As I have said countless times before on this blog, there’s pretty much nothing I love more than a filming location that serves coffee. So I thought stalking the 18th Street Coffee House in Santa Monica, which was featured in the Season 6 episode of Modern Family titled “Rash Decisions,” would be a pleasant experience. I was wrong. But more on that in a bit.
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In “Rash Decisions,” Alex Dunphy (Ariel Winter) attends a college interview for Princeton at a local café. While there, she realizes that the interviewer, Vanessa (Aya Cash), is bored, so she recounts a story recently told by her sister, Haley Dunphy (Sarah Hyland), involving sneaking into Dodger Stadium. In doing so, she inadvertently calls Vanessa “slut.” Interview over!
Thankfully, 18th Street Coffee House’s real life exterior signage was clearly shown in the scene which made the place easy to track down.
When I showed up to stalk the café, I took several photographs outside before walking in, large camera in hand. I ordered my drink, camera still in hand (did I mention it was large?), and asked the barista all sorts of questions about the filming of “Rash Decisions,” questions she seemed just barely to tolerate. The attitude there is just a wee bit pretentious (as evidenced by countless reviews on Yelp). I fangirled out nonetheless, explaining that I had come in solely to see the place because of its appearance on Modern Family. After I got my latte, I snapped the picture below and all of a sudden the barista got upset with me, not-at-all politely informing me that photographs were most certainly not allowed on the premises. You’d think she would have mentioned this beforehand, while I was asking about Modern Family, when she undoubtedly had to have seen the big ol’ camera in my hand. Either way, I would have expected her to be polite about the whole thing, which she was not. I’ll never understand places that don’t allow photographs, but do allow filming. Not to mention that there are a myriad of customer pictures of the place featured on the 18th Street Coffee Shop Facebook page. Go figure.
The 18th Street Coffee House actually has quite a few rules. Cell phone use is prohibited there, which is something I can typically get behind. Who wants to listen to someone talking loudly on a phone inside of an eatery? That is one of my biggest pet peeves. But, according to several Yelpers, at 18th Street you aren’t allowed to look at your phone. So if you want to grab a coffee, sit down and answer a few emails, be forewarned that you will not be allowed to (though the guy in the above photo appears to be doing so). The rule is apparently in place to encourage interaction and conversation. While I agree that it is a nice sentiment to want customers to interact with the people they are dining with rather than having their heads buried in cell phones during a visit, when someone is alone I don’t see why he or she should not be able to check their email or surf the web via their cell phone. I’m all about having rules and like the thought of a restaurant wanting to establish a peaceful, quiet environment, but there is also such a thing as overkill. (This scene from Bridesmaidscomes to mind.)
It has long been rumored that the 18th Street Coffee House is owned by Bob Dylan and this 2002 Los Angeles magazine article stated that the place’s business permit, as well as that of the boxing club located downstairs from it, are in the name of Dylan’s manager, Jeff Rosen. When asked about the ownership, Jeff said, “I know nothing about that . .. Can’t you find something more interesting to write about?” Yep, that pretty much sums up the attitude of the whole place.
My coffee was excellent, though. The place was not so pretentious as to not offer whole milk (another of my pet peeves when it comes to coffee shops), so my latte was perfectly creamy and delicious. And I will say that the café is definitely picturesque, both inside and out, though I will, sadly, most likely not be going back.
The 18th Street Coffee Shop has appeared onscreen several times. In the Season 1 episode of Californication titled “The Devil’s Threesome,” which aired in 2007, Mia Lewis (Madeline Zima) and Dani (Rachel Miner) discussed what Dani thought was Mia’s new book [though the tome was actually written by Hank Moody (David Duchovny)] over coffee at 18th Street.
In 2009, the coffee shop popped up in the Season 7 episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm titled “Denise Handicapped,” as the spot where Larry David (playing himself) met a handicapped woman named Denise (Anita Barone).
