Lindsay

November 8, 2019November 18, 2019

Cicada from “The Morning Show”

I don’t know what all the hullabaloo regarding The Morning Show being terrible is about. The Grim Cheaper and I trepidatiously tuned in earlier this week and, considering all the jeers reviewers are spewing, were shocked at how much we enjoyed the new Apple TV+ series! We devoured the three episodes that have aired so far in one sitting and literally loved every second! So artfully done and intriguing is the show that it even managed to pull one over on me, locations-wise! Set in NYC, I assumed all filming had taken place there as well. While I did have a few “That looks like L.A.” moments throughout episode 1, it was not until Bradley Jackson (Reese Witherspoon) walked up the instantly recognizable split staircase of downtown’s iconic Cicada restaurant at the start of episode 2 that I realized my mistake! A quick look at the drama’s Wikipedia page confirmed that it was largely lensed in Los Angeles, with a few exteriors shot in the Big Apple. Hoping to throw a little love The Morning Show’s way, I figure it is the perfect time to blog about Cicada, a spot I stalked ages ago (while scouting wedding venues prior to my 2010 nuptials!) but somehow have yet to write about.

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Any article about quintessential Los Angeles restaurants will undoubtedly feature Cicada. Initially established as Rex iI Ristorante in 1981, the landmark eatery sits on the ground floor of the Oviatt Building in the heart of downtown. The 13-story structure was the brainchild of James Oviatt, a famous clothier who outfitted the likes of Clark Gable, John Barrymore, and Gary Cooper during the Golden Age of Hollywood. Originally employed as a window dresser at Desmond’s Department Store, Oviatt partnered with fellow employee Frank Alexander in 1911 to open their own haberdashery, the exclusive Alexander & Oviatt. It was an instant success. A 1925 visit to Paris’ International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts (which introduced Art Deco to the world) inspired James to construct a gilded architectural marvel of his own in L.A. Thus the Oviatt Building was born in 1928.

Designed by Albert Walker and Percy Eisen, the exquisite structure featured maillechort detailing, hand-carved wood paneling, more than 30 tons of glass artworks created by René Lalique, and an arcade with an ornate frosted-glass ceiling courtesy of artist Gaetan Jeannin (pictured below).

Sadly, much of both Lalique and Jeannin’s pieces were later sold off and have since been replaced with facsimiles, though some of their original works remain, like the doors below.

The building’s pièce de résistance was easily its street-level salon which housed the new Alexander & Oviatt haberdashery. Gilded, grand and absolutely striking, the boutique featured a large open sales floor flanked by wooden cabinets filled with the finest clothes money could by, a magnificent split staircase, a mezzanine which was home to the women’s department (aka the Salon des Elegances), and an outdoor palm grove, where patrons could experience the wares in natural light.

Though L.A.’s premier place to shop for fine clothing for decades, Alexander & Oviatt saw a decline in patronage in the 1960s and closed its doors in 1967. The once-popular boutique subsequently sat vacant for years. By that time, the building was showing its age. Enter Wayne Ratkovich and Don Bowers, developers who, seeing potential in the once-grand structure, made an offer to buy it in 1977 and subsequently dedicated $5 million into a major renovation. A huge part of that renovation was a reimagining of the former Alexander & Oviatt space, which was transformed into an exclusive eatery courtesy of Mauro Vincenti. Because the Oviatt had been declared a Historic-Cultural Monument in 1978, the nuts and bolts of the boutique’s interior, thankfully, couldn’t be changed, but the Rome-born restauranteur outfitted it with décor and design elements inspired by a dining room from the 1930s-era Italian cruise ship the SS Rex. Mauro dubbed the place “Rex il Ristorante,” which translates to “Rex the Restaurant.” The gorgeous site was soon the spot to dine in L.A.

Vincenti sadly passed away in August 1996 at the untimely age of 53. His widow kept his famed eatery open until the following January when the lease on the site expired. Stephanie Taupin subsequently took over the 14,000-square-foot space and re-located her West Hollywood restaurant Cicada there.

Though the interior was given a bit of a facelift, the ceiling painted with gold leaf and much of the décor swapped out, thanks to its Historic-Cultural Monument status, the former boutique still looks not only much as it did when Rex was in operation but Alexander & Oviatt as well!

It is easily one of the most gorgeous places in L.A.!

I mean!

In the first episode of The Morning Show, titled “In the Dark Night of the Soul It’s Always 3:30 in the Morning,” Corey Ellison (an absolutely brilliant, but utterly unrecognizable Billy Crudup) and Chip Black (Mark Duplass) dine at what is supposedly the Archer Gray Hotel in New York, where they discuss future strategy for their program after one of the hosts, Mitch Kessler (Steve Carell), gets fired for sexual harassment. It is the top screen capture below that gave me that initial “That looks like L.A.” moment while watching and I actually turned to the GC and said, “Wow, that place is the spitting image of Cicada.” Facepalm!

It took Bradley venturing up the staircase and around Cicada’s mezzanine at the top of the second episode, “A Seat at the Table,” for the pieces to fall into place for me.

The Morning Show is hardly the only production to feature Cicada. In fact, the restaurant is practically royalty when it comes to Hollywood! So much so that it would be impossible for me to chronicle all of its cameos here, but read on for a list of some of the more significant.

In easily its most famous appearance, Viviane Ward (Julia Roberts) tosses an escargot shell across the Rex il Ristorante dining room in the 1990 classic Pretty Woman.

Rex also served as a locale in another Richard Gere film – the 1992 thriller Final Analysis. It was there that Heather Evans (Kim Basinger) suffered from an extreme bout of pathological intoxication while out to dinner with her husband, played, ironically enough, by Julia’s brother, Eric Roberts.

David Murphy (Woody Harrelson) confronts Diana (Demi Moore) and John (Robert Redford) outside of Rex in the 1993 drama Indecent Proposal.

Longfellow Deeds (Adam Sandler) takes Babe Bennett (Winona Ryder) on a romantic date at Cicada that ends in a massive fight with other diners in the 2002 comedy Mr. Deeds.

The following year, Cicada popped up as the spot where Bruce Nolan (Jim Carrey) brought girlfriend Grace Connelly (Jennifer Aniston) to tell her that he was finally given the anchor job in Bruce Almighty.

Charlene Morton (Queen Latifah) teaches Peter Sanderson (Steve Martin) to dance there in the 2003 comedy Bringing Down the House.

John (Brad Pitt) and Jane (Angelina Jolie) share a seductive tango at Cicada in 2005’s Mr. & Mrs. Smith.

Mad Men utilized the restaurant in no less than three episodes. In Season 1’s “New Amsterdam,” which aired in 2007, it was both the restaurant where Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser) dined with his wife and her parents . . .

. . . and where he later met clients for a drink.

The following year, Roger Sterling (John Slattery) tried to convince his daughter to have a big wedding over dinner at Cicada in Season 2’s “Three Sundays.”

And Don Draper (Jon Hamm) won a Clio Award at the restaurant in Season 4’s “Waldorf Stories,” which aired in 2010.

George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) overhears some unkind words from Peppy Miller (Berenice Bejo) while at Cicada in the 2011 film The Artist.

In 2015, the exterior of Cicada, as well as that of the Oviatt Building, portrayed the outside of Hotel Cortez in American Horror Story: Hotel.

Though no filming actually took place inside, Hotel Cortez’s lobby was very closely modeled after the interior of Cicada.

Cicada occasionally masked as the entrance to Lux nightclub during the third season of Lucifer, which began airing in 2017.

Cicada also masquerades as the restaurant where Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) dines while filming on location in Italy in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (which is not yet out on DVD so I am unable to make screen captures of that scene), as well as the bar from which Marvin Schwarz (Al Pacino) calls him (which is shown briefly in the trailer as pictured below).

