Robert Lewis Shayon (August 15, 1912 – June 28, 2008) was a writer and producer for WOR and for the CBS Radio in

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

. He was also a teacher at the Annenberg School for Communication and the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of f ...

Biography

He was born in

Brooklyn Brooklyn is a Boroughs of New York City, borough of New York City located at the westernmost end of Long Island in the New York (state), State of New York. Formerly an independent city, the borough is coextensive with Kings County, one of twelv ...

on August 15, 1912. His mother died in 1918 when he was 6, and his father, who was an insurance salesman, later married a woman who had her own children. By the late 1920s, he was homeless and sleeping on park benches. He took odd jobs in theaters and occasionally he read poetry on the radio. There he met the Australian opera singer Leah Frances Russell (1891–1983), who became his mentor and benefactor. She introduced him to her daughter, Sheila Russell, whom he later married. They were married for 47 years, until her death in 1983. Shayon died on June 28, 2008, in

Frankfort, Kentucky Frankfort is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of Kentucky. It is a list of Kentucky cities, home rule-class city and the county seat, seat of Franklin County, Kentucky, Franklin County in the Upland Sou ...

Radio programs

*Operation Crossroads (1946) *The Eagle's Brood (1947)

Books authored

*Interaction: television public affairs programming at the community level (1960) *Open to criticism (1971) *The Crowd-catchers; Introducing Television (1973) *Odyssey in Prime Time (2001)

References

Other sources

Oral history interview
with Shayon in the Columbia Center for Oral History Research collection {{DEFAULTSORT:Shayon, Robert Lewis 1912 births 2008 deaths Hollywood blacklist Deaths from pneumonia in Kentucky American homeless people Writers from Brooklyn American radio producers Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania faculty