Year: 2014

The Culver City Hobbit Houses

I have a major affinity for unique architecture. So when I came across this CurbedLA article about the Lawrence and Martha Joseph Residence and Apartments, a grouping of Storybook-style structures in Culver City colloquially known as the “Hobbit houses,” I just about foamed at the mouth. The complex looks like something straight out of a Disney cartoon and it was not long before I was rushing out to see it with my own two eyes.

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The Lawrence and Martha Joseph Residence and Apartments compound consists of three buildings – a main house and two cottages that contain seven individual apartment units. The dwellings were constructed between 1946 and 1970 by Lawrence Joseph, a former Walt Disney Co. artist and Lockheed aircraft designer. Lawrence first designed the main residence (pictured below), which he lived in with his wife, Martha.

He then built the two additional apartment cottages.

Joseph incorporated two of his main hobbies, carpentry and sailing, into the design of the structures. While the exterior boasts hand-carved wooden detailing, the interiors were made to look like that of a ship, with galley kitchens, built-in furniture, and latches and pulls used as doorknobs. You can check out some photographs of the whimsical interior of one of the apartment units here.

The property’s detailing is downright incredible. I fell in love with the lamp pictured below.

And check out the spider-web design of the main residence’s front door.

In 1996, the complex was declared Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument #624.

Though not a filming location (at least not that I am aware of), the Lawrence and Martha Joseph Residence and Apartments do boast a celebrity connection. Tony Award-winning actress Gwen Verdon called one of the apartment units home for a time, as did Nick Nolte, Paula Prentiss and Richard Benjamin. And in a more nefarious twist, Joseph Amsler, one of the kidnappers of Frank Sinatra Jr., lived on the premises during the time of the abduction. It was inside of one of the apartments that the FBI wound up tracking down a majority of the $240,000 in ransom money that Ol’ Blue Eyes had paid for the return of his son. You can read more about the kidnapping here.

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Lawrence and Martha Joseph Residence and Apartments, aka the Hobbit Houses, are located at 3819 Dunn Drive in Culver City.

September 22, 2014
This Week’s “L.A.” Mag Post – About the “Golden Girls” House

Don’t forget to check out this week’s L.A. magazine blog post – about the Golden Girls house – here.

September 21, 2014
A Much-Needed Break

Our beloved cat passed away on Friday evening and I am beyond distraught. I will be taking the week off from blogging, but hopefully will be feeling more like myself again next Monday.

September 15, 2014
The “Encino Man” House

Lately, I have been on a retro-movie watching kick. I think it has something to do with ”The ‘80s” issue of Los Angeles magazine that hit newsstands this past July. Reading through it got me in the mood to revisit decades past. So I was thrilled when my buddy Mike, from MovieShotsLA, took me by the residence that served as the Morgan family home in Encino Man (spoiler alert – it’s not actually in Encino!). I had not seen the 1992 comedy in ages and remembered very little about it. To be honest, I could not even recall what the house looked like at the time that Mike took me to stalk it. So I decided a re-watch was in order STAT and the Grim Cheaper and I sat down to view it earlier this week. The flick brought back some great memories. Man, I love me some Pauly Shore! “Meat group!”

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Mike found this location (sans help from a crew member, I might add) many years ago thanks to both this 1992 Los Angeles Daily News article, which stated that the Morgan home was located in West Hills, and an address number of 7511 that was visible on the curb of a neighboring residence in the scene in which newly-thawed caveman Link (Brendan Fraser) got into a fight with the mailman. He began searching all of the 7500 blocks in the West Hills area and, while it took him quite a bit of elbow grease, he eventually spotted the place at 7532 Sedgewick Court.

Amazingly, the Morgan house looks almost exactly the same today as it did onscreen 22 years ago when Encino Man first premiered!

The mailbox that appeared in the movie, which was modeled to look like the residence, is, sadly, not there in real life. I am guessing that it was a prop brought in for the shoot and not the home’s actual mailbox.

I so love that the front walkway, where Dave Morgan (Sean Astin) waited for Stoney Brown (Pauly Shore) and Link to return from Mega Mountain, is still in its 1992 state.

As you can see below, the house located next door to the Morgan’s looks completely different today than it did during filming. In 1992, the property was traditional in style and painted grey. It has since been transformed into a Spanish-style home, with a white exterior and red tile roof.

