The YWCA Hollywood Studio Club from “Dexter”

Aside from Sex and the City’s, I don’t think there’s ever been a television finale that I loved. Dexter’s, in my opinion, was the absolute worst.  But I was thoroughly mesmerized by the location chosen to portray Rendall Psychiatric Hospital, the ultra creepy abandoned lair of the Brain Surgeon Killer, Oliver Saxon (Darri Ingolfsson), in the series’ last three episodes.  The structure, with its dark, looming presence, dramatic arched windows and iron balconies, was striking onscreen.  Thanks to Seeing Stars, I learned that filming had taken place at the historic YWCA Hollywood Studio Club and ran right out to stalk it shortly after the Dexter finale aired in November 2013.  While I had every intention of blogging about the site the following October, somehow I never got around to it.  So here goes!

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The Hollywood Studio Club was initially founded in 1916 by a small group of aspiring actresses who regularly gathered at the Hollywood Branch Library to rehearse plays.  A friendly librarian named Eleanor Jones got the ball rolling on finding the ladies a more suitable venue to perfect their craft, securing a nearby hall with the help of the Young Women’s Christian Association.  At the time, most of the club members lived alone in less-than-adequate housing, so in 1919 Eleanor and the YWCA spearheaded a campaign to establish a safe, clean, affordable and chaperoned residence for the girls, as well as other young Hollywood hopefuls from all walks of the entertainment industry, to reside in upon moving to town.  The group found what they were looking for in a large columned Colonial-style pad at 6129 Carlos Avenue in the heart of Tinseltown.  Though it no longer stands, you can see what it looked like here.  Cecil B. DeMille and Mary Pickford helped provide funding and furnishings.   With space for only twenty residents, it was not long before the place was bursting at the seams and a larger facility was needed.  Numerous show business heavyweights helped raise money for the project, including Harold Lloyd, Gloria Swanson and Jackie Coogan, with the YWCA picking up the rest of the tab.  Julia Morgan was commissioned to design the new site and construction was completed in 1926.

The picturesque three-story Mediterranean Revival-style property featured housing for 88 women, as well as an auditorium, a kitchen that offered two daily meals (Laugh-In’s Jo Anne Worley, a one-time resident, claims the coffee cake served on Sundays was the best she’d ever had), a rehearsal hall, a dining room, a loggia, a library, a gym, a spacious living room, beamed ceilings, multiple fireplaces, 24-hour phone service, and a grassy central courtyard.  By all accounts it was an idyllic place to live.  As character actress Virginia Sale, who moved into the club in 1927, recounted to the Los Angeles Times in 1975, “It was the most beautiful place I had ever seen.  And it was like a real home.  You knew that the minute you walked in.”  Often referred to as a “sorority,” the YWCA Hollywood Studio Club also offered onsite drama, singing, dancing, design, exercise, and writing classes and regularly hosted special events, such as dances, plays and fashion shows.  You can see some photos of the place from its early days here.

Countless luminaries called the place home over the years including Donna Reed, Kim Novak, Rita Moreno, author Ayn Rand, Barbara Eden, Sharon Tate, clothing designer Georgia Bullock, Maureen O’Sullivan, ZaSu Pitts, Ann B. Davis, Sally Struthers, and Miss Marilyn Monroe, who in June 1948 moved into Room 307 with actress Clarice Evans.  Monroe later occupied Room 334, which was a single.  You can see a picture of a check the starlet wrote with the Studio Club listed as her address here.  It was during her residency that she posed for those infamous nude photographs.  According to Wikipedia, the September 1996 issue of Saturday Night magazine quoted Marilyn as once saying  “Funny how shocked people in Hollywood were when they learned I’d posed in the nude.  At one time I’d always said no when photographers asked me.  But you’ll do it when you get hungry enough.  It was at a time when I didn’t seem to have much future.  I had no job and no money for the rent.  I was living in the Hollywood Studio Club for Girls.  I told them I’d get the rent somehow.  So I phoned up Tom Kelley, and he took these two color shots—one sitting up, the other lying down . . . I earned the fifty dollars that I needed.”  The rest, as they say, is history.

