Father Of The Bride | 1991
- Locations |
- Los Angeles, California
- DIRECTOR |
- Charles Shyer
This unashamedly old-fashioned remake of the 1950 Vincente Minnelli movie with Spencer Tracy and Elizabeth Taylor happily trots out every cosy cliché about fathers, daughters and weddings.
The film is bathed in a pinky-golden glow, inspired by the feel of Norman Rockwell paintings, and the setting is ‘San Marino’, one of those prosperous southern California towns that looks just like an eastern suburb of Los Angeles.
It’s no great surprise, then, that ’24 Maple Drive’, the home of the Banks family (Steve Martin and Diane Keaton) can be found in Pasadena. It’s 843 South El Molino Avenue, south of California Boulevard.
The house interior was, of course, recreated in the studio and, incidentally, the backyard, with the basketball hoop, belonged to an entirely different house, to the north, in Altadena.
The ‘Village Cyclery’, where George Banks picks up his daughter Annie’s (Kimberly Williams-Paisley) bike, can be found in another regular ‘Anytown, USA’ stand-in, Monrovia, east of Pasadena. It’s 407 South Myrtle Avenue. Next door, by the way, was the café in Grosse Pointe Blank.
It’s not too far to find the local bar, Club 41, where George, despite himself, realises his potential son-in-law Bryan (George Newbern) is a perfect match for Annie. It became restaurant Cheval Blanc, then the White Horse Lounge – which now too seems to be closed, 41 South De Lacey Avenue in Pasadena. Director Charles Shyer returned to the bar three years later for I Love Trouble.
It’s off to Bel-Air to find the home of the Banks' future in-laws, and that really is the hilariously pompous faux-Classical gateway to the posh enclave.
The house “the size of Rhode island” is 364 St Cloud Road. Since the film was made, the gate has been beefed up and there’s little to see. Interiors this time were filmed in a mansion in Malibu.
The boutique of wedding planner Franck (the wildly OTT Martin Short) is on Melrose Place in West Hollywood.
With spiralling costs, sudden snowfalls and tearful break-ups dealt with, the wedding finally goes ahead, with a cinematic blending of two separate churches.
The folksy little church used for the exterior shots is HOPE Christian Fellowship, 6116 North San Gabriel Boulevard, at Beverly Drive, San Gabriel, down southeast of Pasadena, near the real town of San Marino.
The church used for the interior is the significantly grander Trinity Church of Santa Monica, 1015 California Avenue in Santa Monica.
Tom Irish, who played Ben Banks (the brother of Elizabeth Taylor’s character) in the 1950 original, appears as one of the wedding guests – you can see him sitting immediately behind Martin and Keaton in the church.
