Category: Movie Locations

The Former KCET Studios from “L.A. Story”

While perusing through my extensive backlog of stalking photographs recently, I realized that there were a few L.A. Story locales that I had yet to blog about, one of which was the former site of KCET Studios in Los Feliz, where Harris K. Telemacher (Steve Martin) worked in the 1991 comedy. I had actually stalked the spot way back in May, but, for whatever reason, never got around to writing about it. So here goes.

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The 4.5-acre lot located at 4401 Sunset Boulevard in Los Feliz has been the site of a moviemaking facility just shy of one hundred years. The first studio to be established there was Lubin Manufacturing Company in 1912, which was founded by film producer Siegmund Lubin to create educational videos. After he sold the location in 1913, it changed hands numerous times and then was eventually purchased by an actor named Charles Ray in 1920. Ray built several red brick structures on the premises, most of which still stand to this day. He also constructed a cutting-edge soundstage with a glass-enclosed stage, glass roof, removable sides, a water tank, and extensive electrical equipment. Amazingly, that soundstage, known as Studio A, is still currently in use. When Charles Ray Productions went bankrupt in 1923, the locale again went through a succession of different owners including Monogram Pictures, Allied Artists, and ColorVision. In 1971, KCET purchased the facility for $800,000. The company remained there for the next 40 years.

The studio, which was named a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument in 1978, was acquired by the Church of Scientology to be used as one of their “production of religious and social betterment audiovisual properties” in April 2011.

In L.A. Story, KCET Studios stood in for the KYOY 14 news facilities. The exterior of the structure was shown in one of the movie’s opening scenes, in which Harris arrived at work to give his daily wacky weather report. In the scene, he drove through the studio’s east entrance, which is located near 1441 North Hoover Street.

I am fairly certain that the area where Harris parked his car in the scene is on the studio’s north side, near the intersection of Sunset Drive and North Commonwealth Avenue. I could not match the exact angle of the screen capture below being that the spot where Harris parked is located on the studio grounds, but I believe the street visible behind him is North Commonwealth Avenue.

And that the satellite pictured below is the one he parked next to.

The interior of one of the studio’s soundstages was also used as the KYOY 14 news set in the film.

Thanks to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, I learned that the exterior of the former KCET Studios was also featured as the City Emergency Hospital where Dr. Miles J. Bennell (Kevin McCarthy) was evaluated in the 1956 horror flick Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

I believe that the area used as the hospital entrance is the gate located near 4368 Sunset Drive, just east of where Harris parked his car in L.A. Story.

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The former KCET Studios, from L.A. Story, is located at 4401 Sunset Boulevard in Los Feliz. The entrance that Harris drove through in the flick can be found near 1441 North Hoover Street, in between Fountain Avenue and Sunset Drive. The area where he parked is located just south of the intersection of Sunset Drive and North Commonwealth Avenue. The City Emergency Hospital gate from Invasion of the Body Snatchers can be found near 4368 Sunset Drive, slightly east of where Harris parked his car in L.A. Story.

December 9, 2013
Mr. Hart’s Mansion from “Nine to Five”

One of my favorite movies growing up was the 1980 comedy Nine to Five. I would watch it on an almost daily basis (no joke!) and practically had the thing memorized. I can still belt out the theme song to this day, in fact. (I am guessing the majority of my fellow stalkers can, too.) A couple of weeks ago, while rummaging through our DVD collection, I happened to come across the flick and realized I had not seen it in years, so I immediately popped it in. I was a little afraid that it would not live up to my memories of it, so I was floored to find myself laughing throughout. The movie definitely stands the test of time. That garage-door-opener/hang-glider contraption was pure genius! Anyway, immediately after watching, I, of course, headed straight to my computer to do some location sleuthing and was floored to discover that the mansion belonging to Franklin M. Hart Jr. (Dabney Coleman) in the flick had already been identified and that, according to the photos I found, still looked pretty much exactly the same as it did in Nine to Five. So I ran right out to stalk it while I was in L.A. a couple of weeks ago.

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In Nine to Five, Doralee Rhodes (Dolly Parton), Violet Newstead (Lily Tomlin) and Judy Bernly (Jane Fonda) hold their “sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot” of a boss, Mr. Hart, hostage (by forcing him into a hang gliding harness strapped to a customized garage door opener) for three weeks at his stately Tudor mansion while they try to find proof that he has been embezzling money.

