Category: This and That

The Thomas W. Phillips Residence from “The People Under the Stairs”

In his comment on my Milbank Mansion post, fellow stalker David, from The Location Scout blog, also informed me that directly across the street from the Beckett house (which I blogged about yesterday) was another famous movie location – the Thomas W. Phillips residence, which was featured extensively in The People Under the Stairs. And even though I had never seen the 1991 horror flick, since we were right there and since I was gearing up for my annual Haunted Hollywood postings, I figured I might as well stalk the place. And I am so glad that I did, because its façade is seriously sinister. The residence looks like a real life haunted house and it is not hard to see why Wes Craven chose to feature it in The People Under the Stairs.

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The Thomas W. Phillips residence was constructed in 1905 by the architecture team of Sumner B. Hunt & Abraham Wesley Eager. Hunt was also responsible for designing The Ebell of Los Angeles (an oft-filmed at locale that I have yet to blog about) and the Southwest Museum of the American Indian in Mt. Washington. Thomas W. Phillips, who had commissioned the construction of the three-story Craftsman-style abode, was one of the original founding residents of L.A. You can check out a photograph of the dwelling from its early days here. As you can see, not much has changed in the 107 years since it was built. Love it!

In real life, the massive abode, which was deemed a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument in 1991, boasts 8 bedrooms, 4 baths, a whopping 7,707 square feet of living space, and a 0.40-acre plot of land. Besides being a filming location, according to a February 1999 Los Angeles Times article, the residence also belonged to actress Butterfly McQueen (aka Scarlett O’Hara’s maid in Gone with the Wind) at one point in time.

The Thomas W. Phillips residence was used quite extensively in The People Under the Stairs as the home where Man (Everett McGill), Woman (Wendy Robie) and Alice (A.J. Langer) – and, of course, the people under the stairs – lived.

In the movie, the residence was said to be the Robeson Funeral Home, which was established in 1896.

All of the interior house scenes were filmed on a studio lot, though, and not inside of the actual Thomas W. Phillips residence, which you can see some photographs of here. And yes, the dwelling does have a very large – and very spooky – basement in real life, much like its onscreen counterpart.

Thanks to The Official Halloween Message Board, I learned that the kitchen of the Thomas W. Phillips residence stood in for the Myers’ kitchen in Rob Zombie’s 2007 Halloween re-boot. Unfortunately, I could not find any great photographs of the real life kitchen online, but you can sort of see it here and here.

The Thomas W. Phillips residence also appeared in the background of both the Season 2 episode of Lie to Me titled “Darkness and Light” . . .

. . . and the Season 3 episode of Brothers and Sisters titled “Going Once . . . Going Twice.”

The abode also popped up in 1989’s The Immortalizer and 2000’s The Convent. And while I could not find copies of either of those movies with which to make screen captures for this post, you can see some on The Location Scout blog here. And while IMDB states that the house was also used in the 1998 video Witchcraft, I could not find a copy of the production with which to verify that information.

You can find me on Facebook here and on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And be sure to check out my latest post, about one of the best salads I’ve ever had in my life, on my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic.

Big THANK YOU to David, from The Location Scout blog, for telling me about this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Thomas W. Phillips residence, aka The People Under the Stairs house, is located at 2215 South Harvard Boulevard in the West Adams District of Los Angeles.

October 11, 2012
The Beckett House from “Delusion: The Blood Rite”

Way back in February, fellow stalker David, of The Location Scout blog, wrote a comment on my post about the Milbank Mansion, the interior of which was used as the inside of the Finch home in Running with Scissors, informing me that the exterior shots of the Finch residence were filmed at the Beckett house in the West Adams District. David also let me know that the Beckett house had appeared in quite a few B-movies from the ‘80s, most of them of the horror genre. And while I did add the place to my To-Stalk list, for whatever reason, I never ventured out there. Then, a couple of weeks ago, I spotted the mansion in a Season 2 episode of Lie to Me (the Grim Cheaper and I just finished watching the entire series on DVD and absolutely fell in love with it – I am seriously bummed that it was cancelled!) and decided that I had to stalk the place as soon as possible. So I dragged the GC right on over there, just in time for my Haunted Hollywood postings.