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Cicada, aka New York’s fictional Archer Gray Hotel from The Morning Show, is located at 617 South Olive Street in downtown Los Angeles. You can visit the restaurant’s official website here.

November 6, 2019November 17, 2019

The Arts District Firehouse Hotel from “ER”

The Grim Cheaper likes to say that I fixate on the silliest of things. I typically scoff at the notion, but he’s 100% right. Case in point – a few months back favorite blogger Emily Schuman, of Cupcakes and Cashmere, did a photo shoot at the Arts District Firehouse Hotel, a stylish fire-station-turned-lodging in downtown L.A. While there, she recorded an Instagram story showing an assortment of blush matchbooks displayed at the check-in desk. As it so happens, I had recently changed up my kitchen décor by adding some pops of pink, including a bowl filled with two rose-colored matchbooks. One look at Emily’s story and I decided I had to snag some of the hotel’s matches ASAP to add to my new collection. When the GC and I headed out to L.A. to take care of some business a few weeks later, I, of course, tried to reserve a room at the property, but it was completely booked. Undeterred, I ventured right on over there as soon as we arrived in town to grab that matchbook – and an iced latte from the lobby coffee bar, natch. The Arts District Firehouse Hotel is so artfully designed and unique that I couldn’t help but snap some pics while waiting for my drink, which turned out to be quite fortuitous, because, as it turns out, the place is a filming location!

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The Arts District Firehouse Hotel began life as Engine Co. 17, which started servicing the downtown area on April 1st, 1905. Interestingly, it was situated in a slightly different location at the time – at 2100 East Seventh Street, about 100 feet north of its current home. At its inception, the handsome vine-covered building (which you can see here) sat facing Seventh Street, in pretty much the spot where Bread Lounge stands today When the Seventh Street Bridge, which ran in front of the station, was raised above grade in the mid-20s, Engine Co. 17 had to be re-located. I’ve come across a few reports stating that to accommodate the project, the entire building was picked up and moved the short distance to 710 South Santa Fe Avenue, but I don’t believe that to be true. Though similar, the edifice of the original Engine Co. 17 is quite different from that of the Arts District Firehouse Hotel. The former boasted an intricately paned, three-panel window with angled projections across its second floor (as you can see here), while the latter has six separate flat windows in that spot. And while the original featured one bay door, the hotel has two. Though subtle, the differences are just enough to lead me to believe the 1904 firehouse was razed during the bridge project and a replacement then built at the new location. Whatever the case, per LAFire the Santa Fe Avenue facility opened its doors on September 9th, 1927. The station operated at that site for the next five decades before being decommissioned in 1980, at which point Company 17 re-located once again to a new building eight blocks south at 1601 South Santa Fe.

The former firehouse was subsequently sold to photographer Robert Blakeman who transformed it into four separate artist studios which he shared with various contemporaries over the next 20 years. In 2006, he put the property up for sale for $2.95 million. At the time, the 8,721-square-foot, 2-story structure boasted the station’s original kitchen, an indoor handball court, and parking for 13 cars. There were no takers, though, and it was removed from the market in 2007.

At some point, Engine Co. 17 did change hands and the owners began making plans to transform the space into a hotel, but those plans did not reach fruition until hospitality magnate Dustin Lancaster was brought onboard in 2016. He quickly tapped interior designer Sally Breer, with whom he partnered on two prior projects, to reimagine the station’s interior. Sally worked her magic, converting the site into an operable lodging, all the while keeping intact all of the original firehouse elements that make it so unique. A woman after my own heart, she told the Los Angeles Times, “Always our job first and foremost is to respect the architecture and breathe some new life into it.” Yaaaaas! With that mantra in mind, Breer preserved the building’s concrete flooring, pressed-tin ceiling, and exposed beam work.

To say the finished project is stunning would be a gross understatement! Since the transformation, the hotel has been written up by everyone from Vogue to Architectural Digest to Time – and it’s not very hard to see why. The place is serious #designgoals!

Opened this past April, the boutique lodging features nine suites, a restaurant and bar, event space (the station’s former handball court now serves as a private dining room), a coffee bar, a large patio complete with a fire pit, and a small shop featuring Los Angeles- and California-themed wares.

I did not realize Engine Co. 17 had appeared onscreen until long after I got home, though it really shouldn’t have come as a surprise. A decommissioned firehouse with many of its original elements intact that operated as a studio (and therefore could easily be shut down for filming) for over two decades? Sounds like a dream site for any location manager working on a procedural!

In the Season 8 episode of ER titled “A River in Egypt,” which aired in 2002, Kerry Weaver (Laura Innes) confronts her paramour, firefighter Sandy Lopez (Lisa Vidal), at Engine Co. 17 for outing her to her fellow County General Hospital coworkers.

Thanks to firehouse expert Richard Yokley (you may remember him from this post and this post), I learned that Jack Malone (Anthony LaPaglia) and Danny Taylor (Enrique Murciano) investigated the disappearance of a firefighter at Engine Co. 17 in the Season 2 episode of Without a Trace titled “Trip Box,” which aired in 2003.

Kate Beckett (Stana Katic) interrogates Rod Halstead (John M. Jackson) at Engine Co. 17 about a fire her mother had been looking into in the Season 4 episode of Castle titled “Rise,” which aired in 2011, though little of the building is visible in the scene.

Richard also informed me that Captain Ray Holt (Andre Braugher), Jake Peralta (Andy Samberg) and Charles Boyle (Joe Lo Truglio) headed to Engine Co. 17 to apologize to Fire Marshall Boone (Patton Oswalt) in the Season 1 episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine titled “Sal’s Pizza,” which aired in 2013.

The episode gives us some nice glimpses of the firehouse’s Interior, as well.

The music video for A Great Big World’s 2014 song “Already Home,” which you can watch here, also largely took place at Engine Co. 17. The song tells the story of lovers who live on opposite coasts, which explains why the top screen capture below is split.

Per On Location Vacations, the pilot of Like Father was also lensed at the firehouse in 2012, but, sadly, it appears as if the show never made it on air.

And for those asking, pictured below are the matchbooks I went out of my way to procure – a fabulous addition to my collection, don’t you think?

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Arts District Firehouse Hotel, aka the former Engine Co. 17 from the “A River in Egypt” episode of ER, is located at 710 South Santa Fe Avenue in downtown Los Angeles. You can visit the lodging’s official website here.

November 4, 2019November 12, 2019

A “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” Halloween

I usually start planning my and the Grim Cheaper’s Halloween costumes on November 1st each year. Out with the old, in with the new, as they say. This year I was a bit late to the game because by the time mid-summer came around, I still found myself with no ideas. And then, on July 28th, I saw Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. One look at Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) donning a red kimono, a blender full of margaritas in hand, and I knew there was no one else the GC could be! I was unsure of my costume, at first, as there was no real female counterpart to Rick in the movie. Then my mom said, “Why not dress up as up as Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt)?” – duh! – and, voila, our costumes for Halloween 2019 were born!

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I opted to wear Cliff’s Hawaiian shirt/Champion tee ensemble featured on the movie’s poster.

Image result for once upon a time in hollywood poster

It turned out to be an easy costume to put together. I found the Hawaiian shirt first, at Walmart of all places – a pretty accurate facsimile of Cliff’s for $25! The Champion tee came from Red Bubble (I ordered the slim fit version), the Levi’s (men’s 511s) from a local thrift store, the belt from Etsy, the watch was my grandfather’s, and the leather bracelet and sunglasses I already had in my closet. I was most excited to find Cliff’s suede booties, though! The iconic Minnetonka Two Button Softsole Boot was first released in 1969 and recently reissued thanks to the popularity of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood – (I got the women’s version, men’s are here). To complete the look, I pinned up my hair (my neighbor actually thought I cut it!) and there he was, Cliff Booth in the flesh!