As you can see below, today the house has quite a bit of foliage blocking its visibility from the street and the western portion of it seems to have been remodeled a bit since Nine to Five was filmed. Otherwise though, little else of the dwelling has been altered in the ensuing years.

In real life, the 1932 mansion boasts seven bedrooms, ten baths (!!!), 9,738 square feet of living space, and a 1.76-acre lot.

I was unable to determine if the estate’s actual interior appeared in Nine to Five, as I, unfortunately, could not find any interior photographs of the place online. In 1984, the abode was featured extensively in the pilot episode of Murder, She Wrote, which was titled “The Murder of Sherlock Holmes.” (Pictured below.) The interior shown in the episode looks completely different than the interior of the house from Nine to Five, though, so either the property was remodeled in between productions or a set was built for the filming of the movie. (It is highly unlikely that a set was built for Murder, She Wrote as the mansion only appeared in one single episode.)

Pictured below is the kitchen that appeared in Nine to Five, as compared to the kitchen that appeared in Murder, She Wrote. As you can see, they do not even remotely resemble each other.

Neither do the living rooms;

or stairways.

Further confusing the matter is that in Murder, She Wrote, a different location altogether was shown in establishing shots of the exterior of the mansion at night. And while I at first thought that interior filming might possibly have taken place at that second mansion, that does not appear to have been the case.

In “The Murder of Sherlock Holmes,” there is a shot of a character walking out of the interior of the residence onto the front porch, in which the exterior steps, arched façade and paneled front door are visible. Those elements match the exterior of the Nine to Five mansion (which you will be able to see more clearly later on in this post). I’ll leave it up to my fellow stalkers to be the judge on this one, but my best guess is that the interior of Mr. Hart’s mansion was just a set.

The exterior of the mansion also appeared very briefly in set-up shots of Bel-Air in the Season 1 episode of Dragnet titled “The Big Jade,” which aired in 1967.

The Nine to Five mansion was also where Jim Rockford (James Garner) and Warren Weeks (a very young Ron Rifkin) hid from the police by crashing a wedding in the Season 3 episode of The Rockford Files titled “The Trouble with Warren,” which aired in 1976.

As you can see below in a screen capture from Murder, She Wrote as compared to a screen capture from The Rockford Files, the front door, brick steps and arched overhang that appear in both episodes match each other perfectly.

A small portion of the interior of the mansion also appeared briefly in “The Trouble with Warren.”

And while the residence was also reportedly used in the 1981 television miniseries Jacqueline Susann’s Valley of the Dolls, I could not find a copy of that production with which to verify that information.

On a sad side note – I was heartbroken to learn that Paul Walker passed away in a car accident on Saturday afternoon. I had the pleasure of meeting Paul last December and he was easily one of the nicest celebrities I have ever encountered. You can read about his legendary kindness in this fabulous CNN article. And you can read about my experience meeting Paul on the Mike the Fanboy website here. Such a tragic loss.

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Los Angeles magazine online. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Mr. Hart’s mansion from Nine to Five is located at 10431 Bellagio Road in Bel-Air.

December 3, 2013
The Town House Motel from “Vacation”

As I mentioned in last Wednesday’s post, fellow stalker Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, recently got on a kick of tracking down missing locations from his all-time favorite comedy, the 1983 classic National Lampoon’s Vacation. One of the locales he managed to find was the Town House Motel in Glendale, where Clark W. Griswold (Chevy Chase) and his family – wife Ellen (Beverly D’Angelo), son Rusty (Anthony Michael Hall) and daughter Audrey (Beverly Hills, 90210’s Dana Barron) – spent the first night of their road trip from Chicago to Los Angeles. [I also did some digging and pinpointed the gas station where Clark tried to fill the new Wagon Queen Family Truckster (it’s the Little America Hotel at 2515 East Butler Avenue in Flagstaff, Arizona) and the rest stop where he danced with a sandwich (it’s the Shaw Creek Rest Area near 25090 Highway 160, just east of El Dorado Lane, in South Fork, Colorado).] And while Owen informed me that the Town House Motel was, sadly, no longer standing, I figured since I was already in the area stalking the car dealership from the film, I might as well drop by.

