Category: Movie Locations

Olivia, Markie and Penelope’s House from “Truth or Dare”

If Ghostface from the Scream franchise ever called me to inquire “What’s your favorite scary movie?”, things might get a little confusing because the only answer I’d be able to give would be Scream. It’s honestly the sole flick in the genre that I truly love. I did recently watch Truth or Dare, though, and found it to be pretty enjoyable – as well as downright terrifying. I was on the edge of my seat throughout! And yes, it is a bit on the dumb side, but it made for a fun watch – up until the end that is, which was sorely disappointing. Regardless, I thought it would only be appropriate to stalk and blog about a couple of its locales this month in honor of my Haunted Hollywood theme. First up is the Craftsman-style home where doomed college student Olivia Barron (Lucy Hale) lives with her similarly-doomed roommates, Markie Cameron (Violett Beane) and Penelope Amari (Sophia Ali), in the 2018 film. Thankfully, the pad was an easy find.

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In an early scene in which Olivia, Markie, Penelope and their friends leave home to head to Mexico for Spring Break, not only was it apparent that their residence was located on a corner and that the backyard was situated on the side of the property and not the rear (two incredibly helpful identifying markers) . . .

. . . but the signage of an adjacent street, Gramercy Place, was visible.

I ventured right on over to Google to search aerial views for a corner home with a large side yard abutting Gramercy. I decided to start my hunt at the 10 Freeway and first work my way north. If I had no luck in that direction, I’d switch gears and head south. As soon as the aerial imagery came into focus, though, I just about fell out of my chair because there was the Truth or Dare house staring me right in the face, literally one block north of the 10 at 2233 West 21st Street.

The handsome dwelling pops up numerous times in Truth or Dare, though it is never quite explained how three college kids can afford such spacious, fancy digs.

For whatever reason, we are not given a full view of the house in the movie.

Instead, the property is only ever shown in tight, abbreviated shots.

The best glimpse we get of the place is via the rather harrowing scene in which Penelope is dared to walk along the edge of the second-story roofline until she finishes drinking an entire bottle of vodka.

The speared side gate that figures so prominently in the segment isn’t actually there in real life, but was a set piece brought in for the filming.

In actuality, a wooden fence stands in that spot. I could not get a great shot of it due to the car parked in the driveway, but you can just make it out to the right of the pad in the images below.

In another rather fortuitous bit of luck, when I headed over to Image Locations’ filming library to see if I could dig up some photos of the inside of the Truth or Dare house, I was thrilled to discover that the place was actually the very first listing under the Craftsman category! One look at the pictures posted told me that the interior was definitely utilized in the flick. As you can see, the screen shot of the girls’ living room below is a perfect match to this image of the home’s real life living room.

As is this shot of Olivia’s bedroom to this photo of the property’s master suite.

The pad’s actual dining room parallels what was shown onscreen, as well . . .

. . . as does the built-in buffet.

In real life, the 1905 abode boasts 4 bedrooms, 2 baths, 3,126 square feet of living space, and a 0.18-acre lot.

Though a gorgeous example of Craftsman architecture, it is not surprising that the dwelling wound up in a horror film. The place just has a very looming quality about it.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Olivia, Markie and Penelope’s house from Truth or Dare is located at 2233 West 21st Street in Los Angeles’ Harvard Heights neighborhood.

October 4, 2018
Anthony’s House from Twilight Zone: The Movie”

Perhaps no film in the history of filmdom has been as mired in controversy as Twilight Zone: The Movie. Bring up the 1983 thriller to anyone and talk will likely turn to the death of three of its actors in a harrowing and, what has been argued, completely avoidable accident. On July 23rd, 1982 at Indian Dunes movie ranch in Valencia, while lensing the segment titled “Time Out,” star Vic Morrow carried two young children, Renee Chen and Myca Dinh Le, through a pond in a simulated Vietnam War battle. A helicopter flying overhead during the shoot happened to get hit by one of the explosive special effects, causing it to crash to the ground, crushing Chen to death and decapitating Morrow and Le in the process. Director John Landis and four other crew members were brought up on manslaughter charges following the disaster, but all were found not guilty at the end of the nearly ten-month trial. The film has been shrouded in darkness ever since, though. Considering my penchant for the macabre, surprisingly, up until just recently I had never watched Twilight Zone: The Movie or done any stalking of it. That all changed when I came across a photo of the sprawling Victorian where Anthony (Jeremy Licht) lived in the “It’s a Good Life” portion of the film on the Then & Now Movie Locations website earlier this summer. Fascinated with the massive structure, I added it to my To-Stalk List and headed right on out to see it in person shortly thereafter.

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The immense Queen Anne-style pad was originally built in 1887 by prominent San Francisco architect Joseph Cather Newsom, who also gave us the Walker House in San Dimas, the Sessions House in Echo Park, and the Carson Mansion in Eureka.

Amazingly, per the Los Angeles Office of Historic Resources, the dwelling was initially located in Pacoima, but was moved – literally picked up and relocated – to its current home at 17410 Mayerling Street in Granada Hills in the 1970s.

The picturesque estate currently boasts 5 bedrooms, 4 baths, 3,842 square feet of living space, 11-foot ceilings, stained glass windows, hardwood flooring, 2 fireplaces, wainscoting, original moldings, beveled glass mirrors, a clawfoot tub (be still my heart!), an updated kitchen with granite counters and stainless steel appliances, a formal dining room, a den, pull-chain toilets (which seriously creep me out for unknown reasons), a glass-ceilinged conservatory, a 2-car garage, a wraparound porch, a vineyard, and a detached 1-bedroom, 1-bath guesthouse with a kitchen and a private yard.