The GC’s costume was easy, as well. I found the house slippers on Amazon (they run large, so size down), the kimono on Ali Express (we ordered “red black”), and the vintage blender was an eBay score (and pretty much the most expensive part of the ensemble, interestingly).

Though we both loved walking around in our costumes, the highlight of our Halloween came when Once Upon a Time in Hollywood costume designer extraordinaire Arianne Phillips, whom I had contacted a while back to inquire about the kind of slippers Rick wore in the movie, shared a photo I sent her, along with pics of a few others dressed in OUATIH garb, on Instagram! Say whaaa? Pretty darn cool, if you ask me!

In honor of our costumes, I thought it only appropriate to blog about Rick Dalton’s fabulous mid-century ranch-style pad today. Because the film has yet to come out on DVD (December 10th can’t come soon enough!), I was only able to forage the trailer for screen captures. As soon as I do get my hands on a copy of the movie, I will add more imagery and information (thank you, special features!) to the post.

I found the address of Rick’s house thanks to this CurbedLA article about OUATIH filming locations and ran out to stalk it while in the area a few weeks back. In real life, the 1964 pad boasts 3 bedrooms plus a den, 3 baths, 2,630 square feet, terrazzo and hardwood flooring, a pool, a 0.42-acre lot, and striking 180-degree views of the city. The residence was recently offered for lease at a whopping $9,000 per month. The listing even touts its Once Upon a Time in Hollywood cameo!

According to a 2019 Architectural Digest article about the movie’s set design, Rick’s supposed Cielo Drive property proved quite evasive to pin down. Author Cathy Whitlock says, “For Rick Dalton’s house, the design crew searched for the perfect ranch house only to encounter one obstacle after another. The goal of a one-story ranch-style midcentury with a sloped ceiling, soffits, and a pool with a great view meant shooting three separate locations instead of one.” (The “three separate locations” thing surprised and confused me, but more on that in a bit.)

Adding to the elusiveness of the locale was the fact that the production required a home with a gate and long winding driveway be situated next to Rick’s to stand in for the leased residence of Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) and Roman Polanski (Rafal Zawierucha). Assistant location manager Scott Fitzgerald told the Location Managers Guild International (LGMI) website, “The whole idea was that Rick Dalton and Sharon Tate lived in the same neighborhood. So we had to find two houses that would work. Quentin had these little pieces in his mind. Rick was a movie star, so his house had to be the house of a movie star. But movie star homes back then were not weird and wild like they are today. Some were modest ranch houses in a nice neighborhood. It was a sign of wealth.” Contributing even more difficulty to the hunt was a shot director Quentin Tarantino had in mind from the beginning. As production designer Barbara Ling told LGMI, “The real albatross was finding Rick Dalton’s house. We wanted to try to capture the Benedict Canyon of that time. The house needed to be very close to another house. Quentin is so visual as a director. He had this shot written into the script. ‘We’ve got to have Rick in the swimming pool, and we’ve got to be able to have a camera that moves over so you can see the other house.’ We looked everywhere. It was such a tricky combo of driveways and was very specific to the shot he needed.” In the same article, location scout Lori Balton furthers, “Tarantino was super specific about his needs. The exact geography was important. For instance, the camera is on Rick’s pool, then cranes up and over the hedges to Sharon and Roman in their car leaving the driveway.” The production team finally found exactly what they were seeking for the Dalton and Tate/Polanski residences at 10969 and 10974 Alta View Drive, respectively, in the hills above Studio City. (The MLS image of the pool below comes from 10969’s recent rental listing.)

10969 Alta View Dr, Studio City, CA 91604

Both properties are pictured below, though only the gate of 10974 is visible from the street.

Though the exterior of Rick’s pad wasn’t featured in the trailer, from my recollection it looks very much as it did onscreen – as does the carport area (which did make the trailer), minus the large movie poster bearing his face, of course.

Per the LGMI article, the shoot on Alta View Drive required 14 nights of filming! And it was all exterior work.

The interior of Rick’s house was nothing more than a set built on a soundstage at Raleigh Studios in Hollywood. You can check out what the actual inside of 10969 Alta View looks like here. It bears little resemblance to what appeared onscreen, as you can see below. Of Dalton’s décor, Ling told Architectural Digest, “Rick is somebody who bought a house at the height of his career and hasn’t renovated since he was a bachelor. He was not into the pop culture of the moment. The development of the character was about a TV star in his era, and everything was given to him from a [studio] set, such as the saddle of a horse from a TV show or a movie poster.”

10969 Alta View Dr, Studio City, CA 91604

As referenced earlier, Architectural Digest contends that three different locations masked as Rick’s residence. The magazine stipulates, “For Dalton’s Cielo Drive house, the production team used the exterior of two ranch-style homes and created the interiors on a soundstage.” I think that info may be erroneous, though, as we know that both the façade and backyard of 10969 Alta View were featured as Rick’s. I don’t recall any other outside areas of his house ever appearing onscreen and cannot fathom what the secondary ranch exterior mentioned could possibly have been used for. I think the article may actually be alluding to the fact that two different homes were used to portray the Tate residence (more on that below), though neither of them is a ranch. But that is just a guess. Once I get my hands on the DVD, I will hopefully be able to piece things together.

So far, what I have been able to discern is that the production team meshed two different exteriors to play Sharon’s pad. The gate and driveway are, of course, at 10974 Alta View Drive.

Though aerial views make it hard to tell, I believe front exterior shots of the Tate/Polanski rental were also likely lensed there.

According to the LGMI piece, backyard scenes were shot at a different location entirely – the former residence of Western actor Lee Van Cleef. While initially scouting that property, Balton says, “ . . . just my luck, a guy was pulling down the driveway wondering what I was up to. After I explained myself, he got a funny look on his face at the mention of Quentin Tarantino. He explained it was Lee Van Cleef’s home — a ’60s time capsule — and filled to the brim with Hollywood memorabilia that he thought would interest Quentin. Quentin is a rabid Sergio Leone fan; Van Cleef was in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and For a Few Dollars More. Van Cleef died in 1989, but his wife still lives there with her brother. We ended up shooting in their backyard.” Key assistant location manager Kirk Worley furthers, “It stood in for the backyard of the Tate/Polanski home.” Per property records and my friend E.J.’s Movieland Directory website, Van Cleef’s former pad is at 19471 Rosita Street in Tarzana. The backyard has a pool smack dab in the middle of it, which doesn’t much jibe with the layout of the actual Cielo Drive house Sharon and Roman rented, but I guess the production team was able to make it work.

On an interesting side-note – until researching for this post, I had no idea that there was at one time a “twin residence” to the real Tate/Polanski rental. Both pads were designed by architect Robert Byrd in 1941. The twin, situated below Sharon and Roman’s place on Cielo Drive, had an almost identical façade and footprint, as you can see here. Both properties have since been remodeled past recognition, sadly. What is odd, though, is that, despite being owned by different parties and renovated at different times, the two homes once again are almost identical! It is a bit eerie to see. For those interested in the history of the actual Tate rental, I direct you to this fabulous Curbed LA article.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Rick Dalton’s house from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is located at 10969 Alta View Drive in Studio City. Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski’s gate from the movie can be found next door at 10974 Alta View.