Not all residents found fame and fortune, though.  As Virginia Sale also told the Los Angeles Times in 1975, “One woman, older than the rest of us, was murdered in front of the club by a boyfriend.  He was an ex-serviceman or something like that.  And he then killed himself.”  I tried to find some further verification of the story, but came up empty, so I am not sure if it is true or not.  Either way, it only adds to the place’s intrigue.  In all, more than 10,000 girls called the YWCA Hollywood Studio Club home before it shut its doors in 1975, after falling victim to both hard financial times and a change in the fire code that would have required a whopping $60,000 worth of upgrades.  The fire improvements were eventually made following the shuttering and the site subsequently operated as a YWCA Job Corps training center for a time.  Today, the building, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is a Historic-Cultural Monument, is utilized as a Workforce/Youth Development center/Digital Learning Academy – and a filming location.  You can check out some current photos of its interior here.

The YWCA Hollywood Studio Club first appeared as Rendall Psychiatric Hospital in the Season 8 episode of Dexter titled “Goodbye Miami,” in the scene in which the deranged Saxon shows his mother, Dr. Evelyn Vogel (Charlotte Rampling), where he kills all of his victims and removes portions of their brains.  Shudder!  The abandoned former mental asylum is said to be located at 1215 West Clarendon Avenue in Allapattah, Florida on the series, but its actual address is 1215 Lodi Place in Hollywood.

The building popped up in the next two episodes of Dexter, as well, titled, respectively, “Monkey in a Box” . . .

. . . and “Remember the Monsters?”  It is in the latter, which served as the show’s horrific finale, that Debra Morgan (Jennifer Carpenter) is shot, setting off a series of seriously depressing events.

The interior of the YWCA Hollywood Studio Club was also utilized on Dexter.

But I am fairly certain that Saxon’s kill room, supposedly located inside Rendall Psychiatric Hospital, was nothing more than a studio-built set.

Dexter is hardly the only production to have been lensed on the premises.  Thanks to fellow stalker Paul I learned that the club masked as Smith’s Grove Sanitarium in a dream sequence in the 1981 horror film Halloween II.

In the Season 2 episode of Visiting . . . with Huell Howser titled “Hollywood Ladies,” which aired in 1994, Huell tours the Hollywood Studio Club with four women who lived there during the 1940s and have remained friends ever since.

I highly recommend giving the episode a watch (which you can do here).  Not only do the woman share fascinating and heartwarming tales of their time at the club and the lifelong friendships it cultivated, but viewers are given great glimpses of the property, including its central courtyard . . .

,

. . . and dining room and auditorium.

In the Season 1 episode of Agent Carter titled “The Iron Ceiling,” which aired in 2015, the YWCA Hollywood Studio Club portrayed the Red Room Academy, supposedly located in Russia.

The site, playing itself, is where Marla Mabrey (Lily Collins) and the rest of Howard Hughes’ (Warren Beatty) contract starlets take singing and dancing lessons in 2016’s Rules Don’t Apply (which I only scanned through to make the screen captures below, but is now on my list to watch as it looks absolutely darling – and stars Megan Hilty, whom I adore!).  Both the exterior . . .

. . . and interior of the club are featured in the movie.

The kitchen also appears briefly as the kitchen of the Desert Inn in Las Vegas, where Hughes has 350 gallons of Baskin-Robbins banana nut ice cream delivered after learning the flavor is being discontinued.

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Big THANK YOU to the Seeing Stars website for finding this location! 

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 

Stalk It: The YWCA Hollywood Studio Club, aka Rendall Psychiatric Hospital from Dexter, is located at 1215 Lodi Place in Hollywood.