Category: Movie Locations

Community Church at Holliston from “That Thing You Do!”

Many moons ago, around the time I first moved to Los Angeles in early 2000, the Pasadena Historical Society hosted a special exhibition about filming in the area. I, of course, attended and, along with learning that Dylan McKay’s (Luke Perry) house from Beverly Hills, 90210 was located just down the street from Casa Walsh, I also gleaned that fave movie That Thing You Do! had been lensed at two Crown City locales – the now largely defunct Ambassador College (at 131 South St. John Avenue) and the Holliston Avenue Methodist Church, now Community Church at Holliston (at 1305 East Colorado Boulevard). Though I visited both sites many times over the years, I have somehow never done a blog on either. So I figured it was time to change that. A write-up on Ambassador College will be coming soon, but today I thought I’d cover the Community Church.

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Community Church at Holliston has an interesting history – one that involves a move. Yes, the structure was actually moved from one location to another. But more on that in a bit.

The parish was originally built in 1887 at the southeast corner of East Colorado Boulevard and South Marengo Avenue (where the Pacific Southwest Trust & Savings Bank building stands today). The Gothic-style structure, then known as the First Methodist Episcopal Church, was razed after its tower and roof were blown off during a bad storm in 1891. A replacement church was subsequently constructed on the site in 1901.

The new church, Richardsonian Romanesque in style, was designed by architect John C. Austin, who was also responsible for giving us the Theodore Groene/Bahn Jewelry Store building in Ventura and the Griffith Observatory in Griffith Park. You can see photos of the church during its early days here, here, and here.

In 1923, it was decided that the congregation needed more land and a larger worship space, so the First Methodist Episcopal Church was taken apart – literally – and moved piece by piece to its current location at the corner of East Colorado Boulevard and South Holliston Avenue, where it was rebuilt with a few alterations. It re-opened to the public in December 1924.

The sanctuary boasts a façade consisting of Sespe-covered-bricks which, along with the gothic-style windows, apses, and crenelated roofline, gives the church a very castle-like appearance.

The large inner courtyard is especially reminiscent of a castle.

The parish has undergone several name changes over the years, becoming Holliston Avenue Methodist Church, then Holliston Church, and finally Community Church at Holliston, as it is known today.

In That Thing You Do!, the Community Church at Holliston was the spot where The Oneders recorded their first single, for their soon-to-be-hit song “That Thing You Do.”

The reason their inaugural record was laid down in a church? That’s all thanks to Guy Patterson (Tom Everett Scott). When the idea of recording an album first comes up, Guy informs the group that he has a relative in the record industry. Well, sort of. As Lenny Haise (Steve Zahn) explains, Guy’s uncle, Uncle Bob (Chris Isaak), “records church music, choirs, favorite sermons, stuff my mom listens to.” Uncle Bob does indeed help The Oneders, though, recording their first single in what is supposedly a locale Eerie, Pennsylvania church. In the scene, you can see the sanctuary’s E.M. Skinner pipe organ.

Sadly, when we showed up to stalk the church, mass had just ended and the interior was packed with people. Though we did get to see the inside, I did not snap any photographs of it due to the crowds. I was able to take pictures of the courtyard area, though, thankfully. You can check out some images of the Community Church at Holliston’s interior here.

I used to live not far from Community Church and happened upon the filming of a Cold Case episode on the premises one day. Or actually, episodes. The locale appeared in Season 6’s special two-parter, titled “The Long Blue Line” and “Into the Blue,” both of which aired in 2009. For the shoot, the church was transformed into the Pennsylvania Military Institute.

Though I couldn’t venture onto the property to watch the filming, I could see a few of the courtyard scenes being shot from the street, all of which involved military formations and marching. It could not have been more cool to witness!

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Community Church at Holliston, from that Thing Thing You Do!, is located at 1305 East Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena.

September 13, 2017
Grand Central Terminal’s Whispering Gallery

New York is a magical place. I always describe it as such. It is not just the abject filming locations, gorgeous architecture, and surplus of history that make the city so majestic, but the little, notable things that seem to be tucked around every corner. Take for instance the Whispering Gallery at Grand Central Terminal. On the lower level of the landmark train station is a small alcove framed by four pillared archways. Commuters and tourists rush through it everyday, hurriedly passing underneath the tiled bows, taking no note of its symmetrical beauty or its acoustic secret. Linger a few minutes in the 2,000-square-foot chamber, though, and you will undoubtedly see friends enter together, wander to opposite corners, turn to face the pillars, and then either immediately proclaim “How cool!” or start giggling. Their exuberance is due to the fact that the curvature of the Gallery’s ceiling provides a seamless path for low-level sound to travel up one side and down the other, arriving in the ear of a listener 50 feet away.

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I first read about the phenomenon shortly before my inaugural visit to New York in 2004. The guidebooks I purchased in preparation for the trip didn’t specify exactly where in Grand Central the Whispering Gallery was located, though, and I somehow got the impression that it was part of the Main Concourse. So, on our first sojourn to the station, the Grim Cheaper and I excitedly headed to opposite corners of the grand room, turned and faced the walls, and, like a couple of idiots, proceeded to whisper to each other. Neither of us heard a peep, outside of the hustle and bustle of commuters, and walked away from the experience thoroughly confused, I am sure drawing quite a few laughs from Manhattanites in the know. Thinking the Whispering Gallery was a hoax, we never re-visited the search on any of our subsequent trips to the Big Apple. I did not even think about the site until years later, in fact, when I happened to mention our failure to fellow stalker Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, during our first meet-up, which took place in NYC in 2009. Owen was quite familiar with the Whispering Gallery, knew of its exact location, and assured us it was real. While he wanted to show it to us that day, unfortunately we ran out of time. But he vowed that on our next visit, he would take us there. Though it took 7 years for that visit to materialize, Owen made good on his promise.

As he showed us, the Whispering Gallery is located on Grand Central’s lower level, in the Dining Concourse, just outside of the iconic Oyster Bar.

The rotunda, which is actually a convergence of three commuter corridors, was constructed, along with the rest of Grand Central Terminal, in 1913. The vaulted space was designed by Rafael Guastavino and his son, Rafael Guastavino, Jr., of the Guastavino Fireproof Construction Company. The duo, who also created domed masterpieces at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, the City Hall subway station, and the Bronx Zoo Elephant House (just to name a few), utilized their signature technique to create the Gallery. As the Metropolitan Transportation Authority website explains it, “Guastavino’s method of arch construction uses layers of thin, glazed terracotta tiles set in mortar in a herringbone pattern. The tiles are naturally fireproof and as strong as steel or wooden beams but weigh much less.”

The result is a dazzling display of gilded masonry.

And yes, a scientific curiosity. Thanks to the laws of physics and the Gallery’s parabolic-curved ceiling, two friends can stand at opposite corners of the room, face the wall, whisper to each other, and those whispers will magically be heard. The GC and I tested it out, with Owen acting as our guide, and I am happy to report that the phenomenon is absolutely real – and so incredibly cool.

There are differing beliefs as to whether or not the Guastavinos intended the effect. The New York Times quotes architect Frank J. Prial, Jr., who worked on the 1990s restoration of the terminal, as describing the acoustical occurrence as “a happy coincidence.” Apparently, during the restoration project, Prial’s firm, Beyer Blinder Belle, did not come across any evidence that the sound effect was deliberate. But author Lisa Montanarelli states in her book New York City Curiosities that the Guastavinos “designed the whispering gallery based on architectural principals that have been used for centuries worldwide – from the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London to the Temple of Heaven in Beijing to the Gol Gumbaz in Bijapur, India.” Regardless if the phenomenon was accidental or intended, the Whispering Gallery is a fabulous “secret” site, one that I cannot more highly recommend visiting and testing out for yourself.