October 31, 2019November 12, 2019

Woodsboro Police Station from “Scream”

Happy, happy Halloween! I can’t believe it is already time to wind down my Haunted Hollywood posts, but here we are. Another October in the books! The season definitely turned into a full-blown Scream-fest on the blog (as predicted a couple of weeks ago) and I am a-OK with it! Amazingly, there are still quite a few locales from the 1996 horror flick that I have yet to write about, so I figured I’d finish things off this year with Oakville Grocery Co., the former Healdsburg City Hall which masked as Woodsboro Police Station onscreen. Like all the other Scream sites I’ve blogged about recently, I stalked this one back in 2016 while in Northern California for a brief visit.

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The southeast corner of Matheson and Center Streets in downtown Healdsburg was home to the area’s City Hall for 110 years. The original building, a towering three-story brick and stone Romanesque Revival structure which you can see here and here, was erected in 1886. Comprised of city offices, a library, a post office, and a gym for a nearby school, it was razed in 1960. The building that replaced it was a vast departure from its predecessor with a decidedly mid-century modern feel. Designed by A.C. Steele, the new Healdsburg City Hall was dedicated on July 4th, 1961. Built at a cost of just over $175,000, the one-story, 7,544-square-foot site housed both city offices and the police station and featured a beamed overhang, a front patio, pebble rock siding, and globe lighting. You can check out a photo of it here. It is that building that appeared in Scream.

In the hopes of making downtown Healdsburg more tourist-oriented, City Hall was moved to a new, larger building a couple of blocks northwest at 401 Grove Street and the police station re-located next door to 238 Center Street in 1996, shortly after Scream was lensed. The former city hall site was subsequently given a massive overhaul and transformed into the Oakville Marketplace, home to a winery, a jewelry store, a spa, a clothing boutique, and an upscale deli/market named Oakville Grocery Co. Boasting a Mediterranean façade, the 9,000-square-foot retail complex is hardly recognizable from its days as City Hall, though structurally it remains the same.

Though I abhor the fact that a Scream location has been gutted, Oakville Grocery Co., which takes up a third of the former City Hall space, has long been our favorite spot to eat when in town. With a large front patio complete with a fireplace, a wide selection of specialty grocery items, and excellent deli sandwiches, Oakville just can’t be beat!

Healdsburg City Hall pops up as Woodsboro PD twice in Scream, first in the scene in which Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) is brought in by Deputy Dewey (David Arquette) to make a report following the attack by Ghostface. As you can see below, the exterior is recognizable from its 1996 cameo in shape only, unfortunately.

I first saw Scream in December 1997 with some friends who had rented it on DVD over Christmas break. I remember being shocked when the end credits rolled and I spotted a nod to the City of Healdsburg in the “Filmmakers Wish to Thank” section, suggesting filming had taken place there. The charming Northern California town was only about an hour away from where I then resided and a stone’s throw from where my aunt lived (and still lives). I begged my mom to take me up there pronto and a few days later she obliged. At the time I was not entirely sure what portions of the movie had been filmed in the area – this was long before location websites that could point me in the right direction existed – so when we arrived, my mom suggested I pop into the local police station to inquire, which I distinctly remember garnering an eye roll and a “Seriously, mom?!?” from me. I did as she recommended, though, and just about fell over when the detective I spoke with informed me that filming had actually taken place at the former police station! By then, the remodel had already occurred and Oakville Grocery Co. was in full swing, but he walked us over to explain where the station used to be and which areas of it had appeared onscreen – proving further that mothers always know best! As he told us, the actual interior of City Hall was utilized as Woodsboro PD in the movie.

An interview that fellow stalker Ashley of The Drewseum recently emailed me a scan of leads me to believe that it was the City Hall portion of the building, not the actual police station, utilized in Scream. In the blurb, production designer Bruce Alan Miller says, “There’s a City Hall on the corner of the square that we turned into our police station. We just changed some signs and put a few things in the windows. We couldn’t use a real police station, because we would have been at their mercy, and we couldn’t be disrupting their police activity.” Though I was unable to unearth any photos of the interior areas featured in Scream, I did find 1961-era pictures of Healdsburg City Hall’s lobby, courthouse, and city council chambers. (Here’s another of the lobby for good measure.)

Perhaps even more famous to Scream fans than Woodsboro Police Station is the alley that runs alongside it, where Dewey escorts Sidney and Tatum (Rose McGowan) after Sidney gives her statement. Said alley can be reached via Center Street, just south of Oakville Grocery, but it, too, has largely been remodeled. The door that the girls walk out of in the scene, unfortunately, fell casualty to the 1996 renovation, though the pipe visible just beyond it still stands.

The door’s former location is pretty much where the middle glass block window is currently situated, as denoted with an orange rectangle below.

The rain gutter and window due east of the door’s former location are also still intact, which was thrilling to see! Along with the aforementioned pipe, they are pretty much the only elements that remain from the time Scream was filmed.

The dumpster enclosure and chain link fencing situated at the rear of the alley also largely remain the same.

It is in the alley that Sidney famously gives Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) a fist to the face.

Had to do it!

During my ‘97 visit, my officer friend informed me that the people standing across the street in the punching scene were not background actors hired to be there, but interested locals hoping to catch a glimpse of the filming. Taking advantage of the situation, Wes Craven installed barricades to give the illusion that the crowd was made up of lookie-loos waiting outside the station for news about the murders of Casey Becker (Drew Barrymore) and Steve Orth (Kevin Patrick Walls). In his commentary on the Scream Collector’s Series DVD, Craven calls them “free extras.”

Woodsboro Police Station also shows up in a later scene in which Dewey drops the girls off to go grocery shopping while he checks in with his boss, Sherriff Burke (Joseph Whipp).

That segment gives us a better look at City Hall’s former exterior. It truly was a piece of mid-century perfection!

Today, the entrance to Woodsboro PD serves as the exterior of the Virginia Carol clothing boutique (the shop with the yellow awning below).

Man, what I wouldn’t give to have seen the old City Hall building still intact!

The happiest of Halloweens to all of my fellow stalkers!

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Oakville Grocery Co., aka Woodsboro Police Station from Scream, is located at 124 Matheson Street in Healdsburg. Healdsburg Town Plaza, which portrayed downtown Woodsboro in the movie, is right across the road at the intersection of Healdsburg Avenue & Matheson Street.

October 29, 2019November 5, 2019

Healdsburg Town Plaza from “Scream”

I was saddened to wake up to the news of yet another fire tearing through Sonoma County last Thursday morning, this one threatening Healdsburg, one of my favorite places in the entire world. Not only is the city idyllic, pastoral and ridiculously charming, but it is a filming location to boot, the main square having stood in for downtown Woodsboro in Scream. Healdsburg Town Plaza was, in fact, the site of one of my very first stalking adventures back in late 1997. I have visited it often in the years since, most notably during my epic October 2016 Scream stalking trek in which I hit up every.single.location. featured in the 1996 flick, down to the warehouse where the production’s few sets were built to the hotel where the cast and crew stayed during the 55-day shoot (the latter was, sadly, lost to the Tubbs Fire in October 2017). Though Healdsburg remains safe from the Kincade Fire for the time being, the city was evacuated and per a Los Angeles Times article is currently a “ghost town,” a situation eerily reminiscent of Scream’s curfew scene which rendered downtown Woodsboro deserted. I pray that the blaze is controlled soon and my thoughts go out to everyone affected, including my aunt and uncle who were recently evacuated from their home in the area. For now, I thought a post on Healdsburg Town Plaza was in order.

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The city of Healdsburg was originally envisioned by businessman Harmon Heald. After failing to strike it rich mining gold, the native Ohioan built a small home in 1851 on what was then a portion of the Rancho Sotoyome land grant. Figuring the site was perfectly situated between San Francisco and the mining areas north of it and would, therefore, be passed through often, he constructed a general store with a post office soon after. A community surrounding the shop quickly developed and in 1857 Harmon commissioned a surveyor to layout a design for a town square and surrounding streets and, thus, Healdsburg and its central plaza were born. The city was incorporated ten years later.

