Category: Movie Locations

HarborPlace Tower from “The Craft”

Today’s location is a special request from my good friends Katie and Lavonna, who, in a group text, both suggested I blog about some sites from The Craft as part of my Haunted Hollywood postings. Now the 1996 horror flick is not one of my favorites and its locales have been pretty well documented elsewhere online, but I am never one to turn down a stalking plea from friends. So Katie and Lavonna, this one’s for you! Thankfully, I already had a few sites from the film stockpiled, ahem, stalkpiled. Back in May 2015, a fellow stalker named Nathan wrote to me asking for some help in tracking down two locales from the movie, the occult shop (I told the story behind that search here) and the building where Nancy Downs (Fairuza Balk) lived with her mom, Grace Downs (Helen Shaver). Lucky for me, that spot was an easy find thanks to a notation on IMDB which stated that The Craft had done some filming at Long Beach’s HarborPlace Tower. Though Nathan didn’t think that was the right place, one look around the property on Google Street View told me it was. I finally made it out to see the structure in person this past May.

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Construction on HarborPlace Tower (and no, that’s not a typo – per the building’s official website, the name is spelled “HarborPlace” with no spacing) began in 1990 and was completed in September 1992.

The modern, Art Deco-ish building is comprised of 225 luxury condos.

The structure boasts 22 floors, though there is no 13th, which I thought was quite fitting being that I am covering HarborPlace as a Haunted Hollywood locale.

Building amenities include a pool, a spa, his-and-hers saunas, concierge service, a gym, an underground garage with parking for 600 cars, a 24-hour security guard, a sun deck, a park with artwork designed by sculptor Ned Smyth (some of those pieces are pictured in the images above and below), an expansive lobby, ocean views, and meeting rooms.

You can check out a video showing the interior of the building and one of the units here.

In The Craft, teen witch Nancy places a spell on her abusive step-father causing him to have a heart attack and die. Thanks to his extensive life insurance policy, Nancy and her mom are subsequently able to move from the trailer park where they live to more upscale digs at HarborPlace Tower.

In the scene in which Sarah Bailey (Robin Tunney), Bonnie (Neve Campbell), and Rochelle (Rachel True) visit Nancy’s new apartment for the first time, the girls enter the property on its East Ocean Boulevard side. The buildings visible in the background (located at 555 East Ocean and 455 East Ocean) still look much the same today as they did in 1996 when The Craft was filmed.

The interior of one of HarborPlace’s actual units stood in for Nancy’s apartment in the flick.

While it was under construction, the building appeared as itself in the Season 10 episode of Columbo titled “Columbo and the Murder of a Rock Star,” which aired in 1991.

And in the 1995 action flick Heat, Lt. Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino) ambushed Hugh Benny (Henry Rollins) at HarborPlace Tower.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: HarborPlace Tower, from The Craft, is located at 525 East Seaside Way in Long Beach.

October 13, 2016
“The Bedroom Window” Apartment

I am always on the lookout for new thrillers and scary movies to watch, especially during this time of year. While researching Baltimore locations in preparation for our recent trip to the Old Line State, I came across information about the brownstone apartment featured in The Bedroom Window. I had never seen the 1987 crime flick before, but remembered hearing good things about it. So, figuring the locale would fit in perfectly with my Haunted Hollywood posts, I added the address to my To-Stalk List and ventured right on over there while in town. I finally sat down to watch the movie this past week and found it really held up against the test of time, despite being almost thirty years old. The Bedroom Window is thoroughly frightening and suspenseful. For those who haven’t seen it, the film centers around businessman Terry Lambert (Steve Guttenberg) who starts up an affair with his boss’s wife, Sylvia Wentworth (Isabelle Huppert). Never a smart move. On the evening of their first tryst, Sylvia witnesses an attack on a woman in the park located just outside of Terry’s apartment. She, of course, can’t come forward as a witness, so Terry agrees to call the police and pretend as if he saw the assault. Not surprisingly, things do not go as planned and not only does Terry become a suspect in the crime, but the real culprit comes after him and Sylvia.

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In The Bedroom Window, Terry lives in an apartment located in a handsome four-story brownstone.

Amazingly, the property still looks much the same today as it did in 1987 when the movie was filmed.

The picturesque Federal-style building was originally built in 1900.

It is situated in the Mount Vernon Place Historic District, an area that surrounds Baltimore’s Washington Monument. The entire neighborhood is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The brownstone, like those that surround it, was likely originally constructed as a single-family home.

It was subdivided at some point in time and today the building is made up of individual condo units.

In The Bedroom Window, Terry is shown to live on the second floor in Unit 4. His window, from which Sylvia witnesses the attack, obviously figures prominently in the story.

I am fairly certain that the interior of Terry’s flat was a set built on a soundstage and not one of the building’s actual units – which is unfortunate because it was a fabulous place. It reminded me a bit of the New York loft where Josh (Tom Hanks) lived in Big.

You can check out what one of the building’s actual units looks like here.

The church down the street from Terry’s brownstone also made a brief appearance in The Bedroom Window.

The hauntingly gothic sanctuary, which was designed by Thomas Dixon and Charles L. Carson in 1872, is known as Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Terry’s apartment from The Bedroom Window is located at 12 East Mount Vernon Place in Baltimore.

