Jan Shepard was born Joanna Sorbello on March 19 1928 in Quakertown, Pennsylvania. She acted in plays when she attended Quakertown High School. She was also a cheerleader, a drum majorette, and the valedictorian of her class. She moved to Los Angeles in 1949. She joined the Ben Bard Players. a theatre company that had been founded by actor and comedian Ben Bard. She later trained at the Pasadena Playhouse. To make a living she worked as a secretary at n I. Magnin department store. She shared an apartment with Amanda Blake, who would later become famous as Miss Kitty on Gunsmoke.
Jan Shepard made her television debut on an episode of Fireside Theatre in 1952. In the Fifties she appeared on the shows Death Valley Days, I Married Joan, Big Town, Ford Television Theatre, Schlitz Playhouse of Stars, Captain Midnight, The Adventures of Kit Carson,The Loretta Young Show, My Little Margie, Public Defender, Stage 7, TV Reader's Digest, The Man Behind the Badge, The Lone Ranger, Tales of the Texas Rangers, Private Secretary, Screen Directors Playhouse, It's a Great Life, Waterfront, The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, Crossroads, The Man Called X, Sergeant Preston of Yukon, Circus Boy, Science Fiction Theatre, Code 3, Official Detective, The Gray Ghost, The Californians, Target, Trackdown, Highway Patrol, The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin, Richard Diamond Private Detective, Wichita Town, The Man and the Challenge, Wanted: Dead or Alive, Tombstone Territory,. Philip Marlowe, Grand Jury, and U.S. Marshal. She had a recurring role as Nurse Betty on the syndicated show Dr.Christian. She made her movie debut in Sabre Jet in 1959. In the Fifties she appeared in the moves Burden of Truth (1957), King Creole (1958), and Attack of the Giant Leeches (1958).
In the Sixties Jan Shepard was a regular on the soap opera The Clear Horizon appeared in the movies Third of a Man (1962), Della (1965), and Paradise, Hawaiian Style (1966). She appeared on the TV shows Dante, Rawhide, Bat Masterson, Gunslinger, Assignment: Underwater, Stagecoach West. Lock Up, The Brothers Brannagan, Cain's Hundred, Bus Stop, Lawman, King of Diamonds, Laramie, The Lloyd Bridges Show, G.E. True, Kraft Suspense Theatre, Perry Mason, Convoy, The Long Hot Summer, Bonanza, A Man Called Shenandoah, Teh Road West, Gunsmoke, Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color, Ironside, Mannix, The F.B.I., The High Chaparral, Land of the Giants, The Virginian, Then Came Bronson, Marcus Welby M.D., and This is the Life. She appeared in the TV movie The Doomsday Flight.
In the Seventies she appeared in the shows Longstreet and The Rookies. She appeared in the TV movie That Certain Summer.
While Jan Shepard played Elvis's sister in King Creole, I have to think she may be best known for her work in television. She appeared on Perry Mason four times along, from playing a politician's wife accursed of murder in "The Case of the Paper Bullets" to a race car driver's wife in "The Case of the Runaway Racer." She appeared in multiple Western TV shows, including three appearances on Rawhide. In the TV Westerns she played everything a woman working with a band of renegades in the Bat Masterson episode "Bullwhacker's Bounty' to the fiancee of a drover addicted to morphine in the Rawhide episode "Incident at the Top of the World" to a woman coerced into lying about a murder in the Laramie episode "The Jailbreakers." Jan Shepard was certainly versatile.
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