The Malibu home of Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell has been placed for sale after years of being on the rental market. It is an interesting place with a hint of oriental decor and colours such as gold, and artifacts such as Buddhas. There are also other funky details such as those flower prints on the stairs. And then there is the priceless Malibu beach view.
A bit eclectic house for sure as one would expect from movie stars, but at the same time this house seems to have "some soul".
One of the questions I get asked a lot is whether the bungalow court from the movie “Swing Shift” is the same as the one from “Alvin & the Chipmunks.” I wasn’t sure, so I started researching it. I couldn’t find much information online about it, so I rented “Swing Shift” to see for myself.
My conclusion: they’re not the same. The bungalow court in “Alvin & the Chipmunks” was a little larger, with more houses and more space between them.
A blogger named Julie who lived in a “Swing Shift” bungalow says:
My bungalow is one of seven built around a courtyard back in 1929, presumably for studio housing. In 1984, it was the location of the Johnathan Demme movie Swing Shift, where Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell say they met and fell in love. Right there on my front lawn.
The housing complex in “Alvin” is known as St. Andrews Bungalow Court, and it was built in 1919, 10 years earlier than these. Here’s what those bungalows look like:
You can see more photos of those bungalows here. Here’s a photo Julie posted of her charming “Swing Shift” porch on her blog:
It looks like the porch has been altered a little since the movie was filmed in 1984. At the time she wrote the post in 2005, the bungalow was rent-controlled and she was paying only$835 a month for it. Sounds like a bargain to me.
As the movie opens, Jack (Ed Harris) returns home from work, walking up to the bungalow he shares with his wife Kay (Goldie Hawn):
Their front porch is small but charming with the Adirondack chairs:
Kay steps into the living room:
In this scene, when Ed Harris (Jack) sat down on the chair, he was wearing nothing but a towel and exposed more than he intended to. Oops. It made it to the theaters before anyone noticed it. Viewers saw plenty on the big screen, but it was cropped for the video version.
Jack returns home from the war to discover that his wife has been cheating on him with her boss from work (Kurt Russell).
Here she is with Lucky, who came home with her and borrowed one of her pink robes. Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell have been together since making this movie.
The Bedroom:
In this scene we get a glimpse of the bathroom.
Doesn’t Goldie Hawn look like her daughter, Kate Hudson, from that angle? Kate was only 5 when this movie was made.
Kay’s Kitchen:
Looking out toward the street from the courtyard:
This is the kind of movie you watch more for the scenery–the sets and the 1940s fashions–than for the plot. I also enjoy the actors in it–especially Goldie Hawn and Christine Lahti’s characters, who strike up an unlikely friendship while working the swing shift.
Do you have a favorite Goldie Hawn film? I always get a kick out of “Private Benjamin,” but my favorite has to be “Housesitter” (I love that little yellow house!).
Visit my TV/Movie Houses page for more, from Hanging Up to Hope Floats. Or check out the bungalows from “Alvin & the Chipmunks.”
Steve Martin plays Newton Davis, an architect who built a dream house for his girlfriend Becky (Dana Delaney). He tied a big red ribbon around it and asked Becky to marry him, but she said no. He draws a sketch of the house on a napkin and shows it to Gwen (Goldie Hawn), a waitress at the Cafe Budapest.
Here’s what it looks like when Gwen sees it in person, with the ribbon drooping and the house empty and abandoned:
According to an article about it in Entertainment Weekly:
Sexy Dana Delany, who plays architect Steve Martin’s hard-to-please squeeze in Housesitter, must be the only person in America not impressed with his dream house. Nestled by a pretty pond in Concord, Mass., it’s both snug (1,800 square feet) and architecturally prestigious. The columned porch is classic Yankee farmhouse, the gables evocative of 1800s Greek Revival, the clapboard siding and checkerboard window pattern very ”American Gothic.”
