Christmas Vacation, A Movie House Tour

When Christmastime comes around each year, do you and your family have a favorite movie that you just have to watch?   Mine without a doubt is the classic, Home Alone.  Love the house, love the humor and I can't help but feel a little sentimental when I see it since my son was about Kevin's age when the movie first came out.

Another movie that's become a favorite over the years for many folks is National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation starring Chevy Chase as Clark Griswold and Beverly D'Angelo as his wife, Ellen.

In the movie, Clark has big plans for a "good, old-fashioned family Christmas."  Both sets of grandparents are coming for Christmas, along with his Aunt Bethany and Uncle Lewis.  The Griswolds get a surprise visit from Cousin Catherine (Miriam Flynn) and her moocher husband, Eddie, played by Randy Quaid.

The movie takes place in this adorable house.  You know I have an affinity for yellow houses from THIS post.  It definitely has that "all-American, mom and apple pie" look.




If you've seen some of the other movie house tours at BNOTP, you are probably wondering if the movie was really filmed in this house.


Per riverblue.com, the exterior shots were constructed and filmed entirely on a studio lot in southern California.  They even had an earthquake occur during the filming!   Fake snow was produced for the movie--amazing how realistic it looks.  Reminds me of the "snow effect" in the filming of the Pottery Barn commercial seen in this Pottery Barn garland hack post, HERE.

Riverblue.com also reveals that many of the outdoor scenes were filmed in Breckenridge, Colorado.  That's about the only place I'm actually familiar with in CO since we used to go there to ski every few years.  It's a beautiful, quaint picturesque town.  While in Breckenridge for the filming, some of the indoor sets for the Griswold home were built inside an old high school gymnasium.

Well, it's still a great looking "fantasy" movie house, even if it is just a set.  Once again, the movie producers and set directors know just how to get to us, don't they?




One of the main themes throughout the movie is Clark's elaborate decorating of the exterior of the home with 25,000 lights!  In this scene below, Clark is at the fuse box flipping the switches while Ellen shouts the bad news that the lights still won't light up.




After all his hard work stringing the lights, they will not light up.  Did you find yourself rooting for poor old Clark and his lighting attempt?  He so badly wants to make this the best Christmas ever for his family.  Long after everyone is in bed, Clark is still up on the roof testing each bulb, trying to figure out why they will not work.




Let's leave Clark to his work and tour the inside of the home.  Maybe he'll figure out the problem by the time we're done.  Christmas Vacation was filmed in 1989 so we are traveling back in our time machine.  Get ready for some late 80's, early 90's interior decorating.

In this scene we get a nice view of the entry.  Love the wainscoting going up the stairway.  That's something that never goes out of style.   I've seriously considered adding some wainscoting to my main stairway.  I like this pattern.  Note to self:  save copy of this pic for future reference.




Step into the living room and feast your eyes on THE TREE.  This reminds me of the year I talked my sister and her husband into letting me bring home a Christmas tree that was so big, my cat climbed it three times that year!  It really didn't look that big when we were out in the woods.




Another view of the living room. You'll see some pairing of red and green throughout this movie, but not near the amount we saw in the Home Alone house tour.




Another view of the living room with "the stockings hung by the chimney with care."




The lighting feels so warm and cozy in all these scenes.




We get a brief glimpse or two into what I'm calling the den or TV room.  Remember when folks used to have a "TV room" in the house?  Lots and lots of shutters...again very cozy.




Here's Rusty, played by Johnny Galecki chilling out watching TV.  Looks like he's watching a black and white movie...maybe it's an old Christmas movie like, It's a Wonderful Life.




Lots of wallpaper in this house...after all it's the 80's.  Note all the red and white transferware in the china hutch.  What pattern is that?  Yes, I want to know.  These are important questions I have here! ;)

The scenes around the table in the dining room always remind me of a famous painting.  Can you guess which one?

Yup, Norman Rockwell's, "Thanksgiving Dinner."   I think I read once that Norman Rockwell painted himself into this scene.  I think he's either the guy on the left closest to us or the one looking back at us.  Ummm, anyone know if that's true?

The wallpaper appears to be a blue and white toile.  What a skinny little chair rail.




Do you have a fireplace in your dining room?  Oh, I would so love that!  Wonder why they didn't have a fire going?  Definitely needed a fire in the fireplace for this scene.




There's one of those brass chandeliers that everyone in Blogland is always painting over these days.   Not me, I still like brass.  I know, I'm weird.  Notice we have the kid's table...always the kid's table.




During the movie, the Christmas tree goes up in flames and Clark cuts down a tree right from his yard.  He unknowingly brings a squirrel into the house via the tree.  The squirrel goes berserk running through the house with Cousin Eddie's dog in hot pursuit, leaving a big mess behind.




This is the only scene I was able to capture of the kitchen.  Love the plaid curtains...feels sooo homey and so Christmasy.




