A super-hero in Santa Barbara

 By Joan Mac Trevor, Ciné Télé Revue, 1991

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John Wesley Shipp has a beautiful voice of baritone. Born a January 22 in Norfolk, Virginia, the actor and his family moved a lot during his youth : his father was a pastor. He nevertheless spent his adolescence in Louisville, Kentucky.

In 1980, in any case, he is hired in the daytime soap Guiding Light where he plays the role of Kelly Nelson during four consecutive years. He then plays in a TV movie Summer Fantasy (with Richard "Brick Wallace"Eden) and appears in an episode of Fantasy Island... In 1985, this is the soap As the World Turns which opens its gates to him. His interpretation of the character of Douglas Cummings will bring him his first award : the Emmy Award of the best outstanding supporting actor. The next year, John Wesley Shipp will receive another Emmy, the one of the best guest star, for his appearance in Santa Barbara where he plays a tennis player. "The producers had hired me for six weeks and I would have liked to stay longer. As I played the role of a professional tennis player, I had taken lessons to be the most credible as possible. In spite of my efforts, the producers did not keep my character."

This disappointment was however quickly forgotten thanks to the award that the professionals of television decreed to him. After a small unproductive period that the actor filled while going up on the stages and by playing, in particular, musicals in New York, the company Warner Bros calls him. In 1990, he is offered a second chance in his career : The Flash. Since, John Wesley Shipp shot, in Germany the continuation of the movie The Neverending Story.