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The Beckett house was originally built in 1905 for Dr. Wesley W. Beckett and his wife, Iowa Archer. Dr. Beckett was a member of the board of trustees at USC and the namesake of the school’s Beckett Hall. According to commenter “KWB” on the Big Orange Landmarks blog (where you can read a fabulously detailed history of the residence), the doctor lived on the premises until his death in 1936. You can see a photograph of the home around the time that it was originally constructed here. It is amazing to me that, despite its severely dilapidated state, it still looks almost exactly the same today as it did over one hundred years ago. In 1981, the property apparently suffered a destructive fire on its top floors and while the then owners, thankfully, restored it, the mansion has since been left to deteriorate. Today, the home, which very much looks like a real life haunted house, is vacant and is used primarily for filming.

The Beckett house, which was designated a Los Angeles Historic–Cultural Monument in 1973, boasts 6 bedrooms, 4 baths, a whopping 5,415 square feet, and a 0.54-acre plot of land. You can check out some fabulous interior photographs of the mansion here. While some of the inside is in serious need of TLC, the majority of it is in far better shape than what the exterior would lead one to believe. Despite the decay, it is easy to see that the place must have been magnificent in its heyday!

As luck would have it, when we showed up to stalk the place, we happened to spot a man who was building some sort of elaborate scenery piece in the side yard. We got to talking with him and he informed us that he was setting up for an interactive Halloween-themed theatre production known as “Delusion: The Blood Rite“ that was going to be held at the mansion for the second year in a row. How incredibly cool is that? The 2011 play, which was simply titled “Delusion”, was named “Best Haunted Attraction” by FOX LA and “Hottest Ticket in L.A.” by NPR’s All Things Considered. Actor Neil Patrick Harris saw the show twice last October and loved it so much that he is actually co-producing it this year. Um, love it!

The play (which looks to be scaaaaaaaaaaary!) is currently running through November 10th. You can purchase tickets here and you can watch a video about it by clicking below.

Delusion play

Due to its marred appearance, the home has long been a favorite of location scouts seeking decrepit or spooky locales. As I mentioned above, the exterior of the property was used as the exterior of the mansion where the crazy Dr. Finch (Brian Cox) lived with his even crazier family in 2006’s Running with Scissors. As you can see below, the facade was painted Pepto-Bismol pink for the movie.

Thanks to The Official Halloween Message Board, I learned that the upstairs portion of the Beckett house was used as the upstairs of the home where the young Michael Meyers (Daeg Faerch) lived in Rob Zombie’s 2007 Halloween re-boot. Several areas of the abode appeared in the movie, including a bedroom (which you can see a real life photograph of here) that stood in for the bedroom of Judith Meyers (Hannah Hall, who also played “Young Jenny” in Forest Gump);

another bedroom (which you can see a real life photograph of here) that was used as Michael’s room;

a bathroom (which you can see a real life photograph of here);

a hallway (which you can see a real life photograph of here);

another bedroom (which you can see a real life photograph of here) that was used as the bedroom of Baby Boo (who was played by Sydnie Pitzer, Myla Pitzer and Stella Altman);

a back stairway (which you can see a real life photograph of here);

and the basement (which you can see a real life photograph of here). It was rather difficult to get a decent screen capture of the basement as the scene shot there was far too dark, but in the image below you can see that the small rounded windows that appeared in the movie match the home’s actual basement windows.

The living room of the Beckett house also masqueraded as the Strode family’s living room in the flick. You can see a real life photograph of that room here.

Thanks to Geoff, of the 90210Locations website, I learned that the Season 3 episode of Brothers and Sisters titled “Going Once . . . Going Twice”, which aired in 2008, featured the Beckett house as the bank-owned residence that Kevin Walker (Matthew Rhys) purchased as a surprise for his boyfriend, Scotty Wandell (Luke MacFarlane).

The interior of the property was also used in the episode.

The Beckett house was also shown in a real estate listing in the episode . . .

. . . and in an auction image, which stated that the property was located in Pasadena.

Both the exterior . . .

. . . and the interior of the house were also used extensively in the 2008 music video for Robert Plant and Allison Krause’s song “Please Read the Letter”.

You can watch that video by clicking below.

The Beckett House from the “Please Read the Letter” Music Video

In the Season 2 episode of Lie to Me titled “Darkness and Light”, which aired in 2010, Dr. Cal Lightman (Tom Roth) tracks a missing and troubled young woman named Molly (Natalie Dreyfuss) to the dilapidated old mansion where she has been living with several other downtrodden girls.

The interior of the home also appeared in the episode.

Mike, from MovieShotsLA, informed me that the mansion was also used as the frat house where Emma Kurtzman (Natalie Portman) and Adam Franklin (Ashton Kutcher) met for the second time in the 2011 romantic comedy No Strings Attached.

