By Jim Hagarty
2012
A Christmas Story is my all time favourite Christmas movie.
The actor who plays the lead character Ralphie in A Christmas Story also appears in Will Ferrell’s Christmas classic Elf. He was one of Bob Newhart’s elves at the North Pole. You might be able to find a short video or photo on the Internet which points out which one he is. And he appears as an airport ticket clerk in another Christmas movie, Four Christmases.
Funny that Peter Billingsley would be in three Christmas classics. He’s also been in a number of other movies but mostly he works as a producer/director.
Two years ago my son Chris and I visited the house in Cleveland where the exteriors of A Christmas Story were shot. (Most of the rest of the movie, including the interiors, were filmed in Canada). The movie narrator never reveals in what city Ralphie Parker and his family lived but there is a hint given when he refers to their street as Cleveland Street. That is not the actual name of the real street.
The mailbox where Ralphie got his secret decoder from is still there although the door to it is gone. There is a shed in the backyard but I don’t think it is the one that all the bad guys were crawling on that Ralphie was shooting heroically with his pellet gun, although it is in the same location of the yard.
A house directly across the street has been converted to A Christmas Story museum and Ralphie’s little brother Randy was scheduled to be there the next day but we had to move on. As we were driving away, one of the houses on the street had a full-sized leg lamp in the window. Very cool.
The school scenes were shot at an old school in Welland, Ontario, which has now been turned into a family violence shelter. I don’t know where the house interior scenes were shot – maybe Toronto – but someone has bought the house in Cleveland and completely rebuilt the insides to match the movie set interiors of the house. There is a full-size leg lamp in the front window, as there was in the movie.
As you can tell, my son and I are big fans. We watch it together every Christmas eve while my wife and daughter usually watch something else. They like the movie but don’t share the same extreme passion.
