A Christmas Story

by Caseen Gaines

  Peter Billingsley in 2008 © Albert L. Ortega / PR Photos

  In January 2011, Loren King of the Boston Globe summed up the criticism in her preview of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. “[Spider-Man] is the latest in a long line of big Broadway shows eager for tourist-friendly brand names to sell expensive tickets,” she wrote. “Over the last decade, the lights of Broadway have often resembled a film festival marquee.”

  So, when it was announced that a musical was being made in the image of A Christmas Story, the reaction was tepid enthusiasm. The idea had promise, journalists and fans seemed to signal, but the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

  Another reason why a Christmas Story musical was unforeseen is because a non-musical stage play, written by a Kansas-based playwright, had been quite successfully making the rounds for several years.

  Philip Grecian is a man dedicated not only to his family, but also to the theater. In 1999, he had just directed a stage adaptation of Frank Capra’s 1947 classic holiday film, It’s a Wonderful Life, but the script was terrible. As a playwright, he thought he might take a crack at writing a better edition. He contacted his editor at Dramatic Publishing, which licenses shows for theater companies and schools, and asked them for a chance to bring a better version of Life to the stage.

  It turned out there was already a new version coming out that year, but his editor had another suggestion: “Have you ever heard of this movie, A Christmas Story?”

  The movie was sixteen years old, and the twenty-four-hour marathons of the film had already started running on TBS, but it was before the movie had really caught on as a pop phenomenon. It was entirely plausible that Grecian’s answer would be negative, but instead, he replied with, “Well, gosh, yes!”

  His mind filled with memories of the early 1980s. He thought back to when he was a father with young children. He would often read them a bedtime story. Grecian was a fan of Jean Shepherd’s work, which led him to share those stories with his children. His kids became close friends with Ralphie, Randy, Flick, and Schwartz, and whenever a new edition of Playboy arrived in the mail, they became excited and exclaimed, “Is there a Jean Shepherd story in this one?”

  When the winter of 1983 rolled around, Grecian and his wife took their kids to see A Christmas Story. They didn’t know anything about the movie except that it was by the director of Porky’s and that it was supposed to be family-friendly. There was an excited buzz in the aisle where his family sat when the lights dimmed, the music started, and the title card appeared on the screen that read “A film by Jean Shepherd.”

  “Our Jean Shepherd?” His daughter could hardly contain her amazement and elation.

  As the movie unfolded, it became clear that it was their Jean Shepherd after all. They watched, transfixed for the movie’s full running time. When it was over, A Christmas Story instantly became a Grecian family favorite. The film would go on to be referenced throughout the following years and, when the marathon showings began on television, it became their must-watch event of the holiday season.

  It’s not surprising, then, that when he was offered the chance to adapt A Christmas Story for the stage, the playwright jumped at the chance. Through his editor, a deal was struck with Warner Bros. and Jean Shepherd. Grecian was allowed to use the film as a jumping-off point, as well as the four stories from In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash. The playwright began writing his version of A Christmas Story, a process that provided some unique challenges early on.

  “When I adapted this for the stage, I didn’t have a copy of the screenplay,” he says. “I had a VHS copy of the movie and a book with the stories in it, so I began with the stories. Those things that were common to both I circled and underlined, and then I watched the movie and the things I wanted to add in from it, I did.”

  Those who see the play performed live on stage will find themselves watching a faithful recreation of the movie, although the play isn’t an exact transferal of the film’s events reproduced on stage. “You don’t adapt a film for the stage by just crossing out where it says ‘dissolve’ or ‘cut’ and putting a ‘lights down,’” says Grecian. “You can’t read the play and follow the movie, but my job is to make you think you can. Some of the lines in the movie are in different people’s mouths or describe different things. Every once in a while there would be something from my own childhood that would fit, and I’d put that in.”

