60-acre, 22,000- square-foot estate built in the late 1800s by the
Thayre family," KALM Oliver says. "It was later purchased by the
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the founder of Transcendental Medita-
tion. Guests such as George Harrison, Michael Jackson, Elizabeth
Taylor and George Hamilton frequently visited. It was up for sale
for $10 million, and if I'd had the money, I would have bought it."
Gonchor adds, "We had scenes there of someone playing the
piano, studying with a tutor and the Christmas dinner. It was
cool. It had good vibes. The building was huge. It had something
like 60 rooms." It took months to figure everything out. "There
are so many ways we could have gone with the two houses. We
found a mansion that was great for the Laurence house, but not
enough room to build the March house. There was a great March
house, but could we build the façade of the Laurence house?
Eventually, we found a place that was on a decent piece of prop-
erty, and it was changing owners.
"Someone bought it but wasn't planning to move in for a year,
so we had the run of the grounds. It was perfect for the Laurence
house. Then we had to decide where we were going to build the
other house. When we were about to shoot it, it turned out that
it was Trustee land and they didn't want us to shoot there. Doug
and I took a walk around the property and found this other place
to build the March house. You couldn't see the front of it because
it was so big, but you could see the back. Then we saw the pond
nearby. It opened up a whole world of possibilities that we never
would have found if they hadn't stopped us shooting."
AUNT MARCH'S HOUSE
"Aunt March's house was challenging to find," Dresser says. "We
wound up using one of the Trustees' properties in a fantastic
neighborhood south of Boston (the Bradley Estate in Canton). It
was one of the houses where we had to add snow. We watched
Exterior New York City
set details filmed in
Lawrence, MA.