The Whispering Gallery is also a filming location! In the 2011 remake of the movie Arthur, Naomi (Greta Gerwig) shows the unique spot to Arthur (Russell Brand) during their first date and he proceeds to officially ask her out – via whisper, of course – while there.

My friend Katie, who runs Matthew Lillard Online, let me know that Cereal (Lillard), Dade (Jonny Lee Miller), Kate (Angelina Jolie) and the gang skated through the Whispering Gallery at the end of 1995’s Hackers. Thanks, Katie!

The Gallery is also said to have been featured in the 1996 romcom Breathing Room, but unfortunately I could not find a copy of it anywhere with which to make screen captures for this post.

The Oyster Bar, also designed by the Guastavinos, has been featured in a couple of productions, as well. Though we did not venture inside the historic eatery during our Whispering Gallery stalk, I figured it still bears mentioning here. The restaurant popped up a couple of times in the 2016 thriller The Girl on the Train.

That same year, Prairie Johnson (Brit Marling) dined there with Dr. Hunter Aloysius ‘Hap’ Percy (Jason Isaacs) in the Season 1 episode of The OA titled “New Colossus.”

Though a scene in the Season 1 episode of Mad Men titled “Red in the Face” was set at a supposed New York City oyster bar, the specific oyster bar wasn’t mentioned. Countless websites state that filming of the segment took place at Grand Central, but that information is erroneous. The AMC series was shot almost in its entirety in Los Angeles and the “Red in the Face” scene was lensed at Musso and Frank Grill in Hollywood, as detailed in this post. Being that Musso’s (as the eatery is commonly called) looks nothing like Grand Central’s Oyster Bar (as you can see below), I am unsure of how the confusion came to be.

Another “secret” spot in Grand Central that we checked out while in New York last April was a section of dirty ceiling in the Main Concourse. When the room’s massive rooftop mural was cleaned in the mid-90s (a job that took 6 months to complete at a cost of $1 million!), the John Canning Company, the group that performed the restoration, left one small 9×18-inch patch tainted. That patch can be found near the crab’s claw in the hall’s northwest corner. While most websites (and even Grand Central tour guides) claim that the dirt was caused by nicotine tar from the hundreds upon hundreds of commuters who puffed in the Concourse before cigarettes were banned, JCC disputes this fact, stating that the grime, which boasted a 2-inch thickness in some spots, was actually created by air pollutants, including car and truck exhaust and soot emissions from area industrial plants. JCC left the small patch of dirt intact for future study. According to the company’s website, such patches “provide the complete environmental history of the building’s interior.”

Though the dirty ceiling patch was referenced in Arthur, it wasn’t shown. A close-up view of it can be seen below, though.

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

Big THANK YOU to my friend/fellow stalker Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong blog, for showing me this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Grand Central Terminal is located at 89 East 42nd Street in the Midtown East area of New York. The Whispering Gallery, from Arthur, can be found just outside of the Grand Central Oyster Bar & Restaurant, which is on the Lower Level in the Dining Concourse. The dirty ceiling patch is located near the crab’s claw in the northwest corner of the Main Concourse.

September 8, 2017
Jewel’s Catch One from “Pretty Woman”

They say that Lady Luck makes for a fickle mistress, but she was certainly smiling on me earlier this month. Not only did I track down the Campbell residence from Soap and the original Mama’s Family house during the first week of August, but fellow stalker Chas, from It’s Filmed There, sent me a text saying that he had finally, finally located the interior of The Blue Banana from the 1990 romcom Pretty Woman, a place I had been looking for for ages. I was shocked to learn that Vivian Ward’s (Julia Roberts) favorite hangout was actually Jewel’s Catch One, an oft-filmed site that also appeared in another of my favorite movies, Girls Just Want to Have Fun. The Arlington Heights hot spot shut its doors in July 2015, unfortunately, after 44 years in business. It crushed me to realize that up until two summers ago, the venue was still in operation and I could have stalked it! Knowing the transient nature of nightclubs, in all my years of searching for the locale, never in my wildest dreams did I think it would still be in business, intact, or even remotely recognizable 27 years after filming took place. But a Google search of images of Jewel’s Catch One showed me that, up until the closure, the lounge still looked exactly as it did in Pretty Woman. Another Google search told me that the site now housed a different nightclub named Union. I happened to be in L.A. when I received Chas’ text, so I headed right on over to stalk the venue. And there was Lady Luck once again at my side. Union was closed when we stopped by, but while I was taking photos, one of the booking managers happened to walk out. I asked if there was any way he might show me the interior and he could not have been more happy to do so! I literally just about hyperventilated from excitement. That excitement only heightened when I saw that, despite the change in ownership, the interior of the club is still very recognizable as The Blue Banana!

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Before I delve into that, though, a little history on the site. Jewel’s Catch One was founded in 1973 by Jewel Thais-Williams, an African-American lesbian who had long been growing weary over the difficulty she was having getting in to the popular West Hollywood gay clubs of the era due to her skin color and gender. Recognizing the need for a safe haven for minority members of the LGBT community to dance, party and let loose, Jewel took matters into her own hands and purchased a neighborhood bar located on the ground floor of a three-level 1923 building that once housed the Diana Ballroom. She transformed the small space into Jewel’s Catch One, a welcoming nightclub that offered the ultimate in privacy and discretion for its patrons. It quickly caught on, becoming so popular that Jewel was able to expand into other areas of the building, eventually purchasing and taking over the entire 7-room property.

Jewel’s Catch One attracted people of all races, genders, and sexual orientation. Thanks to the privacy the club afforded, it wasn’t long before celebrities started popping in, as well. Just a few of the stars the lounge played host to include Sammy Davis Jr., Gregory Hines, Warren Beatty, Ali MacGraw, Madonna, Sharon Stone, Janet Jackson, Christina Aguilera, Sade, and Pink.

In 1985, the club suffered a massive fire in its top-floor disco room. Despite having to shut down for two years to rebuild, Jewel’s prevailed, coming back stronger than ever.

Thais-Williams could be found on the premises nightly, mixing drinks and mingling with her customers. She was so much more than just a nightclub owner, though. Jewel quickly found herself in the position of trailblazer, community leader, and humanitarian. When the AIDS epidemic first hit, she held fundraisers and offered her support to those afflicted. She helped local addicts get clean. She operated a soup kitchen out of Catch One’s parking lot to provide food to those who couldn’t afford to feed themselves. She co-founded countless community organizations, including the Minority AIDS Project, the Unity Fellowship of Christ Church, the Imani Unidos Food Pantry, and Rue’s House, a living facility for women and children with HIV. She didn’t stop there, though. After sitting through an appointment with an inefficient doctor in the ‘90s, Jewel decided to go back to school to study Eastern Medicine. She graduated in 1999 with a Masters of Science in Oriental Medicine – at the age of 60 no less. Two years later, she opened the Village Heath Foundation next door to Catch One. The free clinic, which is still in operation, provides medical services to the community’s less fortunate. Today, Jewel can even add “producer” to the long list of her accomplishments, having served as one on a 2016 documentary about her club titled Jewel’s Catch One.