October 7, 2016
Jeff’s House from “Spellbinder”

My Haunted Hollywood backlog is getting ridiculous! Currently, I have more than 50 already-stalked spooky locations compiled – and only about 20 or so days each year to blog about them. Regardless, I keep compiling more – and I love every minute of it! Why can’t all year be Halloween? Last October, fellow stalker Chas, of the It’s Filmed There website, contributed to my ever-growing list by texting to let me know about a horror movie house he thought I might be interested in – the residence where Jeff Mills (Tim Daly) lived in 1988’s Spellbinder. I had never seen the film before, or even heard of it actually, but was fascinated by the fact that the home was located on Westwanda Drive in Beverly Hills, the very same street where Yvette Vickers lived and was found dead in 2011, after months of lying dead on her floor. (I blogged about that property in October 2014.) I ran right out to stalk the Spellbinder pad and, though I was not able to include it in last year’s Haunted Hollywood postings, wanted to make sure to fit it in this year.

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Sadly, as I discovered upon arriving, the house is obscured by a large fence and very little of it can be seen from the road.

Not much of the residence is visible from the other side of the property, either.

That was not the case back in ‘88 when Spellbinder was filmed, though. As you can below, at the time, the dwelling was only surrounded by a small white picket fence.

What can be seen today, though, matches what appeared onscreen.

In real life, the Cape Cod-style residence, which was built in 1954, boasts 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, and 1,940 square feet of living space.

I am fairly certain that the interior of Jeff’s home was a set – especially being that much of it was destroyed at the hands of the otherworldly friends of Jeff’s new girlfriend, Miranda Reed (Kelly Preston), in the film.

I was able to dig up one interior photograph of the residence from an old MLS listing and in it you can see that the set fireplace from Spellbinder very closely resembles that of the actual house, though it is situated differently. I am guessing that most of the set was modeled after the home’s real life interior.

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 telling me about this location. You can check out his page on Spellbinder’s other filming locations here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Jeff’s house from Spellbinder is located at 9912 Westwanda Drive in Beverly Crest. Yvette Vickers’ former home was located just up the street at 10021 Westwanda Drive, though it has been demolished.

October 6, 2016
“The Exorcist” House and Stairs

I’ve ventured down a deep, dark rabbit hole today, friends. I should back up and explain from the beginning. Last night, the Grim Cheaper and I watched The Exorcist for the first time. I had come across images of the stately brick house and adjacent towering staircase featured in the iconic 1973 horror flick while researching filming locations in the D.C.-area prior to our September trip and found them to be particularly haunting. Despite the fact that I had never seen The Exorcist and knew little about it other than it was considered one of the scariest movies of its day (with theatregoers purportedly fainting during viewings), I jotted down the addresses and moved them to the very top of my D.C. To-Stalk List. Both sites proved fabulously creepy in person. I felt I couldn’t very well write about them without a screening of the flick, though, so last night the GC and I sat down to watch. I was shocked at how much the movie withstood the test of time. I was scared throughout (though I did find the demonic ramblings hysterical and I’m pretty sure they were meant to be obscene and shocking in their day). When I sat down to write this post, I discovered that the film was actually based upon a real life case and starting doing research. And wow, did I get sucked in! I highly suggest you do not open that Pandora’s box unless you have a lot of time on your hands because it. is. fascinating.

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I’ll give you the Reader’s Digest version here. The Exorcist was originally a book – a best-seller, actually, written by William Peter Blatty. William was initially inspired to pen the novel while attending Georgetown University in 1949, when a professor mentioned the supposed real life exorcism of a 14-year-old Maryland boy that had recently taken place. The case of the possessed youngster, which was chronicled in countless newspapers, was shrouded in mystery and the story largely twisted by various reporters. The tale, which detailed violently shaking beds, rashes that spelled out demonic messages, and outbursts of profanity laced with Latin, stuck with Blatty for two decades and he finally began to put pen to paper in 1969. The book became an immediate sensation when it hit shelves in 1971 and drew renewed attention to the real life exorcism. The movie that followed two years later, which Blatty wrote the screenplay to, only exacerbated the public’s fascination with the case and rumor and gossip about it spread. The actual story, which was thoroughly investigated by historian Mark Opsasnick and finally revealed in a five-part article in 1999, is much less paranormal. You can read it here. Though Opsasnick does not mention the boy’s real name in his piece, instead using the alias Roland Doe, today that name is widely published all over the internet. The “real” Exorcist child is Ronald Edwin Hunkeler, who lived at 3807 40th Avenue in Cottage City (that’s his childhood home pictured below). You can see a photograph of a teen Hunkeler here. And you can read another in-depth recap of the case, which further debunks many of the rumors, here.

While writing his novel, Blatty made contact with Father Bowdern, the priest who performed Hunkeler’s exorcism. Bowdern told him of a diary that was written by Father Bishop, an attending priest, which chronicled the entire process. The novelist, of course, asked to see the diary, but Bowdern refused to hand it over. To assure the confidentiality of those involved, Blatty decided to change his story’s lead character from a teen boy to a teen girl. He did eventually get his hands on the diary and much of what he read figured into the book. The movie closely follows the story of the book and centers around famous actress Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn) and her 12-year-old daughter, Regan (Linda Blair), who are temporarily living in a handsome brick-clad pad in Georgetown while Chris shoots a movie nearby. Though their surroundings are gorgeous, it is not long before things take a sinister turn and Regan begins to show signs of demonic possession.

The MacNeil’s Georgetown dwelling is featured extensively throughout The Exorcist.

Looking below, you may notice that the actual residence differs quite a bit from what appeared onscreen. For the shoot, an entire fake wing was built on the eastern side of the house. This was done so that Regan’s bedroom window would be close to the stairs situated next to the property, which accommodated for several scenes that were pertinent to the film (I don’t want to give away any spoilers, so I won’t say more). A fake mansard roof was also added to the structure to give the appearance that the home had an attic – something else that was necessary to the plotline.