Be sure to check out today’s Los Angeles magazine post – about the Playboy Mansion’s many appearances onscreen and the 89th birthday of its famous owner. My articles typically get published in the late morning/early afternoon hours.
It’s shaping up to be Parks and Recreation week at IAMNOTASTALKER.com, as here I am with yet another location from the series. I actually came by today’s locale accidentally. While scanning through P&R’s “Operation Ann” episode for yesterday’s post about the Hamburger Hamlet in Sherman Oaks, I spotted The Federal Bar, a North Hollywood watering hole that I stalked back in May of last year because of its appearance on fave show Perception. For whatever reason, I had yet to blog about it, though, and, thanks to the P&R kick I’ve been on lately, figured today was the perfect time to do so.
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The ornate brick building that currently houses The Federal Bar was originally constructed as a branch of Security Trust and Savings Bank in 1926. It was designed by John and Donald Parkinson, the father-and-son architectural team who also created Union Station (which I briefly blogged about here), Bullocks Wilshire (which I blogged about here) and Los Angeles City Hall (am oft-used filming locale that I have, shockingly, never stalked). Parkinson and Parkinson built several similar-looking bank buildings for the Security Trust chain across Los Angeles throughout the years. The one located at 5601 North Figueroa Street in Highland Park is a virtual twin to The Federal Bar. That structure, which I have yet to stalk, has appeared countless times onscreen. It is currently featured each week as the police station on the new CBS series Battle Creek.
For many years, The Federal Bar space operated as Paperback Shack Books, an independent bookstore owned by Earl Spar. In the mid-2000s, the proprietors of Fred 62 (a popular restaurant/filming locale in Los Feliz that I blogged about here) acquired the location and began an extensive, three-year renovation process to turn it into a restaurant/nightclub. They named the new venture “Bank Heist,” which I think was a rather unfortunate dubbing considering one of the bloodiest bank heists in L.A.’s history took place just a little over two miles away.
Bank Heist opened in late September 2007, but never really had a chance to establish itself. Less than four months later, on January 7th, 2008, it was gutted by a fire.
In 2010, Knitting Factory Entertainment CEO Morgan Margolis spotted the architecturally stunning building while taking his children to a martial arts class (I am guessing that class was held at the dojo from The Karate Kid, which is located less than a block south) and thought it would make the perfect place for a new Knitting Factory music club (his insanely popular Hollywood Knitting Club outpost had closed in 2009). The historic look of the building caused him to eventually rethink his plans, though, and, after leasing the place, he decided it was better suited to house a gastropub.
Of the neighborhood, Margolis stated in a Los Angeles Daily News article, “I was really trying to get to the next area I felt was going to move forward, and North Hollywood seems to be transitioning consistently. A lot of other areas were also moving up – i.e. Silverlake, Los Feliz, downtown – but I felt like they were already getting saturated. There are also a lot of great architectural spaces that I like that are hard to find in certain areas. I like a lot of brick, I like old buildings, auto garages and warehouses. I like high-beamed ceilings. This area seems to have an abundance that is popping up. And I found an area where I felt like you could still touch the square footage at the right price.”
After a bit of renovation, The Federal Bar was opened in early 2011. According to a 2012 Los Angeles Times article, it turned a profit the following month and has continued to do so every month since.
The 5,000-plus-square-foot space, which was fashioned by interior designer Rod Sellard, boasts four (yes, four!) bars, a second floor special events area with a stage, and an outdoor patio.
The Federal Bar is nothing short of spectacular, both inside and out, and it is not very hard to see why the place has become popular with location scouts.
In the Season 4 episode of Parks and Recreation titled “Operation Ann,” Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) and Ben Wyatt (Adam Scott) headed to The Federal Bar to spy on Ann Perkins (Rashida Jones), who they thought was out on a secret date with her boss Chris Traeger (Rob Lowe). As Leslie and Ben soon discovered, though, Ann was actually on a date with Tom Haverford (Aziz Ansari).