Sadly, Catch One saw a decline in patronage in recent years. As Jewel explained in a 2014 The Neighborhood News Online interview, “The need [for the club] isn’t there anymore. The population was gay and lesbian for most of the years — though everybody came, including straight people and stars — but now the community can go anywhere they want to. And now, even when I come out on a Saturday night, no one’s dancing, no one’s talking. They’re all standing on the edge of the room and all you see is white lights, screens.” In July 2015, she decided to shutter the site, put it up for sale, and instead focus her energies on running the Village Health Foundation. The space was purchased by Mitch Edelson in November of that year and re-opened as Union in February 2016. I love that the club’s original signage was left intact, despite the changeover.

Today, the venue boasts six dance areas known as the Disco, The Loft, Jewel’s Room, Circle Bar, Noise Room, and Tavern. Jewel’s Room (pictured below) is the space that appeared as The Blue Banana in Pretty Woman and is the area of the club most often featured onscreen. It is not very hard to see why producers choose to use it regularly. It definitely has a retro aura, even with the modernizations made by Edelson when the site became Union.

As I walked into Jewel’s Room, I just about passed out from excitement.

I was in awe at how recognizable it still is from Pretty Woman, as you can see above and below.

I was most excited to see the stairwell leading to the mezzanine, which Vivian walked down in the movie. The white metal railing has since been swapped out for a modern glass and metal railing (which bummed me to no end), but I was thrilled to finally be laying eyes on the stairs nonetheless.

Never thought I’d be posing for this photo! Finally! (Due to the room’s low lighting, my pictures came out a bit hazy, unfortunately – some worse than others. My apologies.)

Jewel’s Room’s mezzanine was referred to as the “Poor Room” in Pretty Woman. When I mentioned that factoid to our tour guide, he asked if I wanted to head upstairs to see the space in person. It was about that time that I completely lost my cool. (Again, I’m sorry about the poor quality of my photos here.)

When I saw that the mezzanine area boasts an air hockey table in real life, I was ecstatic. Not quite the pool table seen in Pretty Woman, but close enough!

Another shot of the “Poor Room” is pictured below.

As I mentioned in this February 2012 post, the front exterior of The Blue Banana was a mocked-up section of the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood.

The rear exterior of Jewel’s Catch One did appear in a deleted scene, though, that was featured on Pretty Woman’s 15th Anniversary Special Edition DVD. In the scene, Vivian stops by The Blue Banana with Edward Lewis (Richard Gere) to look for her roommate, Kit De Luca (Laura San Giacomo). While there Edward proceeds to get into an altercation with drug dealer/pimp Carlos (Billy Gallo). It was because of that segment that Chas was finally able to identify the club. While watching the scene a couple of weeks ago, he happened to recognize Catch One’s back entrance (namely the doorway and stairwell) from its appearance in both Girls Just Want to Have Fun and Pretty in Pink, two movies he has chronicled on his site. (You can check out his posts on those flicks here and here.)

The interior of Jewel’s Room was also utilized in the deleted scene.

In fave movie Girls Just Want to Have Fun, which premiered in 1985, Jewel’s Catch One portrayed The Court nightclub, where Janie Glenn (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Jeff Malene (Lee Montgomery) rehearsed for the big Dance TV contest. In the scene, Catch One’s rear entrance masked as the front of The Court.

I am not sure if the scenes that took place inside The Court were shot at Jewel’s, but I am guessing they were. I believe the Disco was utilized for those segments. Due to the fire that occurred in the Disco in 1985 and the subsequent remodel of the space, it is hard to say for certain either way, though.

Catch One masqueraded as Cats nightclub, where Andie (Molly Ringwald) regularly hung out in 1986’s Pretty in Pink.

As you can see from comparing my photographs below to the screen captures above, Catch One’s rear entrance is now fenced in and, though still recognizable, looks quite a bit different than it did onscreen in Pretty Woman, Girls Just Want to Have Fun, and Pretty in Pink.

Thanks to our friendly tour guide, I was able to snap a pic of the stairwell seen in the three films from behind the fence.

Because so little of the inside of Cats was shown in Pretty in Pink and what was shown was dimly lit, I cannot say with any certainty if Jewel’s Catch One or a different location was utilized for the interior segments.

In the 1988 drama Beaches, Catch One popped up as two different spots. Jewel’s Room first appeared as The Blue Cave, the New York City lounge where CC Bloom (Bette Midler) tried her hand at being a jazz singer.

Later in the movie, the Disco portrayed San Francisco’s Pink Palm nightclub, where CC and Hillary Whitney Essex (Barbara Hershey) made up after not speaking for years.

Jewel’s Catch One also masked as two different places in the 1988 comedy I’m Gonna Get You Sucka. The Disco first popped up in the movie’s Soul Train flashback scene.

Later in the film, Catch One’s front exterior . . .

. . . and Jewel’s Room portrayed the Big Brim Bar, the hangout of “every criminal and major player in town.”

Catch’s One rear exterior and Jewel’s Room appeared as The Gold Tooth, the supposed Decatur, Georgia nightclub where Nisi (Halle Berry) and Mickey (Natalie Desselle Reid) hung out in the 1997 comedy B*A*P*S.

Jewel’s Catch One played The Bell, the Philadelphia-area nightclub where 23 people were killed in a 1978 fire, in the Season 1 episode of Cold Case titled “Disco Inferno,” which aired in 2004.

Though the Disco was utilized for the majority of the shoot, Jewel’s Room was featured at the end of the episode as the spot where Lilly Rush (Kathryn Morris) took ADA Jason Kite (Josh Hopkins) to celebrate after solving the case.

In 2015’s Straight Outta Compton, the Disco portrayed Doo-To’s Club, the Compton spot where Dr. Dre (Corey Hawkins) and Ice Cube (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) first performed.

Jewel’s Catch One was also supposedly featured in the 1993 Tina Turner biopic What’s Love Got to Do with It, but I scanned through the movie and did not see it anywhere.

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

Big THANK YOU to Chas, from the It’s Filmed There website, for finding this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Union, aka Jewel’s Catch One, aka The Blue Banana from Pretty Woman, is located at 4067 West Pico Boulevard in Arlington Heights. You can visit the nightclub’s official website here.

August 28, 2017
Mawby’s Bar from “Flashdance”

While I am definitely a child of the ‘80s, there are some classic films from that era that I have never been a fan of. Pretty in Pink, Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Flashdance come to mind. Being that there’s pretty much nothing I love more than movies with musical and dance montages, the latter should be right up my alley, but, for whatever reason, it never struck a chord. There is one spot from it that I have been asked about regularly over the years, though – Mawby’s Bar, the club where welder-by-day/exotic-dancer-by-night Alex Owens (Jennifer Beals) worked in the 1983 flick. Filming websites had long documented that the Mawby’s exterior could be found in downtown L.A., though it’s exact address was never specified. Then in September 2014, The Worldwide Guide to Movie Locations published some more detailed information. According to a tip from location manager Charles Newirth, Mawby’s was a mocked-up vacant warehouse at the corner of Boyd and Wall Streets that had been demolished at some point since filming took place. Because the building was said to be gone, I did not put any further thought into it. So imagine my surprise when this past December, fellow stalker Chas, of It’s Filmed There, posted a page about Flashdance locales, along with the address of the still-intact Mawby’s warehouse!

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I immediately headed over to Google Street View to check out the building, which, as Chas explained, looks considerably different in reality. Not only was the structure, located at 229 Boyd Street, heavily dressed for the filming of Flashdance (with a neon, glass brick and black metal façade added to the exterior, as well as letters spelling out “hotel” written across the second level), but it was also altered in the years following the shoot. Most noticeably, the five rounded second story windows were filled in at some point.