A fence has also since been added to the perimeter of the property, obscuring most of the ground floor from view. This was apparently done to ward off stalkers, who still rampantly visit the residence, more than four decades after the film was made!

Said fence was closed when I stalked The Exorcist home, but I did find some Google Street View imagery in which it was open. As you can see below, despite the missing wing and mansard roof, the house is still very recognizable from its time onscreen.

Only the exterior of the property appeared in The Exorcist. Interiors were part of a vast set constructed at New York’s now defunct Camera Mart studios.

In real life, the dwelling, which was built in 1950, consists of 3 bedrooms, 6 bathrooms, and 2,808 square feet living space. The pad sits on a 0.11-acre plot of land that overlooks the Potomac River and the Francis Scott Key Bridge.

I find it fascinating that virtually all of the photos I took of the place have some sort of an orb reflection in them!

I mean, come on! Can things get any more creepy?

The infamous stairs, which figured so prominently in the story, are located just east of and adjacent to the house.

And let me tell you, they are harrowingly steep!

According to a 2013 USA Today article, the stairs are technically known as the “Hitchcock Steps,” named in honor of the prolific suspense director, but ever since the movie’s 1973 premiere have largely been called the “Exorcist Steps.”

Though the southern portion of the stairs was also featured in The Exorcist, we did not venture down to see it. It was over 90 degrees and insanely humid the day we stalked Georgetown and ambling all the way down those steps – and then back up – in that heat did not seem appealing in the slightest.

In 2013, Blatty and Exorcist director William Friedkin revisited several of the movie’s locations, including the stairs. You can watch a video clip of their stalk here.

On an Exorcist side-note – I was shocked to see how much Linda Blair resembles Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) from Stranger Things (which the GC and I are obsessed with, BTW – if you have not yet watched, I cannot more highly recommend doing so!).

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 MacNeil house from The Exorcist is located at 3600 Prospect Street NW in Georgetown. The stairs that appeared in the movie are located just east of the house and run between Prospect Street NW and M Street NW.

October 5, 2016
The Old Man’s House from “Night of the Demons”

Ah, how I love creepy old houses. Horror flicks? Not so much. Which is strange, I know, being that I am such a fan of Halloween, all things scary, and movies in general. I do absolutely love horror films that are done well, though (hello, Scream!), but find that the vast majority are pretty pointless (Phantasm, anyone?). That being said, I will never stop stalking locations from them. A couple of months ago, I came across this screen capture of a fabulously spooky old house from the 1988 slasher flick Night of the Demons on The Location Scout website and practically started drooling. Though the capture was slightly blurry due to movement in the scene, the view of the home showed that it was nothing short of tall, dark, and looming. I knew I had to see it in person and jotted down the address immediately. I finally got out to stalk it a couple of weeks back while I was visiting L.A. and, though it has recently been fixed up and is no longer as spectacularly creepy as it appeared onscreen, the place did not disappoint.

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Originally built in 1898 as a single-family home, the 5-bedroom, 2-bath, 2,706-square-foot property was transformed into a duplex in 1942.

As you can see below, the pad boasts two address numbers – 2833 and 2833 ½.

The residence is located in the Menlo Avenue – West Twenty-ninth Street Historic District, an area of University Park that is comprised of a wide selection of architecturally significant homes that date back to the late 1800s. The neighborhood, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, is comprised of more than fifty Victorian, Classic Revival, and Craftsman-style dwellings, each of them boasting unique detailing. The Night of the Demons house was built in the Dutch Colonial Revival-style and features a pedimented front porch with columns and an elaborate tympanum (yeah, I had to look that one up, too), a gambrel roof, a Palladian window, and carved diamond insets.

According to the neighborhood’s National Register of Historic Places Inventory – Nomination Form from 1987, the home was built for Jennie V. Mitchell, one of the only African American women to own property in Los Angeles at the time. Jennie, who never lived in the residence, is featured in the book The Negro Trail Blazers of California. From 1902 to 1904, the pad was occupied by Bernard Potter, a lawyer who wrote 1950’s Los Angeles Yesterday and Today.

In 2014, the property was sold, underwent a renovation, and today serves as student housing for the University of Southern California. You can check out some interior photos of what it looked at the time it was on the market here and some images of what it currently looks like here.

The residence appears twice in Night of the Demons. It first pops up in the movie’s opening scene in which some teenagers harass the Old Man (Harold Ayer) – and I’m not being disrespectful here, the character’s name is actually listed as “Old Man” – while he is standing in front of his house on Halloween night. The Old Man then proceeds to harass Judy (Cathy Podewell), a teen girl who happens by, before promising his revenge on all “damn rotten kids” while menacingly holding up razor blades and apples.

The dwelling then pops up again in the movie’s closing scene, in which the Old Man walks outside to retrieve his newspaper the following morning.

After grabbing the paper, the Old Man heads back inside, whereupon his wife serves him an apple pie she baked that morning using all of the leftover Halloween apples. You can imagine what happens next. Spoiler alert – it ain’t pretty!

I was floored to discover that the actual interior of the residence was used in the filming of that scene. As you can see below, the stairwell visible in the segment is a direct match to the staircase pictured in an MLS photograph of the home from 2014.

Though the MLS photos did not feature a full image of the dining room area, the walls were visible in one of the pictures and, amazingly, they look to have been the same color pink in 2014 that they were when Night of the Demons was filmed in 1988! As you can see in current images of the home, though, the walls have since been painted taupe, so that is no longer the case.

