Blog

Emerson College Los Angeles from “Scandal”

Despite the fact that I live in Palm Springs, I tend to think of myself as having my finger on the pulse of L.A. But when penning A Film Lover’s Guide to Tomorrow’s Movie Location Stars for Los Angeles magazine in 2015, I overlooked two key spots, which I hope speaks more to the vast landscape of the city than it does to my lack of awareness. Though I noted Wilshire Grand Center, Hollenbeck Community Police Station, 8500, Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust, and the revamped Grand Central Air Terminal as the then newly-constructed sites I thought location managers would soon be flocking to, I somehow failed to include The Broad, a contemporary art museum in DTLA with a highly unusual perforated exterior, and Emerson College Los Angeles, an arts and communication school in Hollywood with a campus the Times deemed “a futuristic complex of aluminum and glass.” I actually did not become aware of the latter until watching the Season 5 episode of Scandal titled “Pencils Down” in March 2016, a full two years after its completion.

[ad]

In “Pencils Down,” Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) clandestinely meets up with Alex Vargas (Danny Pino) outside of the supposed Washington, D.C.-area venue where Mellie Grant (Bellamy Young) and Susan Ross (Artemis Pebdani) are participating in their first presidential debate. One look at the staggering wall of geometric panels pictured in the background of the scene and the dramatic vistas shown in wide shots and I was transfixed. I promptly paused my DVR and began trying to figure out where filming had taken place. Because Scandal shoots in L.A., I knew the locale had to be somewhere within the thirty-mile-zone, though I was certain I had never come across it in any of my stalking travels. So I did a Google search for “new modern building” and “Los Angeles” and pored through the countless images that were kicked back until finally landing upon one of Emerson College that matched what I had seen onscreen. Pulling up additional photos of the campus only served to make me more obsessed with the place. Though I immediately added the school to my To-Stalk list, it was not until this past December that I finally made it out there. Thankfully, Emerson, or ELA as it is also called, was worth the wait.

Construction on the 107,000-square-foot, 10-story, $110-million structure began in 2012 and grew out of a need for a more permanent place for the Boston-based Emerson to house and teach students in its semester-abroad program – abroad in this case being Hollywood.

The program, originally established in the 1980s, allows for participants to not only spend a semester studying in the show business capital of the world, but to also participate in invaluable internships at places like MTV, Comedy Central, and E! Entertainment. With no West Coast home base to call its own, students were originally taught in leased space in Universal City and put up in furnished units at the Oakwood at Toluca Hills by Avalon complex in Burbank. That all changed when Emerson’s Hollywood campus was completed in early 2014.

The striking complex, situated on the site of a former Sunset Boulevard parking lot measuring a scant 0.80 acres, essentially consists of one large box-shaped building with an open center. Two residential towers housing 217 dorm rooms, as well as a few faculty apartments, make up the framework of the structure.

Common areas, which include classrooms, editing labs, two black box theatres, a screening room, a conference room, rehearsal space, and lecture halls, are situated in between the two towers.

To say the site, which is the brainchild of Pritzker Prize-winning architect Thom Mayne of the Morphosis architecture firm, is dramatic would be an understatement.

As ELA’s founding director (and the executive producer of Friends!) Kevin Bright said of the structure, “I don’t care whether you walk around it or drive by it or you see it from a distance; the thing about this building is it demands your attention.”

I’ve honestly never seen anything quite like it.

Considering the building’s completely unique and dramatic aesthetic, it is no surprise that location scouts came a-calling pretty much immediately.

As this ArchDaily article puts it, “Looking to the local context, the center finds a provocative precedent in the interiority of Hollywood film studios, where outwardly regular facades house flexible, fantastical spaces within. With rigging for screens, media connections, sound, and lighting incorporated into the framework, the upper platform serves as a flexible armature for outdoor performances, transforming the undulating scrim into a dynamic visual backdrop. The entire building becomes a stage set for student films, screenings, and industry events, with the Hollywood sign, the city of Los Angeles, and the Pacific Ocean in the distance providing added scenery.” The place truly is a location manager’s dream.

Besides appearing in the scene in which Olivia and Alex exchange damaging information on rival presidential candidates in “Pencils Down” . . .

. . . one of Emerson’s residential hallways served as the spot where Susan breaks up with her cheating boyfriend David Rosen (Joshua Malina).

At the beginning of the Season 1 episode of Extant titled “More in Heaven and Earth,” which aired in 2014, ELA portrays the upscale The Villas condominium building where Molly Woods (Halle Berry) attempts to question Derek Pearce (Rocco Vienhage) about the Aruna mission.

Molly returns to The Villas in a later scene only to discover that Derek has died, the victim of an apparent suicide.

Julie Gelineau (Grace Gummer) and Odim James (Charlie Bewley) also dine on the premises in “More in Heaven and Earth.” In the episode, the two share a meal at Emerson Kitchen, a restaurant that was formerly located on the college’s ground floor. Today that space houses Homeward Ground.

On The Catch, a now defunct series that aired on ABC from 2016 to 2017, ELA appeared regularly as the exterior of the Anderson/Vaughan Investigations office.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Emerson College Los Angeles, from the “Pencils Down” episode of Scandal, is located at 5960 Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. You can visit the school’s official website here.

January 12, 2018
The “She’s Out of Control” House – Part 2

One of my favorite parts of writing my blog each day is uncovering the various productions a particular locale has appeared in. Some spots are so prevalent on the big and small screen that I inevitably miss a role or two, though. Such was the case with the South Pasadena pad that portrayed the home of the Simpson family in the 1989 coming-of-age comedy She’s Out of Control, one of my very favorite flicks of the era. A couple of months after publishing my post on the property in 2011, I spotted it in Bruce Almighty (as I mentioned here). Then this past December, fellow stalker David, from The Location Scout, published a comment on my site alerting me to the fact that the dwelling had also been featured in Star Kid. When Mike, from MovieShotsLA, texted me not more than two days later to inform me that he had also noticed the place pop up in Little Fockers, I just about fell over and decided it was definitely time for a redux! So here goes!

