Air Force One, 1997
Director
Cast
visit the film locations
Los Angeles: Flights: Los Angeles International Airport (LAX)
Ebell of Los Angeles, 4401 West Eighth Street at Lucerne Boulevard, off Wilshire Boulevard, midtown (tel: 323.937.0272)
Trivia
The Ebell can be seen in lots of other films, including Steven Spielberg’s Catch Me If You Can.
Air Force One location: the real Russian opening: Red Square, Moscow
A scenery-chewing Russian terrorist (the new Nationalist breed, not the old Commie type) hijacks America’s First Plane with President James Marshall (Harrison Ford) on board.
Air Force One location: the President’s ‘Russian’ speech: the Ebell of Los Angeles, West Eighth Street, midtown Los Angeles
For the early sequences, a second unit captured shots of Red Square in Moscow, but Harrison Ford stayed in Los Angeles to make his Russian speech, at the Ebell of Los Angeles, 4401 West Eighth Street at Lucerne Boulevard, off Wilshire Boulevard, midtown. The complex, comprising a women's club and the Wilshire Ebell Theatre, is a frequent film location.
Similarly, 'Moscow Airport' is actually Los Angeles International Airport.
Air Force One location: the ‘Russian’ prison: Mansfield Reformatory, Mansfield, Ohio
Photograph: Erik Hollander
Plenty of other locations can be found in Ohio, where ‘Ramstein Air Force Base, Germany’ is Rickenbacker International Airport, Columbus. Permission to use airports determined the locations for much of the rest of the film.
The opening scenes use University Circle and Cuyahoga County Courthouse, Cleveland, as ‘Moscow’ government buildings. The ‘Presidential Palace, Kazakhstan’ is Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, while the vast ‘Russian’ prison, in which General Radek (Jurgen Prochnow) is incarcerated, is Mansfield Reformatory, Mansfield (also used for exteriors for The Shawshank Redemption).
And although its lawn was recreated in a park in Los Angeles, it is the real White House in Washington DC in the long shots.
