David Sheehan has been a trail-blazer in the world of broadcasting for the past 40 years.

On KCBS-TV, he was the first entertainment reviewer interviewer on a daily local newscast, then the first commentator to ever critique television on television, drawing "biting the hand that feeds him" feature articles in both Time and Life magazines.

Sheehan was also the first local newsman to ever work for two networks simultaneously: "America Alive" on NBC and "The Big News" on CBS.

Also at NBC, Sheehan was the first local entertainment reporter to host, write and produce his own series of hourlong network specials, including "Macho Men of the Movies" and "Hollywood’s Leading Ladies". He likewise served as host on a variety of NBC network specials for the Dick Clark Company: "The Sensational Seventies" and "The Oscar Race" among them.

At HBO, he hosted and produced the first Pay-TV monthly series in history, "Backstage in Hollywood", and went on to do similar shows for Showtime and On-TV.

In the early 80s, Sheehan took a break from his reviewer - interviewer job on the news to produce and camera-direct the first Broadway musical ever captured by cameras during live stage performance — the Tony Award Winning "Pippin", with Bob Fosse directing the performances and the David Sheehan Bio choreography. Sheehan’s "Pippin" was a long-running hit on Pay-TV and can still be seen on cable TV and on DVD.

He also made a mark in off-Broadway style live theater as the producer-director of the West Coast Premiere of "An Albee Almanac" by Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Edward Albee, the West Coast Premiere of "Little Murders" by noted cartoonist-playwright Jules Feiffer, and another West Coast Premiere: Norman Mailer’s "The Deer Park", while also mounting acclaimed productions of Samuel Beckett’s "Waiting for Godot", Edward Albee’s "A Delicate Balance", "The Zoo Story" and "Tiny Alice", Harold Pinter’s "Lover" & "Collection" and Eugene Ionesco’s "Hunger and Thirst".

Sheehan is the author of numerous magazine articles, including many interview profiles done at Big Sur’s Esalen Institute with the likes of Allan Watts, Abraham Maslow, Fritz Perls, Rollo May, Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert (Ram Dass), and Henry Miller. Miller, of "Tropic of Cancer" fame, helped edit Sheehan’s one and only published novel "Before I Wake" from Fawcett World Library.

He has traveled far and wide in the course of his showbiz journalism. For five years straight, Sheehan drove from Paris to the French Riviera’s Cannes Film Festival, and once his coverage was completed, conducted a kind of personal excursion with friends, taking them to Portofino and the Italian Riviera and Florence and Sicily. The travels would vary year to year, often making their way to the Swiss Alps via Zurich and Interlaken. In Grindlewald, Sheehan even made a tentative attempt to scale the face of the Eiger, but less than a quarter of the way up, when some falling snow hit his face, he changed his mind about the climb.

Stateside, Sheehan conducted a two week road trip survey called "Get Your Kicks on Route 66" from San Bernardino to Chicago, and he rode biking expeditions throughout Wisconsin and Indiana.

After his many years doing daily and nightly newscasts on CBS and NBC, Sheehan established his own production and distribution company Hollywood Close-Ups, Inc., with the help of colleagues and collaborators. He and the new company became hugely successful in syndicated television, producing and hosting dozens of half-hour "Movie Magic" TV specials covering movies and movie stars, and airing on more than 200 television stations nationwide, including KTLA in Los Angeles, WWOR in New York, WCIU in Chicago, WPVI in Philadelphia, KFWD in Dallas, KGO in San Francisco, WCVB in Boston, WXIA in Atlanta, WJLA in Washington D.C., and, of course, many more.

Sheehan is currently, but casually, developing new projects for syndication, cable, the internet and various forms of new media.

He is the father of three children: his oldest, daughter Shannon is an accomplished and well known Los Angeles real estate developer and the proud mother of grandson Quinn; his son Brian recently celebrated 24 years as owner operator of the Eclectic Wine Bar and Grill in North Hollywood, California by selling the restaurant and moving with his wife Desne to a spacious 10-acre horse ranch on the outskirts of Whitefish, Montana; and his youngest, daughter Kelly Marie is a cutting edge L.A - N.Y. singer-songwriter with hit tunes to her credit such as Beyonce’s "Grown Woman", Kylie Minoque’s "Into the Blue", Nicki Minaj’s "Young Forever", and Rita Ora’s "How We Do".

Sheehan lives on the waterfront of the main channel in Marina del Rey, California.

www.DavidSheehan.tv
www.HollywoodCloseUps.com