[ad]

Considering the home’s vast Anywhere, U.S.A.-aesthetic and obvious curb appeal, it is not hard to see why location managers have flocked to it like moths to a flame.

Per Zillow, the 2-story 1908 pad boasts 4 bedrooms, 1 bath, 2,800 square feet of living space, and a 0.17-acre lot.

The picturesque property last sold in 1979 for $140,000 and today is worth an estimated $1.6 million, according to Redfin. Not a bad ROI, especially considering all the film income the place has generated over the years!

In She’s Out of Control, the residence is where newly-made-over teen Katie Simpson (Ami Dolenz) lives with her long-suffering father, Doug (Tony Danza), and smart aleck younger sister, Bonnie (Laura Mooney).

Amazingly, the property still looks exactly the same today as it did when the movie was filmed almost thirty years ago. Talk about being frozen in time! I mean, the trees don’t even appear to have grown in the past three decades!

Only the exterior of the residence was utilized in She’s Out of Control. The interior of the Simpson home was nothing more than a studio-built set.

I cannot even express what a shame it is that Katie’s famous staircase doesn’t exist in real life. If it did and I lived in that house, I’d so have Frankie Avalon’s “Venus” playing on loop! The dwelling’s actual staircase is much less impressive than its onscreen counterpart, sadly, and leads both upstairs and into the kitchen, oddly enough. Regardless, the residence is quite charming inside. You can check out some photographs of it here.

The backyard area also appears briefly in She’s Out of Control.

In the 1997 family flick Star Kid, the abode portrays the Griffith family residence, where Spencer (Joseph Mazzello) lives with his father, Roland (Richard Gilliland), and sister, Stacey (Ashlee Levitch).

Though interiors were filmed on a set, said set very closely resembled the actual inside of the house.

The pad also masquerades as the supposed Buffalo, New York-area home belonging to Debbie (Lisa Ann Walter), Grace Connelly’s (Jennifer Aniston) sister, in the 2003 comedy Bruce Almighty.

I absolutely love this candid shot of Jennifer Aniston and director Tom Shadyac taken out in front of the house during the shoot.

As I mentioned in my original 2011 post, the property serves as the Doyle residence, where Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor-Compton) babysits Tommy Doyle (Skyler Gisondo), in Rob Zombie’s 2007 horror flick Halloween.

In the 2010 comedy Little Fockers, the dwelling masks as the Chicago-area “American foursquare” (“also known as a prairie box”) that Greg Focker (Ben Stiller) and his wife, Pam (Teri Polo), are renovating.

The backyard area, which is undergoing a massive pool installation in the film, also makes an appearance.

And Izzy Richardson (Megan Stott) and April Jarvis (Isabel Gravitt) attend a party at the house in the recently-aired episode of Little Fires Everywhere titled “Picture Perfect,” though the exterior is only seen briefly.

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

Big THANK YOU to David, from The Location Scout website, for telling me about the home’s appearance in Star Kid and to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for alerting me to its role in Little Fockers.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Simpson house from She’s Out of Control is located at 1960 La France Avenue in South Pasadena.

January 10, 2018
Rise N Grind from “Veep”

I have never been one for New Year’s resolutions. That being said, in 2018 I am hoping to regularly exercise, be kinder (to myself and others), drink more water and less champagne, and cut down on my daily latte regimen. The last one is going to be much easier said than done. No matter what, though, I will definitely not be cutting down on my stalking of coffee shops – that I can promise. One café that I recently visited was Hollywood’s Rise N Grind, which I became enamored with after it made a brief appearance in an episode of Veep.

[ad]

In Season 6’s “Georgia,” Catherine Meyer (Sarah Sutherland) and girlfriend Marjorie Palmiotti (Clea DuVall) meet with Dan Egan (Reid Scott) at a supposed New York coffee shop to ask if he would be willing to be their sperm donor. The encounter is extremely quick, as Dan readily agrees to the proposition – literally no questions asked.

Though I’ve always been prone to coffee shop adoration, the café that appeared in the episode intrigued me even more so than usual. I was immediately taken with the space’s modern décor. A black and white color schematic? A marquee “coffee” sign? Painted brickwork? Touches of wood throughout? Yes, yes, yes, and yes! The place couldn’t be any more “me” if it tried! So I, of course, set out on a mission to track it down.

While watching, I noticed what looked to be a menu board constructed out of skateboards in the background of the scene. So I did a Google search for “Los Angeles,” “coffee shop,” and “skateboards.” The second result kicked back was a listing for Rise N Grind located at 6501 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood. One glimpse at the photographs of the place posted online told me it was the right spot. I ran out to stalk it just a short time later.

Opened in July 2014 by nightclub impresario Robert Vinokur, Rise N Grind is fairly new to the Hollywood coffee scene.

Situated inside of a corner building in the heart of Tinseltown, the site is easily one of the most artfully-decorated cafes I’ve ever visited.

Prior to opening, Vinokur completely and painstakingly re-designed the 7,000-square-foot, 2-story, 1994 building, which previously housed a designer suit outlet.

As writer Kim Sudhalter chronicled in a post for the Only in Hollywood blog while the space was being renovated, “Last month I drove up Wilcox and saw a crew of painters working on the building gracing the northwest corner of Wilcox and Hollywood, near my old office. As I got closer, I noticed they were carefully painting the face of each brick white, leaving the brick-colored mortar intact in between. I drove by several times in the next week and they were still at it . . . hand-painting bricks one by one. The final effect was so elegant I knew something special was happening.” Something special indeed! The white brick motif was carried out inside the café, as well, to stunning effect.

The result is a thoroughly modern venue that manages to be industrial, but wholly welcoming at the same time.

“Welcoming” is one of the key characteristics Vinokur hoped to embody in his design – a space where patrons could feel comfortable hanging out for hours on end. To that end, the café provides free WiFi, power outlets for customer use, a copious amount of seating, a large menu offering sandwiches, pastries, juices, and salads, and java specialties provided by Stumptown Coffee Roasters.

As described on LinkedIn, the site is a “laptop haven for all creative minds.”