In real life, the Morgan house boasts five bedrooms, five baths, 4,359 square feet and a 0.34-acre plot of land. It last sold in May 2009 for $970,000.

The property’s backyard – where Stoney and Dave discovered Link while digging a pool – was used extensively in the filming.

An aerial view of the backyard in its current state is pictured below. You can also check out a real estate photograph of the backyard here.

As you can see, while the home does have a pool, it does not match the layout of the one that Dave and Stoney were digging in the movie. The real life pool sits horizontal to the home, while the pool in the movie was situated perpendicularly. The Morgan dwelling was originally built in 1988, only a couple of years before Encino Man was shot, so I am guessing that at the time of the filming the backyard was largely undeveloped, which is probably one of the reasons it was chosen for the movie. Once production wrapped, the hole was filled back in and then a pool with different positioning was later added.

The shed where Dave and Stoney left Link to thaw out after first discovering him was, I believe, not native to the residence, but a prop brought in for the shoot.

And while I would have guessed that the real life interior of the home was used in the filming, the Los Angeles Daily News article that Mike found states that Encino Man’s interior sets were built inside of a warehouse in Sylmar.

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Big THANK YOU to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for finding this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Encino Man house is located at 7532 Sedgewick Court in West Hills.

September 12, 2014
Latest “Los Angeles” Magazine Blog – About the Martin House from “Cellular”

Be sure to check out my latest CityThink blog post – about the house where Kim Basinger lived in Cellular – on LAMag.com. My columns typically get published in the late morning/early afternoon hours.

September 11, 2014
The Victorian from “Mr. Mom”

Some movie scenes just seem to stay with you, seared into your memory for years, despite the fact that you can remember little else about the storyline. That’s how it was for me and Mr. Mom. I had not seen the comedy since 1983 when it first premiered in theatres and recalled few details from it, but the scene in which Jack (Michael Keaton) dried his baby’s bottom in a public restroom using a hand blower had stuck with me. Recently, on a whim, the Grim Cheaper and I decided to re-watch the flick. I was pleasantly surprised to discover how relevant Mr. Mom still is – and even more pleasantly surprised to recognize a location while watching!

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In a brief scene towards the end of Mr. Mom, Jack goes out to dinner with some of the housewives from his neighborhood.

Despite some changes to the exterior, I immediately recognized the spot where the group dined as The Victorian (aka Basement Tavern) located at 2640 Main Street in Santa Monica. It is a place that the Grim Cheaper and I frequent on a regular basis whenever staying on L.A.’s west side. We discovered the eatery about a year ago during an evening stroll on Main Street and fell in love with its gorgeous patio – which I posted a picture of on Instagram – on sight. We promptly decided to grab dinner there and were thrilled by the restaurant’s top-notch menu and fabulous happy hour. It has been one of our dining staples ever since.

The two-story, Victorian-style property was originally constructed as a private residence for an optometrist named Dr. George Kyte in 1892. At the time, it was located at 1003 Ocean Avenue. In 1973, the 15,000-square-foot home was moved about a mile and a half south to its current location as part of Santa Monica’s California Heritage Museum project. A neighboring residence, the First Roy Jones house, was moved to an adjacent lot at the same time. The Jones House was slated to become a historical museum and the Kyte House an upscale restaurant. There were some hold-ups in the planning and development process, though, and it was not until 1977 that The Chronicle was opened inside of the Kyte House. It was founded by restaurateur Lud Renick as a sister eatery to his Pasadena outpost of the same name, which was located at 897 Granite Drive. (The Pasadena Chronicle originally opened in 1971 and was shuttered in 1996. In more recent years, the Granite Drive site housed Jennifer Lopez’s former Cuban bistro, Madres, which I blogged about here and here).

While doing research for this post, I was shocked to discover that The Chronicle was where John Thomas Sweeney worked after serving a scant three-year-eight-month jail sentence for the killing of his former girlfriend, 22-year-old Poltergeist actress Dominique Dunne. I have long loved the writings of author Dominick Dunne and have read quite a bit about the 1982 murder of his daughter. When Sweeney was released from prison in 1986 after serving what Dominick called “a tap on the wrist” of a prison sentence, he landed a job as head chef at The Chronicle. The Dunne family was furious upon hearing the news and famously began standing outside the eatery each night, handing out flyers to patrons which read, “The food you will eat tonight was cooked by the hands that killed Dominique Dunne.” Sweeney soon quit, changed his name and moved to the Pacific Northwest. I had known about the flyers and the Dunne’s ongoing fight for justice for their daughter, but never knew the location of the restaurant where they staged their nightly protests.