While scanning through the episode to make screen captures for yesterday’s post, I immediately recognized The Federal’s intricate exterior.
In the scene, Tom and Ann were sitting in the southwest area of The Federal’s bottom floor and Leslie and Ben spied on them through the windows located on Weddington Street.
The Federal portrays the Philadelphia bar where the Dunder Mifflin gang crashes a trivia contest Oscar Martinez (Oscar Nunez) is participating in in the Season 8 episode of The Office titled “Trivia.”
The Federal popped up as two different places in the Season 2 episode of Perception titled “Wounded.” One of the bars on the main floor was used as the watering hole where Kate Moretti (Rachael Leigh Cook) told Blake Rickford’s (Logan Bartholomew) date that he was a suspected rapist.
And one of the upstairs bars was where Kate spied on Blake later in the episode.
The exterior of The Federal was also used in that scene.
The Federal also popped up in flashback scenes in Perception’s next episode, titled “Warrior.”
In 2013, The Federal masked as Sudz in the Season 9 episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia titled “The Gang Tries Desperately to Win an Award.”
Jake Peralta (Andy Samberg) and Amy Santiago (Melissa Fumero) attend a “jazz brunch” with Amy’s ex, Teddy Wells (Kyle Bornheimer), at The Federal in the Season 4 episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine titled “The Audit,” which aired in 2017.
The women of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills debrief on the latest Lisa Vanderpump drama while at The Federal in the Season 9 episode titled “A Wolf in Camille’s Clothing.”
In 2013, Morgan Margolis opened a second Federal Bar inside of another former Security Trust and Savings Bank building. It, too, has appeared onscreen. Located at 102 Pine Avenue in Long Beach, the space formerly housed Madison steakhouse, which was where Brad’s (Vince Vaughn) company Christmas party was held in the 2008 comedy Four Christmases.
Halfway through writing this post, I realized I probably should have saved it until February. At that point, though, it was too late to start over, so I figured c’est la vie. Here goes. A few years ago, when I first saw the “Galentine’s Day” episode of Parks and Recreation, I recognized the restaurant featured in it as the Hamburger Hamlet in Pasadena. I used to dine at the eatery fairly regularly when I lived in the area and immediately recalled its signature red leather seating, brick walling and dark wood accents while watching P&R. It was not until a couple of a months ago that I decided to do any research on the locale, though, and when I got to comparing images of it to screen captures from the episode, I realized that, while similar, quite a bit did not match up. I quickly surmised that “Galentine’s Day” had most likely been lensed at another of the Hamburger Hamlet chain’s many outposts and, sure enough, eventually discovered that filming had taken place at the Sherman Oaks location.
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The Hamburger Hamlet chain was established by actor Harry Lewis and his wife, Marilyn, in 1950. The first outpost stood on the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Hilldale Avenue in West Hollywood and served comfort food and gourmet hamburgers. It was insanely popular from the get-go.
It was not long before HH outposts were cropping up all over Los Angeles, as well as in other states. In its heyday, 23 sister restaurants dotted the country. The L.A. locations were known as being celebrity hot spots, attracting such legendaries as Lucille Ball, Frank Sinatra, Diahann Carroll, Bette Davis, Danny Thomas, Mel Brooks, Warren Beatty, Ronald Reagan, Elizabeth Taylor, Sammy Davis Jr., Tony Curtis, Florence Henderson, Elton John, Betty White, Nancy Sinatra, and Dean Martin.
Harry and Marilyn sold the chain, as well as their Beverly Hills eatery Kate Mantilini, for a whopping $30 million in 1987. They later ended up buying Kate Mantilini back and subsequently opened up a sister location in Woodland Hills. Both were also insanely popular with celebrities (I once dined next to Reese Witherspoon at the Beverly Hills outpost) and non-celebrities alike, but have since, sadly, closed.
