This year marks the 40th anniversary of one of the most lovable and enduring movies of the holiday season. A CHRISTMAS STORY first hit screens 40 years ago, and has been entertaining audiences ever since—especially during the annual 24 hour viewing marathon on TBS and TNT. The premise: In the 1940s, a young boy named Ralphie Parker attempts to convince his parents, teacher, and Santa Claus that a Red Ryder Range 200 Shot BB gun really is the perfect Christmas gift.
To celebrate this big 40th birthday, we gathered 40 Fun Facts you may not have known about Ralphie, Randy, and the whole CHRISTMAS STORY family!
- The movie is set in Hammond, Indiana. References include: Harding School, on 165th St. where Flick stuck his tongue to the flagpole, Goldblatt’s department store, Griffith, which borders Hammond, Cleveland St., and Hohman Ave. Jean Shepherd grew up in Hammond.
- The film’s narrator, an adult Ralphie, is voiced by Jean Shepherd who was the author of the original book “In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash” on which the film was based.
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Ralphie was supposed to be nine years old, but Peter Billingsley who played him was 12.
- The film’s setting is a town in Indiana, but was actually filmed in Cleveland, Ohio. To find an American city resembling an Indiana town of the 1940s, director Bob Clark sent his location scouts to 20 cities before selecting Cleveland.
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Ralph’s school exteriors were filmed at Victoria School in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada.
- Parts of the movie, including the Christmas tree shopping scene, were filmed in Toronto, Ontario. One of Toronto’s trademark red trolleys can be seen driving by the shot of the outside of the tree lot. Two more trolleys pass by in the background whilst inside the lot.
- The Indiana Welcome Center (located in Hammond, Indiana) features a statue of Flick with his tongue stuck to the flagpole. The site also hosts an annual ‘A Christmas Story’ Comes Home event, which includes the Mommy’s Little Piggy mashed potato eating contest, the Oh Fuuudge relay race, and Santa’s Mountain (compete with red slide).
- Peter Billingsley (Ralphie!) shared on the DVD commentary that he kept three items as souvenirs from the film: The Red Ryder BB gun, the pink bunny suit and Ralphie’s broken glasses.
- The late Don Geyer, who played the Scarecrow, was the head of Display and Fixtures at Higbee’s (now Dillards). Santa’s throne in the movie is one of the chairs owned by Higbee’s that Santa used every year. After Geyer’s death in 1999, his co-workers reported seeing him on the loading dock, where he used to smoke, and a few claim they heard his voice on the overhead paging system.
- For the scene in which Flick’s tongue sticks to the flagpole, a hidden suction tube was used to safely create the illusion that his tongue had frozen to the metal.
- The real house used during filming can be found at 3159 W 11th Street in Cleveland, Ohio. Pictures and a “Street View” of the house can be seen on Google Maps.
- In 2005, the 19th-century Victorian home used for the exterior shots of the Parker family home was put up for auction on eBay. The Cleveland, Ohio, home was purchased for $150,000 by an avid fan of the film named Brian Jones. Jones then spent the following year restoring the home to the way it looked on screen.
- Due to this film’s popularity, the Daisy Rifle Company has started producing Red Ryder BB Guns for sale during the Christmas season. It has become one of Daisy’s best selling rifles.
- If you read Ralphie’s lips during the Higbee’s corner window scene, you will notice that he is reading the text in Red Ryder’s speech balloon.
- According to cast interviews, when Ralphie is wearing his pink bunny suit in disgust, The Old Man’s line, “He looks like a deranged Easter Bunny,” was ad-libbed by Darren McGavin.
- Jean Shepherd‘s book “In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash,” on which the film is partly based, is a collection of short stories which Shepherd wrote for “Playboy” magazine during the 1960s, including the ones about the tongue sticking to the flagpole and eating Christmas dinner at a Chinese restaurant.
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Peter Billingsley, at the age of 12, was given real chewing tobacco (Big Chief) by the prop manager for his scene when Ralphie is dreaming of being a Sheriff confronting Black Bart. Afterward, he got sick for an hour on the set. They thought it was a better idea to give him raisins to chew and make brown spit instead of real chewing tobacco.
