Blog

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.

[ad]

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.

[ad]

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
Halloween Countdown!

I had a bit of car trouble yesterday and, in dealing with that, did not have time to write a new post. But I will be back on Monday . . . with the start of my Haunted Hollywood locales! Yay! I hope all of my fellow stalkers have a fabulous weekend and that all of my fellow Angelinos survive Carmageddon: Part Deux.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

September 28, 2012
Grand Central Air Terminal from “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure”

While doing research for yesterday’s post (which you can read here), I came across a page on IMDB that stated that the bus station scene from Pee-wee’s Big Adventure was filmed at the Glendale Amtrak Station. I knew from previous cyber-stalking, though, that the Pee-wee bus station scene was actually filmed a few miles north of the Amtrak depot at the now-defunct Grand Central Air Terminal (a location that I first learned about way back in March 2011 while writing my post on the nearby former bowling alley that stood in for the exterior of Jack Rabbit Slim’s in Pulp Fiction). Ironically enough, I had actually stalked both the Glendale Amtrak Station and Grand Central Air Terminal on the same day in early May. So to clear up the confusion about the Pee-wee bus station, I thought now would be as good a time as any to blog about the place.

[ad]

Grand Central Air Terminal was designed by Henry L. Gogerty in the Spanish Colonial Revival/Art Deco-style on the site of what was formerly a private airport for millionaire Leslie C. Brand. The property was officially opened to the public on February 22, 1929 and featured the first paved runway west of the Rocky Mountains. The airport was also the first to offer transcontinental passenger air service from Los Angeles to the East Coast and the premiere flight took place in 1929 with none other than Charles Lindbergh at the helm. Hollywood luminaries Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks were also onboard. Other stars who took flights to or from Grand Central over the years include Shirley Temple, Gary Cooper, William Randolph Hearst, Marion Davies, Clark Gable, Charlie Chaplin, Jack Warner, Louis B. Mayer, Carole Lombard, and Jean Harlow. Such aviation pioneers as Howard Hughes, Glenn L. Martin, Eddie Rickenbacker, Amelia Earhart, and Douglas “Wrong Way” Corrigan are all counted as having piloted flights from the airport.

In 1947, following World War II, Grand Central’s runway was cut down to 3,400 feet to make room for a road. When the runway was later deemed too short for jet planes to use in 1959, the 125-acre property was closed and most of its hangars and runways demolished or removed. All that remains of the original airport is the actual terminal building and its three-story Zigzag Moderne-tower. The site was subsequently purchased by Prudential Insurance, who transformed it into an industrial park named Grand Central Business Park. In 1961, The Walt Disney Company leased the vast majority of the property and subsequently purchased it in 1997. The Park is currently used as Disney corporate offices and as the headquarters of Walt Disney Imagineering. And while the Walt Disney Company has an agreement with the city of Glendale to restore the air terminal building, which suffered damage in the 1994 Northridge earthquake, back to its original grandeur by the year 2015, it has, sadly, been left to deteriorate in the meantime.

In Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, Grand Central Terminal stood in for the supposed San Antonio bus station where Pee-wee Herman (Paul Reubens) ran into Simone (my former acting teacher Diane Salinger).

You can even see a portion of a sign reading “Grand Central Building” in the background of the scene.

Thanks to its proximity to several different Hollywood studios, Grand Central Air Terminal has been the site of countless filmings over the years. In the beginning of 1933’s Air Hostess, it was the Los Angeles airport where the TWA flight from Albuquerque landed.

Grand Central was also the airport where saxophonist Ronny Bowers (Dick Powell) landed upon first coming to Southern California in 1937’s Hollywood Hotel.

In 1943, Grand Central stood in for Transatlantic Airways’ London Terminal in the movie Sherlock Holmes in Washington, although it only appeared very briefly.

The north side of Grand Central Terminal stood in for the Carson Police Department in 1985’s My Science Project, although such a small portion of the building was shown that it is virtually unrecognizable.

You can see below, though, that the front of the police station matches the area where Pee-wee sat in Pee-wee’s Big Adventure.

Grand Central Air Terminal also looks to have been the inspiration for the painted backdrop that was used to portray Genovia International Airport in The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement. While the layout of the terminal was, for whatever reason, flipped in the movie, the resemblance is undeniable. You can check out a historic photograph of Grand Central, in which its similarities to the Genovia airport are obvious, here. Being that the movie was produced by The Walt Disney Company, it makes sense that the former terminal served as the model for Genovia International.