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

A big THANK YOU to The Location Scout for finding this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Old Man’s house from Night of the Demons is located at 2833 Menlo Avenue in University Park.

October 4, 2016
Pershing Square Restaurant from “Friends with Benefits”

Though most of my stalking adventures consist of copious amounts of time spent tracking down locations from movies and television shows and then heading out to see those sites in person, it does happen on occasion that a locale I have previously visited pops up unexpectedly in a production. When this occurs, it thrills me to no end. Such was the case with Pershing Square, a brasserie situated just outside of Grand Central Station in New York. My family and I had dined at the glass-fronted eatery numerous times throughout the years during our many trips to the Big Apple. In fact, we grabbed coffee there upon first meeting our friend Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, in person back in 2009. So when the restaurant was featured in a scene in 2011’s Friends with Benefits, I was floored. While I had failed to take many photos of the place during our past meals there, I amended that during my recent trip to New York with the Grim Cheaper.

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Pershing Square restaurant is situated on 42nd Street underneath the Park Avenue Viaduct, an elevated roadway which was constructed from 1917 to 1919 in order to provide an express thoroughfare for automobiles traveling on Park Avenue. The Beaux Arts-style span stretches from 40th to 46th Streets and the area beneath where it crosses over 42nd is known as Pershing Square. The name came about due to a failed city plan to build a public plaza in honor of World War I General John J. Pershing on an adjacent plot of land located at the southwest corner of 42nd and Park. The project went awry, though, and in 1920 the property was sold to a developer who constructed an office building on the site. Despite the change in plans, the area continued to be known as Pershing Square.

The space that now houses Pershing Square restaurant, which is tucked into one of the viaduct’s three French-inspired archways, was originally an open air expanse utilized as a barn for trolleys. In 1939, as part of that year’s World’s Fair, the area was enclosed with a wall of bronze and glass and transformed into a tourist information center, which would remain in place for many years.

By 1989, when the Grand Central Partnership started making plans for an $8-million renovation of the viaduct, the tourist center site was vacant. As part of the revamp, the GCP set out to demolish the space and turn it into a restaurant. The project took several years to come to fruition, but Pershing Square finally opened to the public in the fall of 1999.

The eatery, which evokes hints of both London and Paris with its stylized crimson décor, was established by restaurateur Michael “Buzzy” O’Keefe, of The Water Club and The River Café fame.

Pershing Square won The Municipal Art Society of New York’s Preservation Award the same year it opened.

The brasserie, which has the feel of a glamorous train car from yesteryear and also boasts a fabulous bakery/espresso bar, quickly became one of my family’s favorite NYC dining spots. Though a bit pricey, the food is fabulous and the ambiance charming, and we find ourselves returning there time and time again.

In Friends with Benefits, Pershing Square is where (spoiler alert!) Dylan (Justin Timberlake) takes Jamie (Mila Kunis) for their first official date after professing his love to her via a massive flash mob in Grand Central Station set to Semisonic’s (not Third Eye Blind’s) 1998 hit “Closing Time.”

In the scene, Dylan and Jamie sit in the very front of the eatery.

In reality, though, there is no seating in that area of Pershing Square.

As you can see above and below, that section of the restaurant serves as a sort of waiting area.

During New York’s warmer months, Pershing Square operates an outdoor café situated on its west side. That café was featured in a battle scene in the 2012 film The Avengers.

The front of Pershing Square was also shown briefly in the scene.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Pershing Square, from Friends with Benefits, is located at 90 East 42nd Street in New York’s Midtown East neighborhood. You can visit the eatery’s official website here.

September 9, 2016
The Ansonia from “Single White Female”

There is no shortage of strikingly beautiful, ornately embellished buildings on New York’s Upper West Side. I blogged about one of them, The Apthorp, and the circuitous route some friends and I took to stalk it on Friday. That route included a stop at another gorgeous UWS structure, The Ansonia, easily one of the most breathtaking properties I have ever laid eyes on. Since the site has appeared in countless productions over the years, including the 1992 thriller Single White Female, I figured it was definitely blog-worthy.

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Commissioned in 1899 by millionaire property developer William Earl Dodge Stokes, the building took five years to complete at a cost of $3 million, finally opening to the public on April 19th, 1904. The 17-story Beau Arts-style structure originally served as a luxury residential hotel.

Encompassing 550,000 square feet of space, the ornate limestone building was designed by French architect Paul E. M. Duboy, though Stokes was said to have had a large hand in the conception.

Upon completion, The Ansonia boasted a roof garden with two pools, a basement swimming pool, an art collection, a towering rooftop skylight, a two-story mansard roof, turreted corner towers, balconies, and balustrades.

Stokes also harbored a virtual circus of animals onsite. Several geese, goats, ducks, a bear, a pig, and 500 chickens made their home in the roof garden, while seals were stationed in a fountain in the lobby.

Each of The Ansonia’s 340 suites featured countless then cutting-edge amenities such as an early form of air conditioning, electric stoves, a tubing system to deliver messages, and hot and cold running water.

According to a 2005 New York magazine article, Stokes was not a fan of insurance companies and hoped to avoid using them in any of the dealings with his new building. As such, he went so far as to establish a company that manufactured a strong terra-cotta that would help fireproof The Ansonia. The interior walls were also built incredibly thick for the same purpose, making the hotel units largely soundproof, which made the site attractive to musicians such as conductor Arturo Toscanini, pianist Igor Stravinsky, and opera singers Lauritz Melchior, Ezio Pinza, Enrico Caruso, and Lily Pons, who all stayed on the premises at one time or another. Other luminaries who checked in included Billie Burke, Florenz Ziegfeld, Babe Ruth, and Jack Dempsey. The Ansonia was also where Arnold “Chick” Gandil and some of his fellow Chicago White Sox players cooked up the scheme to throw 1919 World Series.