Recent years have not been kind to the Hamlet. Though the eateries were still bustling with business most days, news of closures popped up regularly. When the Pasadena outpost was shuttered in January 2014, the only HH left in the L.A. area was in Sherman Oaks. It, too, wound up closing in June of last year, but was, thankfully, acquired by Kevin Michaels and Brett Doherty, the restaurateurs behind Killer Shrimp in Marina del Rey – another popular filming location that I I blogged about here. The duo reopened the site, keeping many of the Hamlet’s menu staples intact, in September.
I have been a huge fan of the Hamlet ever since I first moved to Southern California and am happy to report that the re-opened Sherman Oaks location did not disappoint. As always, the food was great and the service friendly. Supposedly, the space will be undergoing a remodel at some point this year, though, so if you want to see it in its current state, I wouldn’t wait.
In the Season 2 episode of Parks and Recreation titled “Galentine’s Day,” which aired in 2010, Hamburger Hamlet was where Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) took her girlfriends out for their annual Galentine’s Day breakfast. For those who did not watch P&R and are confused as to what exactly Galentine’s Day is, I’ll let Leslie explain – “Every February 13th, my lady friends and I leave our husbands and our boyfriends at home and we just come and kick it breakfast-style. Ladies celebrating ladies. It’s like Lilith Fair, minus the angst . . . plus frittatas.”
Leslie and the girls returned to the Hamlet in 2012 to film another Galentine’s Day breakfast scene for Season 4’s “Operation Ann.”
Oddly though, a different place – Villa restaurant from Must Love Dogs, which I blogged about here – was used for the establishing shot of the restaurant in the episode.
Fellow stalker Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, also informed me that the Sherman Oaks Hamburger Hamlet was used in the Season 8 episode of The Office titled “The List” as the spot where Robert California (James Spader) took a select few Dunder Mifflin employees for lunch.
Though I chronicled the main locations used on Parks and Recreation pretty extensively for Los Angeles magazine in March, I still have a few of the series’ less prominent locales stockpiled in my backlog and figured it was about time that I covered them. While watching the Season 7 episode titled “Save JJ’s,” I became just a wee bit obsessed with the building that portrayed the offices of Dennis Feinstein (Jason Mantzoukas), due to the fact that it bore such a strong resemblance to the Dr. Dianne G. Van Hook University Center at the College of the Canyons, aka the Austin FBI Headquarters from The Mentalist. I figured the two structures were probably designed by the same architect and that the Feinstein building was most likely part of a college campus. Though I did find the place fairly quickly, both of my hunches turned out to be wrong.
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Dennis Feinstein Headquarters is actually the Wallis Annenberg Research Center at the House Research Institute, which is located at 2100 West 3rd Street in Westlake, just north of MacArthur Park. The architecturally stunning site was designed by Nick Seierup of the Perkins+Will architecture firm in 2007. Construction of the building was made possible thanks to a $10 million donation from the Annenberg Foundation.
According to its Facebook page, the House Research Institute, which was established in 1946 by ear specialist Howard P. House, was “a non-profit organization dedicated to improving the quality of life for people with hearing loss and related disorders through research, patient care and the sharing of knowledge.” Sadly, the facility started to lose funding during the economic downturn in 2008 and eventually closed its doors in 2014. The House Ear Clinic portion of the organization, which treats about 30,000 patients each year, remains open, though.
According to the Perkins+Will eBook, Nick Seierup incorporated the function of the building into its design by modeling its frame after “the curvilinear shape of the cochlea of the inner ear.”
In 2008, the structure won the “New Buildings: Commercial” award from the the Los Angeles Business Council.
Though the exterior gates were open when I showed up to stalk the place, being that it is an active medical center, I felt uncomfortable venturing onto the property to take any photographs. Quite a lot of it is visible from the street, though, and you can check out some interior photos of the building here.
In Parks and Recreations’ “Save J.J.’s” episode, Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler), Ron Swanson (Nick Offerman) and the rest of the Pawnee Parks gang hold a rally at Feinstein’s head offices after learning that the cologne magnate is planning to demolish the beloved J.J.’s Diner (you can check out that location here) in order to make room for an elbow art salon (and no, that is not a typo).