Regarding the name, Rise N Grind, as Vinokur explained to the Los Angeles Times, is a play on both a motivated get-out-of-bed attitude and the city’s longstanding skateboard culture, which is paid homage to via the menu board I spotted in the background of Veep – a massive display of more than 150 decks displaying the store’s moniker and its many food and drink offerings.

While stalking the place, I, of course, had to partake of a latte and it was fabulous. Rise N Grind will definitely be a frequent stop whenever I find myself in Hollywood. Whoops – there I go, already abandoning that less-lattes-in-2018 plan!

Only the interior of Rise N Grind appeared on Veep. The exterior shots shown were of Orwashers, “New York’s Original Artisan Bakery,” at 440 Amsterdam Avenue on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. With its corner location and black and white façade, Orwashers does bear quite a resemblance to Rise N Grind, as you can see below.

Back in 2003, when the Rise N Grind site housed a clothing store named Roma, it appeared in the background of S.W.A.T., in the scene in which Alex Montel (Oliver Martinez) is captured by Jim Street (Colin Farrell) shortly after escaping from a police bus.

As you can see in the screen captures as compared to the photographs above and below, the building looked completely different – and much less attractive – at the time. The white brick edifice really suits it!

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Rise N Grind, from the “Georgia” episode of Veep, is located at 6501 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood. You can visit the café’s official website here. Exterior footage from the episode was shot at Orwashers, located at 440 Amsterdam Avenue on New York’s Upper West Side. You can visit the bakery’s official website here.

January 8, 2018
Home Restaurant from “Raines”

Every once in a while a show comes along that immediately hooks me. Such was the case with Raines, an extremely short-lived police procedural boasting a scant seven-episode run. I was unaware of the NBC series at the time of its original airing in March 2007. In fact, I only learned of it this past October while doing research for my post on High Tower, the iconic Hollywood Hills campanile from Dead Again that, as I learned via IMDB, also had a prominent role in Raines’ pilot. I was thrilled to discover that the series is available to stream on Amazon and quickly downloaded the inaugural episode. Though I intended to only scan through it to make screen captures for my post, I instantly became intrigued, mainly due to the locations – one of which was an absolutely charming outdoor eatery that I fell in love with upon sight.

[ad]

The Raines pilot centers around the murder of beautiful young call girl Sandy Boudreau (Alexa Davalos). The lead cop assigned to solve her killing is Michael Raines (Jeff Goldblum), an eccentric LAPD detective with a unique method of talking to the dead victims he is investigating in order to close cases. (No, he doesn’t actually “see dead people” – the apparitions he encounters are merely figments of his imagination.) In one of the episode’s flashback scenes, Sandy is shown dining at an adorable café where she meets, and winds up dining with, a married man named Harry Tucker (Jeff Perry). One look at the restaurant’s unique signage reading “THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOME” and idyllic front patio and I was smitten. I promptly halted my research on High Tower and instead switched my efforts to tracking the eatery down. Thankfully, a quick Google search of the terms “Home,” “restaurant,” and “Los Angeles” led me to the right spot – Home Restaurant at 1760 Hillhurst Avenue in Los Feliz. I ran right out to stalk it shortly thereafter.

Home Restaurant was originally established in 1997 by the husband-and-wife team of Aram and Rose Serobian.

More than twenty years later, the place is still going strong – though eagle-eyed viewers will notice the signage has changed a bit since Raines aired just over a decade ago.

Home has become such a success that the Serobians, who lived above the restaurant on the property’s second floor during its early days, have since opened two sister eateries – a second Home at 2500 Riverside Drive in Silverlake and H Coffee, a café situated next to the original Home at 1750 Hillhurst Avenue. (The couple just recently closed the latter to undergo a renovation and rebranding. It will open in January as Guest House.)

Nestled in amongst a canopy of trees, Home’s setting is absolutely magical.

In a 2016 interview with the Los Angeles Mayor’s Office of Public Engagement, Aram explained that he landed on his eatery’s name because “The word ‘home’ means everything in my culture, and almost everyone holds that idea and concept close to their hearts. So, I put my own heart and soul into this restaurant and see the customers as guests in my own house. It’s about feeling welcome and comfortable, being able to get away from the often-hectic nature of Los Angeles. If everyone can walk in and feel like they’re part of a family, even for just an hour, then I know it has been a success.” Aram can definitely pat himself on the back for a job well done because the restaurant truly does have the feel of a home – albeit the home of someone with impeccable taste in décor.

Situated around a sparkling fountain, with furniture made of reclaimed wood, the patio is especially inviting.

The restaurant also boasts an indoor dining room for those who do not want to eat amongst the elements, but, in my opinion, the patio is where it’s at.

Though neither the Grim Cheaper nor I are big breakfast people, we were both completely enamored with Home’s fare. I opted for the cafe’s California Omelette and it was hands-down one of the best omelets I’ve ever had in my life. The GC selected The All American, with eggs, pancakes, and bacon, and it, too, was fabulous.

Home’s prices are surprisingly reasonable, especially considering the fact that the place is not only a brunch hotspot and hipster haven, but the portion sizes are enormous.

The eatery is also something of a celeb magnet. Mark Ballas, Kristen Stewart, Katherine Heigl, Sophia Bush, Jon Foster, Rachel Bilson, and Audrina Patridge have all been spotted there.

Patridge likes the place so much, she even filmed a scene from her short-lived reality series Audrina there. In Episode 2, she meets with her sister Casey Loza at the restaurant to discuss their parents’ upcoming anniversary party.

Thanks to fellow stalker Ellie I learned that Home was also the spot where Dr. Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) met up with Dr. Derek Shepherd (Patrick Dempsey) at the end of the Season 1 episode of Grey’s Anatomy titled “No Man’s Land,” which aired in 2005.

And in the Season 2 episode of You titled “Just the Tip,” Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley) spies on Love Quinn (Victoria Pedretti) and her friends at Home.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Home Restaurant, from the pilot episode of Raines, is located at 1760 Hillhurst Avenue in Los Feliz. You can visit the eatery’s official website here.