- When Ralphie and Randy are listening to “Little Orphan Annie,” the radio is shown to be tuned to about 870 kHz. This would have been the correct frequency on which the program would have been heard, as the program was produced by the NBC Blue network (later ABC), which was heard in Chicago (and northwest Indiana) on WLS/WENR, which at the time was at 870.
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An elaborate fantasy sequence, in which Ralphie joins Flash Gordon to fight Ming the Merciless, was filmed but dropped from the final cut.
- When the character Scut Farkus first appears, the “Wolf” music from Sergei Prokofiev‘s “Peter and the Wolf” plays in the background. The name “Farkus” is derived from the Hungarian word for “wolf.”
- 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.”
- When did the film takes place? The Wizard of Oz (1939) references point to 1939, but the decoder ring points to 1940. The calendar on the wall during the first dinner sequence has December 1st on a Friday, which happened in 1939. However, Bing Crosby‘s version of “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” was released in 1943. The “Little Orphan Annie” radio decoder pin that Ralphie receives is the 1940 “Speedomatic” model, indicating that the movie takes place in December 1940. Different decoder badges were made each year from 1935 to 1940. By 1941, the decoders were made of paper.
- Bob Clark‘s success with the teen-sex comedy Porky’s (1981) allowed him to make a movie he wanted to make. Without “Porky’s” there would have been no “A Christmas Story.”
- The department store in the Santa scene is the Higbee’s in downtown Cleveland. It became Dillard’s in 1992, and closed Jan. 7, 2002. It is now home to Jack’s Casino.
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Ralphie’s father is never named. He is only referred to and credited as “The Old Man.”
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The shooting script for the film reveals that The Old Man’s first name is Frank. No first name is provided for Mother. The 2013 book “A Christmas Story Treasury” by Tyler Schwartz includes a facsimile of the Western Union telegram announcing that The Old Man is the recipient of a major award. The telegram is addressed to Frank Parker.
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Ralph put the ad for the Red Ryder BB Rifle in his mother’s magazine, but he puts the magazine on his father’s bed. This may be the reason why his father knew he wanted one.
- The parade scene was filmed just outside Higbee’s on Cleveland’s Public Square at 3 am. The parade was filmed at night because, during the daytime, the 1960s Erieview Tower and Federal Building were visible, as was the BP Tower, under construction at that time. (Not to mention that many Christmas parades take place after dark.)
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Young Wil Wheaton auditioned for the role of Ralphie.
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Sean Astin also auditioned for the role of Ralphie.
- Author Jean Shepherd‘s middle name was Parker, which is where the family’s name comes from. As in the movie, Shepherd also had a younger brother named Randy. And the Shepherd family lived at 2907 Cleveland St. in Hammond, Indiana.
- Jack Nicholson as almost cast as The Old Man. Jack was interested in playing the part, but he was just too darn expensive by this time in his career.
- 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.”
- This is the second film Melinda Dillon (the mom) appears where someone is playing with mashed potatoes. The other, of course, being Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).
- When the family leaves the house to go Christmas tree shopping, the mom turns off the lamp and tells Ralph’s dad “Don’t want to waste electricity”. As the scene pans out, you can see almost every other room in the house has a light left on.
- The first two carols heard in the opening of the movie are “Deck the Halls” and “Jingle Bells,” the same two carols sung by the staff (in the same order) at the Chinese restaurant to close the movie.
- The Chinese restaurant is named Bo Ling. There is a neon sign across the top of the storefront that reads “Bowling,” except the “w” is not lit.
- Melinda Dillon, who plays Ralphie’s mother, was completely caught off guard seeing the duck served with its head. She was given a fake script so that her reaction would be completely genuine.
- From 1997 to 2004, TNT ran the film ran in a 24-hour marathon that started on the evening of Christmas Eve. In 2004, TBS picked up the tradition. Since 2014, both networks have run the 24-hour event.
- In 2022, a sequel to the first “A Christmas Story” was made with Peter Billingsley reprising his role as Ralphie.
