The “War Games” House

A few weeks ago, I got an email from fellow stalker Owen who was writing to ask if I owned a copy of the 1983 movie War Games on DVD.  And while I did not own the movie, nor had I ever actually even seen it, my fiancé, thankfully, did.  Owen was inquiring about the DVD because he was currently in the process of trying to track down the house where teenaged computer prodigy David Lightman (aka Matthew Broderick) lived in the flick.  Owen had recently discovered – thanks to the stalking tome The Worldwide Guide to Movie Locations  – that the Lightman residence was located somewhere in the Hancock Park area of Los Angeles.  Even though the movie was supposedly set in Seattle, the vast majority of it was actually shot right here in Southern California.  YAY!  So, that very night I popped in my fiancé’s DVD and settled in to watch War Games for the very first time.  And I have to say that I absolutely LOVED it!  How I missed the movie when it first came out in 1983 – and all of the years since – is absolutely beyond me, especially since I am SUCH a child of the ‘80s.  Being that I was only six years old at the time the movie premiered, though, I guess I was a bit too young to appreciate it.  But I digress. 

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Owen had asked me to watch War Games in the hopes that the address number of the Lightman house would be visible at some point during the movie.  And, thankfully, as you can see in the above screen capture, it was!  I spotted the number “333” towards the beginning of the flick in the scene in which Jennifer (aka Ally Sheedy) is shown running up to knock on David’s front door.  So, Owen immediately got to searching all of the 300 blocks in the Hancock Park area and fairly quickly came upon the house.  Ironically enough, there is a notation on Wikipedia’s Larchmont Village page which states that the War Games house is located on the corner of “Lucerne and Second Street”, but that information, like so much of Wikipedia’s filming location information, is actually incorrect.  The Lightman home can actually be found at 333 South Arden Boulevard, a few blocks south of where Lucerne meets Second Street.

As soon as Owen emailed me the address of the War Games house, I grabbed my camera and headed over to Hancock Park to snap some pics.  And I was absolutely shocked at what I found.  As it turns out, even though over 27 years have passed since the movie was filmed, the War Games house still looks pretty much exactly the same as it did onscreen!  Love it, love it, love it!  The owners of the property deserve some very big kudos for resisting the urge to change anything.  Although the home, which was built in 1920, appears to fairly average-sized from the street, it actually boasts a whopping 7 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, and 3,728 square feet of living space. 

Big THANK YOU to Owen for finding this location!  🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  🙂

Stalk It: The War Games house is located at 333 South Arden Boulevard in the Hancock Park area of Los Angeles.