The property last sold in 2015 for $849,000, which seems abnormally low to me considering the sheer size of the house, not to mention the land.

I mean, look at that backyard! It’s huge.

You can check out some MLS photos of the pad from the time it was on the market here.

Though undeniably beautiful, it is not hard to see how the place wound up being cast in a horror/sci-fi film like Twilight Zone: The Movie.

There is just something about old Victorians that renders them downright spooky (read: the Smith Estate).

The “It’s a Good Life” chapter of Twilight Zone: The Movie centers around a misunderstood and rather disturbed young boy named Anthony who can create things with his mind. As such, he conjures up a Victorian house based upon one featured in the cartoon Mouse Wreckers. While segments of the actual 1948 cartoon classic were utilized in the film, the opening scene was altered to show a dwelling matching the Granada Hills pad.

The true imagery featured at the beginning of Mouse Wreckers is pictured below.

Anthony’s residential creation is a true house of horrors in which any family member who disagrees with him or tries to admonish him meets an unpleasant fate, like Ethel (Nancy Cartwright, aka the voice of Bart Simpson on The Simpsons) who gets banished to an evil cartoon world where she is terrorized by animated monsters after an unsuccessful attempt to escape from the home.

Remarkably, the dwelling still looks almost exactly the same today as it did onscreen 35 years ago, excluding a change in paint color and the addition of the detached guest house on the property’s east side.

A close-up view of the guest house is pictured below.

The area around the residence has changed considerably in the ensuing years, as you can see in the Google Street View image as compared to the screen capture below. Though still rather rural in nature, the 17400 block of Mayerling Street has been built up a bit since Twilight Zone: The Movie was shot.

Only the exterior of the property was used in “It’s a Good Life.”

The inside of Anthony’s house, which bears no resemblance whatsoever to the home’s real life interior, was nothing more than a soundstage-built set at Warner Bros. Studio in Burbank. Though the front doors were modeled after those of the actual dwelling . . .

. . . the stairs of the Mayerling pad are situated completely differently than those of its onscreen counterpart, as you can see in the screen captures below as compared to the MLS photo above.

The onscreen living room, which was designed to have a cartoonish feel, also looks nothing like the home’s actual living room.

P.S. Big Bang Theory fans, be sure to check out this great LAist article about the show’s locales that I was recently interviewed for.

Big THANK YOU to the Then & Now Movie Locations website for finding this location!

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Anthony’s house from Twilight Zone: The Movie is located at 17410 Mayerling Street in Granada Hills.

October 2, 2018
Pasadena Central Library from “Foul Play”

It’s my favorite day of the year! No, it’s not Halloween already – it’s October 1st, which marks the start of my annual Haunted Hollywood postings and the beginning of the Halloween season (well, it marks the latter for most people, anyway – I started decorating for the holiday weeks ago!). To kick things off, I thought I’d write about Pasadena Central Library. I stalked the gorgeous book repository last month in preparation for my October blogs, figuring the place would be the perfect segue into the season thanks to its appearance in several scary productions, most notably the 1990 “thrill-omedy” Arachnophobia. But as I only just learned thanks to a few knowledgeable chat room commenters, while the library was briefly featured in the film’s original theatrical run, apparently the footage shot there was not included in later releases – not in any versions available on DVD nor via streaming. Because the site has numerous other connections to the chiller genre, though – namely a cameo in the 1978 mystery Foul Play – I decided to forge ahead with the post.

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The Pasadena Public Library was originally established as the Pasadena Library and Village Improvement Society in 1882, four years before the city itself was incorporated. Its initial headquarters, built in 1884, was situated on Colorado Boulevard near Raymond Avenue (though it was known as “Raymond Street” at the time) on what was then the Central School campus. Two years after it was constructed, the entire building was moved a few blocks south to 42 West Dayton Street. When the need to expand arose in 1890, the library then set up shop in a dramatic turreted property on the corner of Raymond Avenue and Walnut Street. A model of that site, made from stone taken from the actual building and currently on display in the Central Library’s Main Hall, is pictured below. (Sadly, that structure was razed at some point after the current library was erected. Oh, how I wish it had been left intact! I mean, it couldn’t look more like a real life haunted house if it tried! Can you imagine the Halloween fun that could be had there if it was still standing?)

In 1922, the Bennett, Parsons and Frost architecture firm was commissioned to oversee the development of a civic center for Pasadena set to include a city hall, a civic auditorium, and a new library.

The firm held a design contest for the three structures in which ten architecture companies competed. Myron Hunt (who also gave us Thornton Gardens, Occidental College, Wattles Mansion, the Langham Huntington Hotel, the Huntington Library, Art Collection, and Botanical Gardens and the Pasadena Elks Lodge) and H.C. Chambers’ proposal was chosen for the new library and construction on their Spanish Colonial Revival-style masterpiece began on May 19th, 1925.

The structure was completed a little less than two years later and the building was dedicated on February 12th, 1927.

The exterior of the three-story, U-shaped property is comprised of a central courtyard with a fountain, cast concrete friezes, Corinthian cast stone columns, paned arched windows, and outdoor reading alcoves.

While undeniably impressive . . .

. . . the interior is the real sight to behold.

Boasting intricate woodwork, spectacular coffered ceilings, pendant lighting, Italian marble flooring, oak shelving, and ornately carved doorways and hallways, the inside of the building is nothing short of breathtaking.

