Jack Ryan’s House from “Clear and Present Danger”

The Grim Cheaper was anxiously awaiting last Friday’s premiere of the new Amazon series Jack Ryan.  There was practically a countdown going on in our house.  When we finally viewed the first episode, though, my only thought was ‘I want that hour and four minutes of my life back.’  Needless to say, we were not impressed.  The show is a bit of a snoozefest.  And being that it was lensed outside of L.A. (mainly in Canada and Morocco), I did not even have its locations to distract me.  Watching the pilot did remind me of a related site that I stalked back in November 2012 – the Hancock Park pad used for interior shots of the residence belonging to Jack Ryan (Harrison Ford) and his family in the Tom Clancy franchise’s third installment, 1994’s Clear and Present Danger.  I first learned about the home thanks to a Los Angeles Times article published in February 2012, shortly after the property was put up for sale for the first time in almost thirty years.  Though I promptly added the address to my To-Stalk List and hit the place up later that same year, I somehow forgot to blog about it.  With all the interest in the new series, I figured it was the perfect moment to amend that.

In real life, the massive 3-story Southern Colonial-style home, which was built in 1925, boasts 7,480 square feet, 6 bedrooms, 6.5 baths, a master suite with a fireplace, his-and-her baths and his-and-her walk-in closets, a library/den, a gourmet kitchen, a wine cellar with space for 900 bottles, hardwood flooring and crown moldings throughout, a detached 1-bedroom guest apartment, a pool house with its own kitchen, a large veranda, a rose garden, a fountain, a pool, a spa, a tennis court, a 4-car garage, a motor court, and a 0.86-acre lot.  Holy amenities, Batman!

Sadly, thanks to the fact that its entire perimeter is lined with large trees, virtually none of it is visible from the street.

It doesn’t help matters that the residence sits perpendicular to the road, as you can see in the Bing Maps aerial view below.  It is a very unique orientation (I have never seen a house situated sideways like that before) which, unfortunately, blocks most of the place from sight.

The views below are the best that can be gleaned of the home’s spectacular Antebellum façade.

Per the Los Angeles Times, Harrison Ford took such a liking to the property during the ten days spent filming on the premises that he offered to buy it.  The owners, who purchased the pad in 1983 for $800,000, were not interested in selling, though.  Their minds didn’t change until January 2012, when they placed the home on the market for $5.295 million.  The real estate agent used the residence’s cinematic clout as a selling point, which is how it wound up being featured in the Times.  It sold that same July for $4.32 million.  You can check out the MLS photos here.

The dwelling appears numerous times throughout Clear and Present Danger.  The kitchen first pops up in a beginning scene in which Jack learns that Admiral Greer (James Earl Jones) is in the hospital.  Though the MLS photo below was taken from a slightly different angle than the one from which the segment was shot, you can see that very little of the kitchen had been altered from its onscreen state at the time of the sale in 2012.

Even the home’s highly unique copper and stainless steel range hood appears to have remained untouched.  You can just barely see it to the right of Jack’s head in the screen capture below.

The master bedroom is then featured in a later scene in which Jack watches President Bennett (Donald Moffat) being interviewed on TV while getting ready for work.  The MLS image below is, again, taken from a different vantage point, but it is still apparent how little of the room has been changed since the shoot.

In the segment, you can even see one of the room’s walk-in closets through the door in the background.

Near the end of the movie, the living room makes an appearance in the scene in which Ryan learns of Admiral Greer’s death.  That space, too, looks much the same as it did when Clear and Present Danger was shot in 1994.

The Los Angeles Times article also states, “In another scene, Ford is preparing to go to South America and was filmed packing the homeowners'”‘”‘ actual clothes.  The suitcase ended up in a prop truck, and the owners later had to retrieve their belongings from the prop department.”  I scanned through the flick twice, though, in preparation for this post and did not come across a scene like that anywhere.  There is one segment in which Ford is shown carrying a suitcase down the residence’s sweeping staircase just prior to his trip to Bogota, but no packing scene.  I guess that bit wound up on the cutting room floor.

Only the interior of the property appears in Clear and Present Danger.  The exterior of the Ryan home is a different location entirely – one I have not been able to track down as of yet.

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Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The house used for interior shots of Jack Ryan’s residence in Clear and Present Danger can be found at 615 South Rossmore Avenue in Hancock Park.

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