Amazingly though, the outlines of those windows are still discernible today, which I was absolutely floored to see!

I was also floored to see that the utility access cover visible in the sidewalk directly outside of Mawby’s front door is still there today! (I know, I know – it doesn’t take much to excite me.)

Mawby’s, which was loosely based upon a real Toronto-area strip club named Gimlets, was featured numerous times throughout Flashdance.

Though I cannot say for certain, from the way the film was shot and a few blurbs I have read online, it seems that the actual interior of the warehouse was also utilized in the filming. Ron Karabatsos, who played Mawby’s Bar owner Jake Mawby in the movie, even wrote in to the Fast Rewind website explaining that the club was built from scratch in an empty storefront in downtown Los Angeles. (Though he states that said storefront was on 5th and Los Angeles Streets, that intersection is only a hop, skip and a jump away from the Boyd warehouse, so I believe he was just a bit off in his recollection. It is also possible that a different vacant site was utilized for interior shots of Mawby’s, but I do not think that was the case.)

I was really hoping to find some additional onscreen appearances of the warehouse from the same time period so that I could further verify the location (you know me – I don’t like to leave any stone unturned when it comes to this stuff). While I did come across a couple, neither provided a great view of the building. We catch a very brief glimpse of the side of it in the 1984 Sci-Fi horror flick Night of the Comet. In the screen captures below, the Mawby’s warehouse, located just beyond the stop sign, is denoted with a yellow arrow.

A much better view of the warehouse is shown in 1988’s Miracle Mile, in the scene in which Harry Washello (Anthony Edwards) and Wilson (Mykelti Williamson) attempt to get gas at a downtown gas station. Unfortunately, I did not take any photographs of that side of the structure while I was stalking the place, so please bear with the Google Street View images pictured below.

Oddly, the second floor windows that I was so excited to see the outlines of appear to have been replaced by long rectangular windows by the time Miracle Mile was shot, which makes no sense whatsoever. If the rounded windows were actually swapped out, how are vestiges of them still apparent today?

Miracle Mile also provides a quick glimpse of the parking lot that was formerly situated across the street from the warehouse and was visible in Flashdance. Today, a one-story building stands on that site.

Thanks to a commenter named Sam I learned that an establishing shot of Mawby’s from Flashdance was re-used in the 1990 made-for-television movie Perry Mason: The Case of the Poisoned Pen. No actual filming took place at 229 Boyd Street, though.

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

Big THANK YOU to The Worldwide Guide to Movie Locations and Chas, from the It’s Filmed There website, for finding this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The warehouse that masked as Mawby’s Bar in Flashdance can be found at 229 Boyd Street in downtown Los Angeles. The neighborhood where it is located is not the greatest, so please exercise caution when visiting.

August 16, 2017
Chasen’s Restaurant from “Enemy of the State”

I grew up about as far removed from Hollywood and the world of show business as you can get. But somehow I was familiar with Chasen’s, the West Hollywood restaurant that played stomping ground to the Tinseltown elite for close to six decades. I’m not sure where my knowledge of the famed eatery came from, but it is likely due to the countless celebrity biographies and magazines I read as a child and/or the fact that my mom has long been something of a chili connoisseur. For those not in the know, Chasen’s was noted as much for its legendary chili as it was for its acclaimed clientele. Sadly, neither my mom nor I ever got to dine at the restaurant. It was shuttered in 1995, long before we moved to Los Angeles. A portion of its Neo-colonial façade still stands, though (it’s now part of a Bristol Farms market), and I dragged the Grim Cheaper out to stalk it way back in May 2013. Then I promptly forgot about it. Flash forward to last week. While researching Baltimore’s Hollywood Diner, I came across a mention that Enemy of the State had done some filming at the Charm City site. As it turns out, that information was incorrect, but I was thrilled to learn while looking into the matter that the 1998 thriller had actually shot a few scenes at Chasen’s. So I figured it was high time I blog about the place.

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Chasen’s was originally established in 1936 by New York-based Vaudeville performer Dave Chasen. Even the restaurant’s inception is steeped in Hollywood lore. As the story goes, Chasen came out to L.A. to act in a movie and began supplying his actor friends with his special homemade chili, just as he had done with his Vaudeville buddies back home. Depending on which version of the tale you believe, either director Frank Capra or New Yorker magazine editor Harold Ross suggested Chasen get out of show business and start a restaurant. He heeded the advice and on December 13th, 1936 opened the doors of Chasen’s Southern Pit. (Supposedly, Capra had to loan Dave his silverware from home for the opening.) The tiny BBQ joint, which consisted of a scant 6 tables and an 8-seat bar, was an instant hit with the show biz set, despite only serving spare ribs and Dave’s famous chili.

In 1942, Dave married a Sax Fifth Avenue beauty salon head named Maude Martin, whom pal Dom Amici had brought in to Chasen’s for dinner while she was in town on business. Dave was immediately smitten. Following the nuptials, Maude set about expanding both the restaurant’s menu and its square footage, employing renowned architect Paul Revere Williams to spruce up the interior with red leather booths and wood paneling. Williams was hired for a few additional expansions over the years as the restaurant’s popularity continued to grow.

For decades, Chasen’s was the place to see and be seen in Hollywood. Just a few of the legends who regularly dined on the premises include Alfred Hitchcock, Jimmy Stewart, Bob Hope, Kirk Douglas, Cary Grant, Walt Disney, Marilyn Monroe, Carol Burnett, Frank Sinatra, Clark Gable, and Jack Lemmon. Ronald and Nancy Reagan even got engaged there (the booth where Ronnie proposed is now on display at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library). And Elizabeth Taylor was so taken with Chasen’s chili that she reportedly had it flown to her regularly while she was on location in Rome filming Cleopatra. You can check out some photos of Chasen’s from its heyday here.

After Dave passed away in 1973, Maude ran the restaurant herself, greeting customers at the front door nightly. Chasen’s remained popular under Maude’s tutelage and attracted new celebrity clientele such as John Travolta, Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks, Elton John, Sharon Stone, Madonna, and Jack Nicholson. Aaron Spelling even hosted annual Christmas parties for the cast and crew of Beverly Hills, 90210 on the premises. Jason Priestley dedicated a chapter of his book, Jason Priestley: A Memoir, to one of the parties and you can see a photo of the December 18th, 1991 soiree here and the 1993 shindig here.

Sadly, Chasen’s started to see a decline in patronage during the ‘90s. Maude eventually sold the restaurant to a developer and its doors were officially closed on April 1st, 1995. Though there were plans to build a massive 2-story, 89,000-square-foot shopping center on the site, they never came to fruition largely due to neighborhood opposition. While development sat in limbo for the next few years, Chasen’s remained intact and was rented out for filming and private events. The project finally got underway in 1999 and the eatery’s interior décor, furnishings and restaurant equipment were auctioned off to the public in October of that year. The structure was razed shortly thereafter and a 29,000-square-foot Bristol Farms grocery store, which opened in 2000, was built in its place. Thankfully, the market’s owners decided to preserve a piece of the historic eatery. As I mentioned above, a portion of Chasen’s Beverly Boulevard façade was left intact during the demolition, was incorporated into the Bristol Farms exterior, and still stands today. That façade, with the restaurant’s former main entrance denoted with a pink arrow, is pictured below.

