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Meeting Ivo Adam

While vacationing in Switzerland last month, I was not expecting to encounter any stars. But the stalking gods were definitely smiling down upon me because encounter a star, I did – a Swiss celebrity chef named Ivo Adam.

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Upon arriving in Ascona, a gorgeous lakeside town in Switzerland’s Ticino region, my best friend Robin’s girlfriend, Steffi, suggested we grab an afternoon cocktail (or aperitivo) at her favorite area bar, Sea Lounge – a watering hole that sits rights on the harbor of Lake Maggiore.

A portion of Sea Lounge is situated inside of a little cave, which is where our group sat.

As you can see below, the views, even from inside of the cave, are absolutely spectacular!

The entire restaurant is pretty darn amazing, actually. That’s the hallway leading to the bathrooms – yes, the bathrooms – pictured below.

The bathroom faucets, which are controlled by a metal touch screen, were a sight to behold in and of themselves! As you can see below, when a patron turns the temperature to cold, a blue light comes on.

And when the water is turned to hot, a red light comes on. So incredibly cool!

While enjoying our bubbly, Steffi, Robin and Robin’s mom, Doina, told the Grim Cheaper and me about Seaside Lounge’s owner, celebrity chef Ivo Adam, who is quite well-known in Switzerland thanks to his new television series, The Swiss Cookbook with Ivo Adam, and a series of commercials he starred in for the Coop grocery store chain. At one point, Steffi mentioned that she had seen Ivo the last time she was at the Lounge. Well, once I heard that Ivo might actually be on the premises, that was it! I was bound and determined to get a picture with him and pretty much nothing was going to stop me! Next thing I know, Doina announced that she saw Ivo approaching. So I ran up to him, explained that I was a tourist from America and that I would love to take a photo with him. Ivo agreed, thanked me for visiting, and happily posed with me and Steffi. As you can imagine, I could NOT have been more excited! Woot woot!

The Biel-born Ivo got his start in the culinary arts while still in elementary school, when he began baking cakes for his classmates’ birthdays. He was later formally trained as a chef, a pastry chef and a chocolatier. In 2000, Ivo became the youngest person ever appointed to the Swiss Culinary National Team. He opened his first restaurant, Apropos, in 2004, at the age of 27. Three years later, he partnered with Birgit and Stefan Breuer to open Seven in Ascona – the name of which is derived from the fact that the Breuer family boasts seven members. The fine-dining establishment has since gone on to earn a Michelin star. Sea Lounge was founded shortly thereafter and in 2008, Ivo and the Breuers opened two additional Ascona eateries – a casual bistro named Seven Easy (pictured below) and a sushi bar named Seven Asia. Robin likes to joke that Ivo owns every restaurant in town. 😉

Ivo is also the author of several award-winning cookbooks. Oh, and he’s a hit rapper. Yes, a rapper. As Adam stated in a 2008 Swiss News interview, “Back in 2004, I gave a presentation on diet and healthy eating for my diploma and wanted to get my message across to young people. Rap and hip-hop seemed a great way to do that. I put together a CD with some rapped recipes.” His CD consisted of 16 recipes – or “rapcipes”, as the newspaper called them. Amazingly enough, the single “Birchermuesli” (about a popular Swiss breakfast dish consisting of oats and fruit) went double-platinum! Everything the young chef touches seems to turn to gold. It is no wonder that he has been dubbed the Jamie Oliver of Switzerland.

On the recommendation of Steffi, our group wound up eating at Seven Easy that night and, let me tell you, it was spectacular! Pricey, but spectacular. Robin made the best menu choice by ordering the UH-MA-ZING truffle pizza. Though not at all diabetic friendly, I was kicking myself for not having ordered it because it was honestly one of the best things I have ever tasted.

Like Sea Lounge, the design of Easy is altogether unique, with tree trunk cocktail tables, chalkboard menus and a wall made of sawed-off log cross-sections. Love it!

I would be remiss if I did not share some photographs of Ascona in this post, as it is an absolutely GORGEOUS part of Switzerland.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Seven Easy is located at Piazza Giuseppe Motta 61 in Ascona, Switzerland. Sea Lounge is located at just up the street at via Moscia 2. You can visit Ivo Adam’s official website here.

