Hammond statue to immortalize ‘A Christmas Story’ prank
Bertolotti acquires photographs, clippings, advertisements and ephemera related to American comic actor Arnold Stang. A Kenilworth resident, Ms. Bertolotti is an accomplished painter, and her works have been featured in gallery shows in Italy, Los Angeles and New York. Her work was also featured in a retrospective on the life of Bob Dylan in Hibbing, MN, and appears in the book Boxigami Beatles Art by Linda Webb. She is a regular contributor to the online Bob Dylan archive Expecting Rain ( expectingrain.com ).
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The city was home to author and radio host Jean Shepherd, whose lightly fictionalized accounts of growing up in pre-World War II Homan, Ind., formed the basis for the movie. Shepards baritone narrated the movie as the adult version of protagonist Ralphie Parker. Flick was the nickname of Shepards real-life pal, Jack Flickinger, who survived his tongue injuries well enough to run Flicks Tap, about two miles north of the welcome center, into the 1980s. Flickinger died in 1997, but his daughter is scheduled to attend todays unveiling, as is Scott Schwartz, the actor who played Flick on-screen. Schwartz did his own stunts, according to media accounts, though his tongue was adhered to the flagpole with a suction cup. The South Shore Convention & Visitors Authority is hoping to tap into a wave of nostalgia for the film, which opened to lukewarm ticket sales in 1983, only to have the story of Ralphies quest to get a Red Ryder BB gun go on to become a minor industry.
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