The sweeping Main Hall is the library’s crown jewel. Measuring 33 by 203 feet, the room features 45-foot ceilings, oak wainscoting and bookshelves, cork flooring (to mask the sound of footsteps), and a set of handsome dark wood and wrought-iron tables that run the length of the space.

Each of the library’s many chambers can be reached via the Main Hall, including the Children’s Room . . .

. . . which was originally named the “Peter Pan Room” in honor of the Maud Daggett-sculpted fireplace that stands as the space’s focal point and depicts the story of the beloved children’s book;

the Reference Room;

the Centennial Room;

the Business Wing;

the Humanities Wing;

and the floors upon floors of book stacks.

The city embarked upon an extensive restoration and “historically sensitive” renovation of the building between 1984 and 1990. The result is nothing short of striking as the photos in this post attest to.

Pasadena Central Library, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, is elegant, opulent, and grand.

It is not at all hard to see how the site wound up onscreen copious times.

It is also not hard to see how it ended up in so many productions of the spooky nature. Though gorgeous, with its towering ceilings, dark woodwork, colossal size, and maze-like stacks, the space does lend itself quite easily to the macabre.

I certainly wouldn’t want to be there alone after dark – like Gloria Mundy (Goldie Hawn) found herself in Foul Play.

In the flick, the interior of the Pasadena Central Library appears a few times as the inside of the supposed San Francisco-area Sarah B. Cooper Public Library where Gloria works – and is attacked by Whitey Jackson (William Frankfather) while on the job late at night.

Pasadena Central Library also pops up in the 1988 horror comedy Dead Heat as the spot where Roger Mortis (Treat Williams), Doug Bigelow (Joe Piscopo), and Randi James (Lindsay Frost) search through obituaries.

The venue portrays the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. where Lloyd Bowman (Ken Leung) decodes a threatening cypher from Francis Dolarhyde (Ralph Fiennes) in the 2002 thriller Red Dragon.

In the Season 5 episode of Ghost Whisperer titled “See No Evil,” which aired in 2009, a young student named Steve (Jerry Shea) is haunted by a vengeful specter while studying at Pasadena Central Library late at night.

I happened to visit the library during the filming of the scene, which took place on July 17th, 2009, and am happy to report that the crew could not have been nicer. They even allowed me to snap some photos of the set while the cast was on a break.

I am unsure of why the “hot set” tape was placed around the areas used in the filming, but I am guessing it was because producers had the space set up exactly as they wanted for the scene and did not want any elements disturbed. There were also quite a few special effects involved in the segment, so if sections of the library were already rigged, that would explain the tape, as well.

For one effect, special lamp shades with X’s cut into them were utilized, as a crew member pointed out to me.

The library has cameoed in a plethora of non-scary productions, as well.

Grace McQueen (Jessica Tandy) hosts a story hour in the Children’s Room at the end of the 1991 made-for-television movie The Story Lady.

The site portrays the Harvard Law Library where Elle Woods (Reese Witherspoon) studies in the 2001 comedy Legally Blonde.

The locale masks as the Georgetown Law Library where Clifford Calley (Mark Feuerstein) secretly meets with Donna Moss (Janel Moloney) and begs her to set up a meeting with Josh Lyman (Bradley Whitford) in the Season 3 episode of The West Wing titled “H. Con-172,” which aired in 2002.

In the Season 3 episode of Cold Case titled “Beautiful Little Fool,” which aired in 2006, the property plays the Library of Philadelphia where Lilly Rush (Kathryn Morris) and Nick Vera (Jeremy Ratchford) research the Roaring Twenties while trying to solve a murder case.

Ray Drecker (Thomas Jane) meets with a new client at Pasadena Central Library in the Season 2 episode of Hung titled “Beaverland,” which aired in 2010.

Though countless websites claim that Matilda was shot on the premises, I have scanned through the movie numerous times and did not see it pop up anywhere. The library supposedly appears in the 2002 crime thriller The Salton Sea, as well, but I also scanned through that film and did not spot it.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Pasadena Central Library, from Foul Play, is located at 285 East Walnut Street in Pasadena. You can visit its official website here.

October 1, 2018
California Market Center from “Cruel Intentions”

For such a quintessentially “New York” movie, quite a lot of Cruel Intentions was shot in L.A., which I’m only just now discovering. A few of the more prominent West Coast locales include the modern pad where Blaine Tuttle (Joshua Jackson) lived (it’s actually the Benton House in Brentwood), the Rosemont Estate’s ornate indoor pool (that can be found at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles), Penn Station (downtown L.A.’s 7th Street/Metro Center Station in real life), and, as I recently learned thanks to my friend Owen (of the When Write Is Wrong blog), the office of Sebastian Valmont’s (Ryan Phillipe) therapist, Dr. Greenbaum (Swoosie Kurtz), which is really California Market Center, also in downtown L.A. I headed right on out to stalk the site on a sunny Saturday morning shortly after Owen told me about it in June, but what I did not realize is that the wholesale fashion mart is closed on weekends. So that particular mission was thwarted. I wasn’t able to re-stalk the place until mid-September and, this time, I made sure to hit it up on a weekday.

