West Beverly?

A few weeks ago, Mike, from MovieShotsLA, sent me some screen captures from a Season One episode of the original Beverly Hills, 90210 series entitled “Fame Is Where You Find It.” In the episode Brandon “goes Hollywood” after landing a role on Brenda’s favorite television series Keep It Together. In one scene in the episode, Keep It Together’s star, Lydia Leeds, picks Brandon up from West Beverly High in her limousine during lunch. While watching the episode, Mike noticed that the high school shown in that scene did not look like Torrance High School, the real life locale which was used to portray West Beverly High during the first three seasons of 90210. Mike made it his mission to find out exactly what school was used in that scene.

I tried to help him out in this stalking mission, but as usual he was one step ahead of me. 🙂 It didn’t take long at all before Mike found some online photos of Notre Dame High School in Sherman Oaks and recognized it as the place that stood in for West Beverly in the “Fame Is Where You Find It” episode. I have visited and blogged about this location once before, but I just had to run right out to re-stalk it so that I could see the exact spot that was used in 90210. 🙂 And standing there at Notre Dame High, it was easy to see that, without a doubt, it was definitely the location used in the “Fame Is Where You Find It” episode. It is so strange to me that producers filmed Brandon’s limousine pickup at a different location than Torrance High School, especially since there were a few other scenes from that same episode that were filmed at Torrance High. What was it that caused producers to shoot this scene elsewhere when in ever other instance I know of, all exteriors of West Beverly were shot at Torrance? Were they looking for a specific look for that particular scene that Torrance just didn’t have? Did they run out of time and decide to shoot the brief limo scene at Notre Dame because it is about 20 miles closer to the 90210 studios than Torrance High School? Perhaps we will never know, but it is these little idiosyncrasies that absolutely fascinate me when it comes to filming locations – and that will keep me stalking day after day for years to come. 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Notre Dame High School is located at 13645 Riverside Drive in Sherman Oaks. The exterior of the school’s chapel area was used for the filming of Brandon’s limousine pickup.