Film & TV
John Hughes
1950–2009 · film director, screenwriter, producer
Writer-director of The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller's Day Off, who spent his first twelve years in Grosse Pointe as a Gordie Howe fan.
- Born
Lansing, Michigan- Died
New York City, New York
aged 59- Birth name
- John Wilden Hughes Jr.
- Also known as
- Edmond Dantes
- Detroit years
- 1950s–1963
- Field
- Film & TV
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Hughes was born in Lansing and spent the first twelve years of his life in Grosse Pointe, where he grew up a devoted fan of Red Wings star Gordie Howe. In 1963 his family moved to Northbrook, a suburb of Chicago, and it was the North Shore that became the setting of most of his films. The Detroit boyhood still surfaced on screen: Howe later sent Hughes one of his own number 9 Red Wings jerseys, and Cameron wears it throughout Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986). After working as an advertising copywriter and National Lampoon humorist, Hughes wrote and directed Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Weird Science, Ferris Bueller and Planes, Trains and Automobiles, and wrote Pretty in Pink, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation and Home Alone, becoming the defining voice of 1980s teen comedy. He died of a heart attack in New York in 2009.
Highlights
- Spent his first 12 years in Grosse Pointe, Michigan
- Gordie Howe sent him a Red Wings jersey, worn by Cameron in Ferris Bueller's Day Off
- Wrote and directed The Breakfast Club (1985) and Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)
- Wrote Home Alone (1990), one of the highest-grossing comedies of its era
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 1
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Lived here · 1950s–1963
Grosse Pointe
The lakeshore suburbs east of Detroit where Hughes spent his childhood (no specific home documented).