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The California Mart, as it was initially called, was established by New York lingerie manufacturers Harvey and Barney Morse. Upon moving to L.A. and working the SoCal fashion trade in the 1930s, the brothers discovered there was a need for a centralized spot where retailers could look for and secure merchandise. As Edna Bonacich and Richard P. Appelbaum explain in their 2000 book Behind the Label, “Buyers would come to Los Angeles with their checkbooks in hand, yet wind up spending days wandering through the sprawling Los Angeles basis in a sometimes futile search for suitable manufacturers. The Morse brothers saw an opportunity.” The duo purchased a plot of land for their new marketplace on East 9th and South Los Angeles Streets in 1952 and the complex’s first building was completed in 1963.

The mart’s second building was constructed in 1965 and the third in 1979. All three were designed by the Victor Gruen Associates architecture firm.

The result of their efforts is a sprawling 1.8-million-square-foot marketplace that the L.A. Times dubbed “the heartbeat of the Los Angeles apparel industry” in 1987.

The Morse family continued to own the California Mart until 1994 when it was lost to foreclosure. The site was soon snapped up by the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States, who set about refurbishing the interior and increasing tenancy. In 2000, Equitable Life sold to Hertz Investment Group for a cool $90 million. Though the company renamed the vast plaza “California Market Center,” many still refer to it by its original moniker.

In 2005, the complex was acquired for $135 million by Jamison Realty Inc. They subsequently sold it last June for a whopping $440 million to New York-based real estate company Brookfield, who are planning to renovate the space and make it more publicly accessible. (Perhaps keeping it open on weekends might be a good start. ) Bert Dezzutti, the head of Brookfield’s Western region, recently told the Los Angeles Times, “We want to open it up literally and figuratively to the street and to pedestrian flow to invite people into space that is somewhat blocked off and difficult to access now.” I really hope their punch list doesn’t include altering the market’s fabulous lobby.

The gorgeous atrium-like space . . .

. . . is capped by a magnificent glass ceiling that is not only stunning to look at, but allows copious natural light to flow in and provides beautiful views of the mart’s three modernist-style buildings.

The 13-story complex currently houses numerous meeting venues and event spaces, more than 1,200 apparel showrooms, a theatre, a print shop, a food court, a fashion school (Otis College of Art and Design), a bank, a large parking garage, and some of the nicest public restrooms in all of downtown.

You can check out some more photographs of the market here.

Cruel Intentions made spectacular use of the complex’s lobby.

It is there that, in the 1999 drama’s opening scene, Sebastian leaves his latest therapy session just seconds before Dr. Greenbaum learns that he has not only seduced her daughter, Marci (a pre-American Pie Tara Reid), but has posted nude photographs of her online.

Dr. Greenbaum catches up with Sebastian in the market’s atrium and proceeds to scream at him from the second floor.

In typical Sebastian fashion, while Dr. Greenbaum is ranting and raving, he meets a cute girl and informs her that he is taking her to lunch.

The California Market Center lobby looks exactly the same today as it did onscreen 19 years ago. To say I was ecstatic to finally be seeing it in person is an understatement. And while I was a bit nervous that the powers that be would yell at me for taking photographs of the space, I am happy to report that all of the security guards and employees I spoke with could not have been nicer.

As Owen later discovered and informed me, an actual CA Market Center suite was also used in the scene as the interior of Dr. Greenbaum’s office.

As you can see in the screen capture as compared to the Google aerial image of the buildings located just north of the complex (both of which are pictured below), the view from the doctor’s windows match that of the actual mart.

California Market Center also popped up in the Season 4 episode of Starsky and Hutch titled “The Groupie,” which aired in 1978, as the spot where Det. Ken ‘Hutch’ Hutchinson (David Soul) and Det. Dave Starsky (Paul Michael Glaser) went undercover as a swimsuit buyer and a fashion photographer, respectively.

The mart’s real life interior also appeared in the episode, but it looks quite a bit different today than it did onscreen 39 years ago.

Stay tuned on Monday, folks, for the start of my annual Haunted Hollywood postings! I can’t wait!

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

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: California Market Center, aka Sebastian’s therapist’s office from Cruel Intentions, is located at 110 East 9th Street in downtown Los Angeles. You can visit the center’s official website here. The property is only open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., so plan accordingly.

September 28, 2018
Counterpoint Records and Books from “A Lot Like Love”

I obviously need to start paying closer attention to things because for years I was under the impression that all of the locations from fave movie A Lot Like Love had been tracked down. But while scanning through the 2005 romcom to make screen captures for my recent post on the home where Oliver’s (Ashton Kutcher) parents lived in the flick, I just about fell out of my chair when I realized that one spot remained unearthed – the record/book store where Emily Friehl (Amanda Peet) met – or I guess I should say “re-met” – her future fiancé, Ben Miller (Jeremy Sisto). Being that unknown locales plague me like no other and that there’s pretty much nothing I love more than a good book shop, I immediately set about IDing the place. As fate would have it, the hunt turned out to be one of the easiest of my entire stalking career.

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In A Lot Like Love, Emily reconnects with Ben, after initially meeting him at a mutual friend’s wedding, at a spacious record/book store where the two banter over the last copy of an import CD they both want. Feeling lucky, I headed to Google, inputted “large record bookstore Los Angeles” and the very first result kicked back was for Counterpoint Records and Books at 5911 Franklin Avenue in the Hollywood Hills. One look at images of the place told me it was the right spot. If only all of my searches were so simple! So to the top of my To-Stalk List the site went and I headed right on over there a few weeks later.

Counterpoint Records and Books was originally established by John Polifronio and his then girlfriend/now wife Susan way back in 1979 as a classical music boutique that operated out of the back of The Book Treasury, formerly located at 6707 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood.