Today, the bucolic one-acre Town Plaza boasts a gazebo, a central fountain, pathways, Canary Island date palms, and redwood trees, all surrounded by a sprinkling of charming shops, cafés, and restaurants. It is small town U.S.A. at its finest!

The fountain at its center, known as Sandborn Memorial Fountain, was donated by Elmer Sandborn in remembrance of his family in 1961. In the square’s early days, though, a bandstand stood as its focal point. The structure not only drew musical acts, but audiences with alcohol in hand, to the consternation of many locals. The Ladies’ Improvement Club got to work on curtailing the drinking and eventually won permission to raze the bandstand in the early 1900s, with a 13-foot marble fountain installed in its place. The revelers couldn’t be curtailed, though – according to The Healdsburg Tribune, a new bandstand was simply built next to the fountain the following day! Healdsburg Town Plaza also saw raucous times in the 1970s, when the Hells Angels made it their regular hangout. Today, the park is, thankfully, much more low-key.

On any given afternoon, you’ll find families picnicking, couples strolling, and visitors relaxing on the many benches that dot the site.

The space is so idyllic that Travel and Leisure deemed it one of “America’s Most Beautiful Town Squares” in 2013.

The surrounding town isn’t too shabby, either!

The last time I visited, in early December 2018, the city was really flaunting its fall colors.

We just don’t get this kind of Autumn vibrancy in Palm Springs.

Show off!

Healdsburg Town Plaza pops up a couple of times in Scream, most notably as the spot where Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) and her friends eat lunch in an early scene. In the segment, during which Stuart Macher (Matthew Lillard) utters his famous “Liver alone!” line, the group is sitting on Sandborn Memorial Fountain’s north side with their backs to Matheson Street.

Sadly, the fountain has been renovated a bit in the years since filming took place, with its rock siding removed and built-in planters added to its corners.

Even sadder, the park’s quaint white wooden gazebo, visible in the scene, has since been completely replaced. According to a Press Democrat article, the original structure was a “casualty of dry rot and changing taste.” This photo of its demolition, which took place on March 14th, 2007, absolutely breaks my heart.

The gazebo is also where Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox), wearing her infamous neon green suit, reports on the murders plaguing Woodsboro in a news clip that Sidney catches on TV in a later scene.

Fortunately, the original gazebo and fountain were both still in place during my early stalks of the square.

Healdsburg Town Plaza is also seen in an establishing segment in which the sun rises on Woodsboro the morning after Sidney is attacked. That bit was filmed on the corner of Center and Plaza Streets.

Per the sheriff I spoke with during my first Healdsburg stalk, the shot was actually lensed early evening as the sun was setting. Apparently, Wes Craven intended to capture it the morning of the last day of the Healdsburg portion of the shoot, but ran out of time, so he instead grabbed it later that day at dusk, knowing that audiences would be none the wiser.

Finally, the plaza serves as a backdrop for the scene in which Woodsboro townspeople lock up and head home before the newly-imposed curfew. Several shops lining the square are featured in the segment including 104 Matheson Street;

312 Center Street, which was the site of Healdsburg Coffee Company at the time of the filming, but today houses The Nectary juice bar;

and the grassy section of the park directly across from 105 Plaza Street . . .

. . . and 111 Plaza Street.

Thanks to the Dear Old Hollywood blog, I learned that Healdsburg Town Plaza also appears a few times as Hartfield, Iowa in the 1943 drama Happy Land.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Healdsburg Town Plaza, aka downtown Woodsboro from Scream, is located at the intersection of Healdsburg Avenue & Matheson Street in Healdsburg.

October 25, 2019November 5, 2019

Broadlind Hotel from “Over Her Dead Body”

Over Her Dead Body is hardly a horror flick. In fact, the only thing scary about it is the reviews, with one critic going so far as to opine, “A deceased bride, a depressed groom and a caterer who doubles as a psychic. Yes, it’s an unlikely love triangle, and it’s even more unlikely that you’ll like this film.” Ouch. The 2008 “ghostcom,” as Roger Ebert called it, centers around would-be-newlywed Kate (Eva Longoria), who, after getting killed in a freak accident on her wedding day, decides to spend the afterlife haunting Ashley (Lake Bell), a psychic who starts to show interest in her former fiancé, Henry (Paul Rudd). (I’m not gonna lie, that would be so be me!) I initially learned of the movie many moons ago when fellow stalker Virginie emailed me a couple of its locations including Long Beach’s Broadlind Hotel, which doubled as the apartment building where Ashley lived and was haunted by Kate. I finally sat down to give Over Her Dead Body a watch this week and was shocked to find it cute, sweet and funny – and though not of the horror genre, considering its subject matter, fully fitting of a Haunted Hollywood post.

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Built in 1928 as a boutique lodging by the Piper & Kahrs architecture team, the Italian Renaissance-style Broadlind Hotel featured 20 rooms as well as a manager’s unit at its inception.

The property’s name was derived from its location on the corner of East Broadway and Linden Avenue in Long Beach’s East Village Arts District.

Featuring handsome brickwork, terra cotta detailing, two-story arches dotting the lower levels, and carved wooden doors, the structure, dubbed “the biggest little hotel in Long Beach,” was mainly patronized by naval officers temporarily stationed at the now-defunct Long Beach Naval Complex in its early days. Amenities included a tiled bath and shower in every room and a barbershop, beauty parlor, and restaurant on the ground floor.

The basement level, now home to the Blind Donkey whiskey lounge, served as a gambling hall and watering hole during the Prohibition years.

The Broadlind eventually transitioned into an apartment facility before falling into disrepair and sitting vacant for many years. Then in 2005, it was picked up by a new owner who made plans to restore it to its original use as a boutique lodging. Those plans finally came to fruition in 2017. Today, the 20-room property, a Long Beach Historical Landmark, is marketed as a European-style “ApartHotel,” meaning it is part apartment/part hotel. Each of the units features many of the comforts of home, including a kitchenette with an oven, refrigerator and microwave, cookware, utensils, a flat-screen television with digital channels, and Wi-Fi. Laundry facilities are also on the premises, as well as a lobby balcony for guests to enjoy their morning coffee. In a unique twist, there is no front desk or on-site reception – vacationers are instead granted access to their rooms via keyless entry codes.

The Broadlind even has a penthouse suite in the tower situated at its northeast corner.

The hotel’s ground floor is currently home to a Thai restaurant and a juice bar. And don’t forget about the Blind Donkey in the basement!

Though the place looks absolutely adorable both from the outside and in its website photographs, sadly the reviews are less than stellar. Yelpers really don’t mince words about the property, with one referring to it as “whipped cream on dog sh*t” and another deeming it the “Fyre Festival of hotels.” Yikes!

It is the penthouse area that Ashley calls home in Over Her Dead Body. Oddly, we only get one establishing shot of it throughout the entire movie.

Though I didn’t take a matching photograph, that’s the penthouse in my images below.

Broadlind’s front entrance also makes a brief appearance in the film . . .

. . . as does its interior stairwell . . .

. . . and its north side, where Thai District restaurant is now located.

The interior of Ashley’s apartment only existed in a studio soundstage, though. You can see what the actual penthouse looks like here. The sole element of it that matches its onscreen counterpart is the perimeter of arched, paned windows.

The hallway leading up to Ashley’s apartment was also just a set. Production designer Cory Lorenzen incorporated elements of the Broadlind’s actual exterior, including arches, tile work and wooden doors, into the design of both, though.

The Blind Donkey has also famously cameoed onscreen. The basement lounge masked as the interior of Seb’s, the jazz club owned by Sebastian (Ryan Gosling), at the end of La La Land.

