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born 1949
The claim: Shelley Lee Long was born on 23 August 1949 in Indian Village, Fort Wayne, the only child of Leland and Ivadine Long, both of them teachers, her father a rubber industry man turned teacher. She was raised in Fort Wayne and graduated from South Side High School, where she was active in speech, and went on to study drama at Northwestern University, leaving before her degree for the stage, and for Chicago and the Second City company, where American comedy of her generation was trained. The formation runs in a straight line: a teachers' house in Indian Village, a Fort Wayne high school stage, and then the most literate barmaid in television history.
The fame: In 1982 Long was cast as Diane Chambers in a new NBC sitcom set in a Boston bar. Cheers ran eleven seasons and became one of the defining comedies of its era, and for its first five seasons Long's Diane, the pretentious, vulnerable graduate student sparring with Ted Danson's Sam Malone, was its female lead. She won the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series in 1983, was nominated for the role five times in all, and took two Golden Globe Awards, returning for the series finale in 1993. Her film career ran alongside and after: Night Shift in 1982, The Money Pit in 1986, Outrageous Fortune in 1987, Troop Beverly Hills in 1989, and a second popular life as Carol Brady in The Brady Bunch Movie in 1995. A later generation met her on Modern Family. The people record carries her at length; the fame roll's note is short because the case is simple: born, raised and schooled in Fort Wayne, and then, for five seasons, the most argued-about woman on American television.
Sources:
- Golden Globes, Shelley Long person page (born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, 23 August 1949; Cheers, 1982-1987 and 1993; the Golden Globe Awards of 1983 and 1985).
- Encyclopedia.com, Long, Shelley 1949- (the Fort Wayne birth; the parents; the career and awards record, with South Side High School and Northwestern in the fuller accounts).