Richard Shepherd (producer)

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Richard Shepherd (born Richard Allen Silberman; June 4, 1927 – January 14, 2014) was an American film producer. He was born in Kansas City, Missouri, and studied journalism at Stanford University. After college, he worked for Lew Wasserman at MCA, selling syndicated TV shows. In the early 1950s, facing anti-Semitism, he changed his name from Silberman to Shepherd. He served in the U.S. Army, writing for Stars and Stripes in Germany after World War II. After leaving MCA, he formed Jurow-Shepherd Productions with Martin Jurow. Their first film was The Hanging Tree (1959) with Gary Cooper and Maria Schell, followed by The Fugitive Kind (1960), an adaptation of Tennessee Williams's Orpheus Descending, starring Marlon Brando and Anna Magnani. They signed a six-film deal with Paramount, which included an adaptation of Breakfast at Tiffany’s. The studio initially wanted to replace the Moon River song, but Shepherd and Jurow resisted.

In the 1960s, Shepherd became one of the first partners at Creative Management Associates, a leading talent agency. He later headed production at Warner Bros. (1970) and MGM (1976), and eventually founded his own agency, the Artists Agency, where he worked into his 70s. He first married Judith Mayer Goetz in 1954; they had three children—Scott, Tony, and Victoria—and divorced in 1978. He married Patricia in 1979 and they had a son, Christopher. Shepherd died in Los Angeles on January 14, 2014, at age 86 from kidney failure. He produced and oversaw a number of films throughout his career.