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Virginie for telling me about this location!

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Broadlind Hotel, aka Ashley’s apartment building from Over Her Dead Body, is located at 149 Linden Avenue in Long Beach. You can visit the property’s official website here.

October 23, 2019October 22, 2019

Susan Berman’s Former House

One location that has confused me for years is the cottage where writer Susan Berman was murdered in 2000 – so much so that despite stalking it back in August 2015, I have put off blogging about it until now. I first learned of the locale from the hit HBO docuseries The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst, which chronicles the sordid, twisted, extremely weird tale of multimillionaire Durst and the deaths of three people connected to him, including Berman, his longtime BFF. On the show, much was made about Susan living at 1527 Benedict Canyon Drive in Beverly Hills. When I headed out to stalk the home located there, though, I was shocked to see that it looked nothing like the pad showcased onscreen. Figuring I might have jotted down the wrong address (hey, it happens to the best of us!), I took photos regardless and started delving into the matter further as soon as I got home. Sure enough, what was shown in The Jinx, specifically the third episode titled “The Gangster’s Daughter,” did not match the house at 1527 Benedict Canyon. I eventually pushed the matter to the back of my mind where it remained until a couple of days ago when I decided to rehash it. Thankfully, this time around I was able to figure things out.

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In The Jinx, we are only shown one full shot of Susan’s former residence. It’s below.

Several close-up images taken the night of the murder are also featured on the series, though the dark-shingled façade pictured in them looks considerably different than the white-washed exterior from the wide shot. Since both consist of wood shake, though, I figured they were one and the same and that Susan likely had the place painted at some point during her tenure. But, as it turns out, the photos are actually of two different properties. The cottage above is a Brentwood residence Susan owned for a time long before she was murdered, while the pad below is her Benedict Canyon rental, where she lived during two different periods of her life, including her final years. Because the latter was remodeled extensively in 2006 and the wood siding removed, it is not very recognizable today, which only added to my confusion.

It was not until coming across the photos here and here that I was able to piece things together. As you can see, though the shiplap has been removed, making the home appear more ranch-like than its former Cape Cod style, it is the same place.

Hedges now obscure much of the dwelling from view, but toggling back to January 2011 on Google Street View provides better imagery. Per the building permits I dug up, besides the wood shake removal, during the 2006 remodel a portion of the patio was also enclosed in order to expand the kitchen and both bathrooms were gutted.

It was in the quaint abode that Berman met her untimely end on December 22nd, 2001 – authorities say at the hand of her dearest friend, Robert Durst. Susan and “Bobby,” as she called him, originally met while attending UCLA in the 1960s and became fast, yet unlikely companions – she a vibrant, talkative extrovert, he an odd reclusive scion of a prominent New York family. They say a picture speaks a thousand words and the image of Susan and Bob below speaks volumes regarding their strikingly different personalities. Regardless, the two were thick as thieves up until Susan’s death. But to understand her killing, we have to go back to 1982, when Robert’s first wife, Kathleen McCormack, went missing. As I explained earlier, it’s a very twisted tale.

Kathleen and Bob’s relationship was by all accounts tumultuous. Married in 1973, Kathie was seeking a divorce by early 1982. On January 31st of that year, after spending the weekend together at their South Salem lakeside cottage, Durst claims he dropped his wife off at the Katonah rail stop, where she caught a train to New York. A doorman reportedly saw her enter the couple’s pied-à-terre at 37 Riverside Drive later that night. The following morning, Kathie called the associate dean of Albert Einstein College of Medicine, where she was set to begin a clerkship, to say she was ill and would not be coming in. She has not been seen or heard from since. Because Kathie disappeared from Manhattan and Robert never left South Salem that night, he was never regarded as a suspect. At least not officially, though most who followed the case had their suspicions. The investigation quickly went cold and it was not until years later, November 1999 to be exact, that authorities decided to reopen it based upon a tip from a suspect in a different matter. Though said tip turned out to be bogus, it set off a chain of events almost too bizarre to be believed.

Detectives were able to keep the reopening of the case under wraps for a full year before the media caught wind of things. When reports finally started rolling out in November 2000, it sent Robert into a tailspin. He promptly relocated to Galveston, Texas where he rented a small apartment and began posing as an elderly mute woman to avoid detection. Just a couple of weeks later, on December 24th, Susan was found dead at her Benedict Canyon rental. According to a March 2001 New York magazine article, Berman had initially leased the 1935 cottage for a few years upon relocating from NYC to L.A. in 1981. Though small, with 2 bedrooms and 2 baths, at the time it was a “lovely, cheerful place.” As you can see below, the 2006 remodel did the exterior of the place no favors. It looked so much better with the wood siding!

After marrying her one and only husband in 1984, Susan moved out of the Benedict Canyon property and into a home she purchased at 12030 Coyne Street in Brentwood. It was that house that was showcased on The Jinx.

An interview was even conducted outside of the Brentwood pad for the series and, in a very confusing twist, it was made to appear as if it was the Benedict Canyon residence! It’s no wonder I was confounded by the location for so long!

Berman’s marriage didn’t last and by 1987, she had a new love, aspiring screenwriter Paul Kaufman. The two eventually attempted to develop a Broadway musical together, using Susan’s finances to do so, but the venture bankrupted her, put an end to the relationship, and the Brentwood house was foreclosed on. Broke and single, she relocated to a condo at 1131 Alta Loma Road in West Hollywood, which was owned by a friend who let her live there rent-free for the next five years. In 1997, as she started to get back on her feet, she moved back into her old Benedict Canyon rental. But by late 2000, she found herself in dire financial straights yet again and reached out to Durst to borrow money. He sent her two checks totaling $50,000. He claims that around the same time she told him that she had been contacted by detectives regarding the re-opening of Kathie’s case and that she planned on speaking with them. It turns out that was not true – something Robert did not find out until much, much later. As recounted in a fabulous Los Angeles magazine article about Berman, Durst was shocked when L.A. Deputy District Attorney John Lewin informed him during a 2015 jailhouse interview, “They had not contacted her. I think that Susan was trying to subtly squeeze you for money.”

By all accounts, Susan never would have squealed on Bobby, though he had good reason to be nervous. Berman, who had casually mentioned to several friends over the years that Durst had something to do with Kathie’s disappearance, had not only provided an alibi for him the night McCormack went missing, but she also acted as his media liaison in the months that followed. And much of what she spewed wasn’t true. As it turns out, no doorman ever saw Kathie the night of January 31st – that was a story fed to the press by Berman. It is also now largely believed that it was Susan, posing as Kathie, who called the Albert Einstein College of Medicine dean the morning after the disappearance. Susan knew where the bodies were buried (quite possibly literally) and police contend that Robert killed her for it.

Authorities believe that Robert flew from New York to San Francisco on December 19th, 2000. He then took another flight to Eureka and, the following morning, drove to Los Angeles. He headed to Susan’s house late on the evening of the 22nd or early the morning of the 23rd and shot her once in the back of the head, execution-style. Police, responding to a call from a neighbor who reported that Berman’s dogs were running loose and barking up a storm, arrived at her residence at 1 p.m. on Christmas Eve where they found the the rear door open and Susan dead on the floor of the guest bedroom. She was 55 years old. A horrific scenario all around, no doubt, but Kathie’s sister Mary Hughes did have this to say in the Los Angeles magazine article about Susan, “Obviously it’s horrible that Berman was murdered by Durst. But we’ll always be mindful that she was Durst’s coconspirator in covering up Durst’s murder of our sister.”

