Lexington Put into Coma by Harvard Medical School Graduate
I f you want to visit the Jefferson Institute in Lexington you can do so, however, you would have to travel back in time to 1978.
The Jefferson Institute is a fictional medical facility modeled in the Frankenstein tradition. The chilling, creepy Institute is featured in the 1978 classic movie thriller Coma. The Boston-based movie starred two-time Academy Award winner Michael Douglas of Wall Street and One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest fame; Golden Globe winner Geneviève Bujold; and one of the most famous Hollywood noir villains of all time, Golden Globe winner Richard Widmark. The movie also featured roles played by future Magnum P.I. star Tom Selleck and the legendary, Emmy-Award winner Rip Torn.
One of the most thrilling scenes in the movie was filmed on location at an actual Xerox building located in Lexington. The gray, hulking-concrete, Eastern-Block looking structure depicts the perfect setting for elevating suspense and fear around the movie’s sinister and creepy plot. As if frozen in time, the former Xerox building, nearly 50 years later, appears almost exactly as it did in the movie, especially the building’s easily identified front entrance where actress Geneviève Bujold, as Dr. Susan Wheeler, is seen entering the building as if being lured into a web of doom. The building is located at 191 Spring Street.
Coma was a top-budget film produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayor and based on the novel written by New York Times best-seller Robin Cook, who is considered one of the best thriller novelists of all time. A Boston resident and, having received post-graduate training at Harvard, it’s not surprising that many of Cook’s novels are structured around a fictional and non-fictional Boston world.
The movie Coma was directed by the iconic Michael Chrichton; probably best known for Jurassic Park. Among many other things, Chrichton was a Harvard Medical School graduate, but chose writing as a career over medicine.
Highly acclaimed as a “hidden-gem” and an “early Michael Chrichton masterpiece,” Coma captures an enjoyable look back to 1970s Boston and takes viewers on an interesting journey through sleepy old Lexington with some of Hollywood’s biggest stars tagging along.
The Hometown Historians are local historians dedicated to preserving unique historical events, monuments, sites, and people before they slip from the pages of history.
Andrew McAleer served as a U.S. Army Historian and is the author of the best-selling A Casebook of Crime featuring the Henry von Stray historical mysteries. Volume Two set for release this March. Visit him at: Henryvonstraymysteries.com
William Kyle Auterio volunteers for the Lexington Historical Society as a greeter.