As you can see below, though, a different location was used for the interior of the frat house.

The Beckett house was also featured in 1988’s Twice Dead, 1989’s The Immortalizer, 1992’s Evil Toons, 2000’s The Convent, 2001’s The Attic Expeditions, and 2005’s Lethal Eviction, all of which you can read about and see screen captures from on The Location Scout blog here.

You can find me on Facebook here and on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And be sure to check out my latest post, about one of the best salads I’ve ever had in my life, on my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic.

Big THANK YOU to David, from The Location Scout blog, for telling me about this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Beckett house, from “Delusion: The Blood Rite”, is located at 2218 South Harvard Boulevard in the West Adams District of Los Angeles. The play will be running through November 10th and tickets are $45 per person. You can visit the official “Delusion: The Blood Rite” website here.

October 10, 2012
Katie’s House from “The Ring”

While doing research on the Malibou Lake residence that stood in for the office of Doctor Grasnik (Jane Alexander) in the thriller The Ring, I came across a page on fave website Washington State Film Locations which stated that the supposed Seattle-area house where Katie (Amber Tamblyn) lived – and died – in the 2002 flick was actually located in Hancock Park. Well, believe you me, I just about fell off my chair upon learning the information as I had always thought that particular abode was located in the Pacific Northwest, where the majority of The Ring was lensed. So I immediately added the residence to my Haunted-Hollywood-To-Stalk list and dragged the Grim Cheaper right on over there just a few days later.

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Sadly, thanks to some very dense foliage, not much of Katie’s house is visible from the street, as you can see below. In real life, the Tudor-style abode, which was originally built in 1924, boasts 5 bedrooms, 3 baths, 3,610 square feet of living space, and a 0.28-acre plot of land.

The exterior of the stately residence was featured several times in The Ring. It first popped up in the movie’s opening scene in which Katie was tormented and then killed by Samara (Daveigh Chase), seven days after viewing a cursed video tape. As you can see below, while recognizable, the house looks quite a bit different today than it did in 2002 when The Ring was filmed, mostly due to the addition of a front gate, walkway and massive amounts of foliage.

The property next popped up in the scene in which Katie’s friends and family gather for her memorial. In that scene, the driveway area of the home is visible and, as you can see below, at the time of the filming, the hedges surrounding the front yard were much lower than they are now. Boo!

The house lastly shows up – through a rainy windshield – in the scene in which Rachel (Naomi Watts) drops her son, Aidan (David Dorfman), off at her sister’s place for the week.

I am fairly certain that the real life interior of the home was also used in the flick, but I was unable to find any interior photographs of the residence with which to verify that hunch.

Thanks to Geoff, from the 90210Locations website, I learned that the very same residence was also used as the home where Buster (Bernie Mac) lived, with his cheating wife, Robin (Beverly Johnson), in 1997’s How to Be a Player, although very little of the house can actually be seen in the flick.

You can find me on Facebook here and on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And be sure to check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic.

Big THANK YOU to Charles, from the In Twin Peaks website, for finding this location and to Marc, from the Washington State Film Locations website, for posting it!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Katie’s house from The Ring is located at 413 South McCadden Place in Hancock Park.

October 9, 2012
“The Vanishing” Apartment Building

Today’s location is an oldie, but goodie. Waaaaaaaaaaay back in May 2010, the Grim Cheaper and I took a little pre-wedding stalking vacation to the Pacific Northwest to visit our good friends fellow stalker Kerry and her husband, Jim – and to see the grocery store where Michael Buble’s “Haven’t Met You Yet” music video was filmed, which I blogged about here. Before heading up there, Kerry suggested that I check out the 1993 thriller The Vanishing as she had tracked down all of its locales and thought I might be interested in stalking them. Well, I ended up watching the flick just a few days prior to our trip and absolutely loved it – and the uniquely tiered apartment building that appeared extensively throughout it. So Kerry took us right on over there to stalk the place during the second day of our vacay. And, let me tell you, the building is just as cool in person as it appeared to be onscreen. (Please excuse my appearance in the photograph above – the Seattle weather was not very kind to my naturally curly hair and I wound up having to either pull it back or hide it under a cap during most of our stay.)

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In The Vanishing, the apartment building is where Jeff Harriman (Kiefer Sutherland) lives with his new girlfriend, Rita Baker (Nancy Travis), after suffering through the unsolved disappearance of his previous girlfriend, Diane Shaver (a pre-Speed Sandra Bullock), three years prior. The building pops up countless times in the movie.

