A Christmas Story: Behind the Scenes of a Holiday Classic Read online

  “This place must really be busy,” I thought. It was a Friday, around 11 a.m., in late January, so I was a little taken aback that the place could attract so much business off-season that they would need to hire someone to regulate the parking.

  © Meredith Poczkalski

  He seemed to be shouting something at me, but since my windows were rolled up to avoid the Midwestern temperature, I couldn’t make out what he was saying. My slow-moving car and what must have been a confused look on my face caused him to wave the flag more vigorously. Sure enough, my intuition was right. There was a large cardboard sign — “Christmas Story House Parking: $5.00” — tied to his fence that appeared to have been written very carefully with a thick-tipped permanent marker. My lime green sedan, which was probably another indicator that I wasn’t from around these parts, joined two other cars parked in the lot.

  The man introduced himself to my friend Josh and me. There was some overly friendly small talk, then what seemed to be a carefully-rehearsed-to-sound-completely-casual explication of how we should navigate our tour.

  “I always tell people to start at the gift shop,” he said, pointing to a building across the street at his ten o’clock. “People always want to go straight to the house, but I always tell people to start at the gift shop.” We hadn’t disagreed with him, but he must have felt compelled to emphasize the point anyway, just in case we had the same thought process as those who had previously ignored his advice.

  “Then you should make your way to the museum while you wait for your tour,” he said, pointing across the street to a different building, directly ahead. “There’s a whole lot to see in there.”

  I looked across the street, sizing up these two buildings dedicated solely to memorializing the megahit movie that has only grown in popularity with each passing year. Two more cars on Rowley made their way in our direction. While Josh and I were getting a tour of the grounds that would have been better enjoyed with a pair of binoculars, our tour mates were bypassing the opportunity to park on the lawn and opting instead for the more economical meter-free parking curbside. I must have seemed like the perfect candidate for the man’s flag-waving trick, and after seeing the other tourists get out of their cars without forking over some green, Josh and I began to feel we had overpaid for what should have been free parking.

  Josh Bellocchio tries on Flick’s hat in the house © Caseen Gaines

  We were, however, getting our money’s worth in free advice. “Then, the actual house is right here.” He pointed with his flag to his immediate left, to a home best remembered as the one in which Ralphie Parker lived throughout the late 1930s to early 1940s with his whiny kid brother, Randy, his well-meaning and slightly naive mother, and his gruff father (the Old Man) with the heart of gold that was hidden beneath a tough exterior. The house seemed as though it had been untouched over the last twenty-something years, even down to the Christmas lights hanging off the roof and the leg lamp proudly displaying the glow of electric sex in the front living room window.

  Caseen Gaines with the Red Ryder BB gun © Caseen Gaines

  Josh paid the man and we proceeded to the gift shop, which was stationed in the first floor of a small house. Upon opening the door, I felt like Dorothy transported from her ho-hum monochromatic Kansas farmhouse into the extravagant Technicolor experience that is Munchkinland. There was so much everything in the gift shop. I saw figurines of Ralphie in his pink bunny suit. On a separate wall hung replicas of the signature long knit stocking cap worn by Schwartz, Ralphie’s potty-mouthed friend. To my right were T-shirts with phrases like “You’ll shoot your eye out!” sprawled across the front, and, to the right of them, on an adjacent wall, an army of leg lamps stood in an assortment of sizes, waiting and ready to march into a plastic bag and a living room window near you.

  The Christmas Story House Gift Shop © Caseen Gaines

  As we moved deeper into the shop, we realized what we had just seen was only the tip of the iceberg. There was Clarkworld on DVD, an independently produced documentary about the film’s director Bob Clark, on a spinning rack with the film’s 1994 sequel, My Summer Story. I turned my head and saw officially licensed Christmas Story Monopoly, magnets, postcards, action figures, bobbleheads, nightlights, Christmas tree ornaments, puzzles, mugs, and Lifebuoy soap, the cleaning agent used by Ralphie’s mom to wash his mouth out after she finds out her son uses foul language while helping the Old Man change a flat tire.

