Peter Billingsley Describes the Scene and Prop Mix-Up in A CHRISTMAS STORY That Made Him Incredibly Sick
A Christmas Story is a holiday classic that is viewed in most homes celebrating Christmas every year. I know we turn on the cable channel that plays the 24-hour loop of the movie at some point on Christmas, and I usually squeeze in a Blu-ray viewing of it as well so we can watch without commercials. This is a movie my family quotes regularly that makes us laugh every time, and definitely gets us into the holiday spirit.
And while it is also looked back on fondly by the stars, there is a story that star of the film Peter Billingsley, who played Ralphie, recalls with less fondness. In a recent interview on That Scene with Dan Patrick (via Cinemablend), Billingsley talked about the scene where Ralphie is imagining that he is a cowboy dressed in white, and is saving his family from bad guys with the help of his trusty Red Rider bb gun. This is a classic scene, but it wasn’t made without a major bump in the road. Billingsley recalled:
Well, they totally screwed up, Dan. The scene says he’s dressed as a sheriff. So I put the costume on. And the script says he’s chewing tobacco. Sure enough, the prop man, who’s responsible for the chewing tobacco, comes up to me with a pouch that says Red Man on it. I don’t know the difference, I said, 'What do I do with this?' He says, 'Here, jam it down in here. Don’t swallow, just spit.' So, I do it, we get ready to go, and about 15 minutes in, the world starts tilting. I start sweating. My stomach starts hurting, and I start throwing up. [Director] Bob [Clark's] like, 'Cut cut. What the hell is going on?' There was the prop man, 'Oh, I gave him Red Man, you know.' Bob says, 'What are you doing? He’s 12 years old!'
That’s insane! No way that would have happened these days, but the ‘80s were a different time for kids. Billingsley went on to say:
So we shut down, I go and lay on the couch in the living room of the set for about 40 minutes until I can get the shit out of my system. Then they did what they should have done earlier, someone took a bunch of raisins, squished them together and then stuck that in my mouth, so that I had brown spit. You can imagine, it was a very different time then. He just gave me straight up, whole cut-leaf Red Man.
Poor kid. That prop guy was clearly not a parent. But even though it was an insane mishap, at least Billingsley came out of it with a good story, and most likely an aversion to tobacco!