July 17, 2013
Ladurée from “Gossip Girl”

Ever since watching the Season 4 episode of Gossip Girl titled “Juliet Doesn’t Live Here Anymore”, in which Blair Waldorf (Leighton Meester) was shown in a bubble bath eating a box, ahem, boxes of Ladurée macarons, I have been just slightly obsessed with the Paris-based confectionery. Since the chain’s only U.S. outpost is located in New York, though, and since it did not open until August 2011 and my last trip to the Big Apple was in 2009 (yikes!), I had never had the chance to sample any of the bakery’s iconic pastel-colored wares. So when my best friend, Robin, informed me that Ladurée had a shop in Zurich, I just about passed out from excitement and added the place to my Switzerland Must-Stalk list – even though, being that nothing has been filmed there, it is not technically a stalking location.

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Ladurée was originally founded as a small bakery at 16 rue Royale in Paris in 1862 by a miller from the southwest of France named Louis Ernest Ladurée. In 1871, the shop was burned in a fire and Louis subsequently built a larger pastry store in its place. He commissioned French painter/poster artist Jules Cheret to design the interior, which was bathed in a celadon hue. It was not until 1930, though, when the shop started serving its now legendary macarons, that Ladurée gained its immense popularity. There are several differing accounts as to who actually created the macaron as it is known today, but, according to the Ladurée website, Louis’ grandson, Pierre Desfontaines, is the responsible party. Although a single-decker variety of the meringue cookie had been in existence since the 1500s, it was not until Pierre came up with the idea of cementing two of those wafers together with a ganache paste that the contemporary macaron was born. The rest, as they say, is history.

Shortly thereafter, Pierre, acting upon an idea from Louis’ wife, Jeanne Souchard, decided to open a female-friendly tea salon on the premises. At the time, the fairer sex was not allowed inside of Paris cafes. As you can imagine, the Ladurée tea room quickly became a massive hit.

In 1993, the father and son duo of Francis and David Holder purchased the bakery with the hopes of taking it global. And that they did. The second Ladurée opened on Paris’ prestigious Champs-Élysées in 1997. Thirteen additional French stores quickly followed. Today the company has boutiques in twenty different countries, including Saudi Arabia, Brazil and Hong Kong, from which it sells a whopping 15,000 cookies per day.

The interior of Ladurée (which we, unfortunately, were not allowed to take photographs of) is like a cotton-candy dreamworld! It is absolutely adorable and filled to the brim with pastel-colored boxes, which have become collectors items among macaron aficionados.

Robin’s mom, Doina, and girlfriend, Steffi, and I opted for the bakery’s vanilla-flavored macaron variety and it was pretty much the best thing I have ever eaten! As someone who has sampled quite a few different macaron brands in her day, I can honestly say that Ladurée puts them all to shame! If there was a California branch, I wouldn’t be able to stay away! Thank God there is not, otherwise I would be in permanent diabetic shock. 😉 Amazingly enough, at most Ladurée outposts in other countries, the cookies are not made onsite, but flown in daily from Paris! That is not the case with the shop in Zurich, though, so Doina, Steffi and I were lucky enough to taste fresh cookies made right on the premises.

Gossip Girl is hardly the first production to make use of Ladurée macarons. Not only were the cookies featured in Marie Antoinette . . .

. . . but the confection actually formed the basis of the color palate for the entire 2006 movie. As stated in an article from London’s The Times Magazine, “At the start of pre-production, [director Sophia] Coppola handed [costume designer] Milena Canonero a box of pastel-coloured macaroons from the Ladurée pastry house. ‘She told me, “These are the colours I love”,’ recalls Canonero. ‘I used them as a palette.’” Love it!

And while a few websites have stated that the final episode of Sex and the City did some filming at the Ladurée store in Paris, I scanned through the episode yesterday and did not see the bakery pop up anywhere.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Swiss outpost of Ladurée, Blair Waldorf’s favorite macaron shop on Gossip Girl, is located at Kuttelgasse 17, 8001 Zürich, Switzerland. You can visit the official Ladurée website here.