As you can see below, it looks pretty much EXACTLY the same today as it did nineteen years ago when The Vanishing was filmed. Even the paint color is still the same (at least it was in May 2010 when I stalked the place). LOVE IT! LOVE IT! LOVE IT!

In The Vanishing, Jeff and Rita lived in Apartment #20, which is the real life address number of the unit where filming took place, as well. So incredibly cool!

While watching The Vanishing, I had been convinced that the view from the apartment building was fake as it seemed just a bit too spectacular. So I was floored when it turned out to be the building’s actual view! Jaw-dropping!

As luck would have it, while we were stalking the place we happened to meet one of the building’s super-nice residents who invited us to step onto the property to get a closer look. And while I was seriously tempted to pose for a picture next to Jeff and Rita’s front door, I restrained myself as I was afraid that might be overstaying my welcome just a bit.

I am fairly certain that the real life interior of Apartment #20 was also used in the filming, although I could not find interior pictures of any of the units with which to verify that hunch.

You can find me on Facebook here and on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And be sure to check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Vanishing apartment building is located at 200 Aloha Street in Seattle. In the movie, Jeff and Rita lived in Apartment #20.

October 8, 2012
Alfred Hitchcock’s Second L.A. Home

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post (which you can read here), in the Spring of 1942, Alfred Hitchcock, his wife, Alma, and their daughter, Pat, moved out of their first Los Angeles-area home (a Bel Air rental that was previously lived in by Carole Lombard) and into a new one, which they purchased, that was located just a few miles away at 10957 Bellagio Road. I learned of this location, once again, thanks to the book Dial H for Hitchcock, the fifth installment of author Susan Kandel’s Cece Caruso mystery series, which I am a HUGE fan of.

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Hitch’s new story-and-a-half Colonial-style residence, which was originally constructed in 1942 (I am guessing that he was the home’s first owner), boasts 7 bedrooms, 5 baths, and 7,258 square feet of living space. It sits on a well-hidden 0.64-acre plot of land that backs directly up to the golf course of the Bel Air Country Club, near the fifteenth hole. According to the 1999 book Hitchcock & Selznick, the Master of Suspense would snatch up any errant golf balls that made their way into his yard and give them to his dogs. LOL The legendary director lived on the premises from 1942 until his death, which took place inside of the home, on April 29th, 1980. Alma passed away two years later on July 6, 1982. And it appears as though whomever purchased the residence from the Hitchcock estate still owns it to this day.

The Hitchcock & Selznick book also states that, while he was searching for his new home, Hitch told a reporter, “All I need is a snug little house with a kitchen, and the devil with a swimming pool.” Alfred, an avid cook, failed to mention that it would have to be a spectacular kitchen. According to Dial H for Hitchcock, the director apparently spent a whopping TWENTY YEARS redesigning the kitchen of the Bellagio road home. As Kandel states, “For Hitchcock, eating was serious business. His father, a grocer in London’s East End, insisted on potatoes at every meal. The habit stuck. Hitch wolfed them whole, halved, diced, sliced, boiled, baked, fried, sautéed, cottage-fried, double-baked, and, in his waning years, mashed. At age twenty-seven, he weighed two hundred pounds; at forty, he weighed close to four hundred. At forty-four, by his own admission, his ankles hung over his socks and his belt reached up to his necktie. Not that he particularly minded. His weight was his armor, his insulation. Which makes it doubly odd that in his work food is so unfailingly gruesome: the milk poisoned, the eggs scrambled to resemble brains, the ketchup explosive. Murder victims are baked into pies, then devoured. Corpses are concealed in sacks of potatoes. Chickens have necks meant to be strangled.” See why I love Kandel’s books so much? Each provides a plethora of fascinating historical information. I always prefer my mystery novels with a side of history.

Besides a great kitchen, Hitch also sought privacy and, as you can see below, his former Bellagio Road home is extremely well-covered with lush foliage and, unfortunately, not at all visible from the road.

But as I’ve said before, that’s why God created aerial views.

You can find me on Facebook here and on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And be sure to check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Alfred Hitchcock’s second L.A. home is located at 10957 Bellagio Road in Bel Air.