I am fairly certain that the real life interior of the House Research Institute was also used in the filming.
A few other productions have also made use of the unique structure over the years. The 2009 television series Three Rivers was set in Pittsburgh, but was actually lensed in L.A. Production took place mainly at The Studios at Paramount and the House Research Institute, which stood in for the William H. Foster Transplant Institute and the Three Rivers Regional Medical Center on the series.
Ironically, while the exterior and lobby area of Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center in Burbank (another Parks and Rec locale that I blogged about here) were used as the hospital where Sarah Highman (Michelle Monaghan) gave birth at the end of the 2010 comedy Due Date . . .
. . . other interiors were shot at the House Research Institute.
In 2013, the exterior of the House Research Institute made a brief appearance as a hospital entrance in the Season 5 episode of Castle titled “The Fast and the Furriest.”
In the 2015 Entourage movie, Eric (Kevin Connolly) and Sloane (Emmanuelle Chriqui) have their baby at the House Research Institute.
And it is the hospital where Howie ‘Chimney’ Han (Kenneth Choi) is taken after his car accident in the Season 1 episode of 9-1-1 titled “Next of Kin,” which aired in 2018.
Be sure to check out my latest Discover Los Angeles post about ten totally awesome ‘80s locations that can be found in SoCal – one of which is Ed Rooney’s office from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off!
Don’t forget to read today’s Los Angeles magazine post – about the the Girls Just Want to Have Fun apartment building. My articles typically get published in the late morning/early afternoon hours.
I am not really that into stalking celebrity homes (though I have quite a few of them on my site), the main reason being that typically little else besides a gate can be seen from the road. There are some exceptions, though. If there is a star I really like, or if I read about a residence in a book, or if a significant event happened there, or if the look of a place piques my interest, I am most definitely going to want to stalk it. The latter was the case with an estate that pop star Michael Jackson rented for a brief period time in Las Vegas. Now everyone knows that I absolutely love me some MJ, but even so, I normally would not be interested in visiting a residence where he only lived for a short stint. When I saw photographs of Hacienda Palomino a couple of years ago, though, I practically started foaming at the mouth and immediately added the site to my Las Vegas To-Stalk list. In person, it did not disappoint!
The sprawling 24,276-square-foot Hacienda Palomino compound is situated on 1.7 acres and boasts 7 bedrooms, 12 baths, an art gallery, a 7,394-square-foot chapel with seating for 74 guests, a grand salon, a cigar bar, an enclosed courtyard large enough to accommodate 300 people, a recording studio, parking for up to 50 cars, elevators, 3 kitchens, a conference room with seating for 60, and a 3,900-square-foot guest house with an underground tunnel leading to main residence. During his tenure at the property, Jackson and his three children lived in the guest house. MJ also housed his vast art collection, which was insured for $600 million, in the estate’s subterranean vault. You can see some photographs of the uh-ma-zing property here.
Hacienda Palomino was originally constructed in 1952 and, at the time, consisted of a small Spanish-style residence. The property was then redesigned and expanded into the massive compound that it is today by an eccentric theatre developer named Horst Schmidt in the ‘90s. When Schmidt passed away in 2004, Aner Iglesias, the honorary consular of El Salvador, purchased it. It was Iglesias who leased the residence to Jackson. After the King of Pop passed away, the house sat vacant until 2011 at which time Iglesias began renovating the site. He still owns the manse today, though it has gone on the market four times since Jackson’s death. It is currently used as Aner’s second home and as a special events venue. You can read a more in-depth history of the unique dwelling here.
