Jones’ hair-trigger purchase may seem erratic, but that’s only if you don’t know that his own home was fast becoming a manufacturing and shipping warehouse for a Christmas Story–themed startup inspired in large part by a gift his parents had given him a few years earlier.
“Ever since I was a little kid, I wanted to be a jet pilot in the Navy,” Jones explains. “My dad flew a plane, so I thought being a pilot was really cool. I studied hard in school, went to the neighborhood academy, and failed the vision test. I got reassigned to be an intelligence officer, which is not even close to being a pilot. That’s what I wanted to do all my life, so I was bummed.”
To help diffuse his depression, Jones’ mom and pop thought a nostalgic present might put a smile on his face. “My parents sent me a leg lamp as a kind of joke gag gift to help me deal with life’s disappointments,” he continues. With the gift, his parents included a card that read, “It’s not all bad. Here’s a major award for handling it well.” “I asked where they bought it and they had actually made it. It took them a month and a half. They had to go down to the garment district, get a leg. They bought a lampshade from a secondhand store and put it together. I thought it was great and whenever people would come over they’d say, ‘Hell yeah, it’s the leg lamp from A Christmas Story!’”
The gag gift worked and Jones did two tours with the Navy. He owed five years of service as a result of going to naval academy, but as he approached the beginning of his fourth year, he was fed up. “I didn’t sign up to be an intelligence officer,” he thought. “I signed up because I wanted to be a pilot.”
Jones wanted to get out of the Navy, but he couldn’t decide what he wanted to do. His problem wasn’t a shortage of ideas; rather, he had an overabundance of them. He considered a career in real estate, or perhaps he’d become an accountant. He was too stuck in his own disappointment with his life’s direction to realize that the answer to what he should do was sitting in his San Diego condo — the pick-me-up present designed to give renewed inspiration in just these types of downtrodden situations.
“It dawned on me that I should sell leg lamps,” Jones says, still sounding just as inspired as he must have been the moment he thought up the idea. “People always liked leg lamps. A buddy of mine who was a science major had just made a website for his dad and was like, ‘I’ll make you a website.’ That was all the push I needed. I formed a little company and figured out how to make leg lamps. I started to glue them together in my condo and sold them on the internet.”
Red Ryder Leg Lamps, the name of Jones’ new company, began production on April 9, 2003. The company was an immediate success. For $139.99, and a modest shipping and handling fee, Jones would ship a custom-made leg lamp anywhere in the world. Before long, the lamps were available in several independent retailer shops across the United States, and other websites signed on to be authorized resellers of the sexy prop replica.
With his business helping him pay the bills and Jones becoming a pio-neer in the large-scale Christmas Story merchandising area, it was a no-brainerfor him to want to expand the film’s presence in the pop culture landscape beyond lamp replicas. The Christmas Story House, as it formally became known, was the perfect place to do it.
Early on, the young man who took a chance on purchasing a piece of film history had intended to create a museum inside the house that would be dedicated to the film. The property would, of course, include a gift shop where Jones’ lamps could be sold, alongside any other memorabilia from the film he could get for a wholesale price to sell to fans and tourists alike.
Within a day of agreeing to purchase the house, Jones set out to Cleveland to complete paperwork and lay eyes on his new business venture for the first time. The results were less than inspiring. “The place had been a rental property for twenty, twenty-five years since the filming,” Jones explains. “We pulled an entire dumpster worth of junk out of the basement, just old boxes. The basement flooded a couple times, so if you tried to pick up a box, the bottom fell out and things fell all over the place.”
© David Monseur
In order to succeed, Jones would have to significantly renovate the house. The siding would have to go in exchange for the late 1930s/early 1940s look of the film. The other significant issue was that the inside of the house in no way resembled what one would expect to see. Because the interior scenes were filmed on a soundstage, the inside of the house was nothing like what fans of the film would expect the Parker family’s house to look like. In fact, the house was actually a duplex, a fact that the filmmakers deliberately worked around while shooting to give the appearance that the Parker family lived in a single-family dwelling.
Jones’ gamble was about to become even bigger as he prepared to move him and his wife further away from their goal of putting a payment on a San Diego home of their own. “The biggest problem was financing,” he explains. “I think I had eight credit cards out at one point to cover [the renovation costs]. I couldn’t get a commercial loan because it was residential house and I couldn’t get a residential loan because it [was] going to be a commercial property. Nobody would touch it because it wasn’t the cookie-cutter situation bankers like to see. This was back in the days of free credit . . . they werejust giving them out free, $15,000 here, $20,000 there, so I pulled those cards out, hoping that by the time [the house] opened it would do well so I’d be able to pay the credit cards off before I had any interest.”
Even after kicking in the profits from Red Ryder Leg Lamps, Jones took a giant leap off a financial cliff and hoped that a safety net would be waiting for him at the bottom. Overall, the house that was initially listed for just under $100,000 ended up costing over $240,000 after renovations. “It would’ve been easier to build a house from the ground up instead of renovating but nobody wants to come to ‘The Rebuilt Christmas Story House,’” Jones says. “They want to come to the original renovated one.”