October 5, 2012
Alfred Hitchcock’s Former Home

I tend to get a bit overexuberant when it comes to stalking Haunted Hollywood sites each year and typically wind up with more locations in my stockpile (or should I say stalkpile? ) than there are days in October to blog about them. In fact, it would be safe to say that I have enough spooky locales left over from years past to cover all of this October’s posts, not that that will prevent me from stalking new ones, of course. Anyway, one location that I have had waiting in the wings for quite some time now is the first house that Alfred Hitchcock, the Master of Suspense himself, lived in upon moving to Los Angeles in 1939. I learned of the locale thanks to the 2009 book Dial H for Hitchcock, the fifth in Susan Kandel’s fabulous Cece Caruso mystery series. I absolutely love Kandel’s novels because, not only are they fun and suspenseful, but they always feature numerous real and historic locations – one of which, Thelma Todd’s Roadside Café, I blogged about during my Haunted Hollywood postings back in 2008. In Dial H for Hitchcock, biographer/part-time detective/heroine Cece Caruso, who has been commissioned by her publisher to pen a book on the Master of Suspense, heads out to several of his former residences in order to “commune with Hitch’s spirit”. Kandel provided the addresses of the homes in the novel, so I, of course, immediately added them to my To-Stalk list and ran right out to stalk them shortly thereafter.

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According to Kandel, in 1939 producer David O. Selznick convinced Alfred, who was by that time already a successful director, to migrate with his wife, Alma, and daughter, Pat, from their native England to Southern California. Selznick first rented the family a three-bedroom apartment in the Wilshire Palms building (which was once located at 10331 Wilshire Boulevard, but has since, I believe, been torn down). Shortly thereafter, the Hitchcocks learned that their good friend Carole Lombard was moving out of a French Country-style manse she was renting in Bel Air, so Hitch decided to take over her lease and relocated his family there that October.

Carole Lombard had first moved into the abode in 1936, after realizing that her home at 7953 Hollywood Boulevard was not conducive to the affair she had just begun with a married Clark Gable. So she leased a much more secluded residence at 609 St. Cloud Road in Bel Air. You can check out a photograph of Lombard and Gable that was supposedly taken inside of the home here. After finally marrying Gable on March 29th, 1939, the two purchased a ranch in Encino, began renovating it and finally moved in that October, at which point Hitch took over the lease. The Hitchcocks remained in the home until the Spring of 1942, when they purchased a larger Colonial-style manse located two miles away. (And don’t worry, I also stalked that abode and will be blogging about it tomorrow. ) According to this website, Shelley Long also lived in the St. Cloud Road residence at one point in time, although I have been unable to verify that.

The property, which was originally built in 1926 and boasts 5 bedrooms, 6 baths, 4,357 square feet, a 0.76-acre plot of land, a swimming pool, a fish pond, parking for over 20 cars, a chef’s kitchen, and a private guest house, last sold in December 2007 for a cool $7.85 million. It appears to have been remodeled at some point thereafter and, from the description of the place in Dial H for Hitchcock, was quite possibly in a state of disrepair for a brief period of time, as well. The book reads, “Considering the neighborhood, 609 was a dump. I wasn’t sure anybody was even living there anymore. The driveway was strewn with leaves and yellowed newspapers. The gate stretching across it was covered with brown canvas so you couldn’t see in. However somebody had cut a little hole at the bottom. Someone with an avid interest in the former residents, perhaps.” (A stalker, maybe? ) And while that description may have been conjured up for story purposes and not the actual state of the house at the time of the writing, Google aerial views do show that the yard was torn up at some recent date. I am very happy to report that the home was in nice shape when I stalked it earlier this year, although, sadly, not much of it is visible from the road.

You can find me on Facebook here and on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And be sure to check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Alfred Hitchcock’s former home is located at 609 St. Cloud Road in Bel Air. After finishing his second presidential term in January 1989, Ronald Reagan and his wife, Nancy, moved into a house located just up the street at 668 St. Cloud Road.

October 4, 2012
Leigh Ann’s House from “Teaching Mrs. Tingle”

The final Teaching Mrs. Tingle location that I was absolutely desperate to find was the home where Leigh Ann Watson (Katie Holmes) lived in the 1999 thriller. Because the other two properties featured in the movie are located in Pasadena (you can read my post on the house belonging to Mrs. Tingle (Helen Mirren) here and Coach Wenchell (Jeffrey Tambor) here), I was positively convinced that Leigh Ann’s residence was, as well, and spent countless hours scouring aerial views of the city. After repeatedly coming up empty-handed, though, I decided it was time to call in the big guns – fellow stalkers Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong blog – for some back-up. And, amazingly enough, Owen found the dwelling fairly quickly – in Culver City of all places, an area which I never would have searched in a million years. Thank you, Owen! So I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out to stalk the abode just a few days later.