1527 Benedict Canyon Dr, Beverly Hills, CA 90210

As evidenced in the crime scene photos from The Jinx (the top one I blacked out a portion of as Susan’s body was visible) as compared to the MLS images above and below, the house looks quite different today than it did in 2000. The interior was said to be in shambles toward the end of Susan’s life and the pictures featured on the series certainly attest to that. Apparently, the heat had even been turned off and some of the rooms lacked flooring – there was only cement where the carpeting had once been. The place is in much better shape since the 2006 remodel, during which doors were closed off and relocated and the kitchen opened up, as you can see.

1527 Benedict Canyon Dr, Beverly Hills, CA 90210

The bizarre story doesn’t end there. On the 23rd of December, a note was sent to the Beverly Hills Police Department that read “1527 Benedict Canyon Cadaver.” Susan’s body had already been found by the time detectives received it, but it did provide them with a clue. Whoever killed Berman must have cared for her in some way and didn’t want her body to go undiscovered.

The murders don’t end there, either. On September 28th, 2001, Durst shot his Galveston neighbor, a cantankerous elderly gentleman named Morris Black, who had discovered his true identity and had been pressuring him financially. Robert then dismembered his body, wrapped the parts in newspaper, put them in garbage bags and dumped them in Galveston Bay. The bags wound up floating though and were discovered by a teen fishing in the area the following day. An address on one of the newspapers led police straight to Durst and he was arrested. He promptly posted bail and then skipped town, successfully avoiding authorities until he was detained in Pennsylvania about six weeks later for attempting to steal a sandwich and a band-aid from a grocery store. You can’t make this stuff up! Robert claimed self-defense at his subsequent trial for Black’s murder and was inexplicably acquitted despite having dismembered the body, though he did serve some time for bond jumping and evidence tampering. He was eventually paroled in 2005, was rearrested for violating said parole, and served another few months.

In 2010, filmmaker Andrew Jarecki’s movie All Good Things, based on Durst’s life, premiered. Apparently happy with his onscreen portrayal, Robert contacted Jarecki and, against the advice of his lawyers and pretty much anyone else with half a brain, asked to be interviewed by him. Over the next few years, Jarecki compiled more than twenty hours of footage of Durst, which is how The Jinx came to be. The series debuted to much fanfare on February 8th, 2015. Building on evidence uncovered by Jarecki and his producing partner, Marc Smerling, police began closing in on Durst, ultimately deciding to arrest him on March 14th, 2015, the day before the final episode hit HBO. That finale featured a chilling segment in which Robert was confronted with a letter he wrote to Susan in 1993, years prior to her death, which bore not only the exact same block handwriting as the “cadaver” note, but the exact same misspelling of the word “Beverly.” In a stunning turn, he then walked into the bathroom of the hotel room where the interview was taking place, still miked, and uttered to himself, “What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course.” His trial for Susan’s murder is set to begin in January and something tells me this time an acquittal is not in the cards.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Susan Berman’s former house is located at 1527 Benedict Canyon Drive in Beverly Hills.

October 21, 2019October 22, 2019

Nuart Theatre from “Foul Play”

I was hesitant to include today’s locale in with my Haunted Hollywood postings being that the Nuart Theatre is neither haunted nor a horror movie location, per se. But the small arthouse venue did cameo in one of my favorite thrillers/comedies – 1978’s Foul Play – as the site of a murder, no less, so I figured it was fair game. Especially considering I had stalked the place years ago while writing a 2015 article for Discover L.A. about the city’s best places to beat the rain but had somehow never dedicated a post to it. So here goes!

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Commissioned by Forrest W. McManus and boasting terrazzo flooring, 660 seats and a single screen, the Nuart Theatre opened on August 21st, 1930 with a star-studded gala.

Nine years later, the site was remodeled and the neon Art Deco marquee that now stands above the entrance installed.

The Nuart went through several ownership changes over the ensuing decades, first falling under the Fox West Coast Theatres umbrella from 1941 to 1954, then running independently for several years before finally getting snapped up by Landmark Theatres in 1974.

The space underwent a major renovation in 2006 during which the seating was downsized to 303 chaises to allow for roomier accommodations. With beer and wine also served on the premises, today the Nuart easily holds up against L.A.’s many luxury theatres.

Such an arthouse fave amongst Angelinos, in fact, the Nuart consistently ranks as one of the area’s best theatres and has been lauded by such entities as LAist, the Los Angeles Times and Curbed LA. Los Angeles magazine even recognized the place for its “Top-Rated Popcorn” in 2009. The Nuart is also famous for its regular showings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show (which have been taking place since the ‘80s), as well as its many celebrity Q&As with the likes of such luminaries as Harry Dean Stanton, Halle Berry, Burt Lancaster, Ridley Scott, Mel Blanc, John Waters and Mark Hamill. And, of course, it’s also a filming location!

In Foul Play, Gloria Mundy (Goldie Hawn) heads to the Nuart, said to be on San Francisco’s Union Street, one dark and stormy night (because, of course) to meet Bob ‘Scotty’ Scott (Bruce Solomon) for a film noir double feature. During the retrospective, Gloria discovers that Scott has been stabbed to death in his seat. By the time she reports the killing to the theatre manager, though, his body has gone missing (dun dun dun!), setting her off on a path to find the guilty party. Quite a lot of the venue is shown in the movie, including the exterior;

the ticket booth area and front entrance;

and the lobby.

From the way the segment was shot and because various message boards I’ve come across concerning the Nuart mention that its interior was decidedly red in color before the 2006 remodel, I am fairly certain that the inside of the theatre itself also appeared in Foul Play.

Oddly though, in 1976, two years prior to Foul Play, the Nuart was featured in the Season 1 episode of Starsky & Hutch titled “Silence” . . .

. . . but the theatre interior shown did not match what was seen in Foul Play in the slightest, which has me thoroughly confused. I am guessing that Starsky & Hutch must have only utilized the exterior of the Nuart and then shot interiors in a screening room located back at 20th Century Fox Studios where the series was lensed, but that is just a hunch.

The Nuart has appeared in a couple of other productions, as well. Thanks to fellow stalker MM, I was reminded that the theatre popped up briefly each week in the opening credits of the television series Moonlighting, which aired from 1985 through 1989.

Guy Franklin (Alexander Tovar) runs into Heather (Megan Rosati) at the Nuart at the end of the 2016 film Show Business.

And Maddie Kendall (Jennifer Love Hewitt) and Howie “Chimney” Han (Kenneth Choi) head to the Nuart for a date in the Season 2 episode of 9-1-1 titled “Buck, Actually,” which aired in 2018.

Though the Nuart is said to be the spot where Leonard Hofstadter (Johnny Galecki), Howard Wolowitz (Simon Helberg) and Raj Koothrappali (Kunal Nayyar) attend a Planet of the Apes marathon in the Season 1 episode of The Big Bang Theory titled “The Pancake Batter Anomaly,” no filming actually took place there. The episode was instead shot in front of a live audience on a soundstage-built set at Warner Bros. Studio in Burbank, where the show was lensed.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Landmark’s Nuart Theatre, from Foul Play, is located at 11272 Santa Monica Boulevard in Sawtelle. You can visit the venue’s official website here.

October 18, 2019October 23, 2019

Cole’s House from “The Sixth Sense”

Locations stick with me. They just do. Obviously. One that stuck with me above the realm of normalcy, though, is the handsome brick townhouse where Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment) lived in The Sixth Sense.

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Even though I’ve only actually seen the 1999 thriller once, the image of Bruce Willis as child psychologist Malcolm Crowe sitting on a bench while waiting for Cole in the film’s opening sequence is forever seared in my mind. So when we headed to Philadelphia, where the movie was lensed, in September 2016, visiting Cole’s house was a no-brainer. (My photo below is of the wrong bench, unfortunately – I accidentally snapped the one situated directly outside of Cole’s home, thinking that is where Bruce sat, instead of the one across from it.)

