Step Into the Set of 'A Christmas Story'

Dec. 15, 2006— -- On West 11th Street in Cleveland, the line of camera-toting tourists stretches around the corner. A man in an orange vest directs traffic. It is an unlikely sight in this neighborhood, which borders on a steel mill and has definitely seen better days.

The tourists come from as far away as Texas and Arizona to make their own walk-on appearances in the house where the film "A Christmas Story" was set. The quirky holiday movie about a young boy's obsession with a BB gun now rivals seasonal favorites like "The Grinch" and "It's a Wonderful Life."

Now, thanks to a 30-year-old California man's obsession with the film, the Cleveland house has become the city's hottest new tourist destination.

"It's like seeing a movie star, and it feels like you stepped onto the set and that you're actually reliving the movie when you come to see the house," said Brian Jones.

Jones bought the house -- sight unseen -- on eBay for $150,000.

"The first time I got here I felt like I was on the set. I'm running around like a little kid," he said.

Jones brought "Nightline" inside the mustard-colored three-story home, and it felt strangely familiar.

The Old Man's coat rack, the waist-high wooden radio where Ralphie and brother Randy listened to the Orphan Annie show. It's all here.

And there, shining in the window -- is the leg lamp. The "major award" won by Ralphie's Old Man and scorned by Ralphie's mother -- the glowing replica of a woman's shapely leg, adorned in fishnet stockings and a high-heeled pump, and wearing a fringed lampshade as a skirt.

Few props in moviedom have had this kind of stature … this kind of glow, if you will.

"It all started with the leg lamp," said Jones, a former Navy officer who dreamed of going to flight school but couldn't pass the vision test. Like the bespectacled Ralphie character in the movie, Jones' eyesight isn't good. As a consolation, Jones' parents built him a prop from his favorite movie -- a leg lamp.