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Towards the beginning of Vacation, Clark and the gang spend the night at a roadside lodging somewhere outside of St. Louis, Missouri. They wind up at the motel unexpectedly, after Clark, who has fallen asleep at the wheel, pulls in there accidentally. In the scene, the Griswold’s Wagon Queen Family Truckster (newly-adorned with graffiti that spells out “Honky Lips” LOL) goes careening down West Campus Street, heading south. It then veers across East Colorado Street and straight into the parking lot of the Town House Motel, losing a few pieces of luggage in the process.

While watching the scene, Owen had spotted an address number of “1510” above the property’s front entrance. From there, he did a Google search for “1510,” “motel” and “Los Angeles,” and one of the first results to pop up was an eBay sale for a 1950s matchbook from the Town House Motel located at 1510 East Colorado Street in Glendale. As he quickly discovered via a Street View search of that address, though, the structure had been bulldozed and a new, much larger hotel was now standing in its place. Sadness! You can check out what the Town House used to look like here and here.

The new property is named the Glendale Lodge and, as you can see below, it looks nothing at all like the former Town House.

I am fairly certain that one of the Town House’s real life rooms was also used in the filming, although the vibrating bed was most likely a prop.

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Los Angeles magazine online. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, for finding this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Glendale Lodge, aka the former site of the Town House Motel from Vacation, is located at 1510 East Colorado Street in Glendale.

December 2, 2013
Lou Glutz Motors from “Vacation”

Fellow stalker Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, recently embarked upon a mission to try to track down some of the unknown locations from one of his favorite movies, the 1983 classic Vacation. He had quite a bit of success, too, managing to pinpoint two elusive spots, one of which was the Norwalk motel where Clark W. Griswold (Chevy Chase) skinny-dipped with The Girl in the Ferrari (Christie Brinkley) – a place I was absolutely dying to stalk while in L.A. two weeks ago, but unfortunately, the long trek down to that area made it unfeasible to do so. Anyway, Owen’s quest had me reviewing some of the movie’s more well-known locales, including Glendale Dodge Chrysler Jeep, which I had long been aware stood in for the supposed Chicago, Illinois-area Lou Glutz Motors in the flick. Even though I lived mere miles from the dealership for over 13 years, because I assumed it had long since been remodeled, I figured it was not worth a stalk. So when I saw via Google Street View that the spot remained virtually unchanged from its onscreen appearance three decades ago (yes, three decades!) I was absolutely floored and decided that I had to write a blog post on it, stat!

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In the opening scene of Vacation, Clark arrives at Lou Glutz Motors with his son, Rusty Griswold (Anthony Michael Hall), to pick up the Antarctic blue Super Sports Wagon with the CB and optional Rally Fun Pack that he ordered for his family’s upcoming road trip to Los Angeles. After turning in his “ol’ gas guzzler,” he learns from salesman Ed (Eugene Levy) that the car he purchased has not actually arrived yet. And while Ed tries to steer Clark to a “damn fine” Wagon Queen Family Truckster in metallic pea, Clark, who is not your “ordinary, everyday fool,” cannot be deterred from the auto that he originally ordered.

That is until his old car comes back from the wrecking area, completely flattened. As you can see in the photographs above and below, aside from a difference in paint color and the addition of some bright red awnings, the dealership has been pretty much left untouched since Vacation was filmed in 1983! Despite several changes in ownership, the exterior stairway, the plants below it, the screen above the service bay, and even some of the directional road markings all still look exactly the same as they did onscreen.

The exterior of the showroom also remains in its 1983 state, minus the addition of a second set of doors.

The Star Lincoln-Mercury dealership that was visible in the background of the scene also still looks exactly the same as it did onscreen, but I, unfortunately, did not snap any photographs of it.

I honestly cannot express how cool it was to stalk this location and to see in person how closely it still resembles the images of it that are ingrained in my memory from having watched the flick so many times over the years. LOVE IT!

I would like to wish all of my fellow stalkers a very happy Thanksgiving. I will be taking the next few days off to celebrate the holiday with my family, but I promise to be back on Monday with a whole new location. And be sure to check out my latest Los Angeles magazine post, which will be published tomorrow.

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Los Angeles magazine online. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Glendale Dodge Chrysler Jeep, aka Lou Glutz Motors from Vacation, is located at 900 South Brand Boulevard in Glendale.

November 27, 2013
The Stuart Building from “That Thing You Do!”