Grand Central Terminal was also supposedly used in 1923’s Going Up, 1930’s Hell’s Angels, 1933’s Lady Killer, Captured and Central Airport, 1934’s Bright Eyes, 1936’s Hats Off, 1938’s Sky Giant, and 1941’s Sky Raiders, but, unfortunately, I could not find copies of any of those productions 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 other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Grand Central Air Terminal, from Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, is located at 1310 Air Way in Glendale. The former bowling alley that was used as the exterior of Jack Rabbit Slim’s restaurant in Pulp Fiction is located right around the corner at 1435 Flower Street.

September 27, 2012
The Glendale Amtrak Station from “Bulletproof”

I don’t know about y’all, but this stalker is so darn excited for Halloween that I am practically bursting at the seams! I have already decorated my apartment with all things orange and black (much to the Grim Cheaper’s chagrin) and can hardly wait for Monday when I can begin my Haunted Hollywood postings. Only three more days to go! Yay! Anyway, while going through some stalking photographs from earlier this year, I came across pictures of the Glendale Amtrak Station that the GC had taken way back in May and I decided that it was about time I do a blog post on the place. So here goes.

[ad]

The Glendale Amtrak Station was originally constructed in 1924 on the site of the former 1883 Atwater Track Office. The Mission Revival-style structure was commissioned by the Southern Pacific Railroad line and was designed by architect Kenneth MacDonald Jr. (who also designed Villa de Leon in Pacific Palisades and the Portal of the Folded Wings Shrine to Aviation in North Hollywood) and structural engineer/architect Maurice Couchot (who also designed The Bellevue Club in Oakland and the 1917 warehouse that later became the Gift Center in San Francisco). The site was originally named the Glendale Southern Pacific Railroad Depot and then was later known as the Tropico Station.

In 1989, Southern Pacific sold the depot to the city of Glendale for $3.5 million, at which time the name was changed to the Glendale Amtrak Station (or the Glendale Amtrak/Metrolink Station or the Glendale Transportation Center, as the site is also sometimes called). A $6 million renovation and extension project was begun shortly thereafter, during which the building was restored to its original 1923 grandeur. As you can see below, the result is nothing short of spectacular! The dazzling exterior of the Glendale Amtrak Station, which was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1997, features elaborately sculpted terra cotta;

a faux second story;

ornamental wrought-iron detailing;

and ornately carved wooden doors.

The small, one-room interior boasts a terra-cotta tiled floor,

intricately painted exposed wooden beams;

checkered tile baseboards;

and old-school wooden benches. (I love the arty photograph that the GC took below. I think it’s a framer! )

The second I walked inside the historic depot, I was instantly taken back to the famous train station scene from the Season 4 episode of Family Ties titled “The Real Thing: Part 2”, during which Alex P. Keaton (Michael J. Fox) finally professed his love to Ellen Reed (Tracy Pollan). While the train station featured in that scene was just a set, it was very reminiscent (to me, at least) of the Glendale Amtrak Station. When I mentioned this to the GC, he said, “I don’t remember a train station scene from Family Ties.” I swear, how did the two of us end up married???

You can watch the Family Ties train station scene by clicking below. “Now, what did you think I would say at this moment . . . ” Sigh! Has to be one of the best scenes in television history.

“Family Ties” Train Station Scene

In 1996’s Bulletproof, the Glendale Amtrak Station stood in for the supposed Pasadena bus station where Keats (Damon Wayans) and Moses (Adam Sandler) met up with special agents Gentry (Xander Berkeley) and Cole (Sal Landi).

Bulletproof was hardly the first production to film on the premises, though. In 1931’s Big Business Girl, the station was where Johnny Saunders (Frank Albertson) bid adieu to his lady love, Claire ‘Mac’ McIntyre (Loretta Young). Although, not much of the station is visible in the scene.

The Glendale Amtrak Station also stood in for the depot where Kay Curtis (Glenda Farrell) and June Dale (Mary Brian) missed their train in 1933’s Girl Missing. Not much of the station can be seen in that movie, either, though.

The only recognizable detail from the station that is visible in the movie is the ornate light fixture pictured below.

