A Christmas Story: Behind the Scenes of a Holiday Classic

by Caseen Gaines

  “They had a car for us to sit in between takes,” says Schwartz, “but it was too noisy when they were shooting, so they’d cut it off while filming. Then they’d yell, ‘Cut!’ and we’d run back to the car and all the heat would be gone. It would be freezing.”

  The crew prepares to shoot the “triple-dog-dare!” © St. Catharines Museum

  For the kids, there was another unexpected side effect of the outdoor shoot at Victoria Public School. Several dozen students who weren’t cast as extras were showing up at the field and asking the actors for their signatures.

  “It was just so bitter cold,” Schwartz recalls. “My hands were blue and people wanted for me to stick around and sign autographs. It was crazy.”

  R.D. Robb retreating into his trailer to escape the cold © Anne Dean

  The craziness continued when Schwartz, who quickly earned a reputation as being a brat on the set, got his comeuppance for all of the pranks he pulled on the cast and crew during the shoot. “Scott was a pain in the ass,” R.D. Robb explains. “The crew was screwing around with him one time and, when we broke for lunch, everyone walked away and left him stuck on the flagpole.”

  “I was out there all by myself,” Schwartz remembers. “There was no one out there!” In a true moment of life imitating art, the cast and crew watched from a distance as Scott Schwartz became Flick. “He was literally failing his arms, just like in the movie,” Robb says, laughing. “He was yelling, ‘Hey guys, come back! Come back!’ It was so funny.”

  One of the prominently featured students in the film, a redheaded boy who yells, “Holy cow, it’s the fire department!” and “Wow, it’s the cops!” was actually not one of the children selected from the school. Tom Wallace earned his role as one of the only non-principal actors with speaking lines in that scene because he lived in the rural community of Campbellford in Eastern Ontario, right next door to a cottage owned by Bob Clark and his wife.

  Since the Clarks weren’t always there, they had hired the thirteen-year-old Wallace to maintain their yard. One day, the filmmaker saw Wallace cutting the grass and approached him. “Hey,” he said. “Wanna be in a movie?”

  The details were ironed out with the Wallace parents. Clark said he was filming what would be “a Christmas classic,” and their youngster made his way to St. Catharines to be one of many schoolchildren in the movie. He was treated to the same 1940s haircut, which he enjoyed getting just about as much as the boys at Victoria Public School had. Initially, he had no lines, but as filming progressed, Clark found a way to feature his neighbor more prominently in the picture.

  For Wallace, filming was a lot of fun. He recalls playing hockey during his downtime and receiving a comparably hefty fee of $500 for his services, a substantial amount more than the single dollar the Victoria students were paid.

  When the film was completed, his local movie theater promoted the fact that he was in A Christmas Story. An advertising campaign featured Wallace as a local celebrity, even if it was only for a few short weeks.

  Once Flick’s tongue was severed from the pole with the assistance of Neil Burton and John Kennedy, two locals who acted as firefighters, it was believed the shooting was done. The trailers left the parking lot, the rented wind machines were returned, and the actors made their way back to Toronto.

  The view of filming from inside the school © Anne Dean

  With the ice-cold shooting conditions and the occasional inconveniences beyond the camera’s gaze, Schwartz was happy when filming wrapped on that scene at the end of a long day. That was, until director Bob Clark approached him a few days later.

  “Bob came up to me and said, ‘Listen,we have some good news and some bad news,’” Schwartz recalls. “The good news is you’re gonna be with us for an extra few days. The bad news is it’s because when we shot the film, they underdeveloped it in processing. We’re going to have to reshoot it.”

  The underdeveloped film would have caused the scene to look significantly lighter than the rest of the movie. As a result, Clark scheduled a day for Schwartz and the kids to venture back to the same shooting location to recreate the magic they had captured on their first time filming the scene. There were no problems in processing the second time around, and the reshot scene is the version that appears in the film.

  The Victoria School students warming themselves between takes © Anne Dean

  The reshoots included a scene shot by the jungle gym in the playground, and on February 10 and 11, they finished the last shots of the Victoria Public School filming. Once again, the bitter cold was an issue, cutting through the ratty costumes the child actors and extras were required to wear.

  To help supplement what the costumers provided, the producers asked the parents of the Victoria Public School children to search for any old clothes that might be appropriate for the students to wear during the shoot. Cory Ireland, who was in fourth grade at the time, remembers wearing an old plaid wool jacket his mother found for him: “It was a big mistake. We were filming the pole scene and it was freezing.”

  This isn’t to say it was all work and no play. The actors seemed to enjoy their time at the school, and often spent their downtime playing hockey or soccer in the gym. According to Ireland, the child actors also had a habit of taking Play-Doh and chucking it at the school walls. “They were allowed to do what they wanted,” he says, “and we kind of tagged along for fun.”

  The kids at the school were certainly taken with their brush with Hollywood, and the film’s actors and crew reciprocated the warm feelings.