Most amazing of all, the Bristol Farms owners also re-created a section of Chasen’s interior inside the store. It serves as the market’s onsite restaurant.

Called Bristol Café, the space serves soups, salads, sandwiches, and other staples.

Oh, and Dave’s famous chili! For those who don’t live in the area, but want to know what all the fuss is about, you can make Chasen’s iconic chili at home – recipe here.

Though I never got to experience Chasen’s first-hand, Bristol Café was not a bad consolation prize thanks to the fact that the space boasts several of the original restaurant’s booths;

its knotty pine paneling and light sconces;

and doors. For anyone who hasn’t been, I highly recommend a visit.

In Enemy of the State, Chasen’s portrayed Pintero Social Club, the supposed Washington, D.C.-area Italian restaurant owned by mobster Paulie Pintero (Tom Sizemore). The eatery’s dining area was only shown briefly in the flick, though.

Most of the filming took place in Chasen’s kitchen, including the massive shoot-out at the end of the flick.

Only the interior of Chasen’s was utilized in the movie. Exterior scenes involving Pintero Social Club were filmed at a different location.

Enemy of the State is hardly the first production to feature Chasen’s. Columbo (Peter Falk) dines there – and, in a tongue-in-cheek moment, gets scoffed at by a waiter for ordering chili – in the Season 3 episode of Columbo titled “Publish or Perish,” which aired in 1974.

Simon Davenport (Henry Fonda) receives a telephone call from Harry Calder (George Segal) while he is at Chasen’s celebrating his wedding anniversary in the 1977 thriller Rollercoaster.

Bugsy Siegel (Warren Beatty) tells his wife he wants a divorce over diner at Chasen’s in the 1991 film Bugsy.

In the Season 3 episode of Melrose Place titled “Love Reeks,” which aired in 1994, Susan Madsen (Cheryl Pollak) has a job interview at Chasen’s.

Dede Truitt (Christina Ricci) and Matt Mateo (Ivan Sergei) meet up with Bill Truitt (Martin Donovan) and Lucia DeLury (Lisa Kudrow) for a highly awkward dinner at Chasen’s in the 1998 comedy The Opposite of Sex.

Even Bristol Farms is popular with location scouts. In the Season 2 episode of Six Feet Under titled “Back to the Garden,” which aired in 2002, David Fisher (Michael C. Hall) waits for Keith Charles (Mathew St. Patrick) at Bristol Café in a very brief scene.

And in the Season 3 episode of The Osbournes titled “Pain in the Neck,” which aired in 2004, Ozzy Osbourne shops at Bristol Farms with his assistant.

Chasen’s also appeared in the second episode of the 1989 television series Nightingales, but, unfortunately, I could not find a copy of the episode with which to make screen captures for this post.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Chasen’s restaurant, aka Pintero Social Club from Enemy of the State, was formerly located at 9039 Beverly Boulevard in West Hollywood. The site is now home to a Bristol Farms grocery store.

July 28, 2017
Hollywood Diner from “Sleepless in Seattle”

Another day, another diner from a Meg Ryan movie! Unlike the Port Café, the Wilmington, California eatery that portrayed East Coast establishments in both When Harry Met Sally . . . and A Few Good Men, today’s locale can actually be found close to the Atlantic – though its name would have you believe otherwise. I’m talking about the Hollywood Diner in downtown Baltimore, which played the Capital Diner in the 1993 romcom Sleepless in Seattle. To discuss the restaurant’s history, though, we have to go back to the filming of a much earlier movie, 1982’s Diner.

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When writer/director Barry Levinson started pre-production on his semi-autobiographical coming-of-age drama Diner, set in 1959 Baltimore, he sought out to find a coffee shop similar to the one he hung out in during his youth for the shoot. His former stomping ground, the Hilltop Diner, which largely inspired his story, had been turned into a liquor store years prior, so filming there was not a possibility. After failed negotiations with the owners of the Double T Diner in Catonsville, Maryland, Levinson wound up coming across a vacant plot of land in Charm City’s Canton neighborhood that overlooked the famed Domino Sugars sign and thought it would make the perfect setting for his movie. All he needed was a diner. So he headed to a diner graveyard in New Jersey and quickly set his sights on a streamlined silver structure that formerly served as Long Island’s Westbury Grill. He leased the 1954 café from the graveyard, transported it to the plot of land in Canton, and proceeded to shoot Diner there, dubbing the fictional eatery “Fells Point Diner.”

Both the interior and exterior of the diner were used extensively in the shoot. (And yes, that’s a very young Kevin Bacon in the second screen capture below. <3)

Though some sources claim that Bendix Diner in Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey was used for the filming of Diner’s interior scenes, that information is incorrect. The establishment does bear a considerable resemblance to the café where Eddie Simmons (Steve Guttenberg), Shrevie Schreiber (Daniel Stern), Boogie Sheftell (Mickey Rourke), Timothy Fenwick Jr. (Bacon), and Modell (Paul Reiser) hung out in the flick, but upon close inspection, it is obvious that the two are not one and the same.

When filming on Diner wrapped, the 48-foot by 17-foot restaurant was shipped back to the diner graveyard in New Jersey, which would have been the end of the story had then Baltimore mayor William Donald Schaefer not stepped in. Shortly after the movie premiered in early 1982, Schaefer implored local citizens to help return the structure to Charm City, putting purchase and transport of the eatery on his civil “wish list.” WBAL Radio heeded his cry, bought the restaurant from the graveyard and gifted it to Baltimore. It was transferred to its new home at 400 East Saratoga Street in the heart of downtown in January 1984. At the time, the diner lacked a bathroom and a kitchen, but locals donated time and money to spruce up the structure and transform it back into a functional restaurant. It opened later that year as The Kids’ Diner. Run by city schools and the mayor’s office, the site served as both an eatery and a vocational training center for area students.

Plagued by financial woes from the start, the restaurant was taken over by the Chesapeake Foundation for Human Development in 1991 and renamed “Hollywood Diner.”

The foundation couldn’t quell the café’s money problems, though, and, after undergoing a series of different management organizations and restaurant iterations, the site finally shuttered in 2012. Though there were plans to turn the property into a food truck park, using the interior of the diner for seating, it does not appear that the project ever took of.

Despite the longtime closure, the diner still stands intact today, thankfully.

I was floored when I walked up to the structure and saw that the interior was visible through the front windows!

At the beginning of Sleepless in Seattle, Annie Reed (Meg Ryan) stops for tea at the diner while on a Christmas Eve road trip to her fiancé’s parents’ house.

It is amazing to me how little the restaurant has changed since filming took place over 24 years ago.

Hollywood Diner has appeared in several productions over the years. In fact, Barry Levinson has quite a soft spot for the place, having utilized it in two of his other movies. In 1987’s Tin Men, the restaurant serves as Ernest Tilley’s (Danny DeVito) regular breakfast joint.

And Van Kurtzman (Adrien Brody) also hangs out there in Levinson’s 1999 drama Liberty Heights.

The director even named the eatery “Fells Point Diner” in the movie, as a nod to his 1982 film.

Though some websites state that the diner also appears in the 1990 Levinson-directed drama Avalon, in the scene in which Michael Kaye (Elijah Wood) watches as a restaurant is dropped into place on a vacant lot, that information is incorrect. As you can see below, the eatery in Avalon looks nothing like the Hollywood Diner (not only do the windows not match, but neither does the general shape of the structure). Not to mention that by the time Avalon was shot, The Kids’ Diner had already been installed at its downtown location and in full operation for over six years.