Strange events seemed to follow Michael Jackson around throughout his life and a few happened during his time at Hacienda Palomino. One occurred on the evening of Elizabeth Taylor’s 75th birthday party. While Jackson was getting ready for the soiree, his brother Randy crashed his Mercedes through the front gate of the home and was almost shot by security. Randy then demanded to see the singer, claiming that the King of Pop owed him money. Michael refused, but was so distraught over the event that he bailed on Taylor’s birthday party and proceeded to hole up inside of the house for the next three days.
The most bizarre occurrence happened on the two-year anniversary of Jackson’s death, though, when Iglesias opened Hacienda Palomino to the public for a special tour. Apparently, while fans were waiting in line that morning, a random man arrived, opened up the doors to the estate and began leading groups through the residence. As it turns out, though, he had no authority to do so, nor did he have any sort of affiliation with the home, though he seemed to know quite a bit about it. He even offered attendees water! The police were soon called by the property’s caretaker and it was learned that the wannabe tour guide had a warrant out for his arrest. When cops arrived on the scene, he fled, though, and there was an ensuing chase throughout the neighborhood. It seems that even in death the King of Pop cannot escape the obscure events that surrounded him in life.
Had you asked me last week, I would have told you that I was an expert on both Pasadena and its filming history. But something happened on Wednesday afternoon that rocked me to my stalking core. While writing a blog post for Los Angeles magazine, I got on a bit of a Girls Just Want to Have Fun kick and decided to attempt to track down a few of its unknown locations, one of which was the Lakeview Country Club where Natalie Sands’ (Holly Gagnier) debutante ball was held. As it turns out, the country club scene not only took place in Pasadena, but at a spot I am extremely familiar with – The Langham Huntington hotel! At the time of the filming, the property was known as The Huntington Sheraton. I was absolutely reeling upon making the discovery. Then, while doing further research, I learned something even more shocking – the historic hotel was actually demolished in 1989 and then rebuilt from the ground up! What the wha?
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There’s a lot of ground to cover today, but I thought I’d start with how I made the Girls Just Want to Have Fun discovery. While scouring through the debutante ball scene, I spotted two different signs reading “Georgian Room.” So I did some Googling of the words “Georgian Room” and “Los Angeles” and eventually a listing for a Georgian Ballroom came up. I clicked on it and, lo and behold, it was a link to photos of the Georgian Ballroom at The Langham Huntington hotel.
Amazingly, the intricate gold ceiling pictured in the images was an exact match to the ceiling that appeared in Girls Just Want to Have Fun!
Oddly though, the hallway featured briefly in the scene did not resemble The Langham hallways in any way, shape or form. While GJWTHF was filmed three decades ago and the hotel’s décor bound to have changed during such a lengthy time period, I just could not get over the fact that nothing about the hallway in the movie paralleled the hotel’s actual hallways. Nothing. The hallway pictured in GJWHF was dark and Spanish in style, while The Langham’s hallways are very bright and open and boast a Louis XIV design. So I started doing some research and just about fell over when I read that The Huntington Sheraton was demolished in the late ‘80s. Because The Langham is repeatedly touted as being one of Pasadena’s most historic properties, I was shocked to discover this information. Not to mention the fact that I lived in the Crown City for over a decade and have visited The Langham dozens of times! How did I not know about this??
The Langham Huntington was originally constructed as The Wentworth in 1907. Commissioned by General Marshall C. Wentworth, the hotel had problems from the get-go and was shuttered and declared bankrupt a short five months after opening. In 1911, Henry Huntington stepped in to purchase the site and hired architect Myron Hunt to remodel and expand it. The property reopened three years later under the name the Huntington Hotel. It quickly gained a reputation as Pasadena’s finest lodging.
In 1954, the hotel was sold to the Sheraton Corporation and renamed The Huntington Sheraton. Despite being later purchased by the Kiekyu USA company in 1974, the site continued to operate as a Sheraton through 1985. That year, Kiekyu had seismic testing done on the property and the results showed that it was not structurally sound enough to withstand a major earthquake. The doors of The Huntington Sheraton were shut in October, its future unclear. In December 1987, Huntington Hotel Associates purchased the site and set about plans to demolish it. Despite some major resistance from preservationists, the wrecking ball descended on the structure in March 1989. Miraculously, two portions of the original hotel were left intact, the Viennese Ballroom and, you guessed it, the Georgian Ballroom – which means that the very spot that appeared in Girls Just Want to Have Fun is still standing today! But more on that in a minute.