The 1930s and ‘40s were not kind to The Ansonia. Due to the Great Depression, the site began to lose revenue causing all of the hotel facilities, including restaurants, to be shut down and the building was eventually transformed into an apartment house. During World War II, the property was stripped of all of its metal detailing, which was then sent to be used for war supplies, and its large skylight covered over with tar to satisfy the blackout ordinances.

The structure fell into such disrepair that it even faced demolition by its then owner in 1970. Thankfully, Ansonia residents and concerned local citizens stepped in and had the building landmarked, protecting it from being razed. In 1978, the property was purchased by investor Jesse Krasnow who began a lengthy restoration process. His idea of restoration was vastly different from most of the residents, though, and in 1980 they banded together, filed a lawsuit against Krasnow, and began a rent strike. There was dissention among the ranks, though, and a smaller group wound up breaking off and filing a different lawsuit. Of the tenuous situation, journalist Steven Gaines said in the same New York magazine article, “The Ansonia Hotel became the single most litigated residence in the history of New York City. A housing-court judge was assigned full-time to the case, and over the next ten years, Krasnow found himself cast in the role of one of the city’s most villainous landlords.” Jesse eventually converted the Ansonia to a condominium building, bought out the most troubled tenants, and set the property on a more copasetic path. He still owns the building today.

One look at The Ansonia’s uniquely arresting architecture and it is easy to see how it has wound up onscreen so many times over the years – far too many times for me to fully chronicle here, but I’ll try.

In Single White Female, The Ansonia served as the apartment building of Allison Jones (Bridget Fonda), where she first lived with her philandering boyfriend, Sam Rawson (Steven Weber), and then with her psychotic roommate, Hedra Carlson (Jennifer Jason Leigh).

Many great shots of the property were shown in the movie.

Though the interior of Allison’s apartment was a set and not one of The Ansonia’s actual units . . .

. . . the building’s grand interior staircase, which spans 17 floors, was utilized in the filming.

Curmudgeon actor Willy Clark (Walter Matthau) lived at The Ansonia in the 1975 comedy The Sunshine Boys.

That same year, the alley that runs behind The Ansonia appeared in Three Days of the Condor as the spot where Joseph Turner (Robert Redford) engaged in a shootout.

Two Brittany Murphy productions have been shot at The Ansonia. In the 2001 thriller Don’t Say a Word, the building served as the home of Dr. Nathan R. Conrad (Michael Douglas).

And at the beginning of the 2003 comedy Uptown Girls, Brittany’s character, Molly, called a top floor residence home.

In the 2006 comedy My Super Ex-Girlfriend, G-Girl (Uma Thurman) puts out a massive fire at The Ansonia.

The Ansonia served as the home of Rowena Price (Halle Berry) in the 2007 thriller Perfect Stranger.

The building masked as the fictional Upper East Side Drake residential hotel, supposedly located at 999 Park Avenue, on the 2012 television series 666 Park Avenue.

The real life interior of The Ansonia was featured in the pilot episode of the series. Those interiors were later re-built on a soundstage at Cine Magic Riverfront Studios in Brooklyn for all subsequent filming once the show was picked up.

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 Ansonia, from Single White Female, is located at 2109 Broadway on New York’s Upper West Side.

August 29, 2016
The Apthorp from “Funny Farm”

I am the first to admit that, though I am not a natural towhead, I am a dumb blonde through and through. The Grim Cheaper often kids that all of the hair dye I’ve used over the years has obviously gone to my brain. Case in point – during a 2008 trip to New York, the two of us came across a massive and beautiful building on the Upper West Side. We were both struck by the structure’s size and elegance and stopped to peer through its front gates at the gorgeous and also massive central courtyard. I made a mental note of the property’s name, The Apthorp, but did not take many photographs of it because, at the time, I did not realize it was a filming location. Later that same year, I read the novel Black & White by Dani Shapiro, in which the main character, Clara Dunne, grew up in The Apthorp. The building served as an almost character in the story and I became even more fascinated by it. Flash forward to our recent trip to the Big Apple. While planning our visit, I came across a blurb about the building in a movie locations book – or at least I thought I did. The book actually referenced another striking and similarly-named Upper West Side structure, The Ansonia, with a mention that Single White Female had been shot on the premises. So I added The Ansonia’s address (2109 Broadway) to my To-Stalk List and dragged the GC and our friends Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, Lavonna, Kim, and Katie out to see it our second day in the city.

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As soon as we walked up to the building, though, I realized I had gotten my wires crossed somewhere, as it wasn’t the place I had remembered. While gorgeous and grand in size, The Ansonia (pictured below) lacked that stunning central courtyard that the GC and I had been so enamored with. Thoroughly confused, I apologized to the group and pulled out my trusty iPhone to figure out where I had gone wrong. A woman happened to overhear my musings over the mistake and mentioned that there was another spectacular structure located nearby named The Dorilton. She figured it might be the place I was looking for. So our group walked a few blocks south to 171 West 71st Street to see if it was the spot the GC and I had visited all those years ago. (And don’t worry, I will be doing a blog post on The Ansonia and its many onscreen appearances soon.)

The Dorilton (pictured below) proved to be a bust, too. Though the building is undoubtedly stunning and huge, and even boasts a courtyard, I knew right away it was not the correct place.