July 16, 2013
Contra Dam from “GoldenEye”

Sorry to have been M.I.A. the past couple of days. My dad had surgery last Wednesday and I spent the better portion of the remainder of the week in the hospital with him. He is having a follow-up surgery this upcoming Wednesday, as well, so this week will also probably be light on posts. I apologize in advance. Anyway, today, my stalking friends, IAMNOTASTALKER is going global! And a word of warning – if you are at all afraid of heights, you are NOT going to like this locale. When the Grim Cheaper and I were on vacation in Switzerland last month, my best friend, Robin (who planned our entire trip), took us on a little detour to the Ticino region to stalk the Contra Dam, which was featured in the iconic opening bungee jump sequence of the 1995 007 movie GoldenEye.

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The Contra Dam, which is also known as the Locarno Dam and the Verzasca Dam, was originally constructed beginning in 1960 to support the Verzasca Hydroelectric Power Station, which is pictured in the images below.

The structure was designed by Lombardi & Gellaro Ltd. and took five years to complete. The pouring of the concrete alone (the arch-style dam is comprised of 23,000,000 cubic feet of concrete!) took a whopping 18 months to execute!

The dam’s stunning reservoir, which is known as Lago di Vogorno, began to load with water in August 1964 and the dam was finally completed a little over a year later, in September 1965, when the lake was filled to its maximum capacity. Oddly enough, the initial filling of Lago di Vogorno, which boasts a surface area of 400 acres, caused several earthquakes, which was apparently a side effect of the rapid speed with which the water rose. As a result, the reservoir had to be drained and refilled once again shortly thereafter.

Contra Dam, which is the fourth tallest dam in Switzerland, stands at 721 feet (220 meters), with its crest running a length of 1,250 feet (381 meters).

This shot gives me vertigo just looking at it!

Don’t look down!

With my Swiss family on the dam. 🙂

A permanent bungee jump station is now located in the middle of the dam, where those who are so inclined can do their own 7.5-second, 721-foot jump.

Robin bungeed from there a few years back, loved it, and tried to convince the GC and I to do the same. And while I was not at all keen on the idea to begin with, once I found out that jumps cost about $270 per person, I informed Robin that, for that price, I would much rather buy a pair of new shoes.

The Contra Dam appeared only once in GoldenEye, in the opening scene in which James Bond (Pierce Brosnan) is shown bungee jumping off of the dam and eventually latching onto the top of Russia’s Arkangel Chemical Weapons Facility, which is supposedly located below.

Some amazing shots of the dam were shown in the sequence and its appearance, although brief, was pretty darn striking.

In reality, Pierce Brosnan never set foot on the Contra Dam during filming. The scene was instead performed by a British stuntman named Wayne Michaels, who, incredibly enough, completed the stunt in a single take in front of six well-positioned cameras.

The jump was choreographed and coordinated by The Oxford Stunt Factory. So that Michaels would not hit the dam wall during the stunt, a special platform was constructed above and in front of the dam. You can see that platform in the screen captures below.

In 2002, a Sky Movies website poll deemed the jump the best movie stunt of all time. The feat also set the then world record for the highest bungee jump from a fixed structure. According to a BBC news website, of the jump, Michaels said, “It’s pushing the limits of what can physically be done. The body is travelling at such a high rate of speed that it puts a great deal of strain on you.” Um, yeah, that’s why I’d rather have a new pair of shoes!

Oddly enough, when Bond escapes from the facility at the end of the scene, he is in a different location entirely and the Contra Dam is no longer anywhere in sight.

You can watch the opening scene of GoldenEye by clicking below.

The entire time we were at the dam (and for quite a few days thereafter) I was constantly singing what I thought was the James Bond theme song. It was not until a few days after we returned home that the GC turned to me, while I was in mid-song, and said, “You do realize that you’re singing the Mission: Impossible theme, right?” Not my proudest moment.

The Contra Dam also appeared in the first episode of Season 14 of The Amazing Race, in which one member of each team had to perform a bungee jump as a Roadblock challenge.