Thanks to the stalking tome Location Filming in Los Angeles by Harry Medved, Marc Wanamaker and Karie Bible, I learned that 1927’s Horse Shoes, 1931’s One More Chance and 1934’s Here Comes the Groom were also shot at the Glendale Amtrak Station, but, unfortunately, I could not find copies of any of the productions with which to make screen captures for this post. The Glendale Amtrak Station was also featured in 1927’s College and 1948’s Act of Violence, which you can see screen captures of on the Silent Locations blog here. And True Blood apparently did some filming on the premises a couple of weeks ago, as well. The station also had a brush with history when, on September 20th, 1959, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev stopped there for about six minutes. You can see a photograph of his visit here.

And while IMDB states that 1966’s The Trouble with Angels was filmed at the Glendale Amtrak Station, when I scanned through the movie yesterday, I found that the two depots did not match. Upon digging further, I came across this article which stated that the station used in the opening and closing scenes of the flick was actually the Monrovia Santa Fe train station located at 101 West Duarte Road. Sure enough, as you can see in this historic photograph, the two depots are indeed one and the same.

And while countless websites state that the Glendale Amtrak Station was where Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) dropped off Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) in the thriller Double Indemnity, that information is actually incorrect. In reality, the station used in the 1944 flick was the old Burbank Southern Pacific Station, which once stood at 201 North Front Street, but was sadly partially burned down in 1991 and then completely demolished a few years later. The Burbank Metrolink Station was subsequently built on that site. You can check out some historic photographs of the former Burbank Southern Pacific Station here and here. As you can see, there is no denying that it matches the station that appeared in Double Indemnity (pictured below) perfectly.

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 Glendale Amtrak Station, from Bulletproof, is located at 400 West Cerritos Avenue in Glendale.

September 26, 2012
Rachel’s House from “(500) Days of Summer”

Today’s post is, unfortunately, going to be a short one being that I am absolutely exhausted from what turned out to be a very exciting and very successful Emmy weekend. (That’s me on the red carpet above! ) While I had a blast, I truly feel like I could sleep for days and am looking forward to what should be a calm week ahead. But I digress! Now, on with the post!

[ad]

Way back in May, while perusing through fellow stalker Tony’s amazing On Location in Los Angeles Flickr photostream, I came across a picture of the house where Rachel (Chloe Grace Moretz), the wise-beyond-her-years teenage sister of Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), lived in the 2009 flick (500) Days of Summer. And even though I was not at all a fan of the “unromantic comedy” (as Tony calls it) due to the fact that it was incredibly depressing, I did absolutely LOVE the charming and picturesque dwelling that Tony featured on his page (although I did not actually remember seeing it in the movie). So I, of course, ran right out to stalk the place that very weekend.

In real life, the Anywhere, U.S.A.-style home, which was originally built in 1910, boasts four bedrooms, three baths, 2,249 square feet of living space, and a 0.34-acre plot of land. As you can see below, it is absolutely adorable in person!

The house actually only shows up once in (500) Days of Summer, and very briefly at that (which explains why I did not remember it), on Day (11) in the scene in which Tom and Rachel are shown playing a Wii tennis game while discussing Tom’s new girlfriend, Summer (Zooey Deschanel). It is in the scene that Tom says, “She likes Magritte and Hopper and we talked about Bananafish for like twenty minutes! We’re so compatible, it’s insane! She’s not like I thought at all. She’s amazing.” To which Rachel utters her famous line, “Just ‘cause some cute girl likes the same bizarro crap you do, that doesn’t make her your soul mate, Tom.” LOL As you can see below, Rachel’s abode looks very much the same in person as it did onscreen, although the mailbox has since been moved to a different spot.

I am fairly certain that the real life interior of the home also appeared in the scene, although I could not find any interior photographs of the house with which to verify this.

I think one of the property’s bedrooms might also have been used as Tom’s childhood bedroom during the movie’s opening montage, but, again, I could not find any photographs with which to verify that hunch.

I did find an extended version of the Wii scene on YouTube, though, in which Rachel is shown sitting on the residence’s front porch.

More of the property’s interior is shown in the extended scene, as well.

You can watch the extended scene on YouTube by clicking below.

Rachel’s House–”(500) Days of Summer”-Extended Scene

According to this shoot sheet posted on the Seeing Stars website, the same house was also used in a television commercial for Countrywide Financial in March 1997. Because the residence is so incredibly idyllic and picturesque, I am sure it has been featured in countless other productions, as well.

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 Tony, from the amazing On Location in Los Angeles Flickr photostream, for finding this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Rachel’s house from (500) Days of Summer is located at 5231 Shearin Avenue in Eagle Rock. The party house from Teen Wolf (which I blogged about here) is located right next door at 5223 Shearin Avenue.