Renovations began on January 30, 2006, and concluded nearly ten months later. In order to make the house appear to be the same as the soundstage set, a staircase was constructed, a bedroom replaced, and the entire home was outfitted with furniture that was as close to the screen-used props as he could find. Jones and his teams left no detailed unturned, down to the Little Orphan Annie decoder pin and Lifebuoy soap in the Parker bathroom.
© Jesse Yost
eBay also ended up being instrumental in Jones’ expansion of his business venture and in getting the attention of cast members of A Christmas Story. “Scott Schwartz’s dad owned a baseball cards and movie collectibles store which used to be in Westlake Village, California, and from sixth grade on, I grew up in Newbury Park, which is two towns over,” Jones begins. “I think I was in junior high. My mom was in some boring store that was by his dad’s store, so my dad [took] my sister and me to the collectible store. I [was] dorking around, looking at stuff, and there was a poster up of Scott. I said, ‘I think that’s the kid from Kidco,” and his dad, Dan, said, ‘That’s my son. He’s also in A Christmas Story.’
“Years later, when I was starting to sell leg lamps, I saw this listing on eBay of a little miniature leg lamp signed by Scott Schwartz,” Jones continues. “I knew that had to be Scott selling his own stuff, so I approached him and said, ‘Hey, would you be interested in signing some stuff,’ and he was like, ‘I don’t know. I’ll think about it.’”
© David Monseur
Jones wasn’t the only person who had tried to do Christmas Story business with Schwartz that year. Before the previous owner had put the house on eBay, he had attempted to get in contact with the actor to offer him the opportunity to buy it. Ultimately, the two never connected. As Jones remembers it, the owner attempted to catch Schwartz at a public appearance, but the actor had left early. Regardless of the reason, the owner decided to roll the dice on the internet instead of continuing to chase Schwartz.
After Jones purcha
sed the house, he went back to the store for a second time to see the actor. “Hey, I bought the house,” Jones said. “Would you be interested in being part of it?”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. Come out for fundraisers, cast signings? You could make some money signing autographs.”
© David Monseur
Schwartz was still in touch with some of the other film actors, especially since the group had recently reconvened for the twentieth anniversary screening of the film in 2003. He reached out to Zack Ward and Ian Petrella. Jones found Tedde Moore and Yano Anaya on the internet. Patty Johnson and Drew Hocevar were locals who still lived in the Cleveland area and were quick to reach out to Jones once they heard the house was going to be converted into a tourist attraction.
“I saw an article in The Plain Dealer about this guy and the Christmas Story House before he had even done anything with it,” Patty Johnson says. “He had just purchased the house and didn’t know what he was going to do with it yet. After I read the article, I emailed him and said, ‘I’m the elf from Hell and still live in Cleveland, if you’re interested.’ Of course, he got back to me right away. I knew how to get ahold of Drew and when we started to discuss press and events, we were involved from early on because we were local.”
“One thing just led to another,” Jones says.
© David Monseur
The entrepreneur invited the cast to the house over Thanksgiving weekend in 2005 to participate in a three-day fundraiser to help defer the costs of the overhaul project. The weekend, which included tours of the house before renovations, a downtown parade, and tree lighting ceremony, among other activities, extended beyond the block where the house and museum are located. Tower City Cinemas, a local movie house in Cleveland, held a screening of the film and the Renaissance Cleveland Hotel had a display of movie memorabilia.
Even though catching one of the first glimpses of the Christmas Story House would have made the trip worth it for Tedde Moore, she had the added benefit of celebrating her first American Thanksgiving in Cleveland that weekend.
“I was picked up at the airport by Brian and swept off to have a Thanksgiving dinner at the home of the parents of his [business] partner, Christmas Story House curator Steve Siedlecki,” she recalls. “It was a wonderful meal, very lovingly prepared by his family, with A Christmas Story on the TV in the background.”
For the remaining members of the cast, the weekend also proved to be a memorable experience. “I remember when Brian first bought the place,” Petrella says. “We [the actors] went down to see it and it was obvious he needed a lot of help. My mom had taken candid pictures on the soundstage, and I was able to lend those to him to help him out.”
The pictures proved to be invaluable in helping Jones achieve the level of accuracy that he hoped for. “If you look at the house, and you look at certain pieces of furniture in it, and you look at the movie, he nailed it,” Petrella states. “As far as capturing the look and feel of the movie, he really came through as far as I’m concerned. It’s sort of like Fantasy Island for A Christmas Story. You can come in and reenact your own scenes as much as you want.”
Zack Ward (left) and Ian Petrella (right) tour the Christmas Story House with Yano Anaya’s son before the grand opening © Brian Jones
“I’ve got family out in Akron, Ohio,” Zack Ward explains. “So when we went out there I thought, ‘Okay, free ticket. We’ll do some press for the house and nothing will really come of it. I’ll be able to go see my buddy and my little nieces.’ And when we got there, there were literally close to 10,000 people lined up and it was a little more than overwhelming.”