After stalking the dam, we headed a few miles north to Switzerland’s Lavertezzo municipality where we visited the region’s famous Ponte dei Salti (which translates to “Bridge of Jumps”). And while nothing has been filmed onsite (that I know of), the place is just too beautiful not to share.

The double-arch Romanesque-style bridge was originally constructed out of stone during the 16th or 17th century, but was destroyed by a flood in 1906. It was eventually rebuilt in 1958.

Ponte dei Salti spans the Verzasca River, whose waters, as you can see below, are a spectacularly vivid shade of green.

It almost looks fake – like the water at Disneyland.

The area surrounding the bridge looks like it was ripped right from a postcard. Absolutely beautiful!

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Contra Dam from GoldenEye (which does not have an actual address) is located at the northern end of Via Valle Verzasca in Gordola, Switzerland. You can learn more about bungee jumping off the dam here. Ponte dei Salti is located just a few miles north in 6633 Lavertezzo.

July 15, 2013
Beau Burroughs’ Mansion from “Rumor Has It”

Back in April, when fellow stalker Geoff, of the 90210Locations website, let me know that he had found the Fundraiser House from L.A. Story (which I blogged about here) at 3456 Via Campesina in Rancho Palos Verdes, I remembered that a few years prior I had tracked down a different Palos Verdes locale – the supposed Half Moon Bay-area mansion where Beau Burroughs (Kevin Costner) lived in the 2005 romantic comedy Rumor Has It. Because I very rarely find myself in that part of town, though, I had never actually stalked it. So I moved the dwelling to the top of my To-Stalk list and headed right on over there while in the neighborhood visiting the L.A. Story pad just a few days later. And wouldn’t you know it – there was a truck parked right in front of the place when I showed up! Boo!

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The mansion appeared once in Rumor Has It – in the scene in which Sarah Huttinger (Jennifer Aniston) woke up at Beau’s residence after spending the night with him – and, unfortunately, very little of the actual home was ever shown. The only areas of the property that appeared in the flick were the backyard –

with its gorgeous ocean views;

part of a back door;

and a tiny portion of a bedroom.

Despite the fact that I had so little to go on, though, this location was a fairly easy find. Thanks to the Rumor Has It production notes, I knew that at least one scene had been lensed in the seaside city of Palos Verdes and, because Beau’s manse was shown to be situated on a cliff overlooking the ocean, I decided to begin my search there. While watching the flick, I had noticed that the dwelling was located on some sort of a promontory that was directly across from another promontory. On that second promontory sat an immense Mediterranean-style mansion.

So I used Google Maps to search for that house, which I found fairly quickly thanks to its size, and from there tracked down Beau’s place. As you can see below, the residence sits perched above a site named “Honeymoon Cove.” Um, love it!

In real life, the mansion, which was originally built in 1973, boasts five bedrooms, seven baths, 6,126 square feet of living space, and a 0.59-acre plot of oceanfront land. The property last sold in October 1995 for $2.5 million.

Upon arriving, I was happily surprised to discover how much of the residence is actually visible from the street. I had not expected to be able to see any of it.

As the words on the two pillars that flank the front gate seem to indicate, the residence is named “Punta Vento”, which, according to Google Translate, means “peak wind” in Italian.

I was shocked to discover, thanks to the fabulous Seeing Stars website, that the same home was also used in the 1987 classic Lethal Weapon, in which it portrayed the mansion belonging to Michael Hunsaker (Tom Atkins). In the movie, a great exterior view of the property was shown.

The backyard and pool area also appeared;

as did a small portion of the interior of the house.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Beau Burroughs’ mansion from Rumor Has It is located at 2817 Via Segovia in Palos Verdes.