  But of everything in the store, what seemed to be most abundant was cash. There were over a dozen other customers in the small store with us. When we went up to the register to make our purchases, it was impossible not to notice the armfuls of stuff with which other people approached the counter. I have to admit, I accidentally gasped aloud when I heard the cashier tell the person ahead of me in line that their total was over $400, which inadvertently made me feel downright thrifty for spending around fifty bucks.

  We made our way out of the gift shop and to the museum. About ten people were heading in for the next scheduled tour, some eating kettle corn made and sold by a guy stationed between the house and the lawn where my car was parked.

  I had thought that its name, the Christmas Story Museum, would be a misnomer. I’d expected to see some signed autographs, maybe the shooting script, and the movie playing on a constant loop. I couldn’t have been more wrong. When you go to the Christmas Story Museum, you actually are visiting a museum. I had heard of other galleries dedicated to movies, like the Oz Museum in Wamego, Kansas, but I was genuinely gobsmacked at how much material had been amassed about A Christmas Story in this one central location. There were glass cases with original props and costumes, framed movie posters in different languages from all over the world, a large handmade dollhouse in the image of the Parker home, and Jim Moralevitz.

  Oh? You don’t know who Mr. Moralevitz is? Don’t worry, I didn’t either.

  “Good afternoon, and welcome to the Christmas Story Museum! I’m one of the actors in the movie.” Boy, this guy was very friendly. In fact, everyone we had met so far had been seemed indisputably friendly, including the man who I still felt had swindled me out of five bucks to park on his dead grass. The Christmas Spirit was alive and well in Cleveland, as was the entrepreneurial spirit.

  Jim Moralevitz (center) with fans Michael Miller and Kyle Mueller © Michael Miller

  Jim Moralevitz was an older gentleman with an easy charm, a naturally friendly demeanor, and a face as unrecognizable to me as his name. “I’m the guy who delivered the leg lamp in the movie!”

  I studied his face as he continued to tell us anecdotes from the shoot and how lucky he was to get screen time, even though he hadn’t expected any. I found some of his stories genuinely interesting. For example, the prop department had accidentally made the major award’s wooden crate too big and it wouldn’t fit through the door, which obviously posed a problem while filming. Instead of waiting for a new prop and incurring shooting delays, Bob Clark ordered the crate to be cut until it fit through the entryway. As a result, in some shots, “FRAGILE” is missing its first letter.

  While I listened intently to the man’s story, he remained completely unrecognizable to me, even though I had seen the film dozens of times. He had 8x10 glossy screen grabs of him in the film that he volunteered to sign for a nominal fee. I expressed to him that I had appreciated listening to him, which was true, and politely declined purchasing his autograph. He remained cordial, nonplussed even, which made me feel relieved because I certainly hadn’t meant to offend. As I went from that room of the museum to the next, I could hear him starting all over again for the next set of Christmas Story devotees.

  It was almost time for our tour of the house, so we headed back across the street. My car was still there, one of the few on the lawn, and the man was still waving his flag as tourists smarter than us drove
past him and lined the curb. Without much effort, we spotted license plates from Indiana, Illinois, New York, and Florida. There were a few folks waiting on the porch when we arrived back at the house, their faces pressed to the front window to get a glimpse inside, much like the kids at the beginning of the movie, outside of Higbee’s department store. They took what seemed like dozens of photos of the leg lamp from the outside of the house. Every once in a while someone would shout a line like, “It’s a major award!” or “Fra-gee-lay!” as their hand mimicked the Old Man’s syllable-emphasizing gesture in the film.