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In the screen capture I had sent him, Owen had noticed that the faint outline of a 4 was visible in front of the 110 address number posted above Leigh Ann’s front door. Because of the picturesque trees visible on Leigh Ann’s street, Owen was also at first convinced that her house was located in Pasadena and spent quite a bit of time searching 4100 blocks in the area. When those efforts proved fruitless, he decided to take a look at IMDB’s Teaching Mrs. Tingle filming locations page to see if it would provide any insight. And, sure enough, it did! After noticing that both Culver City High School and Culver Studios were mentioned as being used in the flick, he shifted his hunt there and eventually found the house at 4110 Lincoln Avenue, just a few blocks north of the high school (which I believe was only used for a few interior shots). Yay!

Leigh Ann’s house is only featured twice, and very briefly at that, in Teaching Mrs. Tingle – first in an opening scene in which Jo Lynn Jordan (Marisa Coughlan) picks Leigh Ann up for school. In the scene, only the residence across the street from Leigh Ann’s is actually shown, though.

The abode next pops up in the scene in which Leigh Ann returns home for the night after she and her friends have taken Mrs. Tingle hostage. As you can see below, the residence looks quite a bit different now than it did during the filming. A white picket fence has since been constructed around the perimeter of the property, the paint color has since been changed and quite a bit of foliage has since been added to the front yard. I was absolutely floored to see that the moon-shaped cut-outs were still present in the window shutters, though. Love it!

In real life, the residence was originally built in 1934 and boasts 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, 1,472 square feet of living space, and a 0.15-acre plot of land. As luck would have it, the homeowners happened to be outside when we showed up to stalk the place and they truly could NOT have been nicer. And while they did not own the bungalow at the time of the filming, the previous resident had informed them of the property’s cinematic history. For some inexplicable reason, though, they have yet to rent the movie to see the house onscreen for themselves. Sheesh! Some people! If I owned that house, I’d be watching Teaching Mrs. Tingle pretty much nightly!

I am fairly certain that the real life interior of the dwelling was also used in the flick, but, unfortunately, I could not find any interior photographs of the residence with which to verify that hunch, nor did the homeowners know if any filming took place inside

I was absolutely shocked at how much Leigh Ann’s neighborhood resembled Pasadena in person. In fact, if someone had shown me the photograph below prior to me stalking Leigh Ann’s house, I would have bet money on the fact that it was a photograph of a Pasadena street. Who knew Culver City had trees like that?

You can find me on Facebook here and on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And be sure to check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic.

Big THANK YOU to Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong blog, for finding this location.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Leigh Ann’s house from Teaching Mrs. Tingle is located at 4110 Lincoln Avenue in Culver City.

October 3, 2012
The Blankenhorn Lamphear House from “Teaching Mrs. Tingle”

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post (which you can read here), I recently went on a trek to find all of the locations used in the 1999 thriller Teaching Mrs. Tingle. The locale I was most interested in tracking down, of course, was the huge Victorian manse belonging to the movie’s titular character, who was played by Helen Mirren. Once I learned from the flick’s production notes that the residence was located in the Pasadena area, I figured that, thanks to its fabulous façade, it would most likely be chronicled in the architectural section of Hometown Pasadena. So I immediately started scanning through the tome and fairly quickly came across a blurb about a property named the Blankenhorn Lamphear house which said, “This house is one of Pasadena’s finest examples of the Queen Anne style, the most romantic and fanciful of the Victorian era’s architectural idioms.” I quickly punched the address provided into Google Street View and, sure enough, the Blankenhorn Lamphear house and Mrs. Tingle’s abode were one and the same! So I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out to stalk the place just a few minutes later.

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The Blankenhorn Lamphear house was originally constructed in 1893 by the Bradbeer and Ferris architecture firm. It was commissioned by a wealthy railroad executive named David F. Blankenhorn. David’s son, David F. Blankenhorn Jr., who was born on the premises, grew up to become a very successful real estate mogul – it was he who handled William Wrigley Jr.’s purchase of Catalina Island in 1919. The Blankenhorns later sold the property to a Mr. and Mrs. John Lamphear, who lived there for many years with their three children. The property changed hands once again in 1994 when the Lamphear estate sold it to its current owner for $425,000.

As you can see below, the 6-bedroom, 2-bath, 3,017-square-foot home, which sits on 0.31 acres, is absolutely spectacular in person.