January 3, 2018
Merry Christmas!

I would like to wish all of my fellow stalkers a very merry Christmas filled with family, friends, food, and joyous festivities. I will be taking the next week off to spend with the Grim Cheaper and my family and will resume regular posting starting Wednesday, January 3. See you then!

December 25, 2017
The “L.A. Confidential” Christmas Eve Pot Bust House

Some might not consider the subject of today’s post a Christmas location. It’s certainly not from a holiday flick, that’s for sure. But the scene that was shot there took place on Christmas Eve, so I figured it was fair game. For those who do not recognize the pad pictured above, it was at the two-story Craftsman that the infamous “movie premiere pot bust” – or as I always refer to it, the “Christmas Eve pot bust” – from L.A. Confidential was lensed. If you’ve never seen the 1997 film (and I just learned that the Grim Cheaper counts himself in that category, which absolutely flabbergasted me!), I’ll fill you in.

[ad]

At the beginning of the 1950s-set drama, Hush-Hush tabloid reporter Sid Hudgens (Danny DeVito) convinces LAPD sergeant Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey) to arrest two Metro Studio contract players, Matt Reynolds (Simon Baker) and Tammy Jordan (Shawnee Free Jones), whom he has set up for pot possession, so that he can document the whole thing for his magazine. When they arrive at Reynolds’ home, Vincennes, ever the media opportunist, immediately notices that a Hollywood premiere is taking place at the theatre down the street and instructs Sid, “Put your camera right there. When I walk out, I’ll stop right here, you get the movie premiere in the background.” To which Sid says, “I like it! I like it! The movie premiere pot bust!” (Why a film premiere would be taking place on Christmas Eve night is beyond me, but I guess that is a question for director/screenwriter Curtis Hanson.) As Sid later spins the story, “It’s Christmas Eve in the City of Angels and while decent citizens sleep the sleep of the righteous, hopheads prowl for marijuana, not knowing that a man is coming to stop them – celebrity crime stopper Jack Vincennes, scourge of grasshoppers and dope fiends everywhere.”

Because of the tight angle from which the scene was shot, as well as the low lighting (not to mention a change in paint color in the ensuing years), the movie premiere pot bust house looks quite a bit different in person than it did onscreen.

While it deceivingly looks like a single-family residence from the street, as was depicted in L.A. Confidential the 1914 property is actually a multi-occupancy dwelling. Per Zillow, the structure boasts a total of 3 bedrooms, 3 baths, 3,304 square feet, and a 0.23-acre parcel of land.

Though they are now largely obscured by a screened-in porch, you can just make out the property’s two front doors in my photograph below.

The home’s actual interior was also utilized in the movie. It is there that Vincennes (does L.A. Confidential have great character names, or what?) first learns about Fleur-de-Lis thanks to a mysterious black business card he finds tucked away in a notebook.

Though the scene taking place there is rather brief, the pot bust house was one of the tougher locales for the L.A. Confidential production team to nail down. According to an interview with location manager John Panzarella and key assistant Leslie Thorson that ran in L.A. Weekly this past September, early versions of the script called for a residence within view of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. Panzarella says, “Our directive always was to have a theater that was in a sightline to a house, like half a block away. We did go look at the Chinese Theatre, we went down Sycamore, we went down Orange, we went down all the adjacent streets and there was no house there that was within sightlines.” So they started seeking out other venues – in Leimert Park, Westwood, and additional areas of L.A. But they came up with zilch. That’s when production designer Jeannine Oppewall stepped in and saved the day by proposing that an old Art Deco bank building at 5620 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood could possibly mask as a theatre in the scene. Her idea was right on the money and Panzarella and Thorson soon zeroed in on a home with period-perfect architecture located just down the street from the structure at 1714 North Gramercy Place to portray Reynolds’ residence.

Transforming the bank building into the fictional “El Cortez” theatre for the shoot did prove a bit challenging, as the owners of the structure would not allow anything to be attached to the façade. So Oppewall had to think outside the box. As she explained to Curbed L.A. in a recent interview, “What I ended up doing was designing the movie marquee as a freestanding triangle. We shoved it up against the building, and then we built two pilasters on the back two legs that disappeared directly into the background of the building . . . And we had to have a supporting pillar in the front, which we painted black. I specified that we had to always have some extras standing directly in front of it so you wouldn’t see that it was actually standing on three legs.”

Known as the California Bank/Precision Auto Building in real life (per this Historic Resources Survey Report), the structure was designed by John Parkinson of Parkinson & Parkinson, the father-and-son architecture team who also gave us Union Station, Bullocks Wilshire and both Security Trust & Savings Bank’s Highland Park Branch and North Hollywood Branch. According to the Los Angeles Times, the site, which boasts a 95-foot-tall pyramid-topped tower, was built in 1920 (though many others report the year of construction as 1929). Said tower was badly damaged during the Northridge earthquake in 1994. Though it has, thankfully, since been repaired, you can check out some eerie photographs of its toppled spire here and here.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Christmas Eve pot bust, aka the movie premiere pot bust, from L.A. Confidential took place at 1714 North Gramercy Place in Hollywood. The California Bank/Precision Auto Building, aka the fictional “El Cortez” theatre seen in the background of the scene, can be found just down the street at 5620 Hollywood Boulevard.

December 22, 2017
Cindy’s Restaurant from “Surviving Christmas”

I have made no secret of the fact that I majorly ration Christmas locations from year to year. The sad truth is that few holiday flicks are lensed in the L.A. area (the city’s constant sunshine and lack of snow doesn’t exactly scream “Noel!”), which translates to a very minimal amount of holiday locales. So I tend to dole out my Yuletide-themed blog posts slowly for fear of exhausting the limited supply. Today’s location is a major throwback, though, even for me – one I stalked way back in 2014 with my friends Lavonna, Kim, Melissa and Maria, who were in town visiting from the Midwest. I’m talking about Cindy’s Restaurant, which made an appearance in Surviving Christmas. While I wrote a brief Scene It Before post on the Eagle Rock eatery for Los Angeles magazine later that same year, considering the place is a virtual onscreen juggernaut I figured it was high time I penned a proper write-up on it.

