Planes, Trains And Automobiles Home For Sale
By Chuck Sudo in Arts & Entertainment on Jun 5, 2012 4:00PM
In a Chicago area housing market that has seen Michael Jordan and Vince Vaughn put homes on the market and a penthouse at Trump Tower list for $32 million, here's a real estate listing that appeals to the film lover and nostalgic in us.
The house in suburban Kenilworth, Ill. that the late filmmaker John Hughes used as the family home of Neil Page, Steve Martin's character in Planes, Trains and Automobiles, has been listed for sale. At $1.799 million, it's decidedly less than the listings for Jordan's mansion, Vaughn's Palmolive Building penthouse, or the highest residential home in the Western Hemisphere, but it's still out of our price range.
We can, however, marvel at the 96-year-old Colonial-style home with its six bedrooms and four baths, a sunroom and a library. Curbed Chicago notes the home is essentially the mini-me version of the Home Alone house, also located in Kenilworth. Hughes used Chicago and its North Shore environs like few directors before or after him, and Planes, Trains and Automobiles marked a high water moment for him. Roger Ebert, in his "Great Movies" essay on the film, said:
When Planes, Trains and Automobiles was released in 1987, I enjoyed it immensely, gave it a favorable review and moved on. But the movie continued to live in my memory. Like certain other popular entertainments (It's a Wonderful Life, E.T., Casablanca) it not only contained a universal theme, but also matched it with the right actors and story, so that it shrugged off the other movies of its kind and stood above them in a kind of perfection.
The film has also become a must screen for Ebert, and others, every Thanksgiving.