  Although there were some structural changes made for the stage version, the character of the narrator remained constant. Shepherd was insistent that his voice-over remain in the play, which posed a central problem. Because theater is a visual medium, one of the cardinal rules of playwriting is that an omniscient narrator can’t exist. It’s perceived to be boring, at best, and a sign of inferior authoring at worse. After giving it some thought, Grecian settled on an excellent way to include the narrator — for the first time, he would be seen in A Christmas Story, not just heard.

  “Adult Ralphie was written into the play as a character,” he explains. “This turned it into more of a memory play. I also chose to have the narrator pop up elsewhere in the story as some of the minor characters that appear throughout, like the guy who delivers the leg lamp and the firefighter that frees Flick from the flagpole. It works quite nicely.”

  Shep thought the device was a smart way to handle the situation, and luckily audiences and theater company owners agree with him. When the play was published in August 2000, Grecian fully expected that there would be no productions of it that year. His editor had told him that most theater groups had already decided what they would be staging for that upcoming December and that they were hoping it would be a hit the following year.

  Much to their amazement, the hit came early. When A Christmas Story was added to Dramatic Publishing’s website as a new acquisition, close to thirty groups canceled their previously announced holiday titles and signed on to stage A Christmas Story instead. According to Grecian, the show is produced nearly a hundred times a year by various groups across the United States, where it is almost always certain to draw a big crowd. “It’s pulled several theaters out of bankruptcy,” he says. “It usually sells out.”

  This isn’t to say that all the performances are of equal caliber, obviously. Although Grecian doesn’t get to see many productions of his show during the holiday season, he concedes that sometimes his plays don’t quite come to life on stage in the way he had intended. For him, it’s just a side effect of being a playwright with popular material: “My wife and I went to another town with another couple to see a high school’s production of my version of Dracula and it was dreadful,” he recalls. “When we got back to my house, the guy in the other couple said, ‘Doesn’t it bother you to see your play ruined like that?’ I walked over to my bookcase, pulled out a copy of the Dracula script, and said, ‘Here’s my play. My play is fine.’ A playwright has to learn early on that it’s never going to be what you saw in your mind when you were writing it. Sometimes it’s not as good, sometimes it’s better. Sometimes there are things the director or the set designer does that you never even thought of.”

  Although hundreds of thousands of people have seen the non-musical adaptation of A Christmas Story live, one notable person never had the opportunity to do so. Throughout the writing process, Grecian and Jean Shepherd never communicated directly. The playwright would work on scenes and, once they were completed, his editor would send them to Shep for his feedback. “He didn’t want to change anything, which pleased me,” the playwright says.

  However, with only a few scenes left to complete in the show’s second act, Grecian received a sobering phone call from his editor.

  “Phil, I have bad news,” she started.

  “Well, what?”

  “Shep died.”

  There was silence on the line for a few moments.

  “Really?” He was silent for another second. “I didn’t know he was sick. He ne
ver said anything, did he?”

  Jean Parker Shepherd passed away on October 16, 1999, at 3:20 a.m. at Lee Memorial Hospital near his home in Sanibel Island, Florida. Grecian was right: he hadn’t given any indication that he was sick because, according to his closest friend and business advisor Irwin Zwilling, he wasn’t. His death was cited as a result of natural causes. The world lost one of America’s greatest storytellers — and the loss was felt by those who were most influenced by his work.

  “Jean Shepherd showed me that the little plastic box under my pillow could contain a magical world; that radio could present ideas, stories, characters, and words, in addition to music,” radio personality Vin Scelsa said. “Shep taught me that nothing can be more provocative on the radio than the honest-to-goodness sound of an infectious laugh directed at life’s absurd and beautiful ironies.”

  Jean Shepherd in 1972 © Photofest

  “Shepherd often said, ‘You never know,’” recalls Doug McIntyre, a writer for film and television. “Mostly, he meant this as a warning. But it could also be taken as an aphorism of hope. You never know who you’ll influence when you put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard. You never know which ten-year-old insomniac will read or hear or see something you’ve written. You never know how you might give that young person focus, laughter, a dream.