”It taps a memory bank,” says architect Debra Wassman, who did the design with husband Jonathan Lanman. And [the house plan] is available by mail from New York’s Trumbull Architects.
Davis (Steve Martin) disappears after a one-night stand with Gwen (Goldie Hawn), leaving her with nothing but the napkin and stories about his idyllic hometown of Dobbs Mill. Knowing the house is empty, she sets out to see it for herself–and maybe take a little vacation there while she’s at it. Here she is exploring the village after getting off the bus. (“Housesitter” was shot in Concord and Cohasset, Massachusetts.)
Gwen spots the little yellow house. Finding the front door unlocked, she looks around.
We don’t get to see much more of the upstairs loft than this — the view of the pond from the window:
It’s really a very small house — one bedroom and bath, a great room, a kitchen, and an open loft. But it looks like it would feel much bigger than that:
A Little “Housesitter” Trivia:
Gwen loves the house and moves in. She tells a little fib to get the local grocer to put her food on Newton Davis’s tab — that she’s his wife — and word spreads fast. She soon meets his parents, who fall in love with her and help her furnish the house as a wedding present.
Davis comes to Dobbs Mill with plans to sell the house and discovers her there. Here he is, shocked to discover that his house is fully furnished, decorated, and lived in:
The decorating is very eclectic–and looked very fresh and new to us in the early ’90s.
He spots Gwen in the kitchen, cooking, and she asks, “What are YOU doing here?”
In this photo, when she’s pulling her dog off Davis, you get a glimpse of the dining area, furnished with mismatched chairs that are each painted a different color:
When he tells her she has to get out of his house, Gwen climbs into bed and pouts. “Boy, we had a great marriage going until YOU showed up.”
Davis’s old girlfriend Becky (Dana Delaney) walks in on their argument, and he’s surprised to find out she and Gwen are friends. Becky says she was never able to picture Davis as the type of guy you’d marry until she saw him through Gwen’s eyes. She admits she’s a little jealous of Gwen now and wishes she hadn’t been so quick to turn his proposal down.
So Davis strikes a deal with Gwen — they’ll pretend to be married for a little while longer, and then when they “divorce,” he’ll get Becky back.
This will probably shock you, but things don’t go as he planned. He finds himself falling for Gwen instead.
In all the times I’ve seen the movie, I never noticed what Gwen was hanging on the wall in this scene — the napkin sketch of the house.
I wanted to get a shot of the porch with the blue-painted ceiling, but this is the best I could do:
Here are Davis’s parents on the porch (played by the fabulous Julie Harris and Donald Moffat):
A view of the house from across the pond, where a house is being built for Gwen’s “parents” (who are really two homeless people she hired to play the parts):
I was heartbroken to read that this house was built specifically as a “standing set” in Concord, Massachusetts, for the movie, and was torn down after filming ended.
Excuse the credits, but this is the only picture I could get of the house from overhead (I took these while watching the movie because I couldn’t find any good ones of the house anywhere else):
UPDATE 1/10: I was just contacted by Debra Wassman, the architect behind theHousesitter house. She says there were two houses. Her company built the first one, which was named House Beautiful’s “Best Small House 1990.” I remember that issue! Wish I still had it. But at least you can see it on their website: Trumball Architects.
The second was built for the movie. It was a temporary structure that was torn down afterward. She explains:
The main difference between the movie house and ours is the center feature of our house was the two-story fireplace not an opening to the kitchen, and we also had a garage. The film house was a set and torn down; our house was bought and badly renovated so really both are lost.
The original plans were built all over the country, and the world; we have seen a few. I know the changes on the movie house were made for filmability, but also so they didn’t have to pay us a fee! We got film credit because we asked, not because they offered.
Thanks, Debra! You can see more examples of her amazing work at Trumball Architects. I love all of the houses they’ve done.
Visit my TV/Movie Houses for links to all of the others I’ve featured so far, from Father of the Bride to Baby Boom.
