CHICAGO, ILLINOIS – NOVEMBER 15: Actor Peter Billingsley poses on the red carpet during the “A Christmas Story Christmas” Chicago screening at the Chicago Cultural Center on November 15, 2022 in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Barry Brecheisen/Getty Images)
Chances are you’ve seen A Christmas Story (1983) a dozen times, if not on purpose, then while channel-surfing during one of the movie’s marathon runs that have gone on for the past 26 years.
Did you know the actors who played two main characters in the 1983 classic continued their careers in the Dallas-Fort Worth area?
Peter Billingsley, who played Ralphie Parker, and Zack Ward who played bully Scut Farkus, found acting jobs after A Christmas Story.
Billingsley starred in The Dirt Bike Kid (1985), a movie about a kid with a magic motorcycle who soars over the Fort Worth skyline and saves a hot dog stand from being taken over by a bank. Ward played a juvenile delinquent who knocks out Chuck Norris with a tree branch in a 1997 episode of Walker, Texas Ranger.
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Really.
The Dirt Bike Kid premiered at the Inwood Theatre. It drew a rocky review from Sophia Dembling, a film critic for The Dallas Morning News at the time, who wrote that “it is difficult to find anything really glowing to say about this trite and confusing little movie.”
Decades later, Billingsley said he enjoyed the experience. The low-budget movie was filed in Fort Worth and the Mid-Cities area.
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