  “His memory will survive his passing,” McIntyre continued. “He never achieved ‘fame.’ He was never photographed leaving a restaurant or walking on the red carpet with a starlet on his arm. He achieved artistic excellence. He achieved something very rare — originality.”

  Even before the theatrical release of A Christmas Story, it was obvious that Shepherd’s cultural influence would not be soon forgotten. In 1981, he was the recipient of the second annual Hammond Achievement Award, an honor bestowed upon individuals raised in the Indiana town who went on to achieve national or international recognition. After receiving a letter notifying him of the award, Shep wrote back to acknowledge he would be accepting as only he could.

  “Yours is the first letter of any sort that I’ve ever in all the years received from Hammond, good or bad,” he wrote. “I have always had a sneaking suspicion that an undercover Select Committee of watchful Hammond citizens was operating successfully to keep my books, short stories, TV shows, and any mention of my name out of the records of the town, for their own sinister purposes.”

  But this wouldn’t be the last time the alleged “Select Committee” would celebrate their hometown hero. In March 2003, Hammond opened a community center in his name and honor. Five years later, the Indiana Welcome Center, conveniently and coincidentally located in the town, created a lavish display dedicated to A Christmas Story that lasted throughout the entire holiday season.

  “A Christmas Story Comes Home,” as the exhibition was called, included six animatronic displays depicting scenes from the movie, which were previously on display five years earlier in the Macy’s window in New York City. There were also activities for families, such as a “Mommy’s Little Piggy” eating contest, a “What I Want for Christmas” theme-writing contest, and screenings of the film.

  Yano Anaya, Ian Petrella, Zack Ward, Scott Schwartz, and Tedde Moore at “A Christmas Story Comes Home” © Yano Anaya

  Nearly four thousand visited the presentation in its first three days, and based on its success in its inaugural year, it has since become an annual staple of the holiday season. In 2004, Yano Anaya, Tedde Moore, Ian Petrella, Scott Schwartz, and Zack Ward all visited the Midwestern town to meet fans, participate in the activities, and sign autographs. In 2012, it was announced that the center was launching a massive fundraising effort to erect a statue of Flick with his tongue stuck to a flagpole in time for the film’s thirtieth anniversary the following year.

  So perhaps Jean Shepherd never achieved fame in the conventional sense, but that hasn’t stopped the people of Hammond from treating him like a rock star.

  Johnny Rabe © Carol Rosegg

  Shep’s wife, Leigh Brown, had died a year before him and, with Shep’s kids from a previous marriage estranged, Zwilling became the executor to Shep’s estate. Once Grecian’s play was completed, the business advisor signed off on it and it was able to move forward to production.

  Since its debut, Grecian’s version of A Christmas Story has become one of the most produced holiday shows across the United States. The show has become so popular that many theater companies hoping to stage the production have to apply months or even years in advance, just to ensure that they will be granted a license to bring the show to the stage. Because there are restrictions on how many theater groups in an area can produce the same show, every year some groups are left out in the winter cold.

  “That happens a lot,” Grecian says. “Sometimes they write to me and say, ‘Can you put in a good word?’ All right, I don’t know you, but I’ll certainly send a little note to the publisher.”

  In 2006, with Grecian’s play in its sixth successful season, playwright Joseph Robinette, whose previous credits included stage adaptations of Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little, set out to create a new and separate big-budget musical adaptation of A Christmas Story. Like Grecian, he wanted to collaborate with Warner Bros. and Dalfie Entertainment, the production company set up by Zwilling to manage Jean Shepherd’s business affairs, and was granted unprecedented access to not only Shep’s short stories and the plot points exclusive to the film but also the iconic logo for the film with the title written in the familiar bold red typeface.

