The Santa Story: From Hollywood to Ralphs

By JOHN HARLOW | Editor-in-Chief

Behind every beard there is a story—especially if it belongs to an 80-year-old Santa.

But with Burke Armstrong, who leapt over the octogenarian threshold a few days ago as he stood outside Ralphs dressed in a familiar red suit and hat, raising dollars for the Salvation Army, there is a myriad of great yarns.

As one Ralphs manager said last week, “Burke had a kettleful of experiences before he arrived here four years ago.”

Did you know, for instance, that the Village Ralphs’ Santa was lauded actor Jack Lemmon’s double in his last two movies?

“Nice guy, but think he might have been troubled inside,” Armstrong shared.

Or that he danced alongside Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie in their 2005 romantic drama “Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” spilling outside of a club with fellow “background artists” to warn Pitt he was in trouble. “Did you know you are ticking?” is one of the film’s most memorable lines.

He is a wonderfully observant Christmas spirit, in and out of role.

“We knew something was going on with Brad and Angelina because when they were holding hands and the director [Doug Liman] said cut, they kept on holding hands,” Armstrong explained. “It was very sweet, and now it’s very sad.”

He honed his Santa skills off-Broadway, in commercials and movies, including “Sea Biscuit.” Today, he said, he works maybe one or twice per month for his SAG card—Disney, for instance, likes to cast him as a veteran basketball player, not because he is elderly but because he is such a bad basketball player.

“I don’t know why they do it, but it’s happened twice.”

He is a former Army veteran from Upstate New York who married once to a wild Irish woman named O’Riordan who went on to marry again, twice. He worked as an advertising executive in the Mad Men era.

But, he said, eventually, his 73-percent Irish genes let him down and gave him a “special Palisadian experience” in 1979.

“I was pulled over on PCH outside the Palisades for, well, that Mel Gibson kind of stuff,” Armstrong said. “But since then, with the help of a well-known self-help group, I have stayed on the straight and narrow. And now I love giving back in the Palisades.”

Every day over the season, Armstrong travels two hours each way from east Hollywood on the #2 bus to cheer up the children and shoppers in the Palisades—he said he loves the spirit of the town.

“When I first volunteered for the Salvation Army a few years back, I ended up in places where I thought I might lose the drum,” he said, laughing and shaking hands with well wishers. “The Palisades has been very kind to me, and the people at Ralphs, the staff and the shoppers are fantastic.”

At that point, a security guard came over to snap a selfie with Santa—for his kids. Maybe. “Thank you, Santa, and God bless you,” he said, slightly overcome.

This is what makes it all worthwhile for Armstrong.

“This may not be the role of a lifetime but I am having the time of my life doing it,” he said.