Because of the Boulevard’s rather sketchy nature at the time, the couple decided to relocate the following year and sublet a 600-square-foot portion of a frame store in the more shopper-friendly Franklin Village.

Popular from the get-go, it was not long before John and Susan needed to expand, first taking over the entire frame shop and then spreading over into the storefront next door.

The couple also soon decided to branch out. Longtime collectors of rare and used books, John and Susan eventually found their home overflowing with volumes and elected to incorporate the excess tomes into their inventory.

In 1997, the duo purchased the building that houses Counterpoint, which Susan said in a 2012 interview was the saving grace in the store’s longevity.

The shop, which teems with colorful leaflets, thick novels, stacks of vinyl, copies of used VHS and cassette tapes, and racks upon racks of CDs, remains extremely popular today with locals and visitors alike.

Even actor Ron Livingston is a fan and included Counterpoint in his itinerary for a My Favorite Weekend column for the Los Angeles Times in 2006.

It is not hard to see why the store became such a neighborhood staple. Counterpoint Records and Books is warm, friendly and inviting. The employees that I spoke with not only invited me to take as many photos of the place as I wanted, but spent quite a bit of time chatting with me about the various filmings that have taken place on the premises over the years. Though, shockingly, not a one of them knew about A Lot Like Love!

In the movie, Emily and Ben reconnect while perusing the long CD rack in the middle of the store. Though that area of the shop is largely unchanged from the time that filming took place, the sections around it have been moved. During the shoot, the Religion, Philosophy and Occult sections were situated behind the CDs, but today those shelves house Fiction, as you can see below.

Philosophy and Religion can now be found on the opposite side of the room.

I was thrilled to see that, despite the move, the signage still looks exactly as it did onscreen.

There seems to be a bit of confusion concerning some of Counterpoint’s other cinematic appearances floating around online, so I’ll do my best to clear up the misinformation here.

The shop did pop up at the beginning of Prince’s 2004 “Musicology” music video, which you can watch here.

While many websites state that Counterpoint made an appearance in the 2010 movie Beginners, it was only featured in the trailer (which is where the still below comes from), not the actual film. It seems that the scene shot on the premises wound up on the cutting room floor. To confuse matters further, a different L.A. book boutique – the now defunct Cosmopolitan Book Shop at 7017 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood – does cameo a few times. It is there, not at Counterpoint, that Oliver (Ewan McGregor) and Anna (Melanie Laurent) peruse The Joy of Sex.

Counterpoint Records and Books pops up in Olly Murs’ 2012 “Troublemaker” music video, which you can check out here. (I would be remiss if I did not mention that Olly is such a cutie! I had never heard of him until writing this post and was pleasantly surprised to find while watching his video that he reminds me quite a bit of Michael Bublé in looks and mannerisms.)

Though Curbed Los Angeles reports that Joan Crawford’s (Jessica Lange) book signing in the Season 1 episode of Feud: Bette and Joan titled “You Mean All This Time We Could Have Been Friends?” was shot at Counterpoint, that information is incorrect. Perplexingly, the website even goes so far as to say “According to [production designer Judy] Becker, the production team built a book-signing station for the scene, which Counterpoint opted to keep after filming concluded.” But, as you can see below, the two-story venue that appeared in the episode looks nothing like Counterpoint. Filming actually took place at the Philosophical Research Library at the University of Philosophical Research located at 3910 Los Feliz Boulevard in Los Feliz. You can check out some photos of the space here and here.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Counterpoint Records and Books, from A Lot Like Love, is located at 5911 Franklin Avenue in the Hollywood Hills. You can visit the store’s official website here.

September 26, 2018
The “How to Marry a Millionaire” Apartment Building

One of the things I love most about L.A. is the direct access the city has to a myriad of unique, once-in-a-lifetime experiences. Case in point – Essentially Marilyn, The Paley Center for Media’s latest exhibit featuring costumes, personal artifacts, clothing, and memorabilia from none other than Miss Marilyn Monroe herself, including the starlet’s personally annotated script from The Seven Year Itch AND a replica of the infamous dress she wore in the 1955 movie’s iconic subway grate scene. (If you feel like going down a rabbit hole of information regarding the legendary frock, check out these fabulous articles on The Marilyn Monroe Collection website here and here.) Fingers crossed I make it out to see the exhibit before it closes on September 30th. In the meantime, I thought I’d blog about an MM locale I stalked back in April 2016 while in New York – 36 Sutton Place South, aka the building where Pola Debevoise (Monroe) lived with her BFFs Loco Dempsey (Betty Grable) and Schatze Page (Lauren Bacall) in How to Marry a Millionaire.

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Though Marilyn’s performance in the 1953 comedy definitely plays to type, it is one of my favorites of hers. Legend has it that when she asked director Jean Negulesco about her bespectacled character’s motivation, he replied “You’re blind as a bat without glasses. That is your motivation.” The advice led to some of the best comedic moments of her career, in my opinion. For those who have never seen the film (and you really should), it centers around three bachelorettes who, hoping to land millionaire husbands, sublease a penthouse apartment in a tony Manhattan building. To portray the girls’ fancy digs, producers looked no further than 36 Sutton Place South.

Originally built in 1949, the 17-story complex boasts 101 units.

Consisting of a brick and limestone façade with glass balconies, the place has something of a postmodern feel.

The white-glove building, which became a co-op in 1962, features a canopied entrance, a doorman and a concierge, an on-site gym and laundry room, and a rooftop deck with a garden and river views. You can see some interior photos of the property here.

