1983 film by Bob Clark
A Christmas Story is a 1983 Christmas comedy film directed by Bob Clark and based on the 1966 book "" by Jean Shepherd, with some elements from his 1971 book "Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories and Other Disasters". It stars Melinda Dillon, Darren McGavin, and Peter Billingsley, and follows a young boy and his family's misadventures during Christmas time in December 1940. It is the third installment in the Parker Family Saga.
"A Christmas Story" was released on November 18, 1983, and received positive reviews from critics. Filmed partly in Canada, the film earned two Canadian Genie Awards in 1984. Widely considered a holiday classic in the United States and Canada, it has been shown in a marathon annually on TNT since 1997 and on TBS since 2004 titled "24 Hours of "A Christmas Story"", consisting of 12 consecutive airings of the film from the evening of Christmas Eve to the evening of Christmas Day. In 2012, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
The film spawned three sequels. The first, "My Summer Story" (originally released as "It Runs in the Family"), also directed by Clark, was released in 1994. The second, entitled "A Christmas Story 2", was released straight to DVD in 2012. A third sequel, entitled "A Christmas Story Christmas", was released on HBO Max in 2022 and features most of the original cast returning.
Plot.
The film is presented in a series of vignettes, with narration provided by the adult Ralphie Parker. As a 9-year-old boy living in Northwest Indiana in December 1940, all Ralphie wants for Christmas is a Red Ryder Carbine Action 200-shot Range Model air rifle. Ralphie's desire is continuously rejected, first by his mother, who tells him "You'll shoot your eye out." He is later assigned a theme for school about what he wants for Christmas, and he writes about the BB gun, but he gets it back with a poor grade, and the same warning. Finally, on Christmas Eve, Ralphie sees a disgruntled Santa at Higbee's Department Store, and he expresses his desire, only to be hurriedly brushed off with the same warning.
On Christmas morning, Ralphie receives some presents that he enjoys but is disappointed not to find the rifle among them. Ralphie's father ("The Old Man") directs him to one last box hidden in the corner, which proves to contain the rifle. Ralphie eagerly hurries outside to try it out, but when he shoots at the metal target he has set up, the BB ricochets and knocks off his glasses. Ralphie accidentally steps on and breaks the glasses while trying to find them; he makes up a cover story about an icicle falling from the roof of the garage and hitting his eye, which fools his mom and keeps him from getting in trouble.
That night, Ralphie goes to sleep with the gun by his side, as his adult self reflects that it was the best Christmas present he had ever received or would ever receive.
Other vignettes.
Interspersed with the main story are several loosely related vignettes involving the Parkers:
Cast.
Casting.
The basis of the screenplay is a series of monologues written and performed by Jean Shepherd on the radio. Shepherd wrote the adaptation with Bob Clark and Leigh Brown. Several subplots are incorporated into the body of the film, based on other separate short stories by Shepherd. Shepherd provides the film's narration from the perspective of an adult Ralphie, a narrative style later used in the comedy-drama television series "The Wonder Years" and the sitcom "Young Sheldon". Shepherd, Brown, and Clark have cameo appearances in the film: Shepherd plays the man who directs Ralphie and Randy to the back of the Santa line at the department store; Brown – Shepherd's wife in real life – plays the woman in the Santa line with Shepherd; Clark plays Swede, the neighbor the Old Man talks to outside during the Leg Lamp scene.
In the DVD commentary, director Bob Clark mentions that Jack Nicholson was considered for the role of the Old Man; Clark expresses gratitude that he ended up with Darren McGavin instead, who later appeared in several other Clark films. James Broderick, who had portrayed the role in the television films, had died the year prior. He cast Melinda Dillon on the basis of her similar role in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind". Some 8,000 actors auditioned for the role of Ralphie, among the 8,000 actors were Keith Coogan, Sean Astin and Wil Wheaton; "He walked in, and he had us from the beginning", Clark later recalled of Peter Billingsley who was already a successful actor in commercials and from co-hosting the TV series "Real People". Clark initially wanted him for the role of Ralphie but decided he was "too obvious" a choice and auditioned many other young actors before realizing that Billingsley was the right choice after all.
Ian Petrella was cast immediately before filming began. Tedde Moore had previously appeared in Clark's film "Murder by Decree" and was the only onscreen character from "A Christmas Story" who was played by the same actor in the sequel, "My Summer Story". Jeff Gillen was an old friend of Clark's who had been in one of his earliest films. The schoolyard bully, Scut Farkus, was played by Zack Ward, now an actor, writer and director, who had actually been bullied himself while in elementary school. In 2017, he said he was surprised at the impact his role had over the years: "I saw that I was ranked – as Christmas villains go – higher than the Grinch. That's amazing."
Production.