The Chronicle, which you can see a photograph of here, shut its doors sometime around 1987. After the closure, the Kyte House was acquired by the Gerson family, who also own fave restaurant Malibu Café at Calimigos Ranch (which I blogged about last month). The Gersons operated the property solely as a special events and wedding venue for many years, but in 2010 they opened Basement Tavern, a 2,000-square-foot bar, in the basement of the home. On evenings when weddings are not taking place in the actual house, the Basement Tavern also serves dinner and drinks on the residence’s patio and bottom floor. The Victorian is a truly charming place with excellent food and I cannot more highly recommend dining there.

Fellow stalker Chris informed me that The Victorian also popped up as the supposed San Francisco-area Le Grill restaurant, where Jesse Katsopolis (John Stamos) took the Tanner family to dinner to celebrate his wife Becky’s (Lori Loughlin) promotion, in the Season 8 episode of Full House titled “The Producer.”

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The former The Chronicle restaurant from Mr. Mom, now The Victorian, is located at 2640 Main Street in Santa Monica. You can visit the property’s official website here and Basement Tavern’s official website here.

September 10, 2014
The Daily Grill at LAX from “Red Eye”

I am officially back from vacation today (yesterday’s post was pre-written). I could not have had a more fabulous time and was heartbroken when my best friend, Robin, and his family returned to their native Switzerland. During moments like this, I am reminded of the quote, “Don’t be sorry it’s over. Be glad it happened.”

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Before I get to today’s locale, I thought I would share some photos of the amazing house our group rented for the week. The pad was the perfect little oasis in the middle of Hollywood and we could not have enjoyed our time there more. I only wish our stay had been longer.

It is a tradition during each of Robin’s visits to grab one final cocktail at the Daily Grill at LAX’s Tom Bradley International Terminal before he and his family board their return flight home. Knowing that the time to say good-bye is near, we are all typically in tears before our drinks have even arrived, so we have come to refer to the place as “the sad restaurant.” I blogged about the eatery back in December 2011 to chronicle its appearance in Friends with Benefits, but, at the time, was unaware that it had also been featured in the 2005 thriller Red Eye. So, prior to boarding our plane to Switzerland last summer, the GC and I headed over to the Daily Grill to both grab a drink and snap some more pictures. Somehow I completely forgot to write a second post on the place, though.

Flash forward to Robin’s visit this past April. When we arrived at LAX prior to his return flight, we were shocked to discover that the Daily Grill had been shuttered and completely gutted as part of the Tom Bradley Terminal’s current renovation, which is expected to be completed sometime next year. I was hoping that a new eatery would have opened in the former Grill space by the time that Robin and his family departed this past Friday evening, but the area is still a construction zone and, from what the nice lady at Swiss International Air Lines told us, there are no plans for a restaurant to be put in that area. So that only leaves one place in all of LAX located outside of the security checkpoints to grab a drink – Daniel’s Bistro + Bar, and let’s just say that it definitely does not have the same ambiance as the Daily Grill.

In Red Eye, Tom Bradley International Terminal stood in for Miami International Airport, where Lisa Reisert (Rachel McAdams) landed after a rather scary flight from Dallas, Texas, during which she was kidnapped. Upon escaping her attacker and departing the plane, Rachel walked towards the Daily Grill.

My photograph below was shot from the opposite angle from which the scene was filmed, but you can see that the floor pattern matches in both images.

To hide from her kidnapper and airport security, Rachel then sat down with two strangers at a Daily Grill table. When the eatery was in existence, it took up the entire northeast portion of Tom Bradley’s mezzanine and was split in two by a concourse that ran through its middle. In Red Eye, Rachel sat in the portion of the restaurant seen on the right side of my photograph below (again, my picture was taken from the opposite angle from which the scene was shot).

The escalators located adjacent to the Daily Grill also appeared in the scene.

