The estate where most of the action takes place looks like the same one used in the TV series "Hart to Hart" and other movies and TV episodes. Where was it?
shareAccording to a chapter in the film's published screenplay, the sequences at Susan's farm in Westlake were actually shot at a Malibu location called the "Arthur Ranch."
shareI've long wondered about this location myself. It's obvious from the daylight shots of the house's exterior that it wasn't an interior set, so I had hoped it maybe still existed somewhere (like the Blanding's dream house still exists--in not that great a condition--as a park administration building in Malibu State Park).
Some have said they thought it was the same house used in "Christmas in Connecticut", but that house was built within a soundstage, and the style of stone, as well as wood trim was completely different from Susan's aunt's house.
I learned today that the farmhouse scenes were most likely shot at the RKO Encino Ranch at the end of the "residential street"(the Ranch was closed around '53, and is now occupied by a few hundred suburban homes). The house itself can be seen in the Encino Ranch section of the retroweb.com site on this page:
http://www.retroweb.com/rko_encino_residential_sets.html
It's thumbnail is almost at the very bottom of the page, the very last photo (untitled) in the main group of small thumbnails, next to the thumbnail entitled "View toward Genesee Street". Surprisingly, the house appears to sit at the end of a suburban cul de sac instead of somewhere out in the country--but that's Hollywood for ya...turn the camera 180 degrees, and you've traveled 1000 miles cross-country.
From the style of the porch roof supports, the window in the bay just behind the one person in the photo, what appears to be rough shingle siding below this window, and the flagstone siding for the rest of the structure, it all matches Susan's aunt's farmhouse in the film.
Ron H