July 10, 2013
Izzy’s Deli from “Curb Your Enthusiasm”

Because our flight home from Switzerland landed smack dab in the middle of rush hour on a Friday evening, the Grim Cheaper and I decided to book a hotel and spend the night near the airport rather than make what probably would have been a four-plus hour drive to Palm Springs. It turned out to be quite the fortuitous decision, too, because the following morning, on our way back to the desert, we randomly stopped for breakfast (after first grabbing a Starbucks, of course!) at a Santa Monica delicatessen named Izzy’s Deli. While I had passed by Izzy’s countless times over the years, for whatever reason, I had never ventured inside, so I just about fell over when I spotted the above sign while walking through the front doors. Um, Deli to the Stars? Count me in! I was even further surprised when, upon sitting down, I pulled out my trusty iPhone to do some research on the place and discovered that it is also a filming location! Score!

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Izzy’s Deli was originally founded in August 1973 (almost four full decades ago!) by two Brooklyn-ites, Izzy Freeman and Ernie Auerbach. Freeman first moved to Los Angeles in 1953 and had dreams of opening a New York-style delicatessen, like the ones he had dined at as a boy, in the area. While volunteering at City of Hope National Medical Center in 1972, Freeman met Auerbach, who by that time was a successful Santa Monica-based developer. Auerbach decided to help Freeman on his quest and Izzy’s Deli became a reality the following year.

Izzy’s Deli became an almost immediate hit, with lines of hungry patrons often stretching around the block. The eatery, which has won such awards as “Best Designed Restaurant” and “Best All Night Restaurant”, is, amazingly enough, still owned and operated by Freeman (who calls himself “the Deli Lama” – LOVE IT) and his family to this day.

Stars have long been drawn to Izzy’s and the restaurant even boasts a Celebrity Wall of Fame consisting of autographed headshots to prove it. Just a few of the luminaries who have been spotted there include Eugene Levy, Walter Matthau, Florence Henderson, Hal Linden, Rod Steiger, Shaquille O’Neal, and Bill Clinton.

And while our breakfast was great, it is really hard for me to judge a restaurant based on breakfast alone. (It is pretty difficult to mess up eggs!) I am jonesing to return for lunch, though, because the lunch menu looks uh-ma-zing! Fried chicken sliders? Yes, please!

Thanks to the Complex City Guide, I learned that Izzy’s Deli has appeared in no less than three episodes of the television series Curb Your Enthusiasm. In the Season 5 episode titled “The Ski Lift”, Izzy’s was where Larry David (who plays himself) met Ben Heineman (Stuart Pankin) for lunch after hitting – and denting – his car. As you can see below, the restaurant was dressed quite a bit for the filming and all of the celebrity headshots were removed from the walls for the shoot. Boo!

In the following episode, which was titled “The Korean Bookie”, Larry once again met Ben at Izzy’s, this time to confront him over the fact that Ben has failed to fix his car with the $1,500 Larry had given him.

In Season 7 episode titled “The Bare Midriff”, Izzy’s popped up once again as the restaurant where Larry ate lunch with Jerry Seinfeld (who also played himself).

For the filming of this episode, the restaurant’s décor – including the Celebrity Wall of Fame – was left intact.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Izzy’s Deli, from Curb Your Enthusiasm, is located at 1433 Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica. You can visit the restaurant’s official website here. The eatery is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

July 9, 2013
Happy Fourth of July!

I will be taking the next couple of days off from blogging in order to celebrate the Fourth of July weekend with the Grim Cheaper and Mike, from MovieShotsLA, who is in town for a visit. (Yay!) I know, I know – I just got back from a two-week vacation! But such is life.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

July 4, 2013
The Site of Ariel’s House from “L.A. Story”

One L.A. Story location that I tracked down and stalked months ago, but has since become a bit of a conundrum to me, is the apartment building – or house – where Ariel (Susan Forristal), the best friend of wacky weatherman Harris K. Telemacher (Steve Martin), lived. Finding the locale was pretty much a no-brainer (or so I thought), being that it is a running gag throughout the movie that Harris drives to Ariel’s place whenever he wants to visit her, despite the fact that his home (which I blogged about here) is located just a couple of doors away.

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In the movie, the exterior of Ariel’s dwelling is never actually shown. All that is shown is Harris leaving his house, walking to his car . . .

. . . and then driving about 25 feet before parking in front of an apartment building with an odd lattice façade, which I assumed was where Ariel lived.

