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Get
Ready for Ralphie
The story behind one of our most popular holiday movies
Some critics may
point to “It’s a Wonderful Life” as the greatest holiday
film of them all, but ask the average person on the street, and
chances are they’ll say that “A Christmas Story” is their
favorite. Cynical, sardonic, and having little to do with the
goodwill Hollywood typically associates with the season, the tale
of Ralphie Parker’s desperate quest to get a Red Ryder BB Gun
has nonetheless become a cultural phenomenon and perhaps the
definitive American Christmas movie, drawing tens of millions of
viewers each year. Lines like “You’ll shoot your eye out”
and “I triple-dog-dare you” are instantly recognizable by even
the most casual of the film’s fans. Below are a few facts about
how the film was made:
It’s based on a
series of semi-autobiographical short stories written by radio
personality Jean Shepherd, who really did attend Warren G. Harding
Elementary School in Indiana and had friends named Flick and
Schwartz. Shepherd is the film’s narrator and makes a cameo as
the man who tells Ralphie to get to the back of the line to see
Santa.
Shepherd insisted
that he wrote about childhood not out of sentimentality, but
because that’s when life’s hard lessons are learned. Thus,
Ralphie’s treasured Little Orphan Annie Secret Decoder Ring
turns out to be nothing but a conduit for crummy advertisements,
and his parents end up being right about shooting his eye out.
It took director Bob
Clark, perhaps most famous for Porky’s, nearly 10 years to bring
Shepherd’s stories to the big screen.
Clark has a cameo as
Swede, the neighbor who inquires about Parker’s leg-lamp.
Released around
Thanksgiving 1983, the movie didn’t do much at the box office,
and was out of most theaters by Christmas. A Christmas Story found
a second life on cable television, though, and soon became a
holiday favorite.
Two years ago, an
entrepreneur purchased the Cleveland, Ohio house in which the film
was shot and turned it into a Christmas Story museum, complete
with a gift shop selling glowing leg lamps. The house draws huge
crowds of fans every holiday season. Several cast members attended
the grand opening.
TBS airs a 24-hour Christmas
Story marathon beginning every Christmas eve. Some 30 million
viewers tune in each year.
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