Feeling like a complete and total dolt, I was ready to throw in the towel when Owen mentioned another stately Upper West Side building, The Apthorp, that boasts a large central courtyard. He knew of the locale thanks to its appearance in the 1988 film Funny Farm. So our poor group once again turned around and headed eight blocks north to take a look. Sure enough, Owen had hit the nail on the head! The building I had remembered was The Apthorp! I later mentioned to Owen that I felt like we were playing “musical buildings” that day. Huge thanks to him for finally leading us to the right spot!

Commissioned by the Astor family, The Apthorp was designed by the Clinton and Russell architecture firm in 1908. The 12-story Italian Renaissance Revival-style structure, which occupies an entire city block, originally consisted of 103 uniquely-designed units, each with eleven-foot ceilings and eight-foot windows. The building, which for a time was New York’s largest apartment complex and even today remains one of its most luxurious, is best known for its grand entrance featuring a spectacular curved limestone ceiling and an intricate wrought iron gate, as well as the 12,000-square-foot courtyard that serves as its centerpiece.

Sadly, the courtyard is closed off to the general public. The glimpses that can be gleaned, though, show that it is strikingly beautiful and sprawling.

Considering its lavish appointments, it is no surprise that The Apthorp has been home to many celebrities and notables throughout its history including Al Pacino, Lena Horne, Joseph Heller, Rosie O’Donnell, Conan O’Brien, Nora Ephron, and Cyndi Lauper, who in an absolutely ridiculous move in 2005 sued the building’s owners to have the rate on her rent-stabilized unit lowered from $3,750 to $989 a month. Even more ridiculous – she won the case. As an article in The New York Sun about the verdict stated, “So New Yorkers can sleep easy in their (excessively expensive) bedrooms tonight, knowing that the truly needy are getting affordable housing.”

In 2006, The Apthorp was purchased by a developer, who set about turning the units into condos. Cindy’s wasn’t the only apartment to be rent-stabilized, so as you can imagine, the transition did not go smoothly. What followed was several years worth of fighting with the many tenants opposing the change, the Attorney General who not only shut down the sales office for a time, but fined the developers $190,000, and the brokers who at one point all resigned. The conversion was so fraught with drama that Curbed New York dubbed their series of reports on the story “As the Apthorp Turns.”

The condo conversion did eventually go through and the husband-and-wife architecture team of Ingrid Birkhofer and Fernando Papale were commissioned to bring each unit back to its original glory. The result of their efforts is nothing short of spectacular. You can check out some images of the re-vamped building here and here. As Jason Sheftell wrote in a 2009 Daily News article, “Determined not to turn the Apthorp into the next Plaza Hotel, where New York history was massacred by poor layouts and claustrophobic rooms, owners and architects executed a long-term project, with skilled artisans restoring apartments as they become vacant.” I am so thankful that such care was taken to conserve the building’s past. As I noted in this 2009 blog post, I was not at all impressed with the conversion of the Plaza and wholeheartedly agree with Sheftell’s assessment that the hotel and its history were “massacred.” Today, The Apthorp boasts four lobbies, 161 units, a private spa, a gym, a yoga studio, a steam room, a sauna, an entertainment suite, and a kids’ playroom. What I wouldn’t give to live there!

The Apthorp has been featured in countless productions. According to a 1986 The New York Times article, at that time around 30 films were shot on the premise each year! Though I could never properly chronicle all of the movies and television shows shot at the building, read on for a list of a few of the highlights.

The building was featured in the opening scenes of Funny Farm as the New York home of Andy (Chevy Chase) and Elizabeth (Madolyn Smith Osborne). The front exterior of The Apthorp . . .

. . . as well as the courtyard were featured in the flick.

In the 1976 movie Network, The Apthorp served as the home of Max Schumacher (William Holden).

According to the book Mad as Hell, Apartment 9F was utilized in the filming.

The exterior of the building was also shown briefly in the film.

I was floored to learn while researching for this post that The Apthorp was featured briefly as the home of John Russell (George C. Scott) in my favorite scary movie of all time, 1980’s The Changeling. For those who have never seen the film, I cannot recommend it more. It’s absolutely terrifying!

Interestingly, it appears that 9F, the very same unit that was featured in Network, was also utilized as John’s apartment in The Changeling. As you can see below, the living room areas from both films are an exact match.

As are the kitchens.

Vera Cicero (Diane Lane) lived at The Apthorp in 1984’s The Cotton Club.

Nora Ephron not only lived in the building for a time, but she also filmed a movie there. In the 1986 dramedy Heartburn, Rachel Samstat (Meryl Streep) heads to the home of her father at The Apthorp after finding out that her husband is cheating on her.

Supposedly, the interior of an Apthorp unit was used in the filming of the 1986 comedy The Money Pit, but because all of the apartments in the building were individually designed and bear very different looks, it was impossible for me to verify that information.

The Apthorp was used regularly on the 2009 NBC series Kings.

Though its roofline was digitally altered on the show.

Horvath (Alfred Molina) and Balthazar (Nicolas Cage) are released from their ten-year imprisonment in an urn while at The Apthorp in the 2010 adventure film The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.

In the Season 1 episode of Person of Interest titled “Super,” which aired in 2012, John Reese (Jim Caviezel) moves into The Apthorp to investigate the building’s longtime superintendent, Ernie Trask (David Zayas).

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

Big THANK YOU to my friend Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong blog, for not only figuring out which building I was looking for, but for letting me know of its appearance in Funny Farm and for providing the screen captures from the movie that appear in this post.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Apthorp, from Funny Farm, is located at 2211 Broadway on New York’s Upper West Side.

