As we settle in with family and friends this season, many of you might recall the holiday classic A Christmas Story and the legacy it has left us.
Note: Martin Malivoire retells the story of the leg lamp in his own words below.
The heart-warming American film was released on Nov. 18, 1983, and wasn’t exactly a hit at the time, but has gone on to become a classic right up there with The Wizard of Oz. Very little of the film—two shooting weeks of nine, in fact — were filmed in the city where the story is based in Cleveland, Ohio. In what may come as a blasphemous shock to American fans of the A Christmas Story (even still today!), the rest of the movie was filmed on a sound stage in Toronto and on location in St. Catharines.
In a 2013 interview in the Toronto Star, author Tyler Schwartz recounts the Canadian connection in his book A Christmas Story Treasury, written to help mark 30 years since the movie’s release in 1983.
He shares many of the behind-the-scenes facts and interviews with production crew members — including one of the designers of the famous leg lamp, Toronto special effects creator and now the owner of Malivoire Wine Company, Martin Malivoire. Those Canadian details were the facts Schwartz was most anxious to share with A Christmas Story fan.
“I was excited to try to bring the Canadianism of it all,” Schwartz told the Star. “Here’s the movie that’s become huge, right there with The Wizard of Oz and all those other classics and it was filmed on a shoestring budget in and around Toronto, largely by Canadians doing it for the love of film.”
“Nobody expected that,” said Malivoire in the Star interview of the immense popularity of the leg lamp, the “major award” won by Ralphie’s dad (Darren McGavin) that was dreamed up by Shepherd’s imagination and brought to the screen by production designer Reuben Freed.
Malivoire also made that famous flagpole, filmed at Victoria Public School in St. Catharines, and got a good chuckle out of the news his design has been immortalized in a bronze statue.
“He (Malivoire) told me they actually got a chubby-legged model and made a plaster cast from her leg and made a mould out of it,” Schwartz told the Star. “They made a couple of versions — this is stuff nobody knows and for all the fans out there this is really interesting stuff.”
The last remaining leg lamp in Malivoire’s possession — dusty and unappreciated after years in the window of Malivoire’s former special effects shop on Booth Ave. in Toronto — was destroyed in the early 1990s, just before A Christmas Story found new life on TV.
“At that time, there was no value to them,” Malivoire told the Star. “I tracked down the artist who painted the leg lamp and the guy who fabricated it, and they were all so modest and unassuming and maybe not appreciating how huge the leg lamp has become,” added Schwartz, who sells about 1,000 leg lamps in Canada each year. “In the States, it’s huge.”
The movie continues to be celebrated in Cleveland by fans on the movie. The 30th anniversary of the film drew 5,000 fans to the American city to relive nine-year-old Ralphie’s yearning for a Red Ryder BB gun and poor Flick’s tongue stuck to the frozen pole. The fanfare included kitschy merchandise—bobbleheads and “Ohh Fudge” — a DVD and Blu-ray re-release of the film, and interviews and photos with the cast. Most attendees also visited the newly restored A Christmas Story house, a yellow home turned Cleveland tourism hotspot, where fans can eye iconic props including Randy’s red snowsuit and the glowing leg lamps as they explore the film set.
This Christmas, Martin Malivoire himself offered a fond memory of the leg lamp in a Christmas email to friends and fans of the Beamsville Bench winery who subscribe to the winery’s newsletter. This is his story, re-published here with his permission.
The Legacy of the Lamp!
By Martin Malivoire
As you may already know, in the years before I put my name on a winery, my profession was related to the motion picture industry.
In a pursuit spanning 40 years, I collaborated with many great people. Few were as rewarding to work with as the late Bob Clark.
He was a seasoned and visionary film director, and it was at Bob’s suggestion that I undertook an unlikely project, one whose memory became the most enduring of my pre-winery career: the leg lamp made famous by the holiday film, A Christmas Story.
Why do I say “unlikely?” My expertise was in special effects, which I designed and executed for motion pictures, television and stage. Frequently these were loud and dramatic; I engineered fires, explosions, crashes and the like. Prop-making was a little outside my usual practice, but I happily agreed to build this one for my friend.
With a jolly demeanour and a sly smile, Bob handed me a napkin, bearing a sketch of a flamboyant light fixture. The rest is history.
A suitably proportioned young woman was hastily recruited to model for a leg mold, which was no small task, as it required immersing her entire leg, from big toe to navel, in quick-setting plaster.
From the mold, we cast a series of translucent plastic lamps. Each had to be individually crafted to the specific requirements of a scene and uniquely, meticulously illuminated by our director of photography. Accordingly, not one of the fixtures was a complete, C.S.A. anointed, “plug-in, switch-on,” and as Ralphie reminisces, “bask in the soft glow of electric sex” lamp.
Nonetheless, the illusion was a success. The presence of the lamp brought elements of levity, the ridiculous, fantasy and nostalgia to the film, magnified by the director himself. Bob, as narrator, gave his own warm voice to Ralphie’s childhood memories, and made them ours.
When production wrapped, the lamps had nowhere to go. I stored them in Toronto, and for years they adorned the windows of my studio. However, the film company still owned them and when I was told to dispose of these props, I complied, leaving nothing behind.
As movies go, A Christmas Story was what we call “a sleeper.” It drew modestly on release, but grew in popularity year after year, to join the ranks of modern Christmas classics.
We did not foresee this, nor did we foresee that of all the images generated by this now-iconic movie, the leg lamp would become its most-remembered, most-cherished, and most-copied Christmas symbol, launching a huge industry of luminous celebrations and decorative reproductions.
If we had known … well, I’m certain I’m not the only one who would have rushed back to rescue those fishnet stocking-clad plastic leg lamps from a Cherry Street dumpster.
No, I do not receive any royalties, but it gives me pleasure to see how many folks today own a modern copy of our original creation.
If you’re among them, may it light this Christmas and many more to come … and if you don’t have a leg lamp of your own, I hope that by sharing this story I’ve left you with a smile.
A very Merry Christmas to all,
Martin Malivoire
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