One of the funniest moments in A Christmas Story is when the hound dogs, owned by the Bumpus family next door, break in and devour the Christmas turkey at Ralphie Parker’s house. These dogs are notorious for hounding Ralphie’s father by eating the Parker’s mail and one of his shoes. “We knew it was essential to find a way to portray this iconic scene. Since we didn’t have any hound dogs audition,” explained A Christmas Story director, Julian Wiles, “we had to be creative. We learned from our friends at Pet Helpers that they had a beautiful hound dog name Vincent at their shelter. So Victor Clark, who plays Ralphie’s father, and I headed over to the shelter to do a photoshoot with Vincent, a massive but incredibly friendly blood hound. Since we already planned to use a number of projections in the show, adding photos of Vic and Vincent seemed like the perfect solution. Despite his humongous size, Vincent is a sweet and obedient dog and our two actors (man and man’s best friend) got along great. I photographed some fun shots, as you can see featured in this blog. To make the pictures look like old family photos that you might see from the 1940s, we converted them to black and white. Sound Designer DJ Edwards added some barking sound effects and the Bumpus hounds came to life!”
“A Christmas Story”