In the Season 2 episode of The Wire titled “Duck and Cover,” which aired in 2003, a drunken Detective James “Jimmy” McNulty (Dominic West) heads to the Hollywood Diner for coffee and winds up going home with his waitress.

Hollywood Diner provided the setting for the 2017 short film The Dark of Night, directed by Robin Wright.

The restaurant also reportedly appeared in an episode of Homicide: Life on the Street, though I am unsure of which episode.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Hollywood Diner, aka Capital Diner from Sleepless in Seattle, is located at 400 East Saratoga Street in Baltimore. The restaurant is currently closed.

July 24, 2017
The Site of the “A Few Good Men” Crab Restaurant

To paraphrase Dorothy (Judy Garland) in The Wizard of Oz, our heart’s desires can often be found right in our own backyard. Even though I’ve seen the 1939 film about a gazillion times, I failed to heed Dorothy’s advice while searching for the crab restaurant Lt. Cdr. JoAnne Galloway (Demi Moore) took Lt. Daniel Kaffee (Tom Cruise) to in fave movie A Few Good Men. The eatery had long been at the top of my Must-Find List, but because I always assumed it was located in the D.C. area where the 1992 courtroom drama was partially shot, I never put much energy into tracking it down. When I found out that the Grim Cheaper and I would be journeying to the East Coast last fall, though, I immediately sprang into action – and was shocked to discover that the locale was right in my own backyard the whole time. Or at least, it was. The restaurant has, sadly, since been razed, hence the odd photo above which shows roughly where it once stood.

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For those who don’t remember the scene (or perhaps have never seen the movie, which I can’t imagine is possible!), toward the middle of A Few Good Men, JoAnne shows up unexpectedly at Danny’s apartment and asks if she can take him out for dinner (it’s not a date, though!) at a good seafood place she knows. After razzing her quite a bit, Danny accepts the invite and the two head to a very East Coast-looking spot, where they proceed to eat crab off of a paper-covered table, with mallets as their only utensils.

The scene absolutely mesmerized me. Though I grew up in San Francisco, home to fish restaurants galore, until watching A Few Good Men, I had never seen crab eaten in such a way and wanted nothing more than to visit a place like that myself. So, on one of my first visits to D.C., back in 2001, I told my friends who lived in the area that I was not leaving town without going to a similar spot. (This was before I became a master stalker, so it never even occurred to me to try to track down the actual A Few Good Men restaurant during that trip.) My friends happily obliged and that meal is one of my fondest memories of the whole vacation. A page from my D.C. photo album is pictured below, showing us enjoying crab in all of our messy-handed glory.

For this trip, I decided I had to track down the real spot. Most sources I came across online claimed that the A Few Good Men scene was lensed at The Dancing Crab, a D.C. institution that had been around for more than 40 years, but was, sadly, shuttered in 2014. At the time of its closure, the restaurant was located at 4615 Wisconsin Avenue NW in the District’s Tenleytown neighborhood. The photos of the site posted on Yelp did not look anything like what appeared in AFGM, though. So I did some digging and learned that the eatery had moved locations in recent years. It was originally situated one storefront to the south at 4611 Wisconsin Avenue NW. Though I could not find any images of The Dancing Crab from its time at that spot, I could tell from looking at the outside of the building via Google Street View that it was not the right place. Two large windows are visible in the background of the AFGM scene, but the original Dancing Crab site (pictured below) has no such windows. So it was back to the drawing board. (Come to find out, The Dancing Crab does have an A Few Good Men connection, but more on that in a bit.)

I decided to start contacting crew members and got lucky when one responded right away. His reply to my query absolutely blew my mind. He informed me that the AFGM crab restaurant could not be found in Washington, D.C., but much closer to home, about 20 miles south of Los Angeles. As he explained, the eatery was a diner in the San Pedro area that had been redressed to look like a seafood restaurant for the shoot. Then he shocked me even further when he mentioned that the same site had also been used in When Harry Met Sally . . .! At the time, I was unaware that the 1989 romcom had done any filming in the L.A. area. My crew member friend did not remember the name or address of the diner, so I started looking into things and fairly quickly came across its whereabouts thanks to the book Shot On This Site, which stated that a scene from When Harry Met Sally . . . had been lensed at the Port Café in Wilmington. I was devastated to learn upon reading further that the eatery, once located at 955 South Neptune Avenue, just steps from the Port of Los Angeles, had since been demolished.

Scant information about the Port Café is available online, other than a few building permits and the short blurb below which was featured in the book Wilmington (Images of America). Originally built in 1941, the diner was mainly patronized by people who worked on the docks nearby. Aside from moving about 100 feet to the north in 1956 in order to accommodate the enlargement of a nearby terminal, little of the restaurant was changed over the years. Sadly, I could not locate any photos of the interior of the space to compare to screen shots from A Few Good Men.

So I popped in my When Harry Met Sally . . . DVD and was dismayed to see that the café, featured in the beginning of the movie in the scene in which Harry Burns (Billy Crystal) and Sally Albright (Meg Ryan) stop for a roadside meal during their drive from Chicago to Manhattan, did not look anything like the A Few Good Men crab restaurant. I started to think that maybe my crew member friend had gotten it wrong. Even though I knew that the space had been completely redressed for AFGM, I thought that some small detail at the very least would be recognizable from WHMS. I could not find a single matching element, though. Nothing. Nada. Zip.

Enter my friend/fellow stalker Michael (you know him from his many fabulous guest posts). Michael’s eye is much keener than mine, so I asked him to take a look at the AFGM crab restaurant scene and compare it to the WHMS diner scene to see if I was missing anything. Sure enough, I was! As he noticed, a post and lintel (denoted with a purple circle below) and a beam (denoted with a green arrow) that match each other perfectly are visible in the respective scenes.

Upon taking another look at the two movies, I also spotted the post and lintel (albeit the opposite side of it) in an exterior shot in When Harry Met Sally . . .

And I noticed that the stainless steel/green/pink wall schematic (denoted with a purple bracket below) was the same in both flicks. (Love that the Port Café’s 955 address number is visible just to the right of Billy Crystal in the WHMS cap.)

The two movies (which were both coincidentally, or not so coincidentally, directed by Rob Reiner) really showcase different sections of the Port Café, which, along with the re-dressing of the space for A Few Good Men, makes it appear to be two totally distinct places. Helping with the visual manipulation is the fact that the restaurant seems to have had two counters (denoted with purple arrows below) and two kitchens (denoted with green arrows below) – one of each in the center of the space and one of each on the side.

Though the side counter is mainly featured in When Harry Met Sally . . . , Michael pointed out that we get brief views of the central counter, as well, when Harry and Sally enter and exit the restaurant.

The diagonal edge (denoted with purple arrows below) of the counter in A Few Good Men, the wood material, the metal piece running parallel to the floor (denoted with green arrows below) and the foot rest (denoted with yellow arrows below) all correlate to the center counter briefly seen in When Harry Met Sally . . . The green flooring visible in both movies is also a match.

Because I was having trouble envisioning how the Port Café was laid out (the two counters/kitchens really threw me), Michael was kind enough to draw up a diagram, which I transformed into the graphic below. The areas of the eatery utilized and visible in A Few Good Men are denoted in red (the initials TC and DM stand for Tom Cruise and Demi Moore, respectively), those utilized and visible in When Harry Met Sally . . . are blue (BC and MR stand for Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan), and those utilized and visible in both movies are teal.