36 Sutton Place South only actually appears twice in How to Marry a Millionaire, first popping up in the movie’s opening scene in which Schatze arrives at the building to sublease the unit.

It is then featured in a later scene in which the unit’s owner, Freddie Denmark (David Wayne), returns home and attempts to retrieve a document he has stashed away inside. Only the exterior of the property was utilized in the filming.

All interiors were part of an elaborate set built at 20th Century Fox Studios in Culver City, including the building’s lobby;

the inside of the women’s apartment;

and their balcony, which does look very much like 36 Sutton’s actual rooftop deck. You can see photos of it here and here.

I am fairly certain that close-up shots of the building’s front doors were also shot on a set.

Though the entrance shown in How to Marry a Millionaire does look a lot like 36 Sutton’s actual entrance, the complex’s real life doorway is much larger than its onscreen counterpart. The window that should appear in the right-hand portion of the frame below is also missing and, while the bottom part of the planter to the left of the main doors is slanted in real life, it is flat in the movie. Though these elements could have been changed in the 65 years since filming took place, I do not believe that to be the case.

How to Marry a Millionaire is not 36 Sutton’s only claim to fame. During the 1950s, Joan Crawford and her husband, Pepsi-Cola Company chairman Alfred N. Steele, made the place their New York home.

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 How to Marry a Millionaire apartment building is located at 36 Sutton Place South in New York’s Sutton Place neighborhood.

September 12, 2018
Jack Ryan’s House from “Clear and Present Danger”

The Grim Cheaper was anxiously awaiting last Friday’s premiere of the new Amazon series Jack Ryan. There was practically a countdown going on in our house. When we finally viewed the first episode, though, my only thought was ‘I want that hour and four minutes of my life back.’ Needless to say, we were not impressed. The show is a bit of a snoozefest. And being that it was lensed outside of L.A. (mainly in Canada and Morocco), I did not even have its locations to distract me. Watching the pilot did remind me of a related site that I stalked back in November 2012 – the Hancock Park pad used for interior shots of the residence belonging to Jack Ryan (Harrison Ford) and his family in the Tom Clancy franchise’s third installment, 1994’s Clear and Present Danger. I first learned about the home thanks to a Los Angeles Times article published in February 2012, shortly after the property was put up for sale for the first time in almost thirty years. Though I promptly added the address to my To-Stalk List and hit the place up later that same year, I somehow forgot to blog about it. With all the interest in the new series, I figured it was the perfect moment to amend that.

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In real life, the massive 3-story Southern Colonial-style home, which was built in 1925, boasts 7,480 square feet, 6 bedrooms, 6.5 baths, a master suite with a fireplace, his-and-her baths and his-and-her walk-in closets, a library/den, a gourmet kitchen, a wine cellar with space for 900 bottles, hardwood flooring and crown moldings throughout, a detached 1-bedroom guest apartment, a pool house with its own kitchen, a large veranda, a rose garden, a fountain, a pool, a spa, a tennis court, a 4-car garage, a motor court, and a 0.86-acre lot. Holy amenities, Batman!

Sadly, thanks to the fact that its entire perimeter is lined with large trees, virtually none of it is visible from the street.

It doesn’t help matters that the residence sits perpendicular to the road, as you can see in the Bing Maps aerial view below. It is a very unique orientation (I have never seen a house situated sideways like that before) which, unfortunately, blocks most of the place from sight.

The views below are the best that can be gleaned of the home’s spectacular Antebellum façade.

Per the Los Angeles Times, Harrison Ford took such a liking to the property during the ten days spent filming on the premises that he offered to buy it. The owners, who purchased the pad in 1983 for $800,000, were not interested in selling, though. Their minds didn’t change until January 2012, when they placed the home on the market for $5.295 million. The real estate agent used the residence’s cinematic clout as a selling point, which is how it wound up being featured in the Times. It sold that same July for $4.32 million. You can check out the MLS photos here.

The dwelling appears numerous times throughout Clear and Present Danger. The kitchen first pops up in a beginning scene in which Jack learns that Admiral Greer (James Earl Jones) is in the hospital. Though the MLS photo below was taken from a slightly different angle than the one from which the segment was shot, you can see that very little of the kitchen had been altered from its onscreen state at the time of the sale in 2012.

Even the home’s highly unique copper and stainless steel range hood appears to have remained untouched. You can just barely see it to the right of Jack’s head in the screen capture below.

The master bedroom is then featured in a later scene in which Jack watches President Bennett (Donald Moffat) being interviewed on TV while getting ready for work. The MLS image below is, again, taken from a different vantage point, but it is still apparent how little of the room has been changed since the shoot.

In the segment, you can even see one of the room’s walk-in closets through the door in the background.

Near the end of the movie, the living room makes an appearance in the scene in which Ryan learns of Admiral Greer’s death. That space, too, looks much the same as it did when Clear and Present Danger was shot in 1994.

The Los Angeles Times article also states, “In another scene, Ford is preparing to go to South America and was filmed packing the homeowners’ actual clothes. The suitcase ended up in a prop truck, and the owners later had to retrieve their belongings from the prop department.” I scanned through the flick twice, though, in preparation for this post and did not come across a scene like that anywhere. There is one segment in which Ford is shown carrying a suitcase down the residence’s sweeping staircase just prior to his trip to Bogota, but no packing scene. I guess that bit wound up on the cutting room floor.

