Is ‘The Tender Bar’ a real place?

The titular location of the movie “The Tender Bar” is a real place — but it’s not the bar you see on screen.

J.R. Moehringer’s memoir tells of his youth in the 1970s and ’80s, much of it spent with his uncle in the Long Island bar Dickens. There’s still a bar there, at 550 Plandome Road in Manhasset, N.Y.; it’s now called Publicans.

But the movie, directed by George Clooney and starring Ben Affleck, was shot largely in Massachusetts. The bar that stands in for Dickens in the location scenes is Jacob’s Corner, 278 Rantoul St. in Beverly, Mass.

Vin Orlando has owned Jacob’s Corner — a “true regulars’ bar,” as he calls it — for almost a decade. It’s named for his friend Jacob Maxfield, who died shortly after graduating from college.

Greg Chiodo, the film’s location manager, said he chose the site out of over 100 initial options because “it just kind of reminded him of the neighborhood watering hole,” he said, adding that “once George saw it, that was it.”

Orlando was told that Clooney liked it “because it reminded him of a place he went to when he was younger,” Orlando said.

Though Orlando describes it as homey and down-to-earth, the exterior of Jacob’s — on the street level of a three-story building — is more picturesque than the squat, brick building that housed Dickens.

Once the movie came out, the Cabot in Beverly screened it, drawing cheers from the crowd every time a landmark in the city came on screen. Now that it’s on Amazon Prime, Orlando described the surreal experience of flipping through the streaming service and “the top movie right now depicts Ben Affleck leaning against a convertible, and behind it is my bar,” he said.

“The Tender Bar” also includes scenes shot in Lowell — standing in for Manhasset — Fitchburg, Devens, Watertown, Ipswich, Cambridge, Boston, Braintree and Wakefield.