So while in L.A. this past May, I stalked that apartment building. In real life, the place does not have a lattice façade and I do not believe that it ever actually did. I am fairly certain that the façade, along with the numerous statuaries posted along the street, were added solely for the filming.

When I got home a few days later and re-watched the scenes that took place at Ariel’s house, though, I began to have doubts about the location that I stalked. As you can see below, the interior of Ariel’s residence does not look like an apartment at all, but more like the interior of a typical L.A-style bungalow.

Her pad even appears to have some sort of covered porch – a feature that most definitely would not be found in an apartment.

I also noticed that the size and positioning of Ariel’s living rooms windows did not match up to the size and positioning of the real life windows at the apartment building. In fact, one window was missing entirely.

As you can see below, Ariel’s home also has a fireplace, yet the actual apartment building has no visible chimney.

Because the apartment building does not look to have been remodeled since it was built in the 1950s (or at least since 1991 when L.A. Story was filmed), I became fairly certain that I had the wrong location. And while it is possible that producers used two different locales to depict Ariel’s dwelling – one for the exterior and another for the interior – or even possibly built a set for the inside scenes, I do not believe that to be the case.

Upon further inspection (I know, I know – I have WAY too much time on my hands ), I noticed that when visiting Ariel, Harris actually did not park directly in front of the apartment building that I had stalked, but a bit past it. In fact, whenever he is shown driving to Ariel’s, he stops his car at a point halfway blocking the driveway belonging to the house just north of the building, as you can see below.

So I went back to the drawing board and began doing some Google Street View stalking and noticed that the apartment complex located just north of the building that I had stalked was newly constructed. On a hunch, I headed on over to Historic Aerials to see if there used to be a bungalow located on that site at one point in time. And sure enough, there was! It is my belief that that now-defunct bungalow is the house that was used as Ariel’s. And while fellow stalker Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, was nice enough to put me in touch with a very helpful L.A. Story crew member (whom he had contacted a few weeks prior when helping me track down some of the flick’s other locales) in the hopes that he might be able to shed some light on this mystery, said crew member, unfortunately, did not remember anything about the location of Ariel’s house.

Even though the bungalow is long gone, I sent Mike, from MovieShotsLA, out to do some stalking of the apartment building that now stands in its place. Thank you, Mike! According to fave website CurbedLA, construction on the ultra-modern concrete complex was started sometime around 2008. The developer then hit some financial trouble and the project was stalled until finally being completed in 2010.

And while the Curbed commenters were pretty harsh about the aesthetic of the place, I actually really like what it looks like. Especially the interiors, which you can take a look at here.

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

Big THANK YOU to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for taking the pictures of the site where I believe Ariel’s house once stood.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The site where I believe Ariel’s house from L.A. Story once stood is located at 1220 North Orange Grove Avenue in West Hollywood. The building that I originally thought was Ariel’s is located at 1216 North Orange Grove Avenue. And Harris’ house from L.A. Story is located at 1206 North Orange Grove Avenue.

July 3, 2013
Kirk Douglas’ Former Palm Springs House

The Grim Cheaper and I are finally home from a blissful two weeks in Switzerland. It was so hard to leave my best friend and his amazing family (pictured above) and the beauty of their country – especially being that when we returned to Palm Springs, temperatures were around 122 degrees! I will be sharing some pictures from our trip (and I took plenty – by ten days in, I had filled up an 8GB memory card!), as well as a few Swiss stalking locales that I visited while there, in the near future. But for today, I thought I would once again blog about a Behind the Candelabra-related location that I stalked prior to leaving for the Land of the Alps.

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A few weeks ago, while doing some Behind the Candelabra research, I came across a The Guardian article in which Michael Douglas, who played the flamboyant pianist in the HBO biopic, talked about once meeting Liberace while visiting the desert home of his father, Kirk Douglas. Of the encounter, Michael said, “I met him once in passing. My father had a weekend house in Palm Springs and I remember driving out and we came to this cross-section and this Rolls-Royce convertible pulled up alongside. It was a sunny day and, my God, the reflections were bouncing off his gold jewelry and diamond rings and his hair was perfectly coiffed. Of course, we now know that he was wearing a wig.” Well, I, of course, immediately started itching to track down the house Michael was referring to in the article.