  “The kids [from the school] were remarkably good,” Bob Clark reflected in 2003. Tedde Moore agrees. “The kids in the classroom were wonderful,” she says. “We all had a good time. Kids love acting. It’s easy for them to do.”

  Peter Billingsley playing with Legos between takes © Anne Dean

  Scott Schwartz (right) joking around with one of the Victoria School students © Anne Dean

  For all of the professionalism the kids showed while filming, Moore does remember one memorable encounter with the young Scott Schwartz before filming got underway for the flagpole scene, which showed the unpredictability of dealing with child actors. “Scotty got in the makeup chair before I did, and he was as much of a character then as he is now,” she says. “I liked him very much, but he freaked me out. One day I said to the darling makeup man who had been there for a long time that I was never, never, ever going to let any of my children be a screen actor. This was all because Scotty had just been in the chair and had been talking about how much he loved reading Playboy. The makeup artist was putting makeup on my face and said, ‘How old do you think Scott is?’ I told him I didn’t know and guessed eleven or twelve. It turned out that he was like fifteen or something. He was one of those young adults that work in Hollywood that were smaller and looked younger.

  “It was hilarious,” she continues with a laugh. “I had no idea the lad was actually as old as he was. It was pretty funny. I was just horrified that this young boy was behaving like this teenager, but it turns out he had every right to behave like that because he was one.”

  When A Christmas Story was finished, Bob Clark wanted to do something nice for the young extras who had endured the extreme changes to their school schedule for a few weeks, often in the freezing cold while filming take after take of the same crowd shots. The studio treated them to a screening of the film at Lincoln Mall Cinema, a movie theater nearby. The entire school went on the field trip and, when they first saw the establishing shot of the fictional Warren G. Harding Elementary School, they erupted into thunderous applause and loud howling.

  When the movie was over, the kids gave the film rave reviews. “I loved it,” twelve-year-old Kenny Vallee said. “I’m gonna see it a few more times. It’s just great because nothing like this ever happened here before.”


  The principal was also pleased with the finished product. “I thought the kids did very well,” Marshall Pomroy said. “They were quite photogenic. It was interesting to see them.”

  However, not everyone was pleased with the film. The St. Catharines Standard, the local newspaper in the town, cited one of the teachers at the school as being disappointed that the film wasn’t a “real wholesome movie.” While she had no complaints with the way the students of Victoria Public School were represented in the film, Ivy Hunt took umbrage at the scenes in which Ralphie gets out of bad situations by lying, such as when his mother catches him cursing and he claims to have learned the bad words from his pal Schwartz. One such scene was filmed in the school: Ralphie denies knowing who triple-dog-dared Flick to put his tongue to the flagpole. According to the Standard, Hunt’s main concern was that lying was celebrated and used for comic effect.

  However, Hunt seemed to represent a minority opinion. The school community embraced the film and it remains a much talked about event in St. Catharines to this day.

  Bob Clark donated one final gift to the school — a care package containing a movie poster, a copy of the script signed by “their teacher” Tedde Moore and “classmate” Peter Billingsley, and a Betamax tape labeled “A Christmas Story — Director’s Cut.” When the principal and students buried those objects in a time capsule in the front yard of the school, they had no idea that decades later the videotape would be one of the most sought-after artifacts from the film.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Indiana, Canada

  Eight-year-old Ian Petrella sat at the dinner table across from Darren McGavin, who was reading his newspaper. To his left sat Melinda Dillon, with large blond hair that made her look a little bit like a sparkler on the Fourth of July. Peter Billingsley sat across from her, buttering a thick slice of bread. Ian, who was wearing a pink bib and a maroon sweater, lifted his dinner plate and planted his face in his food. The youngster put the plate back down, laughing like a demented clown, as meatloaf and mashed potatoes stuck to his nose and chin.

  Ian Petrella getting ready for his snowsuit scene © Ian Petrella

  It was one of the many shooting days spent at Madger Studios in Toronto. On this day, the “Mommy’s Little Piggy” sequence, as fans of the film have come to call it, was being shot. For the young Ian, filming the scene was a real test of endurance. “It was something you had to do over and over because this was the time when you only had one 35mm camera to shoot a movie with,” Petrella says. “If you needed different angles, you’d have to break that camera down. It was about an hour between takes.”

  To make the young actor laugh, directorBob Clark would hide on the set with Ian’s mother, the two cracking jokes and making fart­ing noises from their mouths. What came out was genuine elation and a memorable laugh. The sound of his giggle has stuck with fans of the film, and consequently has become unshakable to the now-adult Ian.

  Peter Billingsley and Ian Petrella © Ian Petrella

  “People will come up to me and they’ll ask me to do the laugh or recite a line from the film,” he says. “I always tell them I can’t. First of all, I’m in my thirties and it’s just not going to sound the same. Some people get kind of pissed about it, like ‘Why can’t you do it? Why won’t you do it?’ and I tell them, ‘Because it’s not going to sound the same! That’s just how it is.’”

