Homer’s House from “The Day of the Locust”

Today’s locale is an oldie but goodie.  Way back in October 2010, while in Eagle Rock stalking with Mike, from MovieShotsLA, we passed by a residence at 4911 College View Avenue and Mike informed me that it was featured in The Day of the Locust.  At the time I had never heard of the 1975 surrealistic thriller, which was based upon the 1939 Nathanael West book of the same name.  I snapped a few photos regardless, but somehow the pad went straight to the back of my mind pretty much as soon as I got the images uploaded to my computer.  It wasn’t until organizing my location spreadsheet a few months ago that I was reminded of it.  Figuring the home would make for a good Haunted Hollywood post, I finally sat down to watch the movie.  Though the name sounds straight out of a horror film, as it turns out it is neither horror nor slasher – nor are there any locusts to be found!  The Day of the Locust is instead about several show business hopefuls in 1930s-era Hollywood.  Because it is easily one of the oddest, most disturbing flicks I have ever seen, I decided it was still fitting for an October posting.

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In a 1975 review, Roger Ebert explains The Day of the Locust’s odd titling as such, “The locusts are the little people, faceless and sad, who accumulate on the benches of Los Angeles, waiting for a bus that will never come.  They’re surrounded by the artificial glitter of Hollywood, which provides dreams that certainly are happier and sometimes seem more real than the America of the 1930s.  But one day, the dreams will end and the locusts will swarm and the whole fragile society will come crashing down.”  Said “crashing down” occurs in an almost zombie-ish scene at the end of the film in which a bloody riot breaks out in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre during a big Hollywood premiere.  Living amongst the locusts in the film are three archetypal Tinseltown characters – talented aspiring art director Tod Hackett (William Atherton), opportunistic blonde starlet Faye Greener (Karen Black  – who, in real life, became something of a horror movie queen later in her career), and wealthy, lonely, older recluse Homer Simpson (Donald Sutherland) who gets taken advantage of by her.  It is the latter’s house that Mike took me to stalk that warm October day nine years ago.  (And yep, you read that right – Sutherland appeared as a live-action big-screen “Homer Simpson” twelve years before the infamous animated patriarch made his television debut and quickly became a household name.)

Miraculously, the 1928 pad looks very much as it did onscreen when The Day of the Locust premiered over four decades ago – though there have been a few alterations.

Most notably, the front door is in a different spot.  Odd, I know!  But in the movie, the home’s main entrance was situated at the southern end of the front porch, facing West Fair Park Avenue which runs perpendicular to College View Ave.

Though it is hard to see in my photos due to a hedge standing in the way, when I stalked the house the front door was situated in the middle of the porch, facing College View Avenue, as the below Google Street View image from May 2009 shows.

In an incredible twist, since my 2010 visit the front door has been relocated again!  (In all my years of stalking, this is the first time I’ve come across a house with a front door that has been moved twice!)   Per current Google Street View imagery, the door is now situated in the same spot it was during the filming of The Day of the Locust, as you can see in the extreme side view of the property below.

In place of the former front entrance is now a paned window.

The detached garage which once stood at the rear of the property and which was intact when I stalked the place has also since been torn down.  In its place is what is referred to in the building permits I dug up as a 528-square foot “recreation room” with a 2-car garage below it.  Apparently, in 2012 plans were submitted to the city to subdivide the 0.44-acre plot of land the residence stands on in order to build a secondary home on the northern parcel, but they look to have been denied.  I am guessing the “recreation room” was constructed as an alternative.

Per aerial views, the pad also has some sort of guest house/second garage located in the backyard and I am fairly certain that the measurement information supplied by Zillow includes that of the main property as well as the guest cottage and the “recreation room” being that the home itself appears far too small to comprise the reported 6 bedrooms, 5 baths and 3,022 square feet.

I am fairly certain that the residence’s actual backyard was featured in The Day of the Locust . . .

. . . as was its original garage.

The interior of Homer’s house, though, was, I believe, just a set.  While the camera angles certainly made it look as if the actual inside of 4911 College View was utilized, because so many scenes took place there, it seems a lot more feasible that a set was constructed on a soundstage for the production.

Said set was seriously (and appropriately) eerie – and reminds me quite a bit of the Canfield-Moreno Estate in Silver Lake – another great Haunted Hollywood locale that I blogged about in 2012.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 

Stalk It: Homer’s house from The Day of the Locust is located at 4911 College View Avenue in Eagle Rock.