The "South Bend Shovel Slayer's" House From Home Alone Is For Sale Outside Chicago

Crain's Chicago Business - A shingle-covered, turreted 19th century Winnetka house, the work of a distinguished architect but most familiar from its cameo in "Home Alone" as the house where the supposed South Bend Shovel Slayer lived, is for sale.

Penny and Dick Green are asking just under $4.2 million for the house on Lincoln Avenue, which they have owned since 2003. It's been on an agents-only private listing site but will be listed publicly Tuesday, July 23, according to the agent who's representing it, Annika Valdiserri of @properties Christie's International Real Estate.

Built in about 1898, the six-bedroom house is on about two-thirds of an acre, with a 60-foot swimming pool out back. "It's very private," Dick Green says, while at the same time it's within a few blocks of two Metra stations, each surrounded by restaurants and shops, and from lakefront beaches.

By now, everybody knows what they say about Old Man Marley, the South Bend Shovel Slayer right? Back in ’58, he murdered his whole family and half the people on a suburban Chicago block with a snow shovel. He’s been hiding out there ever since, disguising the remains of his misdeeds by turning victims to mummies, and using the dust off their bones to salt our streets.

Last month, the house the McCallister's lived in, aka The Silver Tuna, was put up for sale. 

It sold in a week. Everybody of course went gaga over it, because when you think about it, it has to be on the Mount Rushmore of favorite and most recognizable movie-houses. 

But here's the deal- if the McCallister house sold in a week, then the Marley house better sell in two days tops. In fact, I'm fucking shocked, and if we're being totally honest, insulted, that this house is even on the market for joe schmo buyers. I mean if the South Side Shovel Slayer's house isn't a "pocket listing" then what the hell is?

Talk about a flex.

And what I also want to know is, with how nice the McCallister house was, and with all the questions every December asking what the fuck did Peter McCallister do for a living to afford such a nice home, what about our boy Old Man Marley next door?

Look at his humble abode. 

Not too shabby. 

Especially for a guy who had a reputation for being a serial killer who mummified his victims and used their granulated remains to salt the sidewalks of his Winnetka neighborhood. 

So the real question here should be what did Old Man Marley do for a living? I mean besides the obvious- which is maintain a heavy drinking problem (I'm thinking he was a big Jim Beam, and/or Cutty Sark guy), and drive his wife and kids away through what was most likely some very unhealthy verbal, possibly physical, abuse. And the whole serial killer thing. 

Living in Winnetka, even back in those days, wasn't for the meager. Living on the North Shore comes with a hefty price tag. So how did Marley come into his wealth? 

Given the insane amount of backstories and behind the scenes information still coming out about the classic film, we know that in alternative scripts, Marley really was from South Bend, and referenced it in thrown away dialogue. Was he a Notre Dame grad who went on to becoming a titan of industry here in Chicago post-grad? Did he play for the Irish and then the Bears? I would love some greater backstory on him because for now, this is the best I have come across. 

FUN FACT -This is more or less the movie audiences fell in love with in 1990 and have been watching from one generation to the next every Christmas since. However, there is a key and emotionally crucial bit missing: Old Man Marley being reunited with his granddaughter and estranged son on Christmas morning. That’s because it was never a Hughes invention; the idea came from the film’s  director, Chris Columbus.

The filmmaker, who at the age of 31 had only helmed two movies prior to Home Alone, realized that as adorable as Kevin was, the movie would benefit from a more emotionally cathartic core. Which is to say it needed a little more Christmas magic. As Columbus told Business Insider for Home Alone’s 30th anniversary, “I think probably the biggest thing I brought was Old Man Marley in the church. Not the conversation, but I added the moment when Marley talked about not being able to see his granddaughter.”

In the original draft, Old Man Marley, the alleged South Bend Slayer, did make small talk in the House of Worship with Kevin on Christmas Eve. Functionally, it provided another example of Kevin facing his fear and realizing folks are not what they appear. It also set up Hughes’ idea of having Marley save Kevin’s life with a shovel. Although as first scripted, the old-timer simply smashes Harry and Marv’s faces in and then winks, “A little trick I learned in South Bend.”

That could’ve been the last we saw of Marley, which in typical Hughes fashion leaves open to interpretation whether he might really have been the Shovel Slayer. Ergo, it was Columbus’ idea to reveal the lonely old man misses a son he quarreled with, and a granddaughter he never knew.

“I also added the very end of the movie when Kevin sees that Marley is reunited with his granddaughter,” Columbus said in 2020. “That is probably my proudest addition to the movie.”

In another 2020 interview with The Today Show, Columbus said, “I think the comedy really still works, and I also think the emotional part of Home Alone is there. It’s very emotional for people when Marley reunites with his son and granddaughter at the end of the movie. It’s just so incredibly touching. It just ties into the holiday season.” And it always will.

Couldn't agree more. When Kevin looks out that window and sees Marley hugging his granddaughter and his son and daughter in law standing next to him it's enough to warm even the biggest grinch's heart. 

To wrap up - owning the guy who turned dead bodies into salt and was dubbed the Shovel Slayer’s house is so much cooler than owning the Board of Trade guys. Even if it is the most famous house of horrors of our cinematic childhoods.

P.s.- this should have been left in-

(To be fair, other versions of the script included one more scene that would have appeared as a mid-credits sequence with Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern’s Harry and Marv sitting in jail on Christmas Day, watching TV in the day room when they recognize dialogue from a little movie called Angels with Filthy Souls. “I’ll tell you what I’m gonna give you, Snakes. I’m gonna give you…”)