August 26, 2016
The Rum House from “Birdman”

The Grim Cheaper typically could care less about filming locations, but he is absolutely obsessed with the movie The Godfather. So I included a couple of locales from the 1972 Best Picture winner on the itinerary for our recent trip to the Big Apple. One of those spots was Hotel Edison, a historic Theater District lodging that made a brief appearance in the flick. While we were stalking the place, we happened to strike up a conversation with the super-friendly doorman who informed us that the property’s first-floor bar, The Rum House, had been featured in another Best Picture winner, 2014’s Birdman. So we headed right on in to snap some photos of it. As I’ve said many times before, stalking begets stalking.

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Commissioned by Milton J. Kramer, the 26-story Hotel Edison was originally designed by Herbert J. Knapp in 1931. Thomas Edison was enlisted to turn on the property’s lights (albeit via a remote control from his home in New Jersey) during the grand opening ceremony.

Despite a few renovations that have taken place over the years, the hotel still appears to boast much of its original Art Deco detailing. You can check out a postcard with vintage images of the property here.

At the time of its founding, Hotel Edison featured three onsite restaurants. Today, there is only one eatery/bar in operation on the premises – The Rum House.

The Rum House was originally established in 1973. By the time its owners lost their lease in 2009, the place was in desperate need of a facelift.

Thankfully, a group of restaurateurs including Kenneth McCoy, Michael Neff, and Abdul Tabini took over the space in 2011 and began a renovation. The threesome kept much of the watering hole’s original charm intact, while adding some updates, including a new bar, lighting, and tile flooring. Of the redesign, McCoy stated in a 2015 New York Post article, “We wanted to bring back the feeling of a Times Square piano bar in the 1940s or ’50s.” You can see what it formerly looked like here.

The renovated lounge quickly became a hit with New Yorkers, tourists, and celebrities alike. Just a few of the stars who have been spotted there include Tony Danza, George Wendt, Jake Gyllenhaal, Molly Ringwald, and Jon Hamm. Emma Stone and Bill Murray even tickled the ivories there together one night in 2014.

The Rum House appeared twice in Birdman. It first popped up in the scene in which Mike (Edward Norton) and Riggan (Michael Keaton) discussed their bad preview.

The exterior of The Rum House was also featured in that scene. Through a bit of camera trickery, the bar was made to appear as if it is situated next door to the St. James Theatre, where much of the film took place. In reality, though, it is located three blocks to the north.

Riggan returns to The Rum House to grab a drink in a later scene and winds up confronting theatre critic Tabitha Dickinson (Lindsay Duncan).

According to the Post article, location manager Joaquin Prange chose The Rum House, which shut down for a week to accommodate the shoot, because of its old school aesthetic. He says, “The place needed to fit with Michael Keaton’s character. He’s a recovering alcoholic. Just the fact that he’s taking a drink is a big deal, and the look of the place needed to reflect that. Rum House is dark and woody, with a bit of a patina, like the kind of place where Riggan Thomson would go for a drink by himself. This is not about drinking during the good times, but we also wanted a bar that looked classy, a place that could make you a good cocktail. It was not about finding a dive.” The cast and crew wound up liking The Rum House so much that an impromptu wrap party was held there the last night of filming shortly after the final scene was lensed.

As I mentioned earlier, Hotel Edison appeared briefly in The Godfather. It popped up at the beginning of the scene in which Luca Brasi (Lenny Montana) headed to meet with Sollozzo (Al Lettieri). In the segment, Brasi is shown walking through the Edison’s rear hallway, which can be reached via 46th Street. (Sadly, that area of the hotel was closed for renovations when we were there so I could not photograph it.) When Brasi turned the corner to head into the restaurant where he ultimately met his end, though, he was at a different location entirely – a much disputed location. While it has been reported in several books and online that Sollozzo killed Brasi in Hotel Edison’s now shuttered Sofia Ristorante Italiano, according to Scouting NY the scene was actually shot at the Hotel St. George in Brooklyn.

The same Hotel Edison hallway appeared in 1994’s Bullets over Broadway as the spot where David Shayne (John Cusack) argued with Julian Marx (Jack Warden) about hiring Olive Neal (Jennifer Tilly) for a role in his play.

I was floored to discover while researching Hotel Edison for this post that the site’s now shuttered Café Edison was used in an episode of Sex and the City! In Season 5’s “Anchors Away,” Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) seeks shelter from the rain – and a bowl of matzo ball soup – at the eatery and winds up being seated next to a woman who has a penchant for lithium-laced ice cream. Café Edison was a longtime Theater District staple that served meals onsite from 1980 through 2014 when its owners, unfortunately, lost their lease. The space currently remains shuttered. You can see some photos of what it used to look like here.

The hotel’s Edison Ballroom also made an appearance in “Anchors Away” as the spot where Carrie and her friends party with the plethora of sailors in town for Fleet Week. At the time, the space was known as Supper Club and, though it looks a bit different today, it is still recognizable from its SATC cameo. You can check out some photos of what it currently looks like 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: The Rum House, from Birdman, is located at 228 West 47th Street, inside of Hotel Edison, in New York’s Theater District. You can visit the watering hole’s official website here.