When Harry Met Sally . . . provides us with some great views of the exterior of the Port Café.

I thought those views, along with the Historic Aerials image pictured below, would help me discern the Port Café’s exact former location when I went out to stalk it last week.

When I got to the area, though, I could not make heads or tails of anything and failed to take photos of the precise place. The picture below is the closest I got to the correct location. The Port Café was formerly located pretty much in the spot where the purple arrow is pointing.

Had I panned just a bit to the north, I would have captured its exact former site. Thank God for Street View!

The purple box outlines where the eatery was formerly situated.

In When Harry Met Sally . . ., Sally’s car travels north on Neptune Avenue before turning left (west) onto East Pier A Place and then into the Port Café parking lot. A very crude graphic showing her route is pictured below. The pink line depicts the path of Sally’s car.

Many of the tanks visible when she drives to the restaurant have been razed, as you can see from my photograph below (which, believe it or not, is pretty much a matching angle to the screen capture), though the tall white one on the left-most side still stands.

The tank situated on the side of the Port Café also still stands. It is pictured below, albeit from a different angle.

As I mentioned earlier, A Few Good Men does have a connection to the now defunct Dancing Crab restaurant. In his DVD commentary, Rob Reiner states that while filming in the D.C.-area, he took the cast and crew out for dinner at The Dancing Crab. The ambiance of paper-covered tables and mallet utensils made such an impression on him that he was inspired to place an AFGM scene in a similar setting. So when they got back to L.A., he did just that. And the rest, as they say, is history.

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

Big THANK YOU to my friend Michael for helping me to identify this spot! You can check out Michael’s many fabulous guest posts here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Port Café, aka the crab restaurant from A Few Good Men, was formerly located at 955 South Neptune Avenue in Wilmington. The spot where it once stood is denoted with a pink box below.

July 21, 2017
Retro Dairy Mart from “Say Anything . . . “

“That’s L.A. – they worship everything and they value nothing.” So says Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) while lamenting the closure of a historic jazz club and its subsequent transition into a samba/tapas place in La La Land. Though I did not like the movie (as mentioned previously), I have to agree with Seb on this one. Los Angeles does often show a blatant disregard for its history, regularly razing notable buildings and sites with a nonchalant swoop of its proverbial hand. One yesteryear locale that somehow not only escaped the fate of the wrecking ball, but also popped up in La La Land is the Retro Dairy Mart in Burbank. The property’s onscreen stint in the 2016 musical has been well-documented online for quite a while now, but I was completely surprised when Greg Mariotti, from Cameron Crowe’s official website The Uncool, informed me of its appearance in Say Anything . . . while the two of us were working on our round-up of the 1989 flick’s Los Angeles locales. Since the drive-through market has been featured in two such iconic productions, I figured it was worthy of its own blog post.

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Retro Dairy Mart was originally established as an Alta Dena Dairy market in 1962.

The Alta Dena Dairy company began building the mini grocery stores in 1951, providing patrons with basic sundries like eggs, milk, sugar, and butter all from a convenient drive-up window. The cash-and-carry markets, as they were referred to, became quite popular and countless outposts were constructed across Los Angeles throughout the ‘50s and ‘60s. Though not nearly as prevalent today, there were still 82 of the shops dotting the Southern California landscape as of 2006.

The Burbank site remained in operation until 2014. When it hit the market, recent retiree Patricia Franco saw an opportunity to revitalize the space, while still embracing its retro roots. And revitalize it she did! Patricia completely revamped both the property’s interior and exterior. Over a period of five months, she added a front patio, implemented a red, white and black color scheme, planted foliage, installed new countertops and black-and-white checkered flooring, and expanded the inventory. She dubbed her new shop “Retro Dairy Mart.” It really is an adorable little spot and I am not at all surprised that it turned up in La La Land. The site looked quite a bit different 27 years prior to that, though, when Cameron Crowe pegged it as a location for Say Anything . . .

Masking as a Seattle-area gas station/convenience store, Alta Dena Dairy pops up towards the end of the movie, in the scene in which Lloyd Dobler (John Cusack) asks some male friends – including a young Jeremy Piven – for advice on girls. After they share some not-so-choice pieces of wisdom with him, Lloyd can’t help but question, “If you guys know so much about women, how come you’re here at, like, a Gas N Sip on a Saturday night, completely alone, drinking beers, with no women anywhere?” Their response? “By choice, man!”

In the segment, Lloyd is pacing along the market’s east side (in the area pictured below, which is now covered by an overhang), while his friends sit across from him in front of the chain link fence that separates the mart’s parking lot from that of what is now the Burning Bonzai restaurant located next door.

Lloyd’s positioning in the scene is denoted with a pink “x” in the aerial view below, while that of his friends is denoted with blue circles.

Though the market no longer resembles its Say Anything . . . self, its slanted front roofline remains unchanged.

As do the pipes and electrical equipment visible behind Lloyd’s friends on the Burning Bonzai next door.

I cannot express how cool it was to stand there, in the footsteps of Cameron Crowe, John Cusack, Jeremy Piven, and Gregory Sporleder (Hello, Coach Romano from Never Been Kissed!), 28 years after the fact, and see those pipes and wires in the exact same positioning that they were in when filming took place.

Even the ledge Lloyd’s friends sat on appears untouched, aside from a paint job.

Though Retro Dairy Mart only popped up briefly in La La Land in the scene in which Seb grabs a morning coffee, a much wider view of it was shown than in Say Anything . . . Other than the fact that the front patio area was expanded for the shoot, the site looks much the same in person as it did onscreen.

Unfortunately, the brightly-colored Californian Oranges mural seen on the wall of the Burning Bonzai building was just set decoration that was painted over after filming wrapped.

Van Beek, the jazz-club-turned-samba-tapas place that Seb laments throughout La La Land, sits directly across the street from the Retro Dairy Mart. As Sebastian explains to Mia (Emma Stone) in the movie, “I get coffee five miles out of the way just so I can be near a jazz club.” In reality, that building is the former Magnolia Theatre.

The Magnolia appears twice in La La Land – first in the scene in which Seb grabs coffee and then in a later segment in which Mia helps Seb destroy one of the bar’s signs.

Though there seem to be differing reports about its history online, from what I have gathered the Magnolia Theatre was designed by architect Clifford A. Balch in 1941. The one-screen, 797-seat venue was shuttered in 1979 when the owners lost their lease and was subsequently transformed into a recording studio named Evergreen Studios, established in part by Barbra Streisand. Though the property has since been sold and renamed numerous times, it continues to operate as a music studio. Just a few of the stars who have recorded on the premises include Frank Sinatra, Britney Spears, Whitney Houston, Barry Manilow, Justin Timberlake, Paul McCartney, Plácido Domingo, Mariah Carey, George Martin, and Stephen Sondheim.

La La Land is hardly the first production to utilize the Magnolia Theatre.

Paul Sheridan (Fred MacMurray) helps Lona McLane (Kim Novak) with some car trouble in the parking lot of the Magnolia after catching a flick at the theatre in the 1954 noir Pushover.

In the Season 3 episode of Columbo titled “Double Exposure,” which aired in 1973, Dr. Bart Keppel (Robert Culp) perfects his use of subliminal advertising at the Magnolia. The theatre looks a bit different in Columbo than it did in Pushover due to a renovation that took place in 1963.

Thanks to the Dear Old Hollywood website, I learned that the Magnolia Theatre is where Harry Moseby (Gene Hackman) discovers that his wife is having an affair in the 1975 thriller Night Moves.