Back in early October, upon returning home from doing some That Thing You Do! stalking in Orange (you can read my posts on the locations I stalked here, here and here), I popped in my DVD of the 1996 flick to re-watch it for the first time in years. I was absolutely shocked – and floored – to discover in the course of the viewing that The Stuart at Sierra Madre Villa, an architecturally-stunning Pasadena apartment complex that I toured while house-hunting in 2006, had been featured in the movie. Because I had not taken any photos of The Stuart during the tour, I ran right out to re-stalk the place while I was in L.A. last week.

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The Stuart at Sierra Madre Villa was originally constructed as the Stuart Pharmaceutical Company’s (they created Mylanta!) main manufacturing facility and office headquarters in 1958. The New Formalist-style structure, which is set back 150 feet from Foothill Boulevard and which was originally known as the Stuart Company Building, was designed by architect Edward Durell Stone and took two years to complete. (Stone also fashioned Radio City Music Hall in New York and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.) The Stuart’s 9.4-acre grounds were designed by legendary landscape architect Thomas Dolliver Church.

The flat-roofed building, which boasts a cast concrete block screen façade and a large linear reflecting pool with fountains, won the National First Honor Award from the American Institute of Architects and was featured on the cover of Time magazine the year it was completed.

Arthur O. Hanisch, the Stuart Company’s forward-thinking owner, sought comfort for his employees in the construction of the building and assigned several recreational areas to the 35,000-square-foot site, including an atrium with a gorgeous open staircase, a garden court, a dining lounge, a pool, a pool house, a large terrace, and an outdoor shade pavilion. As you can see below, the two-story atrium is pretty darn striking! There’s a reason I remembered it all these years later while watching That Thing You Do!

In 1990, the Stuart Company, which had been named in honor of Arthur O. Hanisch’s son, was purchased by Johnson and Johnson/Merck Pharmaceuticals Co. The Stuart Company Building was shuttered shortly thereafter and, in 1993, was put on the market for $16 million. A year later, it was purchased by the Metropolitan Transit Authority, who intended to bulldoze it and construct a metro station on the property. Thankfully, the Pasadena Heritage group immediately stepped in and nominated the Stuart for National Registry status to protect it from demolition. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1998. During the interim, while its fate was being decided, the building sat vacant and, sadly, fell victim to vandals and transients. Then, in 2002, the site was purchased by a development company named BRE Properties and a multi-million dollar restoration project was begun. BRE also started construction on an upscale 188-unit apartment complex directly behind the Stuart Building, which became known as The Stuart at Sierra Madre Villa. Today, the arresting atrium serves as a leasing office and communal space for residents.

In That Thing You Do!, the Stuart Company Building’s atrium masqueraded as the Play-Tone Records headquarters where The Wonders – Guy Patterson (Tom Everett Scott), Jimmy Mattingly (Johnathon Schaech), Lenny Haise (Steve Zahn), and T.B. Player (Ethan Embry) – posed for publicity photos upon first arriving in Los Angeles.

The Stuart Company Building was also featured in the 2000 made-for-television movie If These Walls Could Talk 2, in which it stood in for the fertility center visited by Fran (Sharon Stone) and Kal (Ellen DeGeneres). Several areas of the property were used in the filming, including the atrium;

a hallway;

a waiting room;

and an office.

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Stuart at Sierra Madre Villa, from That Thing You Do!, is located at 3360 East Foothill Boulevard in Pasadena. You can visit the complex’s official website here.

November 19, 2013
Watson Drugs and Soda Fountain from “That Thing You Do!”

Another That Thing You Do! locale that I dragged the Grim Cheaper out to stalk while the two of us were in the city of Orange in early October was Watson Drugs and Soda Fountain, which popped up twice in the 1996 flick. And while I really wanted to grab a bite there, sadly the GC and I had just eaten prior to arriving in Orange. It was still extremely cool to see the place, which is Orange County’s oldest drugstore and the city of Orange’s oldest continually operating business, in person, though.

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The pharmacy portion of Watson’s was originally founded on Glassell Street by a pharmacist named Keller E. Watson, Sr. in 1899. Two years later, K.E. Watson’s, as it was then known, was moved around the corner to a building on East Chapman Avenue where it has remained ever since (although it has occupied various different storefronts). In 1915, Keller added a soda fountain to the site and Watson Drugs and Soda Fountain was born. When Keller retired in the 1930s, his son, Keller E. Watson, Jr., took over the operations until he, too, retired in 1965. The shop subsequently went through a succession of different owners and then, in 1971, Scott Parker, a pharmacist from Utah, purchased a portion of it. Scott took over the site completely in 1986 and, while the pharmacy section was closed in 2011, the Parker family still runs the establishment to this day.