[ad]

Though there seem to be some discrepancies regarding the diner’s history floating around online – this Los Angeles Historic Resources Survey contends that the eatery was built as an “L.H. Boody Restaurant” in 1940 and has been in continuous operation as Cindy’s Restaurant since 1963, while the Los Angeles Times asserts that the café first opened its doors in 1948 – I can safely say that the Googie-style property, which is situated on historic Route 66, has been attracting hungry patrons for at least six decades. Sadly, I was unable to dig up anything else about the place’s history – no mention of the site on newspapers.com, no blurbs on the café in my many books about L.A.-area restaurants, not even a reference to the Cindy for whom the eatery was named.

The diner’s recent years were far easier to chronicle. In January 2014, Cindy’s was purchased by Monique King and Paul Rosenbluh, the husband-and-wife-team behind South Pasadena’s popular Firefly Bistro, which sadly shuttered that same December after 12 years in business.

Monique and Paul immediately set about revitalizing the historic site’s interior and exterior, which required shutting the place down for several months. During the renovation, the couple brought new life to the café, which had grown somewhat tired over the years. Thankfully though, the original countertops, booths and wallpaper were left intact, as was the vintage signage, which was refurbished via a Kickstarter campaign. The restaurant re-opened, fresh from its facelift, in April 2014.

Cindy’s menu was given a reboot, as well. Typical diner fare like meat loaf and fried chicken are still offered, but patrons can also nosh on more high-brow items like chicken-fried mushrooms, falafels, and crab hash. While some local denizens were not fans of the changes, most took to the new Cindy’s like moths to a flame. As Paul said to the West Coast Prime Meats website, “There’s a certain amount of people who hate us. We’re not the old Cindy’s. We’re ‘hipsters.’ There are other people who love us for it and tell us, ‘We’ve been coming here for 30 years and this is the first time we’ve had good food.’ You get a little bit of everything.”

In a sad twist, a drunk driver crashed a truck through Cindy’s front windows in June 2016, just two short years after its re-opening, and the restaurant was subsequently shuttered for months while Paul and Monique rebuilt. (Oddly, that was not the first time a car plowed through the eatery – it suffered the same fate in July 2007.) The damage, which you can see photos of here, was extensive, though quite a bit of the décor was able to be salvaged. Cindy’s finally re-opened to much fanfare on December 9th of that same year and has been going strong ever since.

The restaurant boasts an extremely nostalgic palette, one that can be tweaked to represent an Americana diner from pretty much any era, so it is no surprise that studios have flocked to the place to shoot a slew of productions over the years.

Cindy’s portrays the supposed Chicago-area diner where the Valcos – Tom (James Gandolfini), Christine (Catherine O’Hara), Alicia (Christina Applegate), and Brian (Josh Zuckerman) – and Drew Latham (Ben Affleck), the millionaire advertising executive who hired them to pose as his family for the holidays, enjoy Christmas dinner at the end of 2004’s Surviving Christmas.

In the Season 6 episode of Sons of Anarchy titled “Poenitentia,” which aired in 2013, Cindy’s masks as the Reno café where Robert ‘Bobby Elvis’ Munson (Mark Boone Junior) meets up with several Men of Mayhem members.

The restaurant pops up a few times in the 2014 horror flick Ouija as the diner where Isabelle (Bianca Santos) works.

In the Season 5 episode of Parenthood titled “Promises,” which aired in 2015, Zeek Braverman (Craig T. Nelson) takes to eating at Cindy’s while his wife, Camille (Bonnie Bedalia), is out of town and soon befriends a fellow patron named Rocky (Paul Dooley).

Marc Maron, Dave Anthony, and Andy Kindler (all of whom play themselves) grab a couple of meals at Cindy’s in the Season 3 episode of Maron titled “Ex-Pod,” which aired in 2015.

Cindy’s masquerades as a Sunset Strip café named “Gladner’s Coffee Hut” on three episodes of the short-lived television series Aquarius. It first pops up in the 2015 pilot, titled “Everybody’s Been Burned,” in the scene in which undercover detective Brian Shafe (Grey Damon) busts Mike Vickery (Jason Ralph) for drugs and then subsequently gets arrested himself amidst a massive protest.

Shafe returns to Gladner’s Coffee Hut with his partner, Sam Hodiak (David Duchovny), to confront owner Art Gladner (Shaun Duke) in the episode that follows, titled “The Hunter Gets Captured by the Game.”

Art eventually winds up dead in a back area of the restaurant in Aquarius’ third episode, “Never Say Never to Always.”

A subject interview is conducted in one of Cindy’s iconic orange booths in David Farrier’s 2016 documentary Tickled (which looks super interesting).

That same year, Cindy’s popped up in the Season 2 episode of Secrets and Lies titled “The Parent” as the spot where Kate Warner (Jordana Brewster) meets with her son’s adoptive mother, Belinda Peterson (Romy Rosemont).

The diner’s most famous onscreen appearance, though, is in Justin Timberlake’s 2016 “Can’t Stop the Feeling!” music video, which you can watch here.

As was noted on Cindy’s Facebook page shortly after the car crashed into the restaurant that same year, the booth where Justin sat in the video remains unscathed from the accident. Love it!

Most recently, Jen Harding (Christina Applegate) and Judy Hale (Linda Cardellini) popped by Cindy’s Restaurant on their way home from Los Angeles National Forest in the Season 2 episode of Dead to Me titled “Between You and Me,” which just hit Netflix.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Cindy’s Restaurant, from Surviving Christmas, is located at 1500 Colorado Boulevard in Eagle Rock. You can visit the eatery’s official website here.