Only the interior of the property appears in Clear and Present Danger. The exterior of the Ryan home is a different location entirely – one I have not been able to track down as of yet.

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 house used for interior shots of Jack Ryan’s residence in Clear and Present Danger can be found at 615 South Rossmore Avenue in Hancock Park.

September 5, 2018
The Ella Strong Denison Library from “Beaches”

Libraries are very much on my brain as of late. It’s all thanks to Matilda and the post I wrote about the Wormwood home last week. While scanning through the 1996 film making screen captures, I became awestruck by the incredible book repository where young Matilda (Sara Magdalin) regularly hung out. Though countless websites claim that Pasadena’s Central Library at 285 East Walnut Street was utilized in the movie, I spent enough time there in my 10+ years of living in Crown City to immediately know that wasn’t true. Further digging led me to discover that the cavernous space where Matilda devoured books was actually the Doheny Memorial Library on the USC campus. (A post on that site will be coming soon.) Looking into the location reminded me of a similarly beautiful athenaeum I stalked back in February 2012 with Mike the Fanboy, but had failed to blog about – The Ella Strong Denison Library, which appeared briefly in Beaches. So I decided it was finally time to amend the situation.

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The Ella Strong Denison Library, named for Ella Strong Denison, the wife of a wealthy Denver physician who donated funds to numerous universities for the purpose of building libraries, opened its doors on the Scripps College campus in 1931.

Designed by architect Gordon Kaufmann (who also created the Royal Laundry Complex, La Quinta Resort & Club, Santa Anita Park, and Greystone Mansion), the building, which houses special collections, features intricately chiseled front doors, hand-carved wood detailing, and a massive stained glass window depicting Gutenberg encircled by literary motifs.

Oh, and card catalogs the stuff dreams are made of.

The grounds surrounding the place are also quite spectacular.

Along with serving as a quiet place to study, the library plays an integral role in the beginning and end of each Scripps undergrad’s college career. As the school’s website notes,“The key moment in the Matriculation Ceremony occurs in the first few days of Orientation, when incoming students process through the intricately carved Ella Strong Denison Library East Door. This door remains locked on all other days of the year save Commencement, when graduating seniors exit through this same door, signifying the beginning of Commencement Exercises, and the end of their educational journey at Scripps.”

In Beaches, the Denison Library is where Hillary Whitney Essex (Barbara Hershey) researches her illness shortly after being diagnosed.

The handsome space looks much the same today as it did onscreen thirty years ago.

As you can see below, the venue translates beautifully to the screen.

As such, I was certain it had appeared in numerous productions. I was unable to dig up any other movies or television shows featuring it, though.

I’m only now coming to realize that the vast majority of Beaches was shot in the Los Angeles area, despite largely being set in New York and San Francisco. I’ve written about a few of the movie’s SoCal locales previously including Hillary’s beach house at the Crystal Cove Historic District, Hillary’s supposed Atherton-area mansion (you can read a second post on that spot here), and Jewel’s Catch One, which portrayed both an SF nightclub and an NYC lounge. While scanning through Beaches in preparation for last April’s post about the latter (which is best known for its appearance as The Blue Banana in Pretty Woman), I discovered that the flick also did some filming at the now defunct Ambassador Hotel. The famed lodging portrayed Marlboro Blenheim, the ritzy Atlantic City resort where young Hillary (Marcie Leeds) took CC Bloom (Mayim Bialik) for a chocolate soda at the beginning of the movie. I recognized the wood-framed doorways, red floral carpeting and lobby fountain immediately upon viewing the scene. (The Ambassador was also utilized significantly in Pretty Woman as the interior of The Regent Beverly Wilshire, as I wrote about in this post.)

The Los Angeles Equestrian Center made an appearance in Beaches, as well, as young Hillary’s Bay Area riding club. (For those keeping track, that’s three locales the film shares with Pretty Woman, which I guess shouldn’t come as a surprise being that both were directed by Garry Marshall.)

I am also fairly certain that Southwestern Bag Company at 635 Mateo Street in downtown Los Angeles, aka the police station from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, portrayed the New York ACLU office where Hillary worked in the movie, but not enough of the space was shown for me to be absolutely certain.

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 Ella Strong Denison Library, from Beaches, is located in Scripps College’s Kauffman Wing at 1090 North Columbia Avenue in Claremont. Harwood Court residence hall, aka Eastland School from The Facts of Life, can be found just a few blocks away on the Pomona College campus at 170 East Bonita Avenue.

August 29, 2018
“The Princess Diaries” Firehouse

My friend Nat is a definite hostess with the mostest. When I last visited her in San Francisco in October 2016, she not only had champagne chilling in the fridge, but an itinerary of area stalking locales she thought might interest me compiled and mapped out on her phone. The spot on the list I was most excited about seeing was former Engine Company No. 43, where Mia Thermopolis (Anne Hathaway) lived with her mom, Helen (Caroline Goodall), and cat, Fat Louis, in 2001’s The Princess Diaries. This stalker loves herself any adaptive reuse and in person, the firehouse-turned-home did not disappoint. Somehow I forgot to blog about the place after returning home from my trip, though, and was not reminded of it until last Thursday when Mandy Moore, who played meanie cheerleader Lana Thomas in the film, posted a #tbt image of The Princess Diaries July 2001 premiere on Instagram. Seeing the photo brought me right back to the day I stalked the firehouse and I figured there was no time like the present to finally blog about it.

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The Mission Revival-style Engine Company No. 43 was originally built in 1911, back when firemen were still fighting blazes via horse-drawn carriages.