As you can see below, walking inside the eatery is like taking a step back in time. Besides serving up hamburgers, shakes and its famous malts, the place also sells gifts and cards, so, of course, I just had to do a little shopping while I was there.

Watson Drugs first popped up in That Thing You Do! in the scene in which Guy Patterson (Tom Everett Scott) informed Faye Dolan (Liv Tyler) that he had just accidentally hit her car, which was parked outside. As you can see below, both the exterior and the interior of the shop were dressed heavily for the shoot.

Watson’s later appeared in the scene in which Guy gave Faye and his fellow Wonders – Jimmy Mattingly (Johnathon Schaech), Lenny Haise (Steve Zahn), and T.B. Player (Ethan Embry) – portable radios so that they would be able to keep an ear out for their song at all times.

Thanks to its old-fashioned charm, Watson Drugs and Soda Fountain has long been a favorite of location managers. In the 1987 made-for-television movie The Stepford Children (which looks pretty good, shockingly!), the diner was where Laura Harding (Barbara Eden) told her husband, Steven Harding (Don Murray), that she wanted to leave Stepford and move to a new town.

In 2004, the interior of Watson’s masqueraded as two different Massachusetts-area locales in the Season 1 episode of Medical Investigation titled “Progeny.” It first stood in for the soda shop where a child named Joey White (Adam Taylor Gordon) had a seizure and collapsed. The space was dressed heavily for the shoot, though, and is not very recognizable in the scene.

And, for whatever reason, producers chose to use a different location to stand in for the shop’s exterior, as you can see below.

Later in the episode, Watson’s popped up as the diner where Dr. Stephen Connor (Neal McDonough) and his team – Dr. Natalie Durant (Kelli Williams), Dr. Miles McCabe (Christopher Gorham), Eva Rossi (Anna Belknap), and Frank Powell (Troy Winbush) – discussed what might be causing Joey’s ailment.

Once again, a different location stood in for the coffee shop’s exterior. That exterior, which was also used as Rosalita’s Bar on the television series Happy Endings, can be found on the Paramount Studios backlot.

In the 2006 comedy The Benchwarmers, Watson Drugs was where Gus (Rob Schneider) met his new statistician, Sammy Sprinkler (Alex Warrick). Both the exterior . . .

. . . and interior of the diner were used in the scene.

According to the Filmed in Orange website, Watson’s appeared in Fallen Angel, but, unfortunately, I could not find a copy of the 1945 production with which to make screen captures for this post. And while the eatery’s website asserts that the spot was featured in the 1981 comedy The Cannonball Run, I scanned through the flick and did not see it anywhere. Watson’s website also states that Don Knotts, Shelley Hack and Jimmy Smits have all shot commercials on the premises and that George W. Bush made a stop there to pick up a malt while campaigning for the presidency in 2000.

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Watson Drugs and Soda Fountain, from That Thing You Do!, is located at 116 East Chapman Avenue in Orange. You can visit the eatery’s official website here. Tiddlywinks Toys and Games, aka Patterson’s Appliances from the movie, is located just around the corner at 129 North Glassell Street. The That Thing You Do! mailbox scene was filmed just a few storefronts north of Tiddlywinks, in front of 173 North Glassell Street. The building that was dressed to look like a Woolworths in the flick can be found across the street at 160/162 North Glassell.

November 7, 2013
Patterson’s Appliances from “That Thing You Do!”

After stalking the downtown Orange spot where the That Thing You Do! mailbox scene was filmed (which I blogged about yesterday), I dragged the Grim Cheaper just a few feet south to stalk the storefront that was used as Patterson’s Appliances, drummer Guy Patterson’s (Tom Everett Scott) family’s shop, in the 1996 flick. Thank goodness for the Seeing Stars website and its That Thing You Do! filming locations page, which had the address of Patterson’s Appliances listed, because, as I mentioned yesterday, my trip to Orange was completely unexpected and I, therefore, had not done any prior research. Which is a shame, too, because, as it turns out, the town, which is easily one of the cutest places I have ever visited, has appeared in countless productions over the years, many of them favorites of mine. (Check out this amazeballs list of the various movies and televisions shows that have been filmed in Orange and the corresponding addresses used. I wish every city would compile a database like that! LOVE IT!) Ah well, it looks like I will just have to make another stalking expedition to Orange someday.