December 20, 2017
The “Four Christmases” Dance Studio

I can hardly believe it, but the Christmas season is upon us again! It seems like just yesterday I was hanging out in a pool celebrating my 40th birthday in June! I hate how fast time seems to pass, but I do love the holidays and am thrilled to finally be covering a Yuletide-themed locale. Today’s post comes courtesy of my good friend Mike, from MovieShotsLA, who a few years back worked for a production company with offices all over the L.A. area, including the building at 1161 Vine Street in Hollywood. One fateful day, Mike was tasked with setting up some new film and video equipment at the Vine Street space and happened to cue up Four Christmases on his laptop to play in the background while he toiled away (slightly random, being that this was in the summer!). He just about fell over when the dance studio scene came on because, as he looked around the room, he realized he was sitting in the exact spot where the segment had been lensed! Talk about synchronicity! He promptly snapped a bunch of photographs of the place and recently sent them to me, thinking the site would make for a good holiday post. Thank you, Mike!

[ad]

Situated on the corner of Lexington Avenue right in the heart of Hollywood, 1161 Vine boasts quite a Tinseltown pedigree, having served as the headquarters of not one, but two sound industry titans. During the ‘40s, the handsome 1928 building acted as the main office of Altec Lansing, an audio electronics company best-known for developing horn-based loudspeaker systems for movie theatres, concert venues, and home entertainment centers. You can see a photograph of what the property looked like during the Altec Lansing days here. Amazingly, aside from the addition of quite a bit of foliage, not much of its exterior has changed since that time. In 1951, Ryder Sound Services moved into the 5,758-square-foot site, utilizing it as a recording and post production studio. The company, which pioneered magnetic audio recording for the motion picture industry, was founded by Loren L. Ryder, a 5-time-Academy-Award-winning sound engineer.

At the time that Four Christmases was filmed in 2008, the modern office space, which boasts exposed brickwork, a 24-foot-high bow truss ceiling, concrete and wood floors, a fireplace, a full kitchen, and a large loft area, served as a photography studio. Today it is home to digital media firm Beautycon. I wonder if the people who work there have any idea of the place’s cinematic history. I am guessing most don’t and can totally picture a not-in-the-know employee putting on the flick during the holiday season and, upon seeing the dance scene and realization dawning, screaming out, “Oh my God! I work there!” No? That’s just me? And Mike?

You can check out some additional interior photographs of the property here.

Toward the beginning of Four Christmases, Kate (Reese Witherspoon) and Brad (Vince Vaughn) attend a ballroom dance class at 1161 Vine. While there, they get into a rather humorous exchange with two newly-engaged couples who are taking dance lessons for their upcoming weddings, about why they have no desire to get married or have kids. After denouncing expressions like “tying the knot” and “ball and chain,” Brad tells the betrotheds, “I mean I’d rather be, like, stuck on an island with some weird millionaire hunting me trying to kill me and me trying to escape than to be involved in something with those kind of slogans, ‘cause that’s like a time bomb waiting to explode.” Upon seeing their rather shell-shocked reactions to his diatribe, he closes off with, “But anyway, congratulations on getting married. That sounds like a really cool thing. And to each their own. Merry Christmas.” You can watch the hilarious scene here.

The segment is one of my favorite bits of the whole movie, mainly because Kate and Brad dance to “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” a holiday song I adore.

As you can see in the photos and screen captures above and below, 1161 Vine looks much the same in person as it does onscreen, minus the slew of festive Christmas decorations.

The property’s loft area was utilized for another Four Christmases scene in which Kate and Brad are shown calling their respective parents to inform them that they won’t be making it home for the holiday. Though the segment wound up on the cutting room floor, eagle-eyed viewers might remember a portion of it popping up in the movie’s trailer. As I mentioned in this 2012 post, I originally thought the phone call bit was supposed to have occurred at Kate and Brad’s house, which confused me to no end as the space looks nothing like the residence that appeared in the other scenes set at the couple’s home. But I was lucky enough to get in touch with production designer Shepherd Frankel who set me straight. He explained that Kate and Brad were purportedly phoning their parents from a break area of the dance studio. Why the two would be making such personal calls from a public place, I have no idea, but perhaps that is why the scene, which you can watch in its entirety here, was scrapped.

While researching this post, I was absolutely bowled over to discover that 1161 Vine boasts another holiday movie connection! According to the Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol blog, all of the dialogue for the 1962 film, which was the first ever animated Christmas special, was recorded at the building! At the time, the property was home to Ryder Sound Services.

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

Big THANK YOU to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for not only stalking this location, but also providing all of the photos that appear in the post!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Four Christmases dance studio is located at 1161 Vine Street in Hollywood.

December 15, 2017
The Site of Sanford and Son Salvage from “Sanford and Son”

There’s pretty much nothing I relish more than diving into the nitty-gritty when proving or disproving a location – especially if that location is from an old production and/or is no longer in existence. I love the challenge of it. I recently had the pleasure of delving into one such case thanks to a fellow stalker named Dale who emailed me in October to ask if I had any information on Sanford and Son Salvage from Sanford and Son. I never watched the hit series, which ran on NBC from 1972 to 1977 (it was a bit before my time), but started looking into things and quickly came upon this thread about the locale on the Sitcoms Online Message Boards website. User shakespeares_bust started off the thread in August 2003 with the query, “Does anyone know the actual address of the exterior shot used for the opening of Sanford and Son?” It was not until eight years later that he finally got a definitive answer thanks to user Shady Grady who in November 2011 stated that the storefront was located at 10659 West Magnolia Boulevard in North Hollywood. When I inputted that address into Google Street View, though, it became apparent that the locale had either been greatly altered or demolished altogether and replaced with a new structure in the four-plus decades since filming took place. Thankfully, Shady Grady had pointed out some neighboring landmarks still currently standing to prove he had uncovered the right spot. I figured it was my duty to further his pursuit in a blog post, as well as dig into the history of the property. So here goes.

[ad]

For those who, like me, aren’t especially familiar with the series, Sanford and Son revolves around the curmudgeonly Fred G. Sanford (Redd Foxx) and his longsuffering son, Lamont (Demond Wilson), who run Sanford and Son Salvage, an extremely cluttered junkyard said to be located at 9114 South Central Avenue in Watts. The duo’s equally-cluttered home is situated directly behind the shop. Interestingly, though it is the sitcom’s main location, the exterior of Sanford and Son Salvage does not ever appear in establishing shots or in the midst of any of the show’s 136 episodes. The storefront only pops up in the opening credits (which you can watch here) . . .