The messy laundry room shortly after the squirrel/dog escapades.




Let's head upstairs.  Here's a brief view of the stairway with yet, more wallpaper.




A really great scene occurs in the attic.  Clark accidentally gets shut up in there while the family is out shopping for the day. He ends up watching old home movies...very sentimental scene.




Another view of the upstairs landing/hall and we can see more wall paper in the one of the bedrooms.




This is the only bathroom scene in the movie.  Interesting paper, huh?




Audrey, Clark and Ellen's daughter, (played by Juliette Lewis) is seen here in her bedroom for this scene.  How did they come to pair that comforter with those curtains?  This feels very much like a typical American home, doesn't it?  Not overly decorated, just cozy and very livable.  I remember those ruffled curtains.  I had them in beige in the living room.  Ha!  Did I just admit that?  That was back around 1989, too.




That's all we get to see inside the Griswold home.  There's another home we get a brief glimpse inside during the course of the movie--the home of Clark's boss, Frank Shirley, played by Brian Doyle-Murray.  He is said to live "on Melody Lane with all the other rich people."

During the movie, Clark becomes very upset because he discovers his boss has stiffed everyone on their Christmas bonus without warning any of the employees in advance.  Eddie, (the redneck cousin) decides to get even and wants to grant Clark his one Christmas wish.   He personally fetches the boss for Clark--one of the funniest scenes in the movie.  There's Eddie's "deluxe" RV parked right out front.  So funny!




This home is a real home and not just a set, per Lindsay at iamnotastalker.com.  (Love the name of that site.)  This 5,698 sq ft home is located in Glendale, CA.   You can see an aerial view on Zillow.




In this scene, Mr. Shirley's wife is calling the police to report her husband has been kidnapped.  Nice study!




Clark manages to solve his lighting woes and electrifies his house...




...which causes a near black out for miles! So funny!

The power company throws the switch for their nuclear powered generators and electricity is restored to the rest of Chicago.




It's been a full year since I watched Christmas Vacation...I'm ready again.  What movie will you be pulling out this Christmas?




Below you'll find picture links (and text links) to three more Christmas movie house tours:

A Christmas Story
Home Alone
The Holiday


Love touring movie houses as much as I do? You'll find more HERE or click on the category header, Movie Houses at the top of the blog.

Father of the Bride House Tour

Recently, we took a tour of some beautiful neighborhoods and homes in the south. This house, located not far from my home, was included in that tour. Each time I drive by it, I'm always reminded of a famous movie home we all know and love. Do you know the one I'm thinking about?

Yep, it's this one! Recognize it? It's the house from the movie, Father of the Bride. I'm happy to say this much-loved movie house is a real house and not a just a movie set. :) So nice when that happens! I hadn't realized it, but Father of the Bride is actually a remake of a 1950 Spencer Tracey classic by the same name. Did you know that?

What is it about this house that captures our hearts? It just says home, doesn't it? I love the white picket fence, the vines/flowers growing up the front and the cute dormers lined up along the top.

Many years ago, I read an article in a magazine where they interviewed a young couple who bought this house in real life when it became available a few years after the making of the movie. They had some pretty wild stories to tell about folks walking right up to their door, ringing the bell and asking for a tour. One of the things they said that really stuck with me was that some of what we saw in the movie was constructed just for the movie, like the white picket fence.


In the interview, the couple said the fence was just barely standing up and about ready to fall over any second. It had not been installed/built the way a real fence would have been so they had to pay to have it taken down and replaced with a real fence. I remember there were also some things in the kitchen that had to be redone. They spent a fair amount getting the house back to real livable conditions, as I recall.

Now, in case you somehow managed to accidentally stow away on a space ship just minutes before it blasted off to the moon in 1991, causing you to miss this super popular and well-loved movie, ;) here's a little synopsis from Wikipedia to bring you up to speed:

George Banks (Steve Martin) is an upper-middle-class owner of an athletic shoe company in San Marino, California, whose 22-year-old daughter, Annie, (Kimberly Williams) has decided to marry Bryan MacKenzie (George Newbern), a man from an upper-class family from Bel-Air, despite only knowing each other for three months. George can't think of what life would be like without Annie and becomes determined to make the upcoming ceremony as inconvenient as possible (especially when he finds out the wedding will cost him $250 per head), although his wife, Nina (Diane Keaton), tries to make him happy for Annie. When the wedding takes place at their home, along with an eccentric wedding planner named Franck (Martin Short) taking over the ceremony, George tries to handle the fact that Annie has grown up and has a life of her own.

Do you remember this scene from the movie? A freak snow storm hits the day of Annie's wedding. Of course, the snow is just pretend snow since this home is located at 843 S. El Molino Avenue in Pasadena, California.

Let's go inside and take a little tour of this famous movie house.