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Patterson’s Appliances was one of the main locations used in That Thing You Do! and the supposed 1960s-era Eerie, Pennsylvania storefront popped up repeatedly throughout the movie. While Orange does have a very old-fashioned feel to it, production designers heavily dressed the area for the shoot, as you can see below. Even without the extra dressing, though, the site is still very recognizable from its onscreen appearance. In fact, being there brought me right back to when I first saw the flick in 1996, which I could NOT have been more excited about.

At the time of the filming, the Patterson’s storefront was vacant, which allowed designers to thoroughly transform it into a 1964 appliance shop, complete with old-fashioned dishwashers, radios and television sets.

Today, the space houses a toy store named Tiddlywinks Toys and Games. Thankfully, the exterior still looks much the same today as it did in November and December 1995 when That Thing You Do! was filmed.

When Tiddlywinks moved in, the owners changed a few aspects of the décor, but for the most part the set-up is still very recognizable from That Thing You Do! Sadly, shops tend to get a little skittish over interior photographs being taken and I did not feel like arguing with anyone on that particular day, so I failed to snap any images of the inside of the place. But you can check out some pictures of the filming, as well as a photo of the interior of the then vacant shop dressed as Patterson’s Appliances, here.

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Tiddlywinks Toys and Games, aka Patterson’s Appliances from That Thing You Do!, is located at 129 North Glassell Street in Orange. You can visit the store’s official website here. The mailbox scene from That Thing You Do! was filmed just a few storefronts north in front of 173 North Glassell Street. The building that was dressed to look like a Woolworths in the flick can be found across the street at 160/162 North Glassell.

November 6, 2013
The “That Thing You Do!” Mailbox Scene

Well folks, this post sadly marks the end to my 2013 Haunted Hollywood locales, which is especially depressing because this year was easily the Best. Halloween. Ever. Once again, the GC and I (dressed up as The Bachelorette’s Emily Maynard and Jef Holm) headed out to our friends’ house in Malibu. (And yes, I am aware that Emily and Jef are no longer together, but neither are Brenda and Dylan and we dressed up like them, too, one Halloween. 😉 ) Dick Van Dyke ended up not hosting his usual Halloween shindig this year (you can read about his 2011 fest here and his 2012 fest here), so we went instead to a party that our friends’ friends were having in a different gated community nearby. And let me tell you, it was UH-MA-ZING.

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Not only was every single house in the neighborhood dressed to the nines (I swear, nobody does Halloween like the ‘Bu) . . .

. . . but there were celebrities galore, including none other than Gwyneth Paltrow! The GC actually spotted Gwyneth first and, while I just about died of excitement on the spot, because she was with her children, I restrained myself from asking for a photo. I obsessed about it, though, for the next thirty minutes or so and eventually, without me knowing, the GC went up to her and said, “Gwyneth, could you please take a picture with my wife before her head explodes?” Next thing I knew, there was a tap on my shoulder and GP was standing in front of me, saying “I heard you wanted a photo.” Yeah, I was DYING. And absolutely falling in love with the GC all over again. Gwyneth truly could NOT have been nicer (easily one of the sweetest celebs that I have ever had the pleasure of meeting) and I adore her even more now than I did before. So suck it, Vanity Fair!

Also in attendance were Cindy Crawford . . .

. . . and Neil Patrick Harris. Like I said, Best. Halloween. Ever. Not sure how I’m ever going to recover from this one! Here’s hoping next year is just as good.

In the meantime, though, it is back to regular, non-haunted postings here at IAMNOTASTALKER. So here goes! As I mentioned in my post about the Cecil Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, in early October Miss Pinky Lovejoy, of the Thinking Pink blog, hosted her bachelorette party at my favorite place in the entire world, Disneyland. Because we did not want to make the long drive back to Palm Springs that night, the GC and I got a hotel room in the area, which turned out to be a fateful decision. The following morning, on our way out of town, I did a GPS search for a nearby Starbucks and when I saw that the closest outpost was located in the city of Orange, I just about had a heart attack as my very favorite movie scene EVER had been filmed in Orange – the mailbox scene from 1996’s That Thing You Do! So I immediately braced the GC for the fact that we would be making a little unexpected stalking detour.