In Teaching Mrs. Tingle, high school students Leigh Ann Watson (Katie Holmes), Luke Churner (Barry Watson) and Jo Lynn Jordan (Marisa Coughlan – in an AMAZING performance) pay a late night visit to the home of their mean-spirited English teacher, Mrs. Tingle, in order to clear up a misunderstanding. Things don’t go quite according to plan, though, and the three wind up holding Mrs. Tingle hostage inside of the abode for a few days.

A large gate and a massive amount of foliage were added to the residence for the filming, so it looks quite a bit different (and a lot less spooky) in person than it did onscreen.

And while the Teaching Mrs. Tingle production notes state, “The filmmakers chose for Mrs. Tingle an elegant Victorian house in Pasadena, split by a mysterious spiral staircase – a layout that matches the constant shifts and turns of plot and ups and downs of the fate of Leigh Ann Watson and Mrs. Tingle”, because the majority of the movie’s action took place inside of the home, I do not believe that the real life interior was used in the flick. Unfortunately, I was not able to find any interior photographs of the property with which to verify that hunch, though.

Fellow stalker Anthony informed me that the very same house was also used as the residence where Helen North Beardsley (Lucille Ball) and Frank Beardsley (Henry Fonda) lived with their eighteen (!) children in the 1968 flick Yours, Mine and Ours. As you can see below, the façade of the house has not changed much since that time.

The home’s real life address number of “346” was even visible in the background of a few scenes. Love it!

According to a 1974 Pasadena Star News article, only the exterior of the Blankenhorn Lamphear house was used in the flick. The interior of the Beardsley home was a set built inside of a soundstage somewhere in Hollywood. As you can see below, it does not match the interior of Mrs. Tingle’s house in the slightest.

You can find me on Facebook here and on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And be sure to check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Blankenhorn Lamphear house, aka Mrs. Tingle’s home from Teaching Mrs. Tingle, is located at 346 Markham Place in Pasadena. The Daddy Day Care house is located right around the corner at 351 Congress Place.

October 2, 2012
Coach Wenchell’s House from “Teaching Mrs. Tingle”

It’s that time again, my fellow stalkers! October 1st – the beginning of my Haunted Hollywood postings. And I could not be more excited! So without further ado . . . let’s get started! A couple of months ago, I stopped by my good friend Marci’s boyfriend’s house to pick up something she had left for me there. (Marci just so happens to be the owner of one of my favorite places in the entire world – Lula Mae gift shop at 100 North Fair Oaks Avenue in Pasadena. If you are in the area, I cannot more highly recommend stopping by. I love the place so much, I practically hang out there. It’s where I go whenever I need a gift, or am in a bad mood, or am suffering from writer’s block. The store manages to cure all of my ails! But I digress.) While I was there, Marci’s bf and I got to talking about filming locations (imagine that!) and he mentioned that the 1999 thriller Teaching Mrs. Tingle had been filmed at a residence near where he used to live on Atchison Street in Pasadena. Well, let me tell you, I just about fell over upon hearing the news as I had long been under the assumption that the flick had been lensed in North Carolina. So I ran right out to purchase the DVD and immediately started trying to track down all of its locales. Thanks to some big help from the usual suspects (fellow stalkers Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong blog), I managed to find quite a few of them. So I figured what better way to kick off my Haunted Hollywood month than by posting about the house that started my Teaching Mrs. Tingle obsession.

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As it turns out, the house on Atchison Street stood in for the residence where Coach Wenchell (Jeffrey Tambor) lived in Teaching Mrs. Tingle. It popped up only once in the movie, in the scene in which Leigh Ann Watson (Katie Holmes) and Luke Churner (Barry Watson) drove the passed-out (and married!) Coach back to his home after he stopped by Mrs. Tingle’s (Helen Mirren) pad for a booty call. And I should mention here that while I was not really a fan of Teaching Mrs. Tingle, this stalker absolutely LOVES LOVES LOVES herself some Katie Holmes, which is why I became so obsessed with tracking down locales from the flick.

After they arrive at his house, Leigh Ann and Luke dump the Coach onto his front porch and then Leigh Ann, sadly, spots the Coach’s wife sitting inside reading by herself. Only a very tight shot of the home and its front porch area was shown in the flick.

It was such a tight shot, in fact, that I had a hard time pinpointing the exact house that appeared in the movie. (Marci’s boyfriend had only told me that the residence was located on the 1100 block of Atchison). It was not until I spotted two very distinct trees in the background, located in front of a neighboring residence, that I was able to figure it out.

In real life, Coach Wenchell’s house, which was originally built in 1926, boasts two bedrooms, two baths, 2,112 square feet of living space, and a 0.33-acre plot of land. As you can see below, it is an absolutely adorable little house and I am really surprised that more of it was not shown onscreen.