September 25, 2012
Canter’s Deli from “Entourage”

This will, unfortunately, be my last post for this week as I am heading out to Palm Springs bright and early tomorrow morning to take my dad to a few doctor appointments and I will not be back until late Thursday night. And because I am going to the Emmy’s on Sunday (whoo hoo – pinch me now!), there is a good chance that I will not have time to write a new blog post for Monday, either. So apologies in advance. I will for sure be back on Tuesday, though, with a whole new location. And now, on with the post! One very historic locale that I have stalked several times, but, for whatever reason, never blogged about is the legendary Canter’s Deli in Los Angeles’ Fairfax District. So when the Grim Cheaper suggested we grab a bite to eat there a couple of weekends ago, I decided that it was about time I snap some pictures of the place and do a post on it. Here goes!

[ad]

Canter’s Deli was originally founded in 1924 as Canter Brothers’ Delicatessen by Ben Canter and his two brothers in Jersey City, New Jersey. When the deli faltered due to the stock market crash of 1929, the three brothers moved to Los Angeles with only a shared $500 to their name. They settled in the then-predominantly Jewish area of Boyle Heights and, in 1931, opened a West Coast outpost of their delicatessen, which you can see a photo of here. When L.A.’s Jewish population started to migrate west towards the Fairfax District following World War II, Ben and his brothers decided to move their establishment, as well. In 1948, they purchased a storefront at 439 North Fairfax Avenue and changed the eatery’s name to the simpler “Canter’s Deli”. In 1953, the restaurant was moved once again, this time to the old Esquire Theatre at 419 North Fairfax, where it remains to this day. Thanks to its massive popularity, the eatery expanded in 1953 and then, in 1961, added on a bar and cocktail lounge named the Kibitz Room. The Kibitz’s stage has hosted countless well-known musicians over the years including Blues Traveler, The Black Crowes, The Wallflowers, and, most notably, Guns N’ Roses, who got their start on the premises.

Canter’s Deli, which, amazingly enough, is still owned and operated by the Canter family, has been a celebrity hot spot since its inception. In the heyday of Hollywood, such stars as Arthur Miller, Elizabeth Taylor, Cary Grant, Jack Benny, Elvis Presley, and my girl Marilyn Monroe all dined there. In more recent years, Drew Barrymore, John Travolta, Dick Van Dyke, Brooke Shields, Sidney Poitier, Adam Brody, Shenae Grimes, Lea Michele, Cory Monteith, and Taylor Swift have all been spotted at the eatery. Sarah Silverman even did a photo shoot at Canter’s for the clothing company Boy by Band of Outsiders, which you can take a look at here.

Canter’s Deli has won countless awards over the years (and deservedly so!) including “Best Waffles” from Los Angeles Magazine, “Best Deli” from both MyFoxLA and LA Hotlist, and, my personal favorite, Top 10 Jewish Silver Screen Landmarks from the Jewish Journal.

All of Canter’s offerings are handmade on the premises each day, including their humongous pickles, which are nothing short of fabulous – as is all of their food. Amazingly enough, over its “lifetime”, the deli has served over 2 million pounds of lox, 9 million pounds of corned beef, 10 million matzo balls, 20 million bagels, and 24 million bowls of chicken soup! Oy vey, that’s a lot of food!

Canter’s Deli has been featured in quite a few notable productions over the years. In the 1982 flick I Ought to Be in Pictures, Herbert Tucker (Walter Matthau) took his estranged daughter, Libby Tucker (Dinah Manoff, aka “Marty Maraschino” from Grease), for a late-night meal at the historic eatery.

In the 1998 thriller Enemy of the State, the interior of Canter’s masqueraded as the interior of Washington, D.C.’s Sam’s Deli Restaurant, where lawyer Robert Clayton Dean (Will Smith) told his informant/former girlfriend, Rachel F. Banks (Lisa Bonet), that he wanted to meet her source, Brill (Gabriel Byrne).

For the exterior of Sam’s, a different location was used, though.

In the Season 4 episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm titled “The Blind Date”, which aired in 2004, Canter’s was where Larry David (Larry David) took his new friend Haboos (Moon Unit Zappa) for lunch. Both the exterior . . .

. . . and the interior appeared in the episode.

In 2005’s Be Cool, Canter’s was where Raji (Vince Vaughn) told hitman Joe Loop (Robert Pastorelli) that he killed the wrong guy. Both the exterior . . .

