Revere band alums have ‘A Christmas Story’ of their own
By Kathleen Folkerth
RICHFIELD — Every year around this time, Doug MacKay sits down with his family in Hudson and watches a movie of himself in the Revere High School Band.
But the movie isn’t a home video — it’s the perennial favorite “A Christmas Story,” which featured the Revere Marching Minutemen in a very brief scene.
“There it is,” MacKay tells his wife and children. “Quick, look!”
MacKay, a trombone player, was one of about 100 Revere band members who were bused to downtown Cleveland one cold January night in 1983 to be on the set of the film. The scene in which the band appears — and is heard — is the one where main character Ralphie and his family head downtown to visit Santa Claus.
Nearly 24 years have passed since the experience, and memories are a little fuzzy for some who participated. But the excitement that came with being on a movie set is something that hasn’t been forgotten.
“I just remember the band as a whole was very excited,” said Sue (Anderson) Percival, a 1985 Revere graduate who played trumpet in the band.
MacKay said Deborah Scheufler, Revere’s band director at the time, had a special meeting with the band to tell the members about the movie.
“I got a phone call from somebody from the company making the movie, and they were looking for a band to be in the parade scene in the movie,” said Scheufler, who is now the band director at Brecksville-Broadview Heights Middle School. “Since the movie took place in the 1940s, they needed a band with traditional-style uniforms. At that time, we had very traditional-style uniforms, so it fit the time period.”
“The reason they picked us is because of the uniforms — we looked like toy soldiers,” MacKay said.
Copley resident Kelly (Sikora) Shook, who was a junior at Revere and a clarinet player at the time, recalls the band’s red, white and blue uniforms weren’t very popular with the band members.
“We saw all the other bands in the area that were swing bands,” she said. “A lot of people in band disliked that we were a military-style band and couldn’t do fun stuff.”
But thanks to those uniforms, the band was on its way to a role in what would become one of the most popular movies of the latter 20th century.
A cold night in Cleveland
After school one Tuesday in January 1983, the band boarded a school bus and headed to Cleveland’s Public Square.
“Since it was to be an
evening parade scene, they told us to be there at 6
p.m.,” Scheufler said.
“We left at night, and
it was very, very cold,” Shook said. According
to a newspaper article about the event, which Shook
kept in her high school scrapbook, it was 6 degrees
in Cleveland that night.
“It was below zero with
the wind chill,” Scheufler said. “They had
just started building Tower City, so we were housed
there until it was our turn.”
The band waited and waited.
“We sat around for about
six hours,” Scheufler said. “They had come
to me at 12:30 in the morning and said ‘We’re
not going to get to you tonight. Can you get back here
tomorrow?’ and I said ‘No, we can’t
come back tomorrow. I’ve got 100 teenagers here
now.’”
The filmmakers went ahead and
used the band that night.
“We didn’t get to
our scene until 1 or 2 in the morning,” Scheufler
said. “The kids were excited; they didn’t
mind at all. All the other people trying to be extras
were there, too, families with kids who were trying
to be extras in the movie.”
Even with the extreme cold, there
was no snow in Cleveland that night. “They
had to use a snow-making machine,” Shook said.
Percival, a Richfield native
who now lives in Hudson, said her squad was in the second
row during the parade scene.
“We were really excited,
hoping we’d see our faces in the film,”
she said.
The extreme temperatures led
to some of the brass instruments freezing up, Scheufler
said.
MacKay said he remembers that
all the Christmas decorations had been left up downtown,
so even though the holiday was over, Public Square still
looked like Christmas.
Because the scene featured a
Christmas parade, Shook said there was a Salvation Army
band on the set as well as horses and Santa. MacKay
said cars from the movie’s era of the late 1930s/early
’40s were all around the square.
“You really felt like you
were in the ’40s when you went on that movie set,”
Percival said.
MacKay added the band was filmed
as it paraded around the square a couple of times. He
also remembers there was a lot of waiting around.
“I think I saw the dad
in the movie (actor Darren McGavin),
but mostly we saw a lot of extras,” MacKay said.
Shook said at one point, the
band was led to one of the buildings in Public Square
where they were treated to a huge buffet. It was quite
a spread.
“Everything imaginable
to a kid was there,” she said.
She also remembers getting home
very early in the morning and seeing students getting
picked up by their school buses just as she was getting
home. Like many other band members, she stayed home
from school that day.
“We felt like we were big
shots because we were downtown until 3 filming a movie,”
Percival said.
The long night paid off for the
band. Shook said after the movie’s release, the
band was paid for its participation in the filming.