You can find me on Facebook here and on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And be sure to check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic. (I made the photograph below using some SERIOUSLY COOL Halloween filters, fonts and graphics that were just added to my favorite photo editing program PicMonkey.)

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Coach Wenchell’s house from Teaching Mrs. Tingle is located at 1101 Atchison Street in Pasadena. Westminster Presbyterian Church, where Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag got married, is located just around the corner at 1757 North Lake Avenue.

October 1, 2012
The First Beverly Hills House

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, fellow stalker E.J., from The Movieland Directory website, recently published an e-book about Old Hollywood titled Unscripted: Hollywood Back-Stories, Volume 1 (which you can purchase on Nook here and on Kindle here). I read the entire tome – which was fascinating, by the way – in two nights, highlighter and stalking notebook in hand, and, of course, accumulated quite a few new addresses to add to my ever-growing To-Stalk list – the most notable of which was the address of the very first residence ever to be built in Beverly Hills. And I finally managed to drag the Grim Cheaper out there to stalk the place this past Saturday afternoon.

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The city of Beverly Hills actually had a very inauspicious beginning. The six square miles that now make up one of the most exclusive and luxurious areas on the planet started out as a 4,539-acre Spanish land grant known as “El Rancho Rodeo de las Aguas”, or “The Ranch of the Gathering of the Waters”. In 1900, after a succession of different owners, Burton Green, president of the Amalgamated Oil Company, purchased the site – which at the time was being called “Morocco Junction” and was being utilized as a lima bean farm – and began drilling for oil. And while he did not come across any, he did find an abundance of water and, in 1906, decided to develop the land into an upscale housing community and changed his company’s name to the Rodeo Land and Water Company. Green dubbed his new locality “Beverly Hills”, in honor of his hometown of Beverly Farms, Massachusetts. Ground was broken on the site in 1907, whereupon wide, curving boulevards were mapped out (each planted with a different type of tree), parks were landscaped and model homes were built. The first model home (pictured below) stood at 515 North Canon Drive.

Green began selling plots of land for around $500, but, unfortunately, no one was buying. In order to bring attention to his faltering community, he decided to construct a luxury hotel and, in May 1912, the Beverly Hills Hotel, aka “The Pink Palace”, was born. Amazingly enough, according to Unscripted, the BHH “was an hour carriage ride from Hollywood and three hours by train and carriage from downtown L.A.” And I thought today’s traffic was bad! While the hotel proved popular with the showbiz set, it was not until Hollywood darlings Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks purchased a secluded estate in 1920 at 1143 Summit Drive, which they then commissioned famed architect Wallace Neff to transform into a mega-mansion dubbed “Pickfair”, that the city became a celebrity draw. As Unscripted says, “Pickfair brought the stars, who’d never been interested in Beverly Hills, to Beverly Hills. The hilltops within view of Pickfair were soon boasting mansion estates for the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Tom Mix, Rudolph Valentino, Francis Marion and Fred Thompson, and John Barrymore.” And the rest, as they say, is history.

There seems to be quite a bit of discrepancy online about Beverly Hills’ first model home. From what I have been able to gather via property records, the dwelling was originally constructed in 1908, which gels with the timeline of the city’s inception. According to the YouTube video below, though, which was made when the residence was for sale earlier this year, the 5-bedroom, 5-bath, 3,883-square-foot property was “recently built” by architect Alec Dugally. And while I could not find any permits or documents pertaining to a remodel, tear-down or rebuild at the site, according to Redfin, the property was, indeed, renovated in 1948. Adding to the confusion is the fact that Alec Dugally seems to have worked predominantly in the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s, though, not in 1948 and not in “recent” years. So it seems that both Redfin and YouTube might have some bogus information posted. Either way, someone’s wires got crossed somewhere over the years and I cannot state with certainty that the model home is still in its original form today. If I had to guess, though, I would say that the property was, at some point, remodeled. Boo!

The First Beverly Hills House

According to this Beverly Hills Historic Resources Survey, Green’s model home was still standing in its original form in 1986. As you can (sort of) see below in the Historic Aerial’s view of the house circa 1980 as compared to the more current Bing image, it does appear as if some alteration may have taken place. Because the 1980 view is so hazy, though, it is impossible to say for certain either way.

You can find me on Facebook here and on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And be sure to check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The first house ever built in Beverly Hills is located at 515 North Canon Drive.

September 18, 2012