As it turns out, I had actually stalked the home (at least what I think is the correct home) – and blogged about it – once before, way back in March 2008. My research on this location is not exactly definitive. In a The Irish Times article, Michael said that his encounter with Liberace took place around 1956. As Murphy’s Law would have it, though, Kirk Douglas moved from his first Palm Springs residence to his second right around that same time. Michael also mentioned in a Daily Mail article that his father’s house and Liberace’s house were in the same vicinity. But as Murphy’s Law would further have it, both of Kirk’s former desert dwellings are situated about two miles from Liberace’s earliest Coachella Valley abode, which is located at 1516 South Manzanita Avenue. Because the book Explorer’s Guide Palm Springs & Desert Resorts states that the pianist did not move into that home until 1957, though, I am 99.9% certain that the house where Michael’s Liberace encounter took place is the one pictured below.

Kirk’s original (and extremely nondescript) Palm Springs house, which he lived in for two years – from 1955 to 1957 – is located at 1069 East Marshall Way in the legendary Movie Colony neighborhood.

That property, which was recently remodeled and just sold about two weeks ago for $639,900, boasts three bedrooms, two baths, 2,095 square feet of living space, a one-bedroom, one-bath casita, travertine flooring, a pool, a 0.26-acre plot of land, and mountain views. You can check out some interior photographs of the dwelling here.

Kirk’s second desert house, which he owned for over four decades, is located at 515 Via Lola in the Old Las Palmas area of Palm Springs. The five-bedroom, five-bath, 3,790-square-foot abode, which sits on a 0.75-acre plot of land, was designed in 1954 by architects Richard Harrison and Donald Wexler. The modern post-and-beam residence, which originally featured four bedrooms, low ceilings, an asphalt and gravel roof, flagstone walls, and glass adornments, was commissioned by Robert Howard, the one-time owner of the Colony Palms Hotel, which I blogged about back in May. Howard put the property on the market two years after it was completed and it was subsequently purchased by Kirk and his second wife, Anne Buydens, in 1957. Upon buying the residence, the couple added a new façade, interior atriums, a three-car motor court, and quite a bit of square footage. They also transformed the garage into guest quarters. Kirk later bought an adjacent parcel of land on which he installed a tennis court, a gymnasium and a spa.

According to the fabulous book Palm Springs Confidential, the couple entertained quite a bit during their tenure at the home. Just a few of the famous guests who visited over the years include Natalie Wood, Gregory Peck, Stanley Kubrick, Billy Wilder, Yul Brynner, Warren Beatty, Burt Lancaster, Robert Kennedy, Henry Kissinger, Lady Bird Johnson, and Lynda Bird Johnson. Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn even leased the house from Kirk and Anne for a summer getaway on two different occasions and Vincente Minnelli held the wedding reception for his marriage to Lee Anderson (his fourth wife) there.

Kirk and Anne sold the home in October 1999 – for a cool $1.3 million – in order to move to Montecito to be closer to Michael.

To me, the residence exemplifies the Rat Pack-style of architecture that Palm Springs has become so synonymous with. I absolutely LOVE the two palm trees that are the focal point of the front yard.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Kirk Douglas’ longtime former Palm Springs home is located at 515 Via Lola in the Old Las Palmas neighborhood of Palm Springs. His first desert home can be found just about a mile away at 1069 East Marshall Way in the Movie Colony.

July 2, 2013
Leaving on a Jet Plane

The Grim Cheaper and I are heading to Switzerland this evening to visit my best friend, who lives there, for a two-week vacation. I have not been to the Land of the Alps since August 1995, when my parents took me there as my high school graduation present. I fell in love with the country and cannot wait to share its beauty with the GC.

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The amazing photographs posted here are some that my dad took during that trip, almost 18 years ago.

That’s me and my best friend Robin circa 1995 in Switzerland on the left and circa 2010 at my wedding, at which he was my best man, on the right. We’ve come a long way since ‘95. Since Robin comes to visit us in America pretty much every year, even though I am petrified to fly, we figured it was definitely our turn to head over there.