. . . and the closing credits (which you can watch here).

The junkyard where each episode’s action takes place . . .

. . . and the adjacent exterior of the Sanfords’ home . . .

. . . as well as the ramshackle interior were nothing more than parts of an elaborate set built inside of a soundstage at NBC Studios (now The Burbank Studios) in Burbank where the series was lensed.

The storefront’s rather limited screen time did not provide many clues as to its whereabouts, making the job of tracking it down a laborious and lengthy one. Doing so was certainly a group effort on the part of the Sitcoms Online Message Boards users. Clarity on the subject started to take form in September 2003 when member pawson wrote in to say that the junkyard exteriors were shot on Magnolia Boulevard near Cartwright and Denny Avenues, though no proof or further information was given. It was not until user Retrotek posted a comment in April 2011 stating that the Sanford and Son Salvage location had also been featured in the Season 3 episode of Emergency! titled “Alley Cat” that some headway was made. Using pawson and Retrotek’s intel, Shady Grady began lining up elements of the Sanford and Son exterior with the “Alley Cat” junkyard and then matching those elements to current Street View images of the stretch of Magnolia between Denny and Cartwright. It wasn’t long before he landed on 10659 West Magnolia as the right spot.

Though the building at that address, which currently houses a plumbing service named Power Plumbing, is one story and rather small, it otherwise bears no resemblance to Sanford and Son Salvage. Enter Shady Grady once again. As I mentioned earlier, he graciously pointed out several landmarks seen in Sanford and Son and Emergency! to verify his find. I thought I’d take things one step further by providing some graphics to go along with his comments. I must apologize beforehand, though, as I did not snap any photos of the neighboring structures while I was stalking the place, so Google Street View imagery will have to suffice for this endeavor. I also have to take a moment to say a big thank you to fellow stalker Richard Yokley for the Emergency! screen captures that appear in this post. “Alley Cat,” which originally aired in 1973, is not available for streaming anywhere, so I called upon Richard, who is a huge fan of the series – he even penned the book Emergency!: Behind the Scene – to make some grabs of the episode for me and he happily obliged. Thank you, Richard!

In “Alley Cat,” the Squad 51 paramedics are called to a scrapyard to help a junk dealer who has gotten his foot stuck in a bear trap. Shady Grady explains that as the firefighters head to the scene “they pass an intersection, and a streetlight next to a power pole, then a vacant lot, then the store.” As the street sign visible in the background of the segment (denoted with blue arrows below) shows us, the intersection the rescuers drive through is that of Magnolia and Cahuenga. Amazingly, the 7-Eleven they pass (marked with pink arrows) is still there today, though its signage no longer looks as it did at the time of the filming.

When the paramedics exit their vehicle, a portion of the junkyard’s green, yellow and white awning is visible. That awning should be familiar to Sanford and Son fans. As Shady Grady notes, it is a perfect match to the S&S Salvage awning – even down to the bent grim trim!

Shady Grady goes on to say, “Pay attention to the buildings in the background and then go to the address above [10659 West Magnolia Boulevard] in Google Earth. As you look around in street view, you’ll see the stores across the street are still the same.” Though the corner building (denoted with pink arrows below) at 10626 West Magnolia looks a bit different today, it still bears the rounded shape it did on Emergency! The billboard seen in the episode (blue arrows), as well as the scaffold holding it (purple arrows) and the vacant area where it is situated are all direct matches to what appeared on “Alley Cat.” The overhang and door and window configuration of the building just east of the billboard (green arrows) at 10644 West Magnolia also remain frozen in time to when Emergency! was filmed.

When “Alley Cat” was shot, the junkyard was located next to an empty lot. That is now where the Actors Forum Theatre (10655 West Magnolia) stands. Adjacent to that was a thin one-story building (denoted with pink arrows below). That site now houses a Poquito Más outpost (10651 West Magnolia) and still looks much the same as it did onscreen in 1973. Across the street from that structure was some sort of auto supply store (blue arrows). Little of that spot has changed in the ensuing years. In fact, it is still home to an automotive store – San Fernando Tires & Wheels (10637 West Magnolia).

Shady Grady finishes up by saying, “Compare that to the opening credits of Sanford and Son and it falls into place. As Lamont pulls in the driveway, you can see a sign in front of the house, to the right of the driveway [pink arrow] and a power pole to the left of the driveway [blue arrow]. Both are in the Google earth photo.” The building with the angled overhang [purple arrow] seen in the background of the opening credits also remains the same today.

Being that the locale portrayed a junkyard in two different productions, I figured it was likely one in real life, too – at least at the time each was lensed. User waterguybob had written in to the message board in September 2014 to say that he had grown up three blocks away from 10659 West Magnolia and that it was indeed the site of Sanford and Son Salvage (he had even witnessed the filming!). While he said that the property housed a junkyard known as “Joe’s Junk Shop” during the shoot, I could not find any mentions of that name online or any definitive proof of his assertion – until I registered with newspapers.com, that is. Thanks to the incredible (albeit pricey!) stalking tool, I was able to uncover quite a bit of the locale’s history. Via the advertisement pictured below, which ran in the September 21st, 1967 issue of The Los Angeles Times, we know that 10659 Magnolia was the site of an actual junkyard at least as far back as that date, though it appears to have had no name at the time.

I hit pay dirt thanks to the October 8th, 1977 Valley News article below, which detailed the locale’s transition from a junkyard named “The Select Shoppe” into a theatre. Yep, you read that right. According to author Bobbi Zane, somewhere around late 1975, proprietor Joe Lawler turned his long-running scrapyard into a live performance venue known as the Junk Yard Theater. As Zane states, “He’d been donating props occasionally for various productions and his shop was well known to many actors. One day an actor strode into the shop and suggested, ‘Why don’t you make a theatre out of the junk yard?’ The idea struck home, and in short order Lawler had cleared the yard and had his first production underway. It was ‘Everybody Loves Opa [sic],’ appropriately concerning a man who runs a junk store.” Though the place still had the feel of a wrecking yard, with Zane stating “old furniture, bicycle parts, kitchen utensils, tools line the path every patron has to make his way through to get to the theater,” Lawler did add Astroturf, two fish ponds, and plenty of foliage, transforming the site into a “lovely” space.

