Remembering Director Bob Clark, 67, Who Made the Classic A Christmas Story

Film director Bob Clark, 67, and his 22 year old son Ariel were tragically killed when a drunk driver crashed into their car head on in the early morning hours of April 4^th in Pacific Palisades, California.

Clark will never be remembered as one of the best directors to ever come out of Hollywood, but he will be remembered as a man who created three distinctive films that changed the genres they represented. You may not be able to name a Bob Clark film but you have certainly been exposed to his work at some point, especially if you have your television set turned on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day.

Clark is the director of the now classic "A Christmas Story," the humorous story of a young boy named Ralphie whose only Christmas wish is to get the toy gun he has been dreaming of but is always getting rebuffed with the warning "You'll shoot your eye out." Through the witty writing of humorist Jean Shepard, who also narrated the film as the adult Ralphie, Clark translated the lyrical piece to film without losing any of Shepard's signature witticisms. Clark also added his own brand of humor to the film including giving Darren McGavin the now immortal pronunciation of the word 'fragile' (fra-gee-lay). He also can be spotted in a cameo as the man who walks up to McGavin on the street while McGavin admires the infamous leg lamp in his living room window.

At the time of its November 1983 release "A Christmas Story" was a critical hit but only a mild financial success. The film started to catch on but had to be removed from first run theaters as the big Christmas pictures were being ushered in. By the time the Christmas films had played themselves out, "A Christmas Story" had played itself out in second run theaters and was soon headed for home video. It was there that the film began to catch on and the rest is history. For the last several years the film has been shown on a 24-hour schedule from Christmas Eve through Christmas Day.