Scheufler said she doesn’t recall how much the
band was paid, but it wasn’t a lot. The money
went toward the band’s trip to the Cherry Blossom
Festival in Washington, D.C., in the spring of 1984.
Staying for the credits
When the movie was released the
following November, the band members went to see it
as a group.
“We thought it was funny,
but we weren’t in it very long,” Shook said.
“Normally people leave at the end, but we all
stayed to see the Revere Band in the credits.”
The film’s reviews were
mixed. The movie made $19 million at the box office
but disappeared from theaters as the big Christmas movies
(like “Scarface” and “Christine”)
rolled in, according to a history on the film.
But as video and cable became
more common, the movie gained an audience. According
to its Web site, TBS first aired the movie Dec. 1, 1992.
The 24-hour marathon then made its debut in 1997 on
TBS’s sister network TNT and remained there until
it moved to TBS in 2004. The network said more than
45 million viewers tuned in last year.
“It was a once-in-a-lifetime
experience,” Scheufler said. “We had no
idea the movie was going to be that popular.”
Like MacKay, Shook, Percival
and Scheufler own the film.
“My kids watch it every
year,” Percival said. “They’re excited
that their mom is in the movie.”
Marking history
A year or two ago, current Revere
band director Darren LeBeau had an unexpected guest:
The mother of a former band member dropped by with an
old band uniform.
Turns out the red, white and
blue uniform is from the era of the band when it appeared
in “A Christmas Story.”
LeBeau kept the uniform but wasn’t
sure what to do with it. As local interest in the movie’s
making grew this year because of the opening of “A
Christmas Story” House Museum in Cleveland, he
was called and asked if any of the paperwork from the
contract was still around.
“We looked for some stuff
earlier in the school year,” he said. “I
have not been able to find anything. Nobody around here
now was here then.”
Meanwhile, 1988 Revere graduate
Tom Tennant noticed all the publicity the new museum
was generating. A big fan of “A Christmas Story,”
Tennant knew his alma mater’s band had a role
in the film, and he thought it would be fitting that
something from the band — like a uniform —
be on display.
So Tennant set about the
task of trying to find one of the
old uniforms, not knowing that one was hanging somewhere
at Revere High School. He called a friend who knew some
band members and then called LeBeau, who said yes, he
had one.
Tennant headed to Richfield Dec.
12 to pick up the uniform. On Dec. 15, he took it to
the museum, which is located in the Tremont section
of Cleveland.
Tennant said the uniform will
be displayed in one of two rooms in the museum that
is dedicated to items chronicling the filming in Cleveland’s
Public Square.
“It will be among props
from Higbee’s, including vintage toys and, I think,
one of the elf hats from the Santa scene,” said
Tennant.
The uniform will be right at
home there, Tennant said.
“Maybe it was kismet, but
when I delivered the uniform, on a TV in the Public
Square room, the Revere Band marched by,” he said.
The annual 24-hour “A Christmas
Story” marathon will air on TBS beginning at 8
p.m. Dec. 24. For more information on “A Christmas
Story” House Museum, go to www.
christmastoryhouse.com
or call (216) 298-4919.
A Revere High School band uniform
from 1983, the year the band appeared in the movie “A
Christmas Story,” has been donated to the “A
Christmas Story” House Museum in Cleveland. Revere
senior Deanna Schenck is shown modeling the uniform.
Photo: Ken Crisafi
The paycheck earned by the Revere
Marching Minutemen went toward the band’s trip
to the 1984 Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington, D.C.,
where the above photo was taken.
Photo courtesy of Kelly
Shook
Local Nativity scene had part in holiday film
RICHFIELD — Members of
the Revere High School band aren’t the only local
stars appearing in “A Christmas Story.”
According to Constantine’s Garden Center’s
John Constantine Sr., his popular life-size Nativity
scene was used as well.
“They came down, and the
people that did the shooting rented it from us and rented
a pile of Christmas trees, too,” Constantine said.
“They must have had it for three or four weeks.”
He said he’s not sure how
the filmmakers heard about the set, which he purchased
in the early 1970s.
“They heard about it from
somebody,” he said. “They came down and
saw it and that was it.”
The Christmas trees were used
inside Higbee’s department store and are seen
in the film on a stairway, he said.
The Nativity scene is currently
on display at Constantine’s Garden Center, located
at 2518 Brecksville Road.
— By
Kathleen Folkerth
The life-size Nativity scene
at Constantine’s Garden Center is featured in
a scene in “A Christmas Story.” Photo:
Ken Crisafi
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