I am unsure of what year the Junk Yard Theater shuttered, but per various newspapers ads and blurbs plays were running on the premises through October 1978.

I could not find any articles detailing the razing or remodeling of the site, so I next headed over to the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety website to search building records and quickly discovered that the Sanford and Son Salvage storefront, along with the property next to it at 10661 West Magnolia, were demolished in March 1989. New structures were subsequently built in their place that same year. So while some have surmised that the locale might have merely been altered in the years since filming took place, I can safely – and sadly – say that is not the case. Sanford and Son Salvage no longer exists.

During my research, I came across the Sanford and Son publicity shot pictured below. (You can see similar images here, here, here, and here.) Interestingly, though a sign reading “Sanford and Son Salvage” is positioned on the fence, the photo was obviously not lensed at the Magnolia Boulevard location, being that no house was ever situated there. I am unsure of where exactly the picture was taken or why a different locale was used for it, but if anyone happens to know, please fill me in.

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

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Dale for asking me to look into this location and to fellow stalker Richard for providing the Emergency! screen captures.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The former site of the Sanford and Son house and junkyard can be found at 10659 West Magnolia Boulevard in North Hollywood. Sadly, the building was razed in 1989 and a new structure now stands in its place.

December 13, 2017
Thornton Gardens from “Funny Girl”

I have never been a big Barbra Streisand fan. Sure, she’s an undeniably talented singer – and actress and director, for that matter – but I’m just not that into music. And that whole Rosie-O’Donnell-having-to-rearrange-her-stage-to-showcase-Barbra’s-better-side thing really turned me off. I won’t even get in to her absolutely cringe-worthy Inside the Actors Studio interview. Nevertheless, when I came upon this 2016 Outlook Newspapers article which mentioned that the movie Funny Girl had done some filming at a house located at 1155 Oak Grove Avenue in San Marino, I took note – and was utterly shocked. Though I had never seen the 1968 musical biopic, I knew it was a tremendous hit, one that put Babs on the map. I have no idea how I lived in Pasadena for over 15 years – and spent pretty much all of my waking moments traversing the area stalking, no less – yet failed to realize it had been lensed nearby! So I immediately added the address to my To-Stalk List and headed right on over to see the place in person a few weeks later.

[ad]

Prior to stalking the locale, I had not done any research on it. I hadn’t even so much as looked at an aerial view. Because the Outlook article described the site as a “house,” I assumed it was just that – a regular single-family residence. So I was shocked upon arriving to discover an absolutely massive front gate – easily the largest gate I’ve ever encountered – with no sign of a house anywhere.

As it turns out, the “house” mentioned in the article is actually a mansion – an enormous 2-story, 11,700-square-foot, Tudor Revival-style structure that boasts 7 bedrooms, 8 baths, and a whopping 9 acres of land. Sadly, outside of the impressive gate, none of it is visible from the road. But you can catch a glimpse of it in the aerial view below. Known as Thornton Gardens, the massive residence is named for its current owner Charles Thornton Jr., who bought the pad in 1989. For years though, it was known as the Katherine Sinclair Emery Estate, in honor of the woman who commissioned it in 1927.

After her husband, tobacco heir Frank Whitney Emery, passed away in 1920, Katherine decided to “downsize” from the sprawling 24-room mansion at 1400 Hillcrest Avenue in Pasadena that she had called home since 1914. (That pad has, sadly, since been demolished with several residences built in its place.) She hired renowned architect Myron Hunt to design a new estate for her on a large plot of land in nearby San Marino. His creation, which boasted a grand entry hall with a massive staircase, oak walls, leaded-glass windows, and a conservatory, was completed in 1928. The grounds were designed by landscape architects Florence Yoch, Lucille Council and Katherine Bashford and included a motor court, manicured gardens, and a reflecting pool. At various points during her tenure, Katherine, I guess hoping to downsize even further, subdivided her land. When she passed away in 1939, the residence was sold first to a wealthy couple who used it as a winter home and then, in 1945, to Colonel J.G. Boswell and his wife, Ruth Chandler Williamson, daughter of Harry Chandler. Though Boswell re-purchased some of the estate’s lost land, when he passed away in 1952, Ruth sold it off once again. Upon her death in 1987, the manse was acquired by Thornton and his wife, who painstakingly revitalized it and bought back much of the subdivided parcels. Doing so made the couple San Marino’s second largest landowners, the largest being The Huntington Library, Art Collection, and Botanical Gardens! You can see some interior and exterior photographs of the spectacular property, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2011, here.

In Funny Girl, Thornton Gardens masquerades as the supposed Long Island mansion that Nick Arnstein (Omar Sharif) and Fannie Brice (Streisand) purchase after getting married.

Both the exterior . . .

. . . and interior of the property were utilized in the movie.

Though the Barbra Streisand Archives website mentions that Thornton Gardens belonged to producer Ray Stark at the time that Funny Girl was lensed, that information is incorrect. Per the California Office of Historic Preservation, the property was owned by Ruth Chandler and her third husband Sir William Charles Crocker when filming took place in 1967.

Thanks to IMDB, I learned that Thornton Gardens also pops up in 1950’s The Big Hangover as the home of John and Martha Belney (Percy Waram and Fay Holden, respectively) and their daughter, Mary (Elizabeth Taylor).

The front gate even makes an appearance in the flick.

The interior shown in the movie was just a set, though, and not Thornton Gardens’ actual interior.

As you can see in these photographs as compared to the screen captures above and below, the inside of the Belney home does not look at all like Thornton Gardens.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Thornton Gardens, aka Nick and Fannie’s “Long Island” mansion from Funny Girl, is located at 1155 Oak Grove Avenue in San Marino.

December 8, 2017