When director Chris Columbus decided he wanted to use 671 Lincoln Avenue in the Chicago suburb of Winnetka as the setting for Home Alone, he described the stately five-bedroom Georgian house as “warm and menacing.” This came as a surprise to John Abendshien, who owned it.
“I thought, what on earth does he mean by ‘menacing’!” Abendshien recalled with a chuckle to The Independent. “I always thought it had a warm vibe! But when I saw the completed film for the first time, and the scene where Kevin is preparing to do battle with the Wet Bandits, with John Williams’ soundtrack in the background, and those eerie lights coming out of the house, I thought yes, I get the ‘menacing’ bit now!”
Home Alone was released in 1990 and immediately became a smash hit, topping the box office for three months. In the 35 years since, the tale of eight-year-old Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin) defending his home from a pair of dim-witted robbers by any means necessary has cemented its status as a beloved Christmas staple. It is rewatched by millions of fans every year, for whom the grand McCallister house has become as familiar as their own homes.
The first time Abendshien laid eyes on the property in 1989, he knew there was something special about it.
“I cannot explain it to this day, but when we pulled up and looked at it something about that place just captured my heart,” he says. “For one thing I really love natural light, and that home has an abundance of windows. I just liked the shape of it. True confession, we pretty much bought the house from the curb.”
Abendshien, a healthcare strategist, bought the home for $875,000. Less than a year later, location scout Jacolyn Bucksbaum got in touch to enquire about using it as one of the locations for National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.
Abendshien had first met Bucksbaum in 1983, when he was living in nearby Evanston where Home Alone screenwriter John Hughes was filming his directorial debut Sixteen Candles.
“John Hughes really liked to do his filming in the Chicago North Shore area, I think in part because he grew up there and was familiar with it,” explains Abendshien.
“I think he also liked the the community vibe. It’s a very lovely kind of a Norman Rockwell-ian atmosphere, with tree-lined streets and so forth. He liked to have a relatable community setting as his backdrop. He was not a Hollywood guy.”
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A handful of years later, Bucksbaum got back in touch with Abendshien to ask if he would consider letting his Evanston home appear in Uncle Buck, but by then he was already in the process of moving to Winnetka.
She came to visit the new home with Columbus, who at that point was still attached to direct Chevy Chase in Christmas Vacation.
“Chris Columbus and Chevy apparently did not have a good partnership,” explains Abendshien. “Chris bailed out, and John Hughes said: ‘Hey, I’ve got another project for you. This is perfect for you.’”
When Columbus and his crew arrived to start shooting Home Alone, Abendshien and his family initially moved out. However, after realizing it would be more convenient for them to be on site, they moved back in.
The house was large enough for them to have several rooms to themselves while filming continued. “I called it our ‘movie cave’,” says Abendshien. “We had a very large master bedroom, a sitting room with a fireplace, a study and some other rooms. That space was larger than the apartment my then-wife had lived in in New York.”
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That gave the family the unique experience of watching the film being made in their own home, as well as getting to know the cast and crew.
“The only restriction was if they were doing exterior filming, we couldn’t go by the windows,” says Abendshien. “It took me back to my Army days when I was crawling like a GI under the window!”
He continues: “I get a little emotional thinking about the cast and crew, because they became our movie family. Dan Stern, who played Marv the prankster Wet Bandit, is a prankster in real life. He loved to hang out with the kids and have fun with them.
“Joe Pesci was more serious, but a very nice, gracious guy. Catherine O’Hara, oh my gosh, she’s the quintessential mom. She took my six-year-old daughter under her wing, and those two became very close.”
When Abendshien attended the film’s premiere, he felt as if he knew the characters on screen personally. Of course, many of the fans who saw it did too — and some felt like it was their home too.
As soon as the film came out, Abendshien had to contend with fans walking up to the house and pressing their faces to the windows to peer inside. To this day, hundreds of visitors come to the home each day, with roads often needing to be closed off during the holidays to deal with the serious traffic.
“Sometimes you felt intruded upon,” remembers Abendshien. “It was like living in a fishbowl.”
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Those who did peek inside may have been surprised by what they saw. The interiors portrayed in Home Alone were hugely influential after the film became a hit. Before the film, the most popular paint colors in America were mauve, denim blue, light turquoise, and gentle pink.
After the film’s release, paint manufacturer Benjamin Moore noted that their biggest sellers quickly became a deep Arroyo Red and Forest Green. The real home interiors were nothing near as festive.
“When they started putting the holiday red and green wallpaper up, it hurt my eyes!” laughs Abendshien. “They assured me that it was just temporary. They put it on a thin foam board tacked to the walls, and it came off with no damage to the finish itself.
“We had just completed our interior redecoration when the filming started, in a very lowkey, subtle art deco hue. John Muto, the production designer, explained that the story can be told by visuals so I came to accept that the wallpaper decoration was right for the movie but it’s not something I could have lived with if they left it up that way. My tastes are a little bit more subtle.”
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As overwhelming as the attention the house received felt at first, Abendshien says he came to feel he’d been given a blessing. He sold the property in 2012 for $1,585,000, but has fond memories of his time there.
He has just written a memoir, Home But Alone No More, about his many experiences meeting fans of the film who came to visit.
“There was a time where when I went outdoors, I would just plaster a fake smile on my face, maybe faintly wave at people, and go about my business,” he says. “But then I reached a point where I started chatting people up and realizing what a joy it was for them to be there. Truth be known, that joy was infectious for me.
“I talked to them about why they’d come from literally all over the world just to see a house, for Pete’s sake! The conclusion I came to is that at a time when politically we’re a very polarized society, comedy brings us all together. The movie relates to people from all backgrounds and all religions. It was a real education for me, and a very uplifting one.”
John Abendshien’s ‘Home But Alone No More’ is available now
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