The new property opened in 1991 as the Ritz-Carlton Huntington Hotel. The exterior was constructed as an almost exact replica of the original. As you can see in the screen capture (which was taken from Disneyland Dream – a 1956 movie that I will talk about later in this post) as compared to a photograph that I took in 2008, while there are some minor differences between the new and old buildings, they are virtually imperceptible.
The hotel sold a couple of times after its reconstruction and, in 2007, was purchased by the Hong Kong-based Great Eagle Holdings and renamed The Langham Huntington.
While the hotel was being reconstructed in 1989, the Georgian Ballroom underwent a restoration. During the process, ten stained glass windows lining the ceiling of the room were discovered behind plaster. They had been covered over at some point in the 1940s. (This explains why there were not visible in Girls Just Want to Have Fun.) Developers removed the plaster and restored the windows to their original glory and they once again line the perimeter of the grand room.
I have stayed at The Langham countless times over the years and thought I had ventured throughout every square inch of the property, but that was obviously not the case as I had never before seen or heard of the Georgian Ballroom. As soon as I made the discovery about the room’s appearance in Girls Just Want to Have Fun, I was tempted to drive right on out to Pasadena to remedy the situation. In a timely stroke of luck, though, I remembered that my mom had a doctor’s appointment in the Crown City on Thursday, so she headed over to The Langham beforehand to snap some pictures for me. My mom currently has a broken foot and is on crutches, but she still managed to go out stalking on my behalf! She is a rock star!
The Georgian Ballroom appeared in one of Girls Just Want to Have Fun’s more memorable scenes in which Janey Glenn (Sarah Jessica Parker), Lynne Stone (Helen Hunt) and Maggie Malene (Shannen Doherty) sabotaged the debutante ball of mean girl Natalie by inviting 150 unwanted (and rather wild) guests to her upscale soiree.
The Georgian Ballroom looks quite a bit different today than it did onscreen in 1985.
As you can see below, though, aside from the addition of the stained glass windows, the ceiling remains unchanged.
At the time of the filming, the Georgian Ballroom had windows and doors that led to the outside of the hotel.
That is no longer the case, though.
I am fairly certain that the exterior of The Huntington Sheraton was used as the exterior of the Lakeview Country Club in the scene, as well. While I have scoured the internet looking for 1980’s images of the hotel’s main entrance taken from the same angle as GJWTHF to use for comparison, I came up empty-handed.
But as you can see below, in the screen capture from DisneylandDream the exterior of The Huntington Sheraton was covered in vines, as was the building pictured behind J.P. Sands (Morgan Woodward) in Girls Just Want to Have Fun.
The exterior of The Huntington Sheraton was also featured briefly in the 1982 pilot episode of Remington Steele (more on that later) and as you can see in the screen capture below, the front of the hotel was painted white at the time, matching what appeared in GJWHF. You can also check out a photograph of the what the hotel’s entrance looked like in 1989 here. Though not taken from the same angle shown in Girls Just Want to Have Fun, you can see that it does bear a resemblance to the exterior shown in the movie.
During its tenure as The Huntington Sheraton, the hotel popped up quite a few times onscreen. As I mentioned, it was featured in Disneyland Dream, a home movie made by Robbins Barstow who won a trip to The Happiest Place on Earth in 1956 via a contest sponsored by Scotch Tape. During the seven-night vacation, he and his family stayed at The Huntington Sheraton.
You can watch Disneyland Dream by clicking below. The Barstows seem like such a fun family!
As I also previously mentioned, the hotel was used extensively throughout the pilot episode of Remington Steele, which was titled “License to Steele.”