The screenplay for "A Christmas Story" is based on material from author Jean Shepherd's collection of short stories, "". Three of the semi-autobiographical short stories on which the film is based were originally published in "Playboy" magazine between 1964 and 1966. Shepherd later read "Duel in the Snow, or Red Ryder nails the Cleveland Street Kid" and told the otherwise unpublished story "Flick's Tongue" on his WOR Radio talk show, as can be heard in one of the DVD extras. Bob Clark stated on the DVD commentary that he became interested in Shepherd's work when he heard "Flick's Tongue" on the radio in 1968. Additional source material for the film, according to Clark, came from unpublished anecdotes that Shepherd told live audiences "on the college circuit". While shooting scenes in Cleveland in early 1983, Clark told a reporter that it had taken him a considerable number of years to get the film into production. Shepherd envisioned his stories as "Dickens's Christmas Carol as retold by Scrooge", although Clark would soften it for the film; the two did not particularly get along, as Clark did not admire Shepherd's attempts at trying to guide the actors with ideas about how the characters should be played, to the point where he had him barred from the set.
Locations.
The film is set in Hohman, Indiana, a fictionalized version of Shepherd's hometown of Hammond, the only Hoosier city to border Chicago. The name is derived from Hohman Avenue, a major street in downtown Hammond. Local references in the film include Warren G. Harding Elementary School and Cleveland Street (where Shepherd spent his childhood). Other local references include mention of a person "swallowing a yo-yo" in nearby Griffith, the Old Man being one of the fiercest "furnace fighters in Northern Indiana" and that his obscenities were "hanging in space over Lake Michigan", a mention of the Indianapolis 500, and the line to Santa Claus "stretching all the way to Terre Haute". The Old Man is also revealed to be a fan of the Bears (whom he jokingly calls the "Chicago Chipmunks") and White Sox, consistent with living in northwest Indiana. In commemoration of the setting, the City of Hammond holds an annual exhibit regarding the film in November and December, including a statue recreating the scene where Ralphie's friend Flick freezes his tongue to a flagpole.
Director Bob Clark reportedly sent scouts to twenty cities before selecting Cleveland for exterior filming. Cleveland was chosen because of Higbee's Department Store in downtown Cleveland. Since Higbee's was exclusive to northeast Ohio, the department store referred to in Shepherd's book and the film is most likely Goldblatt's, located in downtown Hammond (with the Cam-Lan Chinese Restaurant three doors down on Sibley Avenue). Until they connected with Higbee's, location scouts had been unsuccessful in finding a department store that was willing to be part of the film. Higbee's vice president Bruce Campbell agreed to take part in the project on the condition he be allowed to edit the script for cursing. Ultimately, Higbee's was the stage for three scenes in the film:
In addition to the scenes involving Higbee's, the exterior shots (and select interior shots where Ralphie lived, including the opening of the leg lamp) of the house and neighborhood, were filmed in the Tremont section of Cleveland's West Side. The house used as the Parker home in these scenes has been restored, reconfigured inside to match the soundstage interiors, and opened to the public as "A Christmas Story House". Appropriately, the fictional boyhood home of Ralphie Parker is on Cleveland Street, the name of the actual street where Shepherd grew up.
Several other locations were used. The school scenes were shot at the Victoria School in St. Catharines, Ontario. The Christmas tree-purchasing scene was filmed in Toronto, Ontario, as was the sound stage filming of interior shots of the Parker home. The "...only I didn't say fudge" scene was filmed at the foot of Cherry Street in Toronto; several lake freighters are visible in the background spending the winter at Toronto's port, which lends authenticity to the time of year when the film was produced.
In 2008, two Canadian fans released a documentary that visits every location. Their film, "Road Trip for Ralphie", was shot over two years and includes footage of the filmmakers saving Miss Shields' blackboard from the garbage bin on the day the old Victoria School was gutted for renovation, discovering the antique fire truck that saved Flick, locating original costumes from the film, and tracking down the location of the film's Chop Suey Palace in Toronto.
Red Ryder BB Gun.
The "Red Ryder" model BB Gun was manufactured in Plymouth, Michigan, by Daisy, beginning in 1938; it was never manufactured in the exact configuration mentioned in the film. The Daisy "Buck Jones" model did have a compass and a sundial in the stock, but these features were not included in the Red Ryder model. The compass and sundial were placed on Ralphie's BB gun, but on the opposite side of the stock due to Peter Billingsley being left-handed.
Dating the story.
Director Bob Clark stated in the film's DVD commentary that both he and author Shepherd wished for the film to be seen as "amorphously late-'30s, early-'40s". A specific year is never explicitly mentioned in the film. While the Lionel streamline model passenger train in Higbee's window is a prewar item, the freight train in the same window is of postwar manufacture. The two songs by Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters used in the film, "Jingle Bells" and "Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town" were recorded in 1943, and the Crosby version of "It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas" also heard in the film, dates from 1951. "Look" magazine that Ralphie hides the Red Ryder ad in, is the December 1937 cover with Shirley Temple and Santa. Ralphie's "Little Orphan Annie" Secret Society Decoder Pin bears the date 1940 (and is the real-life decoder pin released to society members that year, though by that time Ovaltine had ceased its sponsorship and Quaker was the primary sponsor of the series), the parade in front of Higbee's features characters from MGM's version of "The Wizard of Oz", which was released in 1939, a 1939 calendar is seen in one scene, and World War II, which the United States entered in December 1941, is never mentioned. The "Old Man's" treasured Oldsmobile 6 is a 1937 Oldsmobile F-Series Touring Sedan. Although the director and author have said that the year has been obfuscated, some sources, including "The New York Times" and CBS News, have dated the film to 1940 or the early 1940s.
The real Shepherd was several years older than Ralphie; Shepherd was