Following its decommission, the 4,800-square-foot wood frame structure was sold to a private buyer at a surplus auction in 1976 and subsequently transformed into a residence.

Today, the unique homestead boasts 8 rooms, 2 stories, a 340-square-foot outbuilding that initially housed Company No. 43’s kitchen, a double 0.11-acre lot, parking for 4+ cars, and original detailing throughout including a fireman’s pole.

The residence last hit the market in late 2014 with an asking price of $2.6 million (at the time it was being utilized as a 2-unit rental property) and was sold the following March for $1.85 million. That’s quite a bargain to call The Princess Diaries firehouse home, if you ask me!

Engine Company No. 43 pops up numerous times throughout the film.

In person, the place still looks much the same as it did onscreen 17 years ago.

Only the front exterior of the structure is featured in the movie.

The home’s massive side staircase also makes a couple of appearances.

Because those scenes were shot from the backyard, I was, obviously, unable to snap any photos matching the angle shown in the flick. But I was thrilled to see that the staircase is visible from the street.

The interior of Mia and Helen’s pad was nothing more than an elaborate set built inside of a soundstage a good 350 miles away at Walt Disney Studios in Burbank. You can check out some fabulous photos of it on art director Caty Maxey’s website.

Engine Company No. 43’s actual interior (which you can see here) is a far cry from its onscreen counterpart. While Mia and Helen’s home is colorful and lovingly cluttered, the firehouse’s real life inside is sophisticated and minimalist. I honestly can’t decide which I like better.

Interestingly, while The Princess Diaries was set in San Francisco, not much of the movie was shot there. Along with Engine Company No. 43, the Anthony R. Grove High School exterior (which Nat took me to stalk many moons ago) can also be found in the City by the Bay at 2601 Lyon Street in Cow Hollow. The school’s courtyard scenes were lensed a bit closer to home, though, at Alverno Heights Academy in Sierra Madre, which I blogged about here.

Big THANK YOU to my friend Nat for telling me about and taking me to this location!

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Engine Company No. 43, aka The Princess Diaries firehouse, is located at 724 Brazil Avenue in San Francisco’s Excelsior District.

August 27, 2018
Cameron’s Seafood from “Say Anything . . . “

The restaurant business is an insanely fickle one. So when I set out to find the eatery where Diane Court (Ione Skye) lunched with her mom, Mrs. Court (Lois Chiles), and her mom’s boyfriend, Ray (Stephen Shortridge), in the 1989 flick Say Anything . . . a few years back, I never dreamed it would be a place still in operation that I could actually stalk. It wasn’t until partnering with Greg Mariotti, from The Uncool website, to write our joint article about the movie’s Los Angeles locations in 2017 that I learned the scene had been filmed at Cameron’s Seafood (no relation to director Cameron Crowe ) at 1978 East Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena. When I inputted the restaurant’s name into Google, I was shocked to not only discover that the joint was still open, but that it was a place I was very familiar with. Though I had never dined there, I drove by it regularly during the 10+ years I lived in Crown City and was always struck by its resemblance to The Fish Market outposts, a favorite restaurant chain of my parents. (You can check out what a couple of those places look like here and here.) So to the top of my To-Stalk List Cameron’s went and the Grim Cheaper and I headed right on over there for lunch a few days later.

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Cameron’s Seafood opened its doors in 1984.

Originally founded by John Cameron (hence the name), it was taken over just two year later by Peter Gallanis, who still owns it to this day.

Cameron’s quickly became a neighborhood staple – the go-to spot in Pasadena for fresh seafood. Per a 2003 The Conduit article, the popular eatery averages a whopping 400 patrons on weekdays and 900 on weekends.

The sprawling 9,800-square-foot space features an exhibition-style kitchen . . .

. . . a large main dining room . . .

. . . a front bar . . .

. . . a rear bar . . .

. . . an on-site fish market . . .

. . . and nautical décor throughout.

The GC and I both loved our lunch at Cameron’s and are now kicking ourselves for not frequenting the place regularly when we lived in the area. The crab cakes I ordered were divine, the ambiance warm and inviting, and the bartender who served us could not have been more friendly. The cherry on top of our meal, though, was when I asked said bartender if she was aware of any filming done at the restaurant, and she replied, “A movie was shot here once, but that was a really long time ago – in the ‘80s.” Shocked, I inquired if she was talking about Say Anything . . . and was floored when she responded in the affirmative. In my experience, it is a rare occasion for employees to know any filming information, even if the filming is iconic (case in point – the concierge at the Plaza Hotel New York who had no idea Home Alone 2 had been lensed on the premises), so for her to be aware of a relatively short scene shot at Cameron’s almost thirty years prior was downright phenomenal!

In Say Anything . . . , Cameron’s Seafood is the site of a rather terse luncheon during which Diane pleads with her mother to tell the IRS nice things about her father, who is being investigated on embezzlement charges.

In the scene, Diane, her mother, and Ray sit at the rear of Cameron’s main dining room, just beyond the counter that overlooks the exhibition kitchen. Though I didn’t get a close-up photo of that area of the restaurant, it is visible in the far back of my picture below.

With its nautical-themed décor, it is not very hard to see how Cameron’s came to be used Say Anything . . . , which was set in Seattle. Amazingly, the place still looks much the same today as it did onscreen 29 years ago.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Cameron’s Seafood, from Say Anything . . . , is located at 1978 East Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena. You can visit the restaurant’s official website here.

August 24, 2018