I could not get over seeing the interior of the property in the episode. With its arched openings, beamed ceilings and wrought-iron glass doors, the place bears absolutely no resemblance whatsoever to The Langham.
I honestly cannot believe how much it has changed!
I was able to spot a few things from Remington Steele that matched up to what appeared in Girls Just Want to Have Fun, which thrilled me to no end. As you can see below, unique fan-shaped lights were visible in both productions.
The carpeting in both is also a direct match.
The hotel stood in for Club Meade in the Season 2 episode of Simon & Simon titled “The Club Murder Vacation” in 1983.
In the episode, a large tree located in front of the hotel is visible. That tree is a match to one that appeared in Girls Just Want to Have Fun. The placement of the lawn-covered center island in Simon & Simon is also a match to what was shown in GJWTHF, further leading me to believe that the exterior of The Huntington Sheraton was used as the exterior of the Lakeview Country Club in the flick.
In the 1985 made-for-TV movie Promises to Keep, The Huntington Sheraton masked as the Westwind Hotel where Jack Palmer (Robert Mitchum) stayed while trying to make amends with the family he abandoned thirty years prior.
The property stood in for the abandoned Cumberland Grand hotel in the Season 3 episode of Scarecrow and Mrs. King titled “The Triumvirate,” which aired in 1986.
The interior of the hotel was also used in the episode.
There are those fan-shaped lights again!
In 1987, the Scarecrow and Mrs. King crew returned to The Huntington Sheraton to film Season 4’s “One Flew East.” In the episode, the hotel masked as the Hospimerica Briarwood Sanitarium.
The renovated Georgian Ballroom also made an appearance in the 2007 film Charlie Wilson’s War.
It is no secret that erroneous (and/or imprecise) filming location information published online and in books is one of my biggest pet peeves – especially when it leads to me stalking an incorrect place, which is exactly what happened while I was in Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago. (Why there is some sort of halo on my shirt in the above pic is beyond me.)
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Several websites state that The Best Little Chapel from The Hangover was a fake set piece that was constructed for the shoot in a vacant parking lot near 1236 Las Vegas Boulevard South. The building at that address currently houses a youth hostel named Hostel Cat. When the Grim Cheaper and I arrived there, though, I found that there were two parking lots that fit that description – one to the north of Hostel Cat and one to the south – and only one of them was large enough to accommodate the construction of any sort of structure, not to mention the car accident scene that took place on the premises. I snapped some photos of the large lot and was shocked when I compared my pictures to images from the movie later that night in our hotel room. As it turns out, The Best Little Chapel set piece had not been constructed in the large parking lot.
The Best Little Chapel was actually not a set piece constructed in a vacant parking lot at all, but a fake front attached to the northern side of the Hostel Cat building.
As you can see below, the western portion of the hostel’s main building was even incorporated into the design of the chapel.
A white picket fence as well as quite a bit of foliage were added to the western portion of Hostel Cat during the shoot to make the place look less hotel-ish.
A fake bus stop – which was later destroyed – was also brought in for the filming. And Hostel Cat’s real life sign was covered over with signage reading “The Best Little Chapel” for the scene, as well.
Hostel Cat is actually made up of one main building and nine free-standing bungalows.
The interior of The Best Little Chapel was a set built on a soundstage and not the actual interior of Hostel Cat.
I was thrilled to see that Hostel Cat embraces its filming history. Not only does the lodging make mention of its Hangover appearance on the homepage of its official website, but an image of Galifianakis as “Alan” is also painted on the wall of the main building.
Stalk It: The Best Little Chapel from The Hangover is located “at the corner of get a map and f*ck off.” Just kidding. The chapel was a fake façade that was built around the north side of Hostel Cat, which is located at 1236 Las Vegas Boulevard South in Las Vegas. The areas that appeared in the scene are denoted in the aerial view below.
The chapel was a fake façade that was built around the north side of Hostel Cat, which is located at 