In the scene, Faye Dolan (Liv Tyler) is listening to a portable radio and mailing letters in what is supposedly 1960s downtown Eerie, Pennsylvania, when she hears “That Thing You Do!”, her boyfriend’s band’s song, playing on the radio for the very first time. She starts screaming and runs down the street towards an Army/Navy store where she finds fellow band member T.B. Player (Ethan Embry). The two then race to Patterson’s Appliances, where another band member, Guy Patterson (cutie Tom Everett Scott), works. (I will be blogging about the location of Patterson’s Appliances tomorrow.) Guy turns all the radios in the store to the station playing the song and, shortly thereafter, the other two members of the group, Jimmy Mattingly (Johnathon Schaech) and Lenny Haise (Steve Zahn), show up and proceed to dance around manically. Liv Tyler is sheer perfection in the scene and it is physically impossible not to be happy while watching it.

You can take a look at the That Thing You Do! mailbox scene by clicking below. Go ahead, try not to smile while watching – I dare you.

In the scene, the mailbox was set up in front of an empty storefront located at 173 North Glassell Street, in pretty much the exact spot where the red sandwich board sign is situated in the photograph below.

I found this locale thanks to the Seeing Stars website and my trusty iPhone. As soon as the GC and I arrived in Orange, I watched the scene on YouTube and saw that the mailbox was located across the street from a Woolworth store. Seeing Stars listed the address of the store that masqueraded as Woolworths as 160 North Glassell Street, so from there it was simply a matter of matching up the angles of what appeared onscreen to the real life buildings. You can check out some images of the Woolworths building and the rest of the downtown area dressed for the filming on the City of Orange website here.

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The mailbox scene from That Thing You Do! was filmed in front of what is now a vacant storefront located at 173 North Glassell Street in Orange. The building that was dressed to look like a Woolworths in the flick can be found across the street at 160/162 North Glassell.

November 5, 2013
“The Seventh Sign” House

NOTE – This blog was supposed to post yesterday, but somehow did not, so it looks like I am a day late and a dollar short. Sorry about that! I would like to start off by wishing my fellow stalkers a very HAPPY HALLOWEEN! I hope all of you have a fabulously spook-filled day. And now, on with the post! Way back in July 2012, Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and I embarked upon a stalking adventure in and around the Venice Beach area. While there, he took me by an adorable little dwelling that was the main location used in the 1988 horror film The Seventh Sign. I had never actually heard of the flick at the time, but Mike figured that the residence would fit in perfectly with my Haunted Hollywood theme. And, as luck would have it, we happened to meet the longtime homeowner while we were stalking the place and he not only told us all sorts of behind-the-scenes information about the shoot, but invited us into the backyard where quite a bit of the filming took place!

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The Grim Cheaper and I ended up watching The Seventh Sign shortly after I returned home and I can’t say that I was a big fan. As I mentioned in my post about the residence belonging to Heather Langenkamp (who played herself) in Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, I am not especially fond of sci-fi-style horror flicks. It was very cool to see the house that I had just stalked a few days prior featured so prominently onscreen, though. In The Seventh Sign, the two-story bungalow is where Abby Quinn (Demi Moore) lives with her husband, Russell Quinn (Michael Biehn), and their demonic unborn child.

According to the homeowner, whose parents owned the pad back in 1988 when The Seventh Sign was filmed, the property was chosen for the shoot because producers liked the fact that it was located on a corner, that it had an apartment above the garage, and that the main house and garage could both be captured onscreen in a single shot. Due to a massive amount of foliage that has since grown, that is no longer the case, though, as you can see below. Otherwise, the abode looks very much the same as it did onscreen, despite the passage of over 25 years.

In The Seventh Sign, Abby and Russell rent out that garage apartment to a rather mysterious individual named David Bannon (Jürgen Prochnow) in order to make some extra income before their baby arrives. Things don’t quite go as planned, though.

Amazingly enough, while the landing is now different, the stairs leading up to the garage apartment look very much the same today as they did back in 1988.

I was floored when the owner allowed me to pose for a photograph on the stairs, which Mike had told me played a significant role in the filming.