August 19, 2016
The Inspiration for the “Annie” Orphanage

My movie obsession began at a young age. I can pretty much pinpoint it to 1982 when Annie premiered. I was hooked on the musical from the start. I watched it over and over and over, eventually wearing out the VHS copy that my parents bought me. Its locations have also served as a longtime fascination. Ever since taking my second Warner Bros. tour in 2008, I have known that the Hudson St. Home for Girls, aka the orphanage in the film, could be found in the studio’s backlot, on Hennesy Street to be precise. The façade and the area surrounding it were created by Annie production designer Dale Hennesy specifically for the film. What I didn’t know up until a couple of years ago, though, was the fact that Dale based his design of the Hudson St. Home for Girls on two real New York buildings. I learned this bit of information from the Annie Official Movie Souvenir Program which I picked up at the Hollywood Show while meeting Annie herself, Aileen Quinn, in 2012. As you can guess, I immediately started chomping at the bit to track the buildings down.

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Of the orphanage’s inspiration, the Souvenir Program states, “Roughly a year before filming on the street [Hennesy Street at Warner Bros.] actually began, Academy Award-winning production designer Hennesy traveled to New York and combed the Lower East Side for the key structure in the Annie script – the orphanage. He found two he liked. One was on Mott Street, just south of Houston, and was now a four-unit apartment building. The other, near Sixth Street and Avenue B, was actually a former Children’s Aid Society home, built in the late 1880s. Making a movie in that area would have been difficult and expensive, so it was decided to build on the lot rather than film on location. The orphanage would combine elements of both buildings, and would be flanked with copies of typical New York structures in their area.” The studio rendering that Dale created is pictured below.

For all of the trouble he went to creating the Hudson St. Home for Girls, very little of the final product was actually shown onscreen.

As you can see above and below, only very tight shots of the orphanage, mainly focused on the doorway area, were featured in Annie.

Thankfully though, I was extremely familiar with the Hudson St. Home for Girls façade from my many visits to the WB, so I knew exactly what to look for when I started tracking down the New York buildings that served as its inspiration.

The building said to be located near Sixth Street and Avenue B, I pinpointed in a snap. I simply headed over to Google to do some Street Viewing of the area and found exactly what I was looking for at 630 East Sixth Street. The picturesque structure at that site features a distinct peaked roof, four levels of angled bay windows (each flanked by a pair of arched windows), and an entrance with a heavy portico situated to the side, all of which match the Annie orphanage to a T. To top it off, further research informed me that the property did, indeed, used to be a Children’s Aid Society school, as was mentioned in the Souvenir Program. Voilà!

The Sixth Street School, as the locale was originally known, was constructed in 1888. Funding for the site, which was designed by Calvert Vaux (the architect and landscape artist who co-designed Central Park) and George Kent Radford, was provided by Emily Vanderbilt Sloane, daughter of William Henry Vanderbilt. In 1932, the school was transformed into a men’s homeless shelter. It has since gone through several different incarnations including a women and children’s shelter, a church, and a social services facility. Today, it serves as a home for those suffering from AIDS and is known as Pencer House.

In 1999, the building’s handsome exterior underwent a restoration process led by Harden + Van Arnam Architects, the result of which is stunning.

You can read a more in-depth history of the site here.

The second building that served as inspiration for the Hudson St. Home for Girls, which the Souvenir Program described as being “on Mott Street, just south of Houston,” was also a snap to find. I simply headed to Google Street View once again to take a look at the block of Mott Street located immediately south of East Houston Street and spotted the right place within minutes at 256 Mott. As it turns out, the site was also once a Children’s Aid Society school known as the Fourteenth Ward Industrial School.

The Children’s Aid Society actually built twelve such schools in the 1880s and 1890s, all employing the same Victorian Gothic style. Only six remain intact today. Lucky for me, the Annie buildings are two of those extant structures. The purpose of the Children’s Aid Society schools was to teach trades to homeless and poverty-stricken children in the hopes that they would be able to provide for themselves in adulthood.

The Fourteenth Ward Industrial School was also built in 1888 and was also designed by Vaux and Radford. The funding was donated by John Jacob Astor III in honor of his wife, Charlotte, who had passed away the previous year. Today, the structure, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, serves as a residential building.

As you can see, the five-unit, four-story property boasts a peaked roof, angled bay windows flanked by arched windows, and a porticoed door situated off to one side, just like the Hudson St. Home for Girls façade and the Sixth Street School.

Unfortunately, it was undergoing a restoration of some kind while we were there and portions of its façade were covered over with plywood.

You can read a more in-depth history of the building here and here.

I was absolutely thrilled to see, while making screen captures for this post, that Dale Hennesy chose to use 256, the real life address number of the Fourteenth Ward Industrial School, as the address number of the Hudson St. Home for Girls.

Interestingly, not only did the Fourteenth Ward Industrial School serve as inspiration for the Annie orphanage, but it is also a filming location! The building is where Rebecca Bloomwood (Isla Fisher) and Suze (Krysten Ritter) lived in 2009’s Confessions of a Shopaholic.

And it served as Audry’s (Adrienne Shelly) apartment in 1989’s The Unbelievable Truth. (I apologize for the horrible screen captures below which I got off of YouTube.)

On a side-note – I find it surprising that the peaked roofline of the Annie orphanage, which Hennesy took such care to re-create from both of the inspiration buildings and which is so significant to their architecture, never appeared onscreen. The screen capture below shows the closest we get to seeing it in the movie.

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 Fourteenth Ward Industrial School is located at 256 Mott Street in New York’s Nolita neighborhood. The Sixth Street School is located at 630 East 6th Street in the East Village. The façade of the Hudson St. Home for Girls from Annie can be found on Hennesy Street at Warner Bros. Studio, which is located at 3400 West Riverside Drive in Burbank. Tour information can be found here.

July 22, 2016