Patty Johnson echoes Ward’s sentiments. As a Cleveland local, she continues to find it astonishing that she can walk down the street and be virtually anonymous a mile away from the house, but once she gets within striking distance of that block, she’s a rock star. “When we had that first reunion, I kept thinking no one was going to come,” she says. “I thought it was just going to be us sitting down there like a bunch of jamokes. I had no idea, absolutely no idea. It was just stunning to me. I feel like I have my real life, where I’m taking out the garbage and schlepping stuff to and from school, and my surreal life, where I’m signing autographs all day and having thousands of pictures taken of me. It’s an interesting phenomenon.”
For Yano Anaya, his appearances with the other Christmas Story actors are more about camaraderie than the feeling of fame. “The reason why I get back with these guys is because we’ve created a bond which is very similar to brothers now,” he says.
Drew Hocevar (left) and Patty Johnson (right) meet a fan © David Monseur
For Zack Ward, the most overwhelming moment came during the weekend’s holiday parade. “We were in these sleighs with wheels being pulled around by horses around the square, and I’m wearing my Scut Farkus hat, and as we’re being pulled around, I’m waving,” he says. “I don’t do parades. I don’t know what to do, so I’m sort of doing the queen’s wave. I think about it and realize, Scut Farkus doesn’t wave at children. Scut Farkus beats the hell out of children. I saw a kid in a crowd and I made a fist and punched my other hand, like ‘You! I’m gonna beat your ass!’ The kid squealed and got the biggest smile on his face and his mom was like, ‘Yeah! Get him,’ so I yelled, ‘Who wants a beatin’?’ All these mothers started holding up their children for me to threaten. ‘You! I’m coming for you!’ I’m a loved abuser of children, what can I say? I thought that was the most bizarre, funny, interesting thing.”
Tedde Moore with fan Michael Kopatich © Michael Kopatich
The Grand Marshall for the parade that year was none other than international pop star Tom Jones, who previously had been acquainted with Tedde Moore. “I met Sir Tom Jones, as he is now known, for the first time when I was attending the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London,” she recalls. “It was 1965 and I was seventeen. He couldn’t have been much older, as he was just starting his career. A strapping young fellow, he was truly poured into his shiny powder blue suit. His trademark was wearing these very tight pants and I can assure you they were tight. So tight, in fact, that he couldn’t sit down and had to take his tea standing up at the bar.”
Although she was a casual observer of his career, Jones’ music didn’t really interest her. She never could have imagined that she would wind up meeting him again, standing side-by-side with him in the middle of Cleveland on a frigid morning in November. “You may not remember this, but we’ve met before,” she said before recalling the story for him in the middle of Cleveland’s main square.
“Sounds like that was a long time ago,” he said with a polite smile.
As incongruous as it may have seemed for the cast to be appearing in a parade headlined by Tom Jones, it actually made a lot of sense. Like the Super Bowl, the Grammy Awards, and the Times Square celebration on New Year’s Eve, A Christmas Story transcends age, race, and gender. It still brings people together from all walks of life around the globe.
On November 25, 2006, just over a month after the final renovations were made on the house, several cast members made the trek back to middle America to help celebrate the grand opening of the completely restored house. On a day cold enough to make your eyes tear, Yano Anaya, Ian Petrella, Scott Schwartz, Drew Hocevar, Patty Johnson, Tedde Moore, and Zack Ward greeted several thousand well-bundled fans who wanted to be among the first to catch a glimpse of the supporting cast from their favorite holiday film.
Yano Anaya arrived at the opening day ceremony with his son, who now bears a striking resemblance to Grover Dill. “People used to tell him all the time that he looked like that kid in A Christmas Story,” he says with a laugh. “Imagine their surprise when he told them ‘that kid’ was his dad!”
Darren McGavin in 1990 © Photofest
The festivities
continued throughout the weekend, with a convention that included a screening of the film. Thousands of glossy 8x10s with sprawling Sharpie marker signatures transferred from the hands of the former child actors, most of whom still bore an uncanny resemblance to their prepubescent versions that appeared on screen, to the eager fans who couldn’t wait to race back to their homes and put the picture next to their television or under their Christmas tree.
The success of the opening weekend even turned around the person who was among the first to express doubt over whether the venture would be a success. “My wife thought that selling the lamps was going to be a hobby,” Jones said in a 2005 interview. “After I got out of the Navy, she kept asking, ‘When are you going to get a job . . . you know, a J-O-B?’ But she’s warming to the lamp idea — and the house — now.”
According to Tyler Schwartz, the Canadian distributor for Jones’ leg lamps, the house doesn’t just attract attention during the holiday season. This is likely due to the warm embrace the attraction has received from two important entities. “I dropped by there fairly recently, mid-summer, and this time I happened to take my dad because I wanted to show him what all the fuss was about,” Schwartz says. “We dropped by and there was a line out the door. My dad said, ‘What the heck is going on,’ and I told him there are only two attractions in Cleveland: the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and this. If you’re in the Cleveland area, you’ve gotta come.
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