. . . and the interior were used in the flick.

In the Season 6 episode of Entourage titled “Berried Alive”, which aired in 2009, Canter’s Deli is where the gang – Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier), Eric Murphy (Kevin Connolly), Johnny Drama (Kevin Dillon), and Turtle (cutie Jerry Ferrara, who I am dying to meet, by the way!) – grabbed late-night drinks and where Drama ran into his former boss, Melrose Place-producer Phil Yagoda (William Fichtner). Both the exterior . . .

. . . and the interior of the deli appeared in the episode.

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: Canter’s Deli, from the “Berried Alive” episode of Entourage, is located at 419 North Fairfax Avenue in the Fairfax District of Los Angeles. You can visit the official Canter’s website here. The deli is open 24 hours a day, 363 days a year (it is closed on both Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur).

September 19, 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.

[ad]

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
The Cecil B. DeMille Estate

This past April, the Grim Cheaper’s best friend came to town for a visit and, while he was here, he invited us over for dinner at his parents’ house. Well, believe you me, because his parents live in the gated Los Feliz celebrity enclave known as Laughlin Park, there was very little arm-twisting involved in getting us there. In fact, we jumped at the chance. Well, I did. Per usual, the GC could have cared less about our famous environs.

[ad]

Just a few of the luminaries who have called Laughlin Park home at one time or another include W.C. Fields, Charlie Chaplin, Dermot Mulroney, Catherine Keener, Natalie Portman, Portia de Rossi, Jenna Elfman, The Dave Matthews Band’s LeRoi Moore, Carole Lombard, Lily Pons, The Black Eyed Peas’ will.i.am, Casey Affleck, director David Fincher, Lauren Graham, Ellen Pompeo, and musician Chick Corea. The most well-known former resident, though, has to be legendary director Cecil B. DeMille. Heck, Laughlin Park’s main street, De Mille Drive, was even named after him and his one-time house, a massive Italianate Revival-style manse, is arguably one of the most famous in all of L.A. So I, of course, ran right out to stalk the place while we were there.

Laughlin Park, or “The Park” as residents have dubbed it, was originally founded in the late 1890s by real estate developers Homer Laughlin and Wilbur Cummings. And while the site was originally intended to boast forty separate “villas”, some plots of land have since been subdivided and the community is now comprised of sixty dwellings, each with its own architectural significance. The 7,472-square-foot, 15-room “DeMille estate”, as it has come to be known, was constructed in 1914 on the largest and highest of The Park’s lots. The home originally belonged to Laughlin himself, but DeMille purchased it in 1916, two years after it was built, for $27,893. DeMille continued to live on the premises for the next four decades, until his death in 1959. His estate then held onto the residence through 1988.

Legend has it that DeMille filmed The King of Kings’ Garden of Gethsemane scene, in which Jesus, the Christ (H.B. Warner) prayed with his disciples after The Last Supper, on the grounds of his estate in 1927, although that would be extremely difficult to verify.

In 2008, the DeMille estate was put on the market for a cool $26.25 million, but it does not appear that the property was ever sold. You can view some fabulous photographs of the place from its real estate listing on fave website The Real Estalker here.

Sadly, as you can see below, not much of the DeMille estate is visible from the street. Even though it is located inside of a gated community, the house itself is also gated. Boo!

But, as I have said before, that is why God created aerial images. As you can see below, not only is the DeMille estate gargantuan, but it is also pretty darn spectacular. What I wouldn’t give to tour the inside of that thing!

On a side-note – the GC’s best friend’s parents both work in the “biz” and have won countless awards, including a whopping NINE Emmys, which I always tend to freak out over when I am there. And this time I just had to snap a picture with one. (Notice all of the other awards displayed on the shelves in the background behind me. So incredibly cool!) Emmys are apparently not the most sturdy of awards, though – as you can see, the rings of the atom in the one I am holding below have all fallen off. LOL Now, that’s what I call a high-class problem.

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 former Cecil B. DeMille estate is located at 2000 De Mille Drive in the Laughlin Park neighborhood of Los Feliz. The property is, unfortunately, located inside of a gated community and is not accessible to the public, so you can only stalk this one vicariously.

September 17, 2012
Baby Showering It in the ‘Bu!

I spent all day yesterday attending a baby shower in the ‘Bu, so I, unfortunately, did not have time to write a new post for today. I will be back on Monday, though. I hope all of my fellow stalkers have a fabulous weekend!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

September 14, 2012