NEED TO KNOW
A Christmas Story star Peter Billingsley revealed he once watched the holiday classic with an unexpected fan: Hugh Hefner.
Billingsley recounted the story while speaking to the New York Post during a recent Boys & Girls Club of Harlem charity event in Times Square in New York City.
“He [Hefner] was a huge fan of the movie … I was invited up there for a screening one time, which was actually very cool,” Billingsley, 54, said.
“I was 18. It was very fun,” he added.
Dan Tuffs/Getty
When pressed for more details about the experience, the child actor turned producer and director said, “No more great story to that other than Hef being a very gracious host.”
The New York-born Billingsley additionally shared some memories of getting cast in the 1983 film, recalling that he didn’t hear back about his audition for months.
Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
“I never heard anything. About three months later, I got a callback. I had assumed I hadn’t gotten it,” he said.
Mgm/Ua/Kobal/Shutterstock
He continued, “I happened to be the very first boy to ever audition … and [director Bob Clark] said, ‘Oh, that’s the guy.’ But obviously you’re not going to hire the first guy. So he went around for three months … they went across the country. It was a massive search,” he said.
Billingsley also shared that there were two scenes filmed for the movie that never made it into the final cut.
“They’re both fantasy sequences,” he explained. “One is a [comic book character] Flash Gordon sequence. And the other one was [villain] Black Bart’s gang trying to attack Santa and take the toys and Ralphie saved them.”
Erik Pendzich/Shutterstock
“Unfortunately, because this movie came out in ’83 before DVDs and before all the behind-the-scenes stuff, it was shot on film, so they threw it all out. We moved through the Warner Bros. stage trying to find it, and we couldn’t,” he added.
Billingsley went on to say that he still gets stopped on the street by fans of the movie — often to be quoted one of the film’s most iconic lines.
“I get a lot of, ‘Don’t shoot your eye out,’ ” he said while speaking to the Post. “But I think the biggest thing that’s been interesting to me is that people really want to communicate how much the movie means to them, and what they generally want to say is, ‘That’s my family,’ and they see their family in these characters.”
The PEOPLE Puzzler crossword is here! How quickly can you solve it? Play now!
“We know that dad who’s tough, but very loving. We know that mom who cares. The kids are all lying to each other. They’re lying to their teachers. But it feels very real … and there’s a lot of love in that house,” Billingsley added.