Those escalators were also featured in the 2005 romcom Rumor Has It.

Manny Delgado (Rico Rodriguez) headed up the same escalators to catch his flight to Columbia in the Season 5 episode of Modern Family titled “Suddenly, Last Summer.”

And the area just below the escalators, which serves as Tom Bradley’s ticketing counters, is where the Backstreet Boys danced in their 1999 “I Want It That Way” music video. You can watch it here.

As I talked about in my December 2011 post, the Daily Grill was featured in Friends with Benefits. In the movie, it masqueraded as the Newark Liberty International Airport restaurant where Dylan (Justin Timberlake) and Mr. Harper (Richard Jenkins) ate a meal in their underwear.

In the scene, the two ate in the Daily Grill’s northeast section, in the area overlooking the international check-in counters.

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Daily Grill, from Red Eye, was formerly located on the Mezzanine Level of the Tom Bradley International Terminal, inside of the Los Angeles International Airport at 380 World Way in Los Angeles. The entire terminal is currently under construction and there is no longer a restaurant in that area.

September 9, 2014
Andrew’s House from “Hidden Away”

Ah yes, another Hidden Away locale. I promise this is the last one! Despite the fact that the 2013 Lifetime Original Movie was laughably bad, I became obsessed with tracking down all of its locations, mainly due to the fact that it was lensed for the most part in Palm Springs. (You can read my various Hidden Away posts here, here and here.) One spot that I was fairly certain was not in the Coachella Valley, though, was the supposed Spokane, Washington-area home where Andrew (Ivan Sergei) lived in the flick. So I set about searching for it in L.A.

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I got really lucky with this hunt. In one of the movie’s earlier scenes, an address of “203 Vera” was visible on the front of Andrew’s house. My initial reaction was that it had to be fake. I mean, it couldn’t really be that easy, could it? I did a Google search for “203 Vera,” regardless, and, sure enough, was met with results for a residence in Malibu with an address of 203 Vera Canyon Drive. It turned out to be the right place.

I wound up stalking it back in June, shortly after grabbing lunch with the Grim Cheaper at Malibu Café at Calamigos Ranch. When we pulled up to the residence, I was shocked to discover that it was actually part of Calamigos Ranch! As I mentioned in my recent post about the ranch, the place is a very popular wedding venue, and dotted throughout the property are cottages that can be rented by wedding guests. Andrew’s house from Hidden Away is one of those cottages.

In real life, the residence, which was built in 1988, is much larger than it appears to be from the street. The pad boasts five bedrooms, three baths and 3,590 square feet of living space.

In Hidden Away, the cottage is where Alexandra (Emmanuelle Vaugier) lived before she moved to Palm Springs and changed her identity in order to escape Andrew, her abusive husband. Despite being located in the ‘Bu, the place does have a very Pacific Northwest-feel to it and it is not very hard to see why producers chose to use it in the movie.

The house, which is extremely picturesque, looks pretty much exactly the same in person as it did in Hidden Away.

I am 99% certain that the real life interior of the cottage was also used in the filming, but, unfortunately, I could not find any interior photographs of the place with which to verify that hunch.

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Andrew’s house from Hidden Away is located at 203 Vera Canyon Drive in Malibu.

September 8, 2014
Latest “L.A.” Mag Post – About Diane’s House from “Back to School”

Be sure to check out my latest Scene It Before post – about Sally Kellerman’s house from Back to School – on LAMag.com. My columns typically get published in the late morning/early afternoon hours.

September 4, 2014
A Visit with Our Best Friends

My best friend, Robin, and his family are currently in town visiting from Switzerland for the week and I could NOT be more excited. We have rented an uh-ma-zing house in Hollywood for their stay and are all looking forward to countless adventures together over the next seven days. Although Robin and I see each other about once a year, this will be the first time in sixteen years that both of our families – his parents and my parents – will be together and the first time that the GC and Robin’s girlfriend, Steffi, will be together with all of us. Our families have a chemistry that I have never experienced with anyone else – put us together and it is a non-stop laugh-fest. I canNOT wait! There will not be much time for blogging, though, so I will be taking the week off. I will be back next Monday, with a whole new post, though. And don’t forget to check out my blog for Los Angeles magazine on Thursday.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

September 1, 2014