Annette Bening played Jean Harris in a 2005 movie. A Lake Highlands house will be used in the 2016 docudrama about Harris. (Photo by Jesse Grant for © WireImage.com)
The story of Jean Harris captivated the nation in the 1980s. Annette Bening played Harris — the headmistress at an exclusive girls school who was convicted of a brutal murder — in the 2005 film, Mrs. Harris.
Harris killed her lover, a famous cardiologist and author of a best-selling diet book. The settings in which she lived her story were “fashionably suburban,” as a New York Magazine writer puts it: Shaker Heights, Cleveland; Grosse Point, Michigan; Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia; a smart girls’ schools in Virginia; and Westchester County …”
So what might any of it have to do with Lake Highlands, TX? Glad you asked. A Lake Highlands home, one perfectly preserved and (for the most part) un-updated since the 1980s, wound up serving as the ideal set for an upcoming show about the infamous murderess.
Docudramas are big these days, especially ones with the words “murder” in the title. Murder Made Me Famous is one of the newer offerings — the series, which premiered last August, examines killers who gained notoriety when their crimes whipped up a media frenzy.
The 1980s-built home will feature in an upcoming series.
An upcoming episode will detail Harris’ story, featuring interviews with victims’ family members, jurors, members of law enforcement and journalists involved with the case, according to a press release about the series.
A production company was scouting the country for a house to portray the quaint abode inhabited by Harris in the 1980s. They found it while scouring Airbnb, a site that helps homeowners to rent to travelers, when they happened upon Cortney Gibson’s home located in the Woodbridge neighborhood of Dallas.
The Woodbridge area of Lake Highlands, just east of Richland College, includes about 230 homes built in the early 1980s. The houses are architecturally unique. (Full disclosure: I live there.) In fact, we’ve already reported one previous story of a Woodbridge home used in the filming of a horror flick. And neighbors tell me an episode of “Walker: Texas Ranger” also was filmed at a Woodbridge home.
Jean Harris
“They were looking for a house like mine, built in 1980,” Gibson tells us. “Because many of the spaces have not been updated — bathrooms, kitchen — it was perfect for the shots they needed.”
The “Murder” crew has visited Woodbridge twice so far — once for planning purposes and another time in January to film.
Look for more about this in our April issue (which also will be our annual Home Design issue, which you do not want to miss).