The Season 1 episode of Electra Woman and Dyna Girl titled “Glitter Rock,” which aired in 1976, also took place at the Magnolia, which the narrator says is located in a “seedy, run-down section of the city.”

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Retro Dairy Mart, aka the Gas N Sip from Say Anything . . ., is located at 4420 West Magnolia Boulevard in Burbank. The Magnolia Theatre from La La Land is located across the street at 4403 West Magnolia Boulevard.

July 10, 2017
St. Elizabeths Hospital from “A Few Good Men”

We all know the scene – a nervous Lt. Cdr. JoAnne Galloway (Demi Moore) briskly walks across a grassy field toward the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, while, behind her, a large U.S. Marine band playing a rousing rendition of “Semper Fidelis” marches in formation and a Silent Drill Platoon performs an enthralling and precisely-timed exhibition drill. I am talking about the opening of A Few Good Men, easily one of the most famous segments in all of moviedom. So I, of course, wanted to stalk St. Elizabeths Hospital, the former mental health facility where the bit was shot, during my trip to Washington, D.C. last September. While the site proved a bit difficult to navigate, I did eventually get to see it – from afar. To cap off my recent A Few Good Men postings, I thought I’d write about it today.

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St. Elizabeths (no apostrophe) Hospital was originally established in 1855 as the Government Hospital for the Insane on a 193-acre plot of farmland overlooking the Anacostia River. The institution was spearheaded by Dorothea Dix, an activist who tirelessly pioneered for the humane treatment of the mentally ill, and Dr. Charles Nichols, a physician’s assistant who became the site’s first superintendent.

Designed by both Dr. Nichols and architect Thomas Ustick Walter, the Gothic Revival-style hospital was built to showcase its bucolic setting, with the hope that the idyllic surroundings would bring peace to those who were institutionalized there.

The federally-run hospital, which was re-named St. Elizabeths in 1916, proved successful for many years and underwent several expansions, eventually coming to encompass a whopping 350 acres on which stood more than 100 buildings. The site grew so large, in fact, that it was divided into sections – the East Campus and the West Campus, with Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue SE bisecting the two. For various reasons, including decreased funding, the deinstitutionalization of health care and a cease on military admissions, St. Elizabeths began to see a decline in patient population in the 1940s. By 1987, operation of the East Campus had been transferred to the District of Columbia. Though admittance continued to decline, a new hospital was constructed in a small section of that site in 2010. It continues to operate today. In fact, up until late last year, John Hinckley Jr. was institutionalized there. (Hinckley actually spent 34 years at St. Elizabeths before being released into the care of his mother on September 10th, 2016.) While the remainder of the East Campus is currently vacant, it is set to be redeveloped as a mixed-use site.

St. Elizabeths’ West Campus continues to be federally owned and though it, too, was set to be redeveloped, the plans fell through. In 2004, the property was taken over by the General Services Administration and it is currently being transformed into the headquarters for the Department of Homeland Security.

Most websites detailing A Few Good Men filming locations state that the St. Elizabeths portions of the movie were lensed at 1100 Alabama Avenue SE, but that is incorrect. That address marks the entrance to the East Campus and when the Grim Cheaper and I pulled up, we knew right away were were in the wrong spot. Thankfully, I happened to find an extremely friendly security guard who counts AFGM as one of his favorite movies. He had no idea it had been filmed on the premises, nor did he recognize the building that masked as the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, which I thankfully had screen captures of. He was completely willing to help with the hunt, though, and called several of his co-workers for assistance. After much discussion, he was finally able to figure out that the building I was looking for was located on the West Campus, which, being that it is home to the Department of Homeland Security, is, obviously, off-limits to the public. The GC and I drove over there regardless, though, to see if anything was visible from the street.

Though the West Campus is heavily guarded, security there was friendly as well. The guard that we spoke with wouldn’t let us onto the property (for obvious reasons), but he did inform us that the structure that masked as the Judge Advocate General’s Corps in A Few Good Men still stands. He also told us exactly where to go to see portions of it from the street.

Known as the Administration Building in real life, the neoclassical-style structure was designed by the Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge architecture firm during a major expansion the hospital underwent in 1903.

The Administration Building popped up countless times throughout A Few Good Men. Along with the opening segment . . .

. . . and the scene in which JoAnne informed Lt. Daniel Kaffee (Tom Cruise) that she got authorization to speak with his client from “Aunt Ginny” (in that bit, Kaffee’s car is parked just south of the building’s entrance) . . .

. . . it was also featured regularly in establishing shots of the movie’s many courtroom scenes.

A Few Good Men utilized the west side of the Administration Building, but, unfortunately, only the east side is visible from the street.

Though several websites report that the inside of an actual courthouse was used in A Few Good Men’s interior courtroom scenes, I have never believed that to be true. Shortly before writing this post, I got in touch with a friendly crew member who confirmed my hunch that the courtroom was a set built at The Culver Studios in Culver City.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: St. Elizabeths Hospital’s Administration Building, aka the Judge Advocate General’s Corps from A Few Good Men, is located on the site’s West Campus, the entrance to which can be found at 2701 Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue SE in the Congress Heights neighborhood of Washington D.C. The campus is closed to the public, but the Administration Building is visible from Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue, about 1000 feet north of where it intersects with Milwaukee Place SE.

June 5, 2017
Sam’s Apartment from “A Few Good Men”

At the risk of saturating my blog with A Few Good Men locations, I’m back today with yet another spot from the 1992 courtroom drama. (And I still have an additional AFGM locale up my sleeve, which I will be writing about soon.) Last September, while in Washington, D.C. – where A Few Good Men was set and partially filmed – I dragged the Grim Cheaper, my good friend Nat, her boyfriend Tony, and her mom Marlys (yeah, there was a whole brood of us) out to Adams Morgan to stalk the apartment building where Lt. (j.g.) Sam Weinberg (Kevin Pollack) lived.

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The building, which is known as Airy View in real life, only appeared once in A Few Good Men, in the scene in which Sam and his co-counsel, Lt. Daniel Kaffee (Tom Cruise), discuss both Sam’s daughter’s first word and whether or not Daniel should encourage their clients to take a plea deal in the Pfc. William Santiago (Michael DeLorenzo) murder case.

Considering how brief the scene is, it is incredible how instantly recognizable Sam’s building is – but that could just be a testament to how many times I’ve seen the movie. Though, Nat and Tony easily recognized it, as well, and they aren’t nearly as obsessed with the flick as I am.

I found this spot thanks to my friend Owen (of the When Write Is Wrong blog), who provided me with quite an extensive list of D.C.-area filming sites prior to my East Coast trip. Owen, in turn, found it via the Movie Tourist website. I am guessing that Movie Tourist tracked it down thanks to the fact that both “Airy View” and an address number of “2415” are visible in the scene shot at Sam’s building.

In real life, the three-story Beaux Arts-style structure houses twenty condominium units.

Airy View was built from 1910 to 1911 and was designed by the L.E. Simpson & Co. architecture firm.

The gorgeous building features a recessed formal entrance with French Classical detailing and a landscaped central courtyard.

Airy View has a very Midnight-in-the-Garden-of-Good-and-Evil thing going for it, which I love. It’s almost hauntingly beautiful.

You can check out a photo of one of the building’s actual units here (those brick walls!) and here.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Airy View, aka Sam Weinberg’s apartment from A Few Good Men, is located at 2415 20th Street NW in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of Washington, D.C.

June 2, 2017