  Clark seemed to have a very simple rule when it came to directing kid actors: if they think it’s funny, it probably is. As a result, all the young actors were encouraged to experiment on the set and make suggestions to help enhance a scene. “There was a lot of play that we got to do,” Ian says. “It wasn’t really acting. We didn’t have to think too much; we just did it and had a lot of fun.”

  Tedde Moore also had an enjoyable time during the Toronto shoot. Though her scenes in the film were shot in St. Catharines, the actress did have a scene on the soundstage several weeks after her initial Christmas Story stint wrapped. Moore appeared alongside Melinda Dillon and Darren McGavin in a sequence that was cut before the movie’s theatrical release. The original shooting script indicates that after Ralphie writes his theme about how much he wants a Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas, a fantasy sequence follows. Miss Shields makes her way to the Parker house to sing Ralphie’s praises and help make the case for him to get his desired Christmas gift. Before she leaves, she gives the parents clear instructions: “If you have any questions about what I have just said, please write them in a theme of 100 words or less for Ralph to deliver to me at school,” she said. “I will grade it and return it by next Friday.”

  Even though the scene didn’t survive in the finished film, traces of it did remain in another one of Ralphie’s dream sequences. “There’s that scene where I’m dressed in a hat and an old-fashioned dress and I’m going ‘A+, A+, A+,’ which apparently comes out of nowhere,” Moore says. “Why am I dressed this way? That’s the way Ralphie saw me in his fantasies — a ginormous, imposing woman. I dressed in the same costume in the cut scene where I went to his house.”

  Darren McGavin © Ian Petrella

  Even though she has no cinematic record of the experience, she still regards working with Darren McGavin as one of the best experiences making the movie. “He rarely had a chance to play a theatrical scene in his movie life, so we just had a ball,” she says fondly.

  © Reuben Freed

  A number of other scenes were also cut from A Christmas Story before it was released. Reportedly, the “director’s cut” version of the film clocked in at close to two hours. MGM argued that it should be shortened by a half hour, in order to have more screenings in movie theaters. While an alternate opening sequence was also cut (it was an extended version of Jean Shepherd’s narration over establishing shots of steel mills), the bulk of the scenes that were cut were Ralphie’s fantasy sequences. From a practical standpoint, cutting those scenes could be done with minimal impact to the plot. For example, a sequence in which Ralphie rescues Santa Claus on the roof of a fairytale home was removed near the end of the film. The jolly gift-giver is about to be robbed by Black Bart and his band of brigands, but they prove to be no match for the tyke with a toy rifle.

  Dwayne McLean (center) as Black Bart with his young bandits © Ian Petrella

  The most significant cut to the movie was an elaborate big-budget sequence in which Ralphie frees Flash Gordon from the stronghold of Ming the Merciless. Careful observers of the movie may have noticed that the end credits reference this scene even though it doesn’t appear in the finished version of the film.

  Filming the deleted Santa Claus fantasy scene © Ian Petrella

  “A good chunk of the budget went into that thing ’cause it was a huge set that they had built,” Peter Billingsley says. “They had me in a little silver bikini and I was palling up with a space hero, taking on a big alien with a gun.”

  Billingsley may have been happy that the world didn’t get to see him in his silver getup, but one person was unhappy about the decision to cut the elaborate sequence — Paul Hubbard, the actor who played Flash Gordon. “I read for it a few times,” he says. “It was just an amazing set, very extensive. Mr. Clark spared no expense. I was thrilled when I saw the version with all our scenes intact. I was over the moon, and I was flabbergasted when I was told that a number of scenes were taken out. I never found out what the reason was.”

  Peter Billingsley and Paul Hubbard in the deleted Flash Gordon scene © MGM/UA Entertainment / Photofest

  Not only did he not know the reason, but he didn’t find out his scene was taken out of the movie until a few weeks before Christmas, after the movie was already released in theaters. “My brother went to go see it and told me,” he says. “I had young kids at the time and we were working on the nursery, so it took me a little while before I could see it for my
self.”

  Even though he wasn’t in the movie, his name still appears in the end credits. According to Hubbard, that was an act of generosity on the part of Christmas Tree Films, which enabled the actor to continue to receive royalty checks for his performance, even though it was cut. Three decades later, A Christmas Story remains a high point of his career, even though few have seen his work on the project. “It was a blast doing it,” he said. “I worked with great people and it was a great shoot. I was very proud to have been involved.”

  While MGM is most frequently blamed for the cuts to the film, director Bob Clark maintains that the final decision to take scenes out of the movie was his. “I cut [them] out,” he said in 2003. “I had complete control of the film. In the first running of the film [they] should have been cut. We were storied out and we were ready to get on with our adventure.”

  Even if the film was stronger due to the cuts, many held out hope that one of the DVD releases of the movie would include the previously unseen footage. Tedde Moore was among those disappointed when she learned the deleted scenes would most likely never see the light of day.

  “I was so delighted when I heard they were releasing the special edition of the DVD,” she recalls. “I assumed my scene with Darren McGavin would be included. I phoned Bob and was heartbroken.”

  “We don’t have it,” Clark said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The footage. We didn’t save it. It doesn’t exist.”