The homeowner also informed us that an incredibly difficult-to-shoot scene was filmed in which Abby walked across a beam of light (in actuality it was a wooden bridge) from the main house to the garage apartment. The scene was very labor-intensive, expensive, required countless retakes, took several nights to complete, and in the end wound up on the cutting room floor! Ya gotta love Hollywood!

Several areas of the residence’s real life interior were also used in the filming, including the living room;

the kitchen;

and the front room. You can check out some more interior photographs of the property on an old rental listing here.

In real life, the charming little cottage, which was originally built in 1916, is not a single-family dwelling. It actually consists of three units – the main home, which features two separate apartments, one on each floor, and a third apartment located above the property’s detached garage, as was depicted in the movie.

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Seventh Sign house is located at 902 Palms Boulevard in Venice.

November 1, 2013
The Cobb Estate from “Phantasm”

One locale that I came across (thanks to an article on Amoeblog) while doing research for my 2012 Haunted Hollywood posts was the former Cobb Estate in Altadena, the gates of which appeared in the 1979 cult horror film Phantasm. And while I stalked the location shortly thereafter, for whatever reason I never got around to blogging about it last October. I actually completely forgot about the site, in fact, until I sat down to write my recent post on Angeles Abbey Memorial Park, which was used in two installments of the Phantasm series – Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead and Phantasm IV: Oblivion. Well, it is better to be late than never, as they say, right?

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The Cobb Estate is named after lumber magnate Charles H. Cobb, who, along with his wife, Carrie, purchased the then vacant 107-acre site in 1916. Two years later, the couple commissioned a rambling Spanish-style mansion to be built on the premises. When Charles, who was a Freemason, passed away in 1939, he willed the massive estate and its acreage to the Pasadena Scottish Rite Temple. The brotherhood sold the site just a few years later and it subsequently went through a succession of different owners, including the Sisters of Saint Joseph. Then, in 1956, the Marx Brothers (yes, those Marx Brothers) purchased the property as an investment. It was left vacant while they debated what to do with it and became a popular hangout for miscreants who vandalized the once elegant grounds and mansion. Sadly, in 1959, the Brothers decided to demolish the majority of the Cobbs’ former home. Today, all that survives is the foundation, a few rock walls, some exterior stairwells, a long, twisting driveway, and the front gates.

In 1971, after their plans to turn to site into a cemetery were thwarted, the Marx Brothers put the land up for auction. Bob Barnes, a social studies teacher at nearby John Muir High School in Pasadena, caught wind of the sale and, fearing that it would be acquired and pillaged by developers, rallied his students to raise funds to save the property. Miraculously, they did. In nine days time – and thanks to a generous donation from art collector Virginia Steele Scott – the group garnered over $150,000. According to this 2011 Pasadena Star-News article, when the auction was held, Barnes was outbid by $25,000, but he made a last-minute plea to auctioneer Milton Wershaw saying his was the “people’s bid.” Wershaw halted the auction for five minutes so that the group could raise the extra funds and even chipped in $1,000 himself. The money was gathered, at which point, in a heart-warming twist, one of the land developers stepped down, announcing, “I am with the people, I shall bid no more!” Barnes wound up donating the 107 acres to the Angeles National Forest and, in my favorite part of the story, headed out to Hollywood the following day, purchased a map of the stars’ homes, rang Groucho Marx’s doorbell, and thanked him. So incredibly cool!

Today, the Cobb Estate is, as the sign on the gate will tell you, “A quiet refuge for people and wild life forever.” The popular hiking area is apparently open 24 hours a day and after-dark walks are allowed. Um, no thanks.

At some point in time (and for reasons unknown to this stalker – and seemingly everyone else on the internet, although there have been some reported unexplained occurrences), the property gained the nickname the “Haunted Forest.” (It is also known as the “Enchanted Forest.”)

In Phantasm, the gates of the Cobb Estate masqueraded as the entrance to Morningside Cemetery, lair of The Tall Man (Angus Scrimm).

Oddly enough, though, all of the scenes that supposedly took place behind the gates were actually shot about 400 miles away at the Dunsmuir Hellman Historic Estate in Oakland.

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Big THANK YOU to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for making the Phantasm screen captures that appear in this post!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The gates to the Cobb Estate, from Phantasm, are located at the intersection of North Lake Avenue and East Loma Alta Drive in Altadena.

October 30, 2013