The correct bench is pictured below.

Though named the “Garden Court Apartments” in The Sixth Sense, the row of picturesque brick townhomes where Cole lives is actually known as the “Garden Block.”

Centered around a foliage-filled median, the small stretch of road, closed to cars, is pretty darn idyllic.

While the vegetation is much more mature and full than it was when The Sixth Sense was filmed twenty years ago, the block is instantly recognizable from its big-screen cameo – even to those for whom locations don’t stick, like the Grim Cheaper who identified the place immediately.

Unfortunately, the abundance of greenery made it impossible to get a photo matching the screen capture below. The pictured image is the best I could do.

As you can see in this unobstructed view, though, aside from the front door and window trims now exhibiting a bright purple hue . . .

. . . the property looks much as it did onscreen.

The inside of the home is another story entirely. For interior scenes involving Cole’s apartment, a studio set was built, one that, interestingly, looked nothing like its real-life counterpart. Though taken from opposing angles, in the MLS image as compared to the screen capture below, you can see that the real entry does not resemble its silver-screen self in the slightest. The actual entrance to the home is comprised of a narrow hallway that leads directly to a staircase, while the movie version is wide and open and pours into the living room.

To accommodate that wide entry, you’ll notice that filmmakers cheated things a bit with the townhouse’s exterior by making it appear to have a central front door flanked by two windows. In actuality, only the window to the west of the door (denoted with an orange arrow below) belongs to the property.

The window to the east is part of the neighboring townhouse (the front door of which is situated around the corner facing South 23rd Street), something that is quite obvious in person thanks to the differing trim colors.

The real kitchen is also much different from its big-screen counterpart, with lower ceilings, fewer, more modern cabinets, and a narrower footprint. I much prefer the homey, charming look of the set to that of the actual house, which is somewhat bland and cold. But I guess that’s why production designers get paid the big bucks!

You can check out some more images of the townhome’s interior here. The washer/dryer situation leaves quite a bit to be desired, but I digress.

Per an old real estate listing, the 1915 pad is comprised of 4 bedrooms, 2 baths, 2,052 square feet, an eat-in kitchen, a small backyard, and a full basement. There’s no mention of unwanted visitors of the spirit variety, so whether or not the house actually has any remains to be, ahem, seen.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Cole’s apartment from The Sixth Sense is located at 2302 St. Alban’s Place in Philadelphia.

October 16, 2019October 23, 2019

Ontario Airport Inn from “Poltergeist”

In “I must be living under a rock” news, I had no idea that a Poltergeist remake had debuted in 2015 – in 3D, no less! Considering the so-called curse that plagued the OG trilogy, I’d have to think long and hard before signing up to be a part of any sort of reboot! That cast and crew were seriously brave – yet it turns out the only thing plaguing the recent flick was bad reviews. The rumored curse has never stopped me from stalking locales from the franchise, though, including the motel where the Freeling family stayed at the end of the 1982 original. The location was actually a mystery for years, with several sources claiming that filming took place at Hotel Silver Lake in Westlake, and I am not entirely sure who finally pinpointed the correct spot. Whoever did discover that the hotel utilized in the production was the Holiday Inn at 1801 East G Street in Ontario (now the Ontario Airport Inn), I thank you! Since the lodging is situated right off the 10 Freeway between L.A. and Palm Springs, I figured it would be the perfect place for a pit stop on the way home from my last visit to the City of Angels, as wells as a perfect Haunted Hollywood posting.

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The property currently known as the Ontario Airport Inn was originally built as a Holiday Inn in the mid-1960s.

At the time, nothing was surrounding it but vacant land as you can see in the 1980 image from Historic Aerials below.

Aerial views look quite different today, though amazingly the hotel hasn’t changed a bit, structurally at least.

Per ads I came across on newspapers.com, by 1996 the lodging had become the Good Nite Inn which it remained through at least 2000. Today, the Ontario Airport Inn, situated less than a mile from Ontario International Airport, boasts a huge pool, a courtyard with a BBQ, a laundry room, free coffee and fruit available 24 hours a day, a business center, park-and-fly services, rooms with Tempur-Pedic memory foam beds, and a complimentary continental breakfast and airport shuttle. Not bad for rates that start at $69.95!

Before snapping any photographs, the Grim Cheaper and I popped into the lobby to ask permission from the powers that be. A front desk clerk welcomed us and I explained that I was hoping to see the area of the hotel featured in Poltergeist. She retreated to ask the manager if it was alright and when she returned she told me it was perfectly fine and then produced a map of the property, pointed to a building on the southern side and informed me that filming had taken place in front of Room 209. Shocked that she knew the precise spot and figuring her awareness had to be due to the countless requests from stalkers like myself, I said, “Oh, do a lot of people come by asking to take photos because of Poltergeist?”, to which she deadpanned, “Nope, not really.” And here I thought maybe I was in good company! The GC and I could not stop laughing as we headed out the door toward Building 4, where we had been pointed (that’s it below).

Said to be “the Holiday Inn on I-74,” the weary Freelings venture to the hotel after leaving Midwestern suburbia, where their possessed home has just been sucked into a paranormal vortex, at the end of Poltergeist. (That scene was achieved using a 6-foot by 4-foot model of the Simi Valley property that stood in for the family’s residence, the debris of which were, at least for a time, displayed in Steven Spielberg’s office.)

Room 209, where the Freelings check in, can be found on the second floor of Building 4.

I was shocked to discover upon walking up to the Freelings’ door that Ontario Airport Inn not only boasts the same coloring it did onscreen in 1982, with red doors and yellow walls, but that the number placards also remain entirely unchanged!

It is incredible that so little of the hotel has been altered since the filming, especially considering two changes in ownership and the passage of 37 years! Aside from the addition of some hedges and the removal of the Holiday Inn signage, though, the place is frozen in time.

In an interesting twist, the locale is not included in the shooting schedule featured on Poltergeist: The Fan Site which covers all sixty days of principal photography, as well as one day of second-unit photography. That coupled with the fact that Ontario is a somewhat out-of-the-way spot to film, especially considering the rest of the thriller was lensed in Simi Valley, Agoura Hills, Irvine, and Culver City, makes me wonder if the hotel segment was a re-shoot or perhaps a scene added after initial filming wrapped.

Figuring one of the Poltergeist DVD iterations had to feature a commentary of some sort which might provide clarity on the issue, I got to Googling and was shocked to discover via DVD Exotica that is not actually the case. Amazingly, the only home release of the film with any sort of extras about the movie itself (and not paranormal activity in general) is the 1982 LaserDisc which boasts a stills gallery, the original trailer, and a 7-minute making-of featurette (that you can watch here). Sadly, none of the three provide any info on the hotel. An Upland resident named Don J. did inform the Daily Bulletin in 2017 that producers landed on the locale thanks to its classic neon signage, which few Holiday Inns in the area still had at the time. Whether that information is true or not is anybody’s guess.

The Ontario Airport Inn has another claim to fame! The many musicians hired to perform at the California Jam music festival in 1974 were put up there and shuttled back and forth to the venue, the Ontario Motor Speedway, via helicopter. During their stay, the motel’s marquee read “Welcome Western States Police Officers Assn.,” a rather humorous attempt to mislead any fans heading to the property hoping to catch glimpses of the various acts, which included such bands as Earth, Wind & Fire and the Eagles.

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Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Ontario Airport Inn, aka the Holiday Inn from Poltergeist, is located at 1801 East G Street in Ontario. Filming took place in front of Room 209 on the second floor of Building 4. Please keep in mind that the hotel is private property and you need permission to be on the premises. You can visit the lodging’s official website here.