  We proceeded inside and our friendly tour guide spoke to us in the foyer beneath the staircase of the house, between the kitchen and living room. She gave us some background history about the house, its owner Brian Jones, and the film. She may have spoken about some other things, but after a minute or two, it was hard to pay attention to her. We were in the Parker house! The excessively tinseled Christmas tree was about twenty feet away from where I stood, complete with wrapped gifts underneath as if we were just moments away from Ralphie and Randy waking up in an upstairs bedroom and tripping over each other to get to the presents first. Did a model zeppelin lie underneath, perhaps, or maybe a heavy blue bowling ball that would eventually end up in the Old Man’s lap? I found myself craning my neck around the other tourists to see if I could find the long, rectangular gift-wrapped present hiding Ralphie’s requested rifle. Everything was almost exactly as I remembered it, but only almost, like when you’re up close at a concert and the lead singer looks a little bit different in real life.

  Corbyn Cook reenacts his favorite scenes © Shelley Cook

  After the guide’s brief presentation, we were free to roam the house with no stated restrictions. Before we were left to our own devices, we were told that when we got to the bathroom, we were free to put the soap in our mouths. According to our guide, lots of people liked to do that. As we made our way around, Josh and I saw a guy who appeared to be in his early thirties put on Randy’s bib and sit at the kitchen table to demonstrate “how the little piggies eat,” an homage to the scene when Ralphie’s kid brother plants his face in a dinner plate of meatloaf and mashed potatoes. Across from him, a slightly younger-looking woman crawled underneath the kitchen sink and whined, “Daddy’s gonna kill Ralphie!” When we got upstairs, we spotted two older women using the phone, pretending to hear Schwartz’s mother screaming on the other end upon hearing the news that her son was teaching his classmates dirty words.

  Josh and I weren’t just people watching, we were playing along too. He put on Flick’s aviator hat, which was inexplicably placed on a coat rack near the front door, and I ran under the Christmas tree and took pictures with a Red Ryder BB gun, grinning from ear to ear. When we made our way upstairs, Josh put on the headpiece to the “pink nightmare” pajamas, and I recreated the “Don’t forget to drink your Ovaltine” sequence while sitting on the toilet — lid down, of course.

  We became kids again, even if just for a few minutes, and everyone around us was a kid too. It reminded me of when I was younger and my friends and I used to play Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles during recess. There were often several different scenes going on at the same time, and perhaps even more than one kid would be playing Raphael or Leonardo, but we would all be having fun playing some form of the same game.

  As we were leaving, I couldn’t shake some of the questions that were buzzing around my head. The “how” questions were easiest: how did A Christmas Story, a small-budget film that had disappeared from movie theaters by Christmastime of its release year, become one of the most popular holiday movies of all time, surpassing even It’s a Wonderful Life on some critics’ lists? How did this section of Cleveland become a Christmas Story mecca, a sort of Disneyland set among the background of steel mills, and how did its owner, Brian Jones, gain the participation of the cast, crew, and Warner Bros. on this unprecedented business venture?

  The “why” questions were harder, like why were so many people flocking to this house on a side street in Ohio in the middle of a weekday? I knew what had brought me there — I had just started thinking about writing this book and wanted to check out the house for research — but what about the person ahead of me in line at the gift shop who had dropped a significant amount of cash on merchandise? Why was he there? Why did being in that house turn what I had imagined to be otherwise unexciting adults into giddy children? Why was this middle-America town a major tourist attraction — the Graceland of Christmas? And why was everyone so nice?

  Over the next several months, as I spoke to Brian Jones and consequently the majority of the film’s cast, members of the crew, friends of Jean Shepherd and Bob Clark, and other Christmas Story fans, the answers to many of these questions became clearer. With train conductors Shepherd and Clark, this movie was the little engine that could. The film defied the odds and skepticism of the executives at MGM, the studio that released the picture, to become not only a holiday classic but also one of the most watched broadcasts on television during the week of Christmas, thanks in no small part to the twenty-four-hour marathon airings started by television mogul Ted Turner in 1997. The most popular lines from the film have easily slipped into our pop lexicon, and the most ardent fans of the film can incorporate even the most esoteric pieces of Christmas Story dialogue into their everyday speech. (One of my personal favorites is exclaiming “Nottafinga!” whenever I leave a room and want my things undisturbed while I’m gone.) There have been annual conventions dedicated to the film, multiple home video releases on VHS, DVD, and Blu-ray, and public appearances by cast members at events over the last ten years.