I return from Switzerland on Friday, June 28th and will most likely resume blogging on Tuesday, July 2nd. So until that time, Happy Stalking!

June 14, 2013
Frances’ House from “Behind the Candelabra”

One Behind the Candelabra location that I was not able to stalk two weekends ago was the palatial Palm Springs abode belonging to Frances Liberace (Debbie Reynolds), the flamboyant pianist’s overbearing mother, in the 2013 HBO biopic. So I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out to do so this past Saturday morning. And, as it turns out, the residence has quite a fascinating history.

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The ornate Hollywood Regency-style dwelling was originally designed in 1962 by James McNaughton, a Palm Springs-area architect who initially got his start in set decoration. In fact, he has the distinction of being television’s first set designer. McNaughton won numerous awards during his stint in show business, including a Look Award, a Christopher Award, and a Peabody award, and he also received quite a few Emmy nominations. I am fairly certain that the residence was commissioned by George Randolph Hearst, Sr. (the eldest son of publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst) and his wife, Rosalie. If the couple did not actually commission the property, they were at least its first owners.

After George’s passing in 1972, Rosalie held onto the residence. It was there that Patty Hearst, George and Rosalie’s niece, hid out in 1977 while on probation awaiting an appeal for her bank robbery conviction. In May 1991, Rosalie sold the house to Harvey and Lori Sarner for a whopping $1,650,000. The Sarners still own the property to this day.

The 7-bedroom, 4.75-bath, 7,557-square-foot house, which sits on a 0.62-acre plot of land, is quite eccentric. According to an August 2012 MyDesert.com article, the dwelling was so lavishly appointed in George and Rosalie’s day that it was known as “Little Hearst’s Castle.” From the looks of things, not much has changed since that time. The place actually has a very Liberace feel to it, ironically enough, and reminds me quite a bit of the pianist’s third desert home, which I blogged about here.

As you can see below, the entire property is surrounded by double-sided Greek goddess statues, which, according to the Radiant Writing blog, are holdouts from the George and Rosalie days. The Radiant Writing author describes the property, which she remembers from her childhood, as such, “This home was gaudy on a small scale and no doubt a son’s attempt at mimicking his father’s extravagant San Simeon Castle. All it looked like to me was a morgue. The home had lion statues guarding both sides of the front door and was surrounded by a wrought iron fence, reminiscent of the Haunted House at Disneyland. The most haunting thing about the always dark house was the presence of the Romanesque goddess bust type statues placed within 3 feet of each other along the scary fence. The goddess busts had 70’s style light globes on their heads.”

The Hearst house appeared once in Behind the Candelabra, in the scene in which Liberace (Michael Douglas) and his boyfriend, Scott Thorson (Matt Damon), visited Frances in Palm Springs and listened to her complain about being lonely. Only the property’s backyard was featured in the flick. As you can see in the screen capture below, the home’s pool area is very reminiscent of the iconic Neptune Pool at Hearst Castle in San Simeon.

Amazingly enough, Behind the Candelabra filming in Palm Springs took place in August, the city’s hottest month of the year, during which high temperatures average 107 degrees! Being that a one-minute segment can take hours upon hours to shoot, the cast and crew must have been absolutely miserable filming the scene in Frances’ backyard! I mean look at the clothes they are wearing! Ugh!

While stalking the house, I was floored to discover that the backyard is partially visible from a neighboring street.

On a Behind the Candelabra side-note – I did not even recognize Debbie Reynolds in the role of Frances Liberace and, in fact, had no idea it was her until after I had finished watching the movie and was researching its locations online. Talk about a fantastic make-up job!

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: Frances’ house from Behind the Candelabra is located at 701 West Panorama Road in the Little Tuscany Estates area of Palm Springs. The backyard portion of the residence can be partially viewed from the intersection of West Vista Chino and North Via Monte Vista. The world famous Kauffman House (which I blogged about here) is located right around the corner at 470 West Vista Chino.

June 13, 2013