playwrights and screenwriters of the contemporary era and garnered ten Obie Awards for writing and directing, the most of any writer or director, in addition to the 1979 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Early Childhood & Life
Samuel Shepard Rogers III, the sole child of Jane Elaine (née Schook) and Samuel Shepard Rogers, Jr., was born on November 5, 1943, in Fort Sheridan, Illinois. He was frequently referred to as Steve Rogers when he was younger.
He was a farmer, teacher, and US Air Force officer who served as a bomber pilot during World War II; Shepard frequently referred to him as a “drinking man, a determined alcoholic.” His mother was from Chicago and was a teacher as well. Sandy Rogers and Roxanne Rogers were his sisters.
He graduated in 1961 from Duarte High School in Duarte, California. He had worked on a ranch as a young man. For a short time, he enrolled at the Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut, California, to study animal husbandry.
A traveling theater troupe called the Bishop’s Company Repertory Players visited his town in 1962. Shepard, who was already a devoted supporter of the modern-theatre movement, joined the group when they left their house and spent the next two years with them before relocating to New York.
Playwright and screenwriter careers
While working as a busboy at the Village Gate nightclub in New York, Samuel Shepard Rogers III met Ralph Cook, the establishment’s head waiter, who introduced him to the world of professional theater. He made the decision to use “Sam Shepard” as his professional name during this time, and although his plays were performed at many Off-Off-Broadway theaters, he was most closely associated with Cook’s Theatre Genesis.
Together with his then-girlfriend Patti Smith, he co-wrote the play “Cowboy Mouth” in 1971. In the play’s debut performance at The American Place Theatre in New York, Smith and Shepard, who were inspired by their own relationship, took on the roles of Cavale and Slim, the two main protagonists. He left the play after opening night because he’d never felt at ease on stage in front of a live audience.
Additionally, he wrote the screenplay for Bob Dylan’s 1975 film “Renaldo and Clara,” which the latter directed.
He joined Magic Theatre as playwright-in-residence in 1975, and for them, he penned some of his best pieces, such as the “Family Trilogy”Curse “‘s of the Starving Class” (1976), “Buried Child” (1978), and “True West” (1980).
Sam Shepard penned “The God of Hell,” which made its debut in 2004, in response to the sad events of September 11, 2001. His final piece, “A Particle of Dread,” a contemporary rendition of Sophocles’ “Oedipus Rex,” made its debut in 2014.
Career in Acting
Sam Shepard had his first significant on-screen debut as an actor in Terrence Malick’s “Days of Heaven” (1978). For his performance as Chuck Yeager, Colonel, USAF, in the 1983 American historical epic “The Right Stuff,” he was nominated for an Academy Award. He appeared in the 1985 movie version of his own play, “Fool for Love,” alongside Kim Basinger.
He primarily appeared in television movies on the tiny screen. He made his television debut in 1995’s TNT western adventure telefilm “The Good Old Boys” as Snort Yarnell. In the 1999 western fantasy “Purgatory,” he played Wild Bill Hickok and Sheriff Forrest. In the 2007 ABC television series “Ruffian,” he played thoroughbred trainer Frank Whiteley.
He had a rare appearance on television in the main cast of the Netflix original thriller-drama “Bloodline” from 2015 to 2017.
Major Works of Sam Shepard
Sam Shepard performed ‘Buried Child,’ his 24th play. An instant sensation, it was an unflinching portrayal of the breakdown of the American nuclear family, with despair and disappointment serving as the background, and American mythology and the American Dream. The play can also be seen as a poignant eulogy for traditional family structures and values as well as an honest observation of the rural economic collapse of the 1970s.
It was among Shepard’s most commercially successful pieces. In addition to earning him the Pulitzer Prize and an Obie, it received five Tony Award nominations. Since its June 27, 1978, Magic Theatre debut in San Francisco, it has gone on to be played all over the world, including on Broadway and the West End.
Recognition & Achievements
Ten Obie Awards went to Sam Shepard. Four of them were the Best Distinguished Play(s) for “Chicago,” “Icarus’ Mother,” and “Red Cross” in 1966; “La Turista” in 1967; “Forensic and the Navigator” and “Melodrama Play” in 1968; and “The Tooth of Crime” in 1973. The remaining three were for “The Tooth of Crime” in 1973. Two were for “Action” in 1975 and “Buried Child” in 1979, both for Best Playwriting. Two were “Curse the Starving Child” in 1977 and “Fool for Love” in 1984, both for Best New American Play.
He received the Pulitzer Prize in 1979 for his play “Buried Child.”
In 1994, he was admitted to the American Theatre Hall of Fame.
He received the American Academy of Arts and Letters Awards’ Gold Medal for Drama in 1992.
Individual Life of Sam Shepard
Sam Shepard initially shared a residence in New York with Charlie Mingus Jr., a fellow young artist and close friend from high school. Additionally, he shared a residence with actress Joyce Aaron for a while.
He wed the actress O-Lan Jones in 1969. Jesse Mojo Shepard, a son of the union, was born (born 1970). He had a passionate relationship with poet, artist, and musician Patti Smith from 1970 to 1971, during which time they worked together on a number of projects. Shepard brought his family to London in the early 1970s after that relationship ended.
In 1975, Shepard came back to America. He first met Jessica Lange, an Academy Award-winning actress, in 1981 while they were working on the movie “Frances.” In 1983, they both moved, and Shepard and Jones were formally divorced in 1984. He has a son, Samuel Walker, and a daughter, Hannah Jane (1985), with Lange (1987). They eventually separated in 2009.
At the age of 73, he died at his Kentucky home on July 27, 2017. He had Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS).
Sam Shepard’s Net Worth
At the time of his passing in 2017, Sam Shepard, an American actor, dramatist, and director, had a net worth of $10 million. Shepard garnered Tony nods for “Buried Child” (1996) and “True West” for Best Play, as well as an Academy Award mention for his portrayal of Chuck Yeager in the 1983 movie “The Right Stuff” (2000). Additionally, he had three nominations for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama, winning for “Buried Child” in 1979. He also received nods for “True West” (1983) and “Fool for Love” (1984). (1984). Sam produced 58 plays, two novels (The One Inside and Spy of the First Person, both published in 2017), and numerous anthologies of essays and short tales.
Trivia
Shepard played in the rock group Holy Modal Rounders from 1968 to 1971. He used the guitar and the drums.
His sole book, “The One Inside,” was released in 2017.