  Fans Stephenee Carsten and Cory Kross © Stephenee Carsten

  When I was interviewing people for my previous book, Inside Pee-wee’s Playhouse, I found that most people I spoke to were surprised I was calling. They hadn’t spoken about the popular children’s television show in decades and, especially when I was just getting started, they couldn’t figure out why anyone would be interested in writing a book about a 1980s television show. Of course, people were still interested in Pee-wee Herman, but those inside the bubble seemed unaware of it.

  Conversely, there wasn’t a single person I interviewed for this book who didn’t recognize the amazing significance of A Christmas Story. This film is more than just an impressive credit on a resumé for the crew; it’s Bob Clark and Jean Shepherd’s love letter to the world. Unlike those of any other film that I can think of, the cast members of this movie remain in contact with one another — with some notable exceptions — and in strong alliance when it comes to participating in events, attending conventions, and granting interviews. It’s all for one and one for all. There are many reasons why this may be, but it’s safe to say that this particular relationship among cast members of a movie that’s three decades old is unique. Unlike long-running television shows, actors typically work on a movie for only a few months, perhaps a year, tops. It’s not that common that lifelong friendships and professional relationships develop as a result of working on a film. However, the Christmas Story featured players continue to defy convention every time they appear together at a promotional event — which is actually more often than you might realize.

  Whenever I told a friend or co-worker that I was writing a book on A Christmas Story, their reactions always took me by surprise. They would go on about either their love for the film or, more frequently, their love for Jean Shepherd. It seemed as though many people’s appreciation for the movie was grounded solely in the fact that the film was based on his work. I knew Shepherd was immensely popular, and he has remained so thanks in large part to his published works and a number of extremely comprehensive fan sites on the internet, but I hadn’t realized the full reach of his impact.

  Ian Petrella signs autographs © David Monseur

  For those uninitiated into the Cult of Shepherd, the reaction was equally as passionate. Sometim
es the casual mention of this project would produce ten minutes of debate about which scene from the movie was the best. Personally, my favorite moment is when Miss Shields, played by Tedde Moore (one of the nicest women on Earth), is trying to guilt Ralphie and Schwartz into admitting they got Flick to touch the flagpole with his tongue. But many people disagreed with me. How can you go without laughing when the kid brother Randy is bundled up so tight that he looks like “a tick about to pop?” Who isn’t reminded of a father figure in their family when the Old Man shouts obscenities at his furnace, or when he fails to mask his dignified heartbreak when his wife breaks his beloved leg lamp? Or what about the Chinese restaurant waiters, who are laugh-out-loud funny even though the joke is far beyond politically correct?

  But almost always, this question would come up: “Why are you writing a book about A Christmas Story?” When I explained the brief history of the film, and its sequels, stage adaptations, and the Christmas Story House in Cleveland, most of the people I spoke to were dumbfounded. “They made a sequel?” I think most people didn’t believe me. “There’s a museum? In Cleveland?”

  The irony became crystal clear early on. There is a whole section of the population that has seen this film dozens of times, and many who cite it as their favorite movie of all time, and yet know virtually nothing about it. I found this fascinating, and the more I told people about the movie’s journey in becoming one of the most beloved holiday flicks of all time, the more people wanted to hear.

  Like a family member, A Christmas Story is loved. It’s the last thing I see as I fall asleep before Santa Claus comes to visit, and the soundtrack to my Christmas morning while we open gifts. For my family, and for many others, it’s a part of our annual holiday routine. For those who worked on the film, the love hasn’t faded in the thirty years since the movie was shot. Even those who hadn’t spoken about their work in decades enjoyed revisiting the house on Cleveland Street.