A Christmas Story

A Christmas Story is a 1983 Christmas comedy film directed by Bob Clark and based on the 1966 book In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash 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 Christmastime in 1940. It is the first installment in the Parker Family Saga.

A Christmas Story was released by MGM/UA Entertainment Co. on November 18, 1983, and received positive reviews from critics. The film grossed $19 million on a $3 million budget. 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 around the late 1930s or early 1940s, all Ralphie wants for Christmas is a Red Ryder Carbine Action 200-shot Range Model air rifle. Ralphie's request is rebuffed by his mother, then by his teacher Miss Shields when he writes about it in an assigned theme, and even by a disgruntled Santa at Higbee's department store, all of whom tell Ralphie "You'll shoot your eye out".

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 mother and keeps him from getting into 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:

• The Old Man is continually having to fix the unreliable household furnace; his frustrations cause him to swear profusely (heard as gibberish in the film), leading Ralphie to suspect a cloud of profanity "is still hanging in space over Lake Michigan."
• Ralphie's friends Flick and Schwartz argue over whether a tongue will stick to a cold flagpole. Schwartz escalates the dare to a "triple dog dare" and Flick reluctantly tries, getting stuck and requiring the fire department's help to get unstuck. Flick refuses to expose Schwartz; Miss Shields decides that the perpetrator's guilty conscience is punishment enough.
• The Old Man is delighted when he wins a "major award" in a newspaper contest – a table lamp in the shape of a woman's leg wearing a fishnet stocking. Mrs. Parker dislikes it, and the ensuing "Battle of the Lamp" ends with her “accidentally” breaking it. Unable to fix it, the Old Man sadly buries it in the backyard.
• Ralphie earns a decoder pin as a loyal listener to the Little Orphan Annie radio show. When the pin arrives, he frantically decodes Pierre Andre's secret message, revealing a disappointingly "crummy commercial" for Ovaltine.
• While helping The Old Man change a tire, Ralphie accidentally drops an F bomb and gets his mouth washed out with Lifebuoy soap as a punishment. When Mrs. Parker demands to know where Ralphie learned the word, Ralphie (who actually learned it from The Old Man) instinctively blames Schwartz, whose mother spanks him offscreen. That night, Ralphie imagines his parents' reaction to him going blind from soap poisoning.
• Ralphie, his brother Randy, Flick, and Schwartz are tormented by the neighborhood bullies Scut Farkus and Grover Dill. Ralphie eventually snaps and attacks Farkus, unleashing a stream of vulgar gibberish similar to the Old Man's. Mrs. Parker breaks up the fight and escorts Ralphie home; Ralphie and Randy expect The Old Man to "kill" Ralphie when he finds out, but Mrs. Parker downplays the fight and distracts the Old Man by talking about football, earning Ralphie's respect.
• Ralphie's Aunt Clara gifts him a pink bunny footed sleeper, which Mrs. Parker orders Ralphie to put on. Both Ralphie and The Old Man are disgusted by the infantile outfit, and Mrs. Parker agrees to only make Ralphie wear it when Aunt Clara is present.
• The Old Man is frequently chased by a pack of "at least 785 smelly hound dogs" owned by the Bumpus family, the Parkers' hillbilly neighbors. On Christmas Day, the dogs invade the Parker house and devour their Christmas turkey. The Old Man takes the family to a Chinese restaurant, introducing Ralphie to "Chinese Turkey."

Cast

• Peter Billingsley as Ralphie Parker
  • Jean Shepherd as adult Ralphie (voice) / man standing in the Santa Claus line at Higbee's
• Ian Petrella as Randy Parker
• Melinda Dillon as Mrs. Parker
• Darren McGavin as Mr. Parker/The Old Man
• Scott Schwartz as Flick
• R. D. Robb as Schwartz
• Zack Ward as Scut Farkus
• Yano Anaya as Grover Dill
• Tedde Moore as Miss Shields
• Jeff Gillen as Santa Claus
• Patty Johnson as Lead Elf
• Drew Hocevar as Male Elf
• Leslie Carlson as Christmas Tree Salesman

Production

Development

The screenplay for A Christmas Story is based on material from author Jean Shepherd's collection of short stories, In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash. 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 both Cleveland, Ohio, and Toronto, Ontario, 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.

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. Peter Billingsley was Clark's first choice for Ralphie: he was already a successful actor in commercials and from co-hosting the TV series Real People. Clark recalled: "He walked in, and he had us from the beginning(.)" Fearing it was "too obvious" a choice, Clark auditioned approximately 8,000 actors for the part—among them Keith Coogan, Sean Astin and Wil Wheaton— before deciding Billingsley was the right choice after all.