Where Was A Christmas Story Filmed?

Bob Clark's "A Christmas Story" is perhaps one of the most notorious cases in history of a film that didn't quite find its audience right away. Released in November 1983 to only moderate commercial and critical success, the film didn't quite make the splash during its original year-end theatrical run that one might expect of a movie that has become all but synonymous with Christmas. Instead, its gradual consolidation into the holiday canon happened — fittingly enough — in people's living rooms, through home video and annual, highly-rated television marathons that turned "A Christmas Story" into a sort of all-encompassing holiday tradition.

Today, it's hard to think of a film that encapsulates the possibilities of Christmas cinema more perfectly and demonstratively. Based on the semi-autobiographical stories of American comedian Jean Shepherd, who also narrates the film, "A Christmas Story" offers an ideal blend of edginess and sweetness, snark and sincerity, wit and warmth. Its evocation of childhood in 1940s Indiana is unparalleled in its honesty and level of detail, and the plot about a boy's (Peter Billingsley) quest to get a Red Ryder 200-shot BB gun as his Christmas present still rings as quaintly subversive more than 40 years later.

Although the fictional town of Hohman, Indiana is crucial to the film's sense of acid-washed nostalgia, "A Christmas Story" was not, as it turns out, actually shot in Indiana — nor was its 2022 sequel "A Christmas Story Christmas." Read on to find out where both "Christmas Story" films was actually filmed.

"A Christmas Story" largely takes place within the home of the Parkers. A Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer production, the film shot most of its indoor scenes on a studio soundstage in Toronto, Canada. In fact, although Bob Clark, Jean Shepherd, MGM, and the characters in the movie are all American, "A Christmas Story" was considered a Canadian co-production at the time, even qualifying for the 5th Genie Awards (Canada's highest film honor prior to its merger into the Canadian Screen Awards), where it snagged nine total nominations and took home awards for best direction and best screenplay.

As for the location scenes, some of the most significant ones were shot in the United States — not in Indiana but in Cleveland, Ohio. The outside of the Parkers' home used an actual home in Tremont, which has since been restored to its film look and opened for the public as a tourist spot. The scenes in and around the Higbee's store in which Ralphie gets his first glimpse at the rifle were shot in the real Higbee's store on Public Square, before its rebrand as Dillard's.

Other location scenes, meanwhile, were shot back in Toronto. The since-closed Victoria School stood in for Ralphie's school, the bridge on which Ralphie and his father (Darren McGavin) change a tire is the Cherry Street Bridge in Port Lands, and the Bo ling Chop Suey Palace is an establishment in East Chinatown, since replaced by a French restaurant.

"A Christmas Story" actually had three sequels: 1994's "My Summer Story" aka "It Runs in the Family," also directed by Bob Clark and starring Kieran Culkin as Ralphie; 2012's widely-hated direct-to-video effort "A Christmas Story 2," which featured none of the original cast or creative team; and finally "A Christmas Story Christmas," which brought back much of the original cast and premiered on HBO Max in 2022. 

Each of those acts as a standalone continuation that ignores the previous sequel attempts, essentially creating a "choose your own adventure"-type continuity in which "A Christmas Story" fans can select their preferred sequel. Naturally, the most popular and beloved one nowadays is "A Christmas Story Christmas," which functioned as a proper, reverential legacy sequel, full of Easter eggs and small details you may have missed.

Indeed, the effort to honor the cultural imprint of "A Christmas Story" extended to revisiting some of the film's original locations in the process of re-assembling the fictional town of Hohman. The Higbee's department store in Cleveland was seemingly once again used, as were some of the Toronto spots. Notably, the production of "A Christmas Story" also added two European locations into the fold. Many scenes were shot in Sofia, Bulgaria, not only on location — the better to take advantage of the snowy weather — but on constructed sets, which were cheaper to build there than in Los Angeles. And some additional production was done in Hungary.