Schwartz never imagined that the “charming little movie” would be the pop cultural phenomenon it is today. Bob Clark directed the film, set in the 1940s. Author Jean Shepherd narrated his tale, in which 9-year-old Ralphie pines for a Red Ryder Range 200 Shot BB gun for Christmas. “A Christmas Story,” celebrates its 35th anniversary this year.
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He’s also shopping around a “Flashback Fridays” TV show, featuring interviews with Anthony Michael Hall of “Sixteen Candles,” Jeremy Miller of “Growing Pains” and Quiet Riot drummer Frankie Banali. He also still finds his way to guest spots on shows like Lost, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and American Horror Story.Schwartz, 50, remains in show business as a motivational speaker and a booking agent for celebrities. He’s now found a nice, tidy home in Uwe Boll and Asylum productions, playing the lead in Boll’s outrageously outre video game adaptation Postal, appearing in a Sharknado movie, and paying a recurring role on Z Nation.
His career got a second start in adulthood as a regular on Christopher Titus’ sitcom, Titus, and in film roles in Resident Evil: Apocalypse and Transformers. In teenhood, Ward maintained a steady string of prominent TV roles in shows like NYPD Blue and JAG, but his biggest roles at that age likely include Moody Spurgeon in a particularly popular Anne of Green Gables adaptation in the ‘80s. Some of Billingsley’s success must have rubbed off on Ward, however, who arguably has the largest acting career of the kids on this list.
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Ralphie going HAM on Scut is one of A Christmas Story’s most beautifully cathartic moments, the viewers getting vicarious justice for everyone who ever bullied them through Ralphie’s full going-postal onslaught. Scut Farkus was the bane of Ralphie’s existence, a merciless ginger bully who delighted in cackling at his prey from under his coonskin cap and behind his braces (and his yellow eyes!). To this day, he no longer suffers from soap poisoning. Since then, he’s found frequent work, particularly with friends/collaborators Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn he directed 2009’s Couples Retreat and executive produced Four Christmases and (get this!) the first Iron Man. Whether he’s wishing against hope for a Red Ryder BB gun, wailing on Scut Farkus, or enduring a bunny suit made by his Aunt Clara, Ralphie encapsulates the bittersweet struggles of growing up at Christmas for a certain subset of Midwestern white kid.Īs for Billingsley himself, after a string of respectable child actor roles in the ‘80s and early ‘90s (including an Emmy-nominated turn in a CBS after-school special called The Writing on the Wall), he made the transition to producing and directing.
Let’s start with little Ralphie, the avatar for all the hopes, dreams, and disappointments that Christmas can offer.
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Last Seen: As an actor, his last turn was a small role in the 2013 romantic comedy A Case of You however, he last directed 2016’s crime thriller Term Life and executive produces the Netflix series F is for Family. Key to that is seeing the world through the eyes of little Ralphie, his little brother, Randy, and the friends and bullies who orbit their tinsel-tinged adventures. It’s easy to be glib about such an omnipresent Christmas classic, but A Christmas Story is a classic for reasons beyond sheer overexposure – it’s a curiously strong mix of warm nostalgia for ’40s holiday Americana and moments of surprisingly adult cynicism about Christmas commercialism and the dysfunction of bickering families. As you read this, some TV somewhere is probably playing A Christmas Story. No one born after 1997 has ever had to seek out A Christmas Story just walk past any random TV playing TNT on the day itself, and you’ll catch a glimpse of Ralphie shooting his eye out with a Red Ryder BB gun or Darren McGavin marveling at his leg lamp. The Bob Clark-directed holiday tale of little Ralphie and the many misadventures surrounding his ninth Christmas started out as darkly comic counterprogramming to the sunniness of traditional Christmas movies, only to become an annual tradition for most yuletide households. Each month, Clint Worthington’s What Ever Happened To… catches us up with some of our favorite faces from our pop-culture past.
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