I've always loved the built-in cabinetry in this room. This is the same look I am going for in a room in my home that I'm hoping to one day turn into a library. You can see the vintage shelving I found for my "someday library" in THIS post. It looks almost exactly like the shelving shown here, doesn't it? Maybe it is the same...if not, it's pretty close. I hope to bump my fireplace out from the wall like they have done here, too.

Here's how the room looks when it's redone for Annie's wedding.

We get a view of the other side of the room in this scene where Annie (Kimberly Williams-Paisley) is introducing her fiance, Bryan (George Newbern) to her parents Nina and George Banks played by Diane Keaton and Steve Martin. The rooms in these old homes are so nice and large, you can pull the furniture to the center, add sofa tables behind the sofas and still have plenty of room for chairs and for walking around behind the sofas. Love that!

We never get a great shot of this wonderful grandfather clock, but it adds so much to this otherwise very neutral interior. Doesn't it look Swedish or Danish? It reminds me of a Mora clock but it doesn't quite have the "pot belly" proportions of the Mora. Ummm, anyone know the origins of a clock like this? It's not really a Bornholm clock like I have HERE in my upstairs family room. Somebody help me out here...I'd love to know what kind of clock this is! :)

A glimpse into the dining room. The lighting throughout this movie is so warm and cozy...very soothing.

Another view of the dining room when Nina and George are cataloging all the gifts Annie and Bryan have received.

Another view across the entry into the dining room. I really love the heavy wainscoting in the entrance. So pretty!

The dining room leads us into the kitchen. You have to admit, this does look just like a real, working kitchen. Personally, there's a little too much "stuff" in this room for me, but it does feel like a real home. It's amazing how quickly a kitchen can get cluttered in real life. How do you like the pot rack? We get another view of it in a sec.

I like the glass front cabinets with the lighting inside. When I had the centers of my kitchen cabinets cut out and installed glass in them, I really wanted that "window pane" look like we see here. But that just wasn't going to happen since I was DIM (doing it myself). :) It appears to have butcher-block counter tops, which seem to be making a comeback today. I've seen them on several home tours, but usually they are a bit darker. Interesting how things just cycle right back around again, isn't it?

Another view of the pot rack in the distance as Annie and her parents gather in the breakfast/eating area of the kitchen. This house has a back stairway and we get a glimpse of it on the right side of this scene.

One more view looking across the kitchen into the dining room of the home. I love the various sets of French doors we see throughout the home.

So, what do you think that room is in the background? Laundry room? Pantry? I see a cuckoo clock. Ummm, wonder if I was subliminally influenced to put a cuckoo clock in my kitchen because of this movie. ;)

Let's go upstairs and check out the bedrooms. Love this gorgeous leaded-glass window on the staircase!

A view of the upstairs hallway as George talks with his son, Matty, played by Keran Culkin. While watching the movie, I was thinking how much Matty reminded me of another "child actor" in another favorite movie house movie. Yep, I'm talking about Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone. You guessed it...they're brothers.

This is pretty much the only view we get of the master bedroom. Wonder if that's wallpaper or just a faux wall treatment. Ragging and sponging were pretty big back around the time this movie was made. Are folks still doing that? I never hear much about it anymore.

George goes into Annie's room to console her (and talk some sense into her) after she and Bryan have a huge disagreement. Somehow the romantic iron bed just fits with the name Annie, doesn't it?

Annie is an architecture student, so as you might expect, she has a drafting table in her bedroom.

We get a brief view of one of the bathrooms here with the "wedding swans" floating in the tub. The unexpected snow storm has made it too cold for them to be outdoors.

I love it when movies include an attic scene. I don't know what it is about attics, but (to me) they always seem to add a little mystery and nostalgia to a movie. Maybe it's all those Nancy Drew Mystery Stories like The Secret in the Old Attic, I read growing up. :)

Annie and Bryan have a backyard wedding in the movie, but the backyard where this wedding scene is filmed is actually the yard of another home and not the one where all the interior scenes were shot. The wedding actually takes place in the backyard of this home at 500 North Almansor Street in Alhambra, CA. The home has just gone on the market recently. You can read about it in THIS post where you'll find a link to the real estate listing.

The wedding takes place underneath a wonderful pergola built just for the movie.

Isn't this just the sweetest scene? Notice how Annie and Bryan are silhouetted against the huge photographer's light.  It looks like a big, full moon behind them, doesn't it? So romantic!

In the scenes where Annie and her dad are playing basketball, this same house is used, again.

And in this back deck scene, too.

Here's how it looks in the daytime. I wonder what the backyard looked like for the Molino Avenue house where all the interior scenes were shot. Perhaps it wasn't large enough for a wedding. So interesting that they used two houses for the making of The Father of the Bride isn't it?

Why do you think this house captured the hearts of so many? Was it the storyline of the movie or the actual design of the house itself? Or, maybe it was both? Was this a favorite movie house of yours?

You'll find additional Movie House Tours HERE OR click on any picture link below.