  “I did triage,” Robinette told the New York Times in 2011 about the writing process. “This must be in it, this should be in it if we have the time, and we might be able to get rid of that.” As a result, some of the memorable moments from the film, like Ralphie’s obsession with Little Orphan Annie, were left by the wayside.

  Scott Davenport Richards, a New York City–based actor and composer, wrote the music and lyrics. Richards and Robinette worked together, peppering the script with songs like “Getting Ready for Christmas,” “You’ll Shoot Your Eye Out,” and “I Won (A Major Award).” In 2008, producers Gerald Goehring, Michael F. Mitri, and Michael Jenkins joined the team, along with Eric Rosen, who signed on to direct.

  That December, Beau Bridges starred as the narrator, who was now simply and appropriately named “Jean Shepherd” in the show, at a Manhattan-staged reading. The show was well received and, the following November, A Christmas Story, the Musical! had its world premiere performance at the Kansas City Repertory Theatre, where Rosen serves as artistic director. The run destroyed box office records at the venue and A Christmas Story, the Musical! became the highest grossing show in the company’s forty-five-year history. Not only was it commercially viable, but the musical also impressed critics and patrons alike. The limited engagement was extended into the New Year — it was originally scheduled to end right after the holiday — and during this time it was announced that the producers were aiming for a 2010 Broadway debut.

  But before the Parker family could make the journey from the Midwest to the Big Apple, there would be significant changes. Richards, who had received accolades for his score, was quietly removed from the creative team shortly after the Kansas City run. The composer had long been displeased with the musical’s reproduction of the Chinese restaurant sequence, a brief scene that appeared at the end of the original film, wherein a group of waiters croon a heavily accented version of “Deck the Halls.”

  © Carol Rosegg

  Even though he was unhappy about its addition, the scene remained in the show as the producers raced toward their first public showing. Richards states that although the sequence earned big laughs from audiences, it was always a “source of tension,” even before the initial New York read. “I had a very strong feeling that I didn’t want an Asian kid taken to a musical and saying to his parents, ‘Why are they making fun of us?’” he say
s.

  Ultimately, his criticism and concerns no longer fell on deaf ears. His name was removed from the promotional materials for the show and its accompanying website, and his songs were ripped from the show.

  Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, two songwriters who were both just twenty-four years old when they were hired to replace Richards, said they also took offense to the Chinese restaurant scene, but understood why it was in the show.

  “The only way we get away with it is that it’s from the movie and it feels familiar and it’s in a bygone era,” Paul said. “I think that’s why it’s excused a bit. To cut it we would be in hot water with a lot of fans.”

  However, Paul’s reasoning may not hold. After all, Philip Grecian omitted the scene from his version. According to the playwright, audiences and theater companies haven’t missed it. “It’s a short scene right at the end of the movie,” he says. “To have people build a new set for a short scene that’s all for one joke didn’t seem to make sense to me.”

  Benj Pasek and Justin Paul © Tyler Schwartz

  One straw that broke the camel’s back occurred during the intermission of one of the Kansas City performances. Richards was sitting in the audience and observed a young adult who appeared to be drunk, hunched over and singing loudly to himself, “Fa-rah-rah-rah-rahhhh, rah-rah-rah-rah!” in anticipation of the scene that had yet to come. For Richards, the sight was unnerving and signaled that some in the audience may have come to the show for the purpose of laughing at those whom they perceived to be different. “There was a side of it that seemed like, to him, there was the anticipation of a kind of racist porn,” he says. “It was disturbing.”

  The scene, which certainly does not hold up to today’s standards of poli­tical correctness and racial sensitivity, is an outlier when it comes to what makes A Christmas Story funny to so many of its fans. When performed live in the musical, the sequence always draws huge laughs, but Richards sees a substantial difference between how the scene plays on screen and in a live performance. “I love the movie,” he says, “but there’s a difference between seeing it in the context of its time, and seeing it live on stage with a real actor. There’s a big distinction.”