Tag: Celebrities

The Smoke House Restaurant – Where Jim and Pam Held Their Rehearsal Dinner on “The Office”

This past weekend, while out doing some Christmas shopping with the Grim Cheaper, the two of us found ourselves in the Burbank area absolutely ravenous. For whatever reason, though, I could not think of a good place to eat, so the GC suggested we grab a bite at that “old Burbank restaurant across from Warner Brothers Studios”. Because my blondness was in full force that day, I had no idea what on earth he was talking about and just about died when he pulled into the parking lot of the Smoke House Restaurant – the very spot where Jim Halpert (aka John Krasinski) and Pam Beesly (aka Jenna Fischer) hosted the rehearsal dinner for their wedding in the Season 6 episode of fave show The Office titled “Niagara”. And although I have actually stalked this location once before and have even blogged about it, because it was long before The Office had shot there and long before I was even a fan of the show, I decided the restaurant was worthy of a repost.

The original 46-seat Smoke House restaurant first opened in 1946 at the corner of Pass and Riverside Avenues in Burbank. The eatery was a hit with the Hollywood set from the very start, with such stars as Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Frank Sinatra (who even has a steak named after him on the Smoke House menu), Judy Garland, Milton Berle, Jack Parr, James Dean, Burl Ives, Walt Disney, and Errol Flynn stopping in regularly to grab a bite to eat. Due to its promise of serving up “fine food at fair prices”, the restaurant became such a Burbank staple that its owners were quickly forced to expand. They started looking for a larger building to move into and, as fate would have it, found one in actor Danny Kaye’s recently constructed Red Coach Inn. Due to city regulations and the Up In Arms actor’s busy filming schedule, Kaye was unable to open the restaurant/night club and in 1949 he sold the never-been-used property to the owners of the Smoke House. The establishment is still located in that very building to this day.   And, six decades later, the place is still going strong. In more recent years, such stars as Robert Redford, Kevin Costner, Megan Fox, Andy Garcia, Miley Cyrus, Tish Cyrus, and the entire cast of Friends (who used to stop by regularly after filming) have all been spotted dining there.



George Clooney is such a fan of the place that he named his production company “Smokehouse Pictures” in honor of the legendary restaurant. The actor also did a photo shoot at the eatery in the booth pictured above.

One look at the Smoke House interior and it’s not very hard to see why it has succeeded for over sixty years. With it’s dim lights, dark red booths, and wood-paneled walls, stepping inside the eatery definitely brings one back to a forgotten era. It’s exactly the type of place I’d imagine Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. hanging out at back in the heyday of Hollywood.

Oh, and did I mention the food? During this particular visit I ordered the restaurant’s Cobb Salad and it was easily the biggest salad I’ve ever seen in my entire life! I didn’t even get through one third of it and I was literally STARVING when we showed up at the restaurant. On our previous visit, the GC and I ordered up the eatery’s famous “World’s Greatest Garlic Bread” and I can honestly say that the restaurant wasn’t being arrogant when they conceived that name. It literally was the best garlic bread I’ve ever had in my life! Truth be told, though, all of the Smoke House food is FABULOUS, but be forewarned, their portions are ABSOLUTELY ENORMOUS! The restaurant’s staff is also INCREDIBLY nice and, even though the place was pretty packed at the time, everyone I spoke with took the time to answer all of my silly questions about the filming that has taken place there over the years.

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In the “Niagara” episode of The Office, the Smoke House stood in for the supposed Niagara Falls-area restaurant where Jim and Pam held the rehearsal dinner for their wedding. The majority of that scene was filmed in the restaurant’s back room, which, luckily enough, was being set up for a private party while we were there, so I was able to snap a bunch of photographs while the room was empty!



Some filming also took place in the restaurant’s bar area.

The Smoke House’s side room was used in the scene in which Michael Scott (aka Steve Carell) and Dwight Schrute (aka Rainn Wilson) are shown eating breakfast the morning following the rehearsal dinner.

The Smoke House was also featured in the Season 1 episode of Desperate Housewives titled “Move On”, in the scene in which Susan Mayer (aka Teri Hatcher) sings a deeply personal rendition of the song “New York, New York” to her ex-husband Karl (aka Richard Burgi) while at a local karaoke bar.

The Desperate Housewives scene was filmed on the stage located in the restaurant’s bar area.

You can watch Susan’s karaoke scene by clicking above.

The eatery has also appeared in CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Cold Case, and in a Season 2 episode of the reality series The Two Coreys, but I cannot for the life of me figure out which episode and it is driving me absolutely crazy! Does anyone out there know?

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Smoke House Restaurant, where Jim and Pam hosted their rehearsal dinner in the “Niagara” episode of The Office, is located at 4420 West Lakeside Drive in Burbank. You can visit the restaurant’s official website here.

December 22, 2010
The Michael Buble “Crazy Love” Concert – A Second Time!

Last Monday night, my mom, my dad, the Grim Cheaper, and I all headed to Staples Center in Downtown Los Angeles to attend the final show of Michael Buble’s “Crazy Love” Tour. And, as you can imagine, I could NOT have been more excited! When I attended the cutie crooner’s concert back in April of this year, the experience was extremely bittersweet for me as my dad, who – if it is at all possible – loves Michael even more than I do, was too sick to attend. Thanks to a hook-up from fellow stalker David, we had absolutely AMAZING seats and although I enjoyed myself immensely while there, I couldn’t help but be distracted by the fact that my dad was not sitting next to me, as he would absolutely died over our proximity to the stage. So, when I found out a couple of weeks ago that MB would be returning to Los Angeles to finish up his tour, I just about had a heart attack and informed the GC that, come hell or high water, we would ALL be attending – my mom, my dad, the GC, and I. You see, after three years of living with pancreatitis – to the point that he was giving himself numerous daily injections of Dilaudid pain medication at home – after over 15 surgeries and one very unsuccessful trip to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, and after literally almost missing my wedding due to pain, my dad is finally, FINALLY healthy again! As it turns out, one of his cholesterol medications was causing the pancreatitis, which we only discovered thanks to an extremely astute emergency room doctor at Huntington Hospital in Pasadena, whom we happened to meet by chance after my dad’s pancreatic specialist told my mom, while en route to a West L.A. hospital in the midst of one of my dad’s attacks, that there was “nothing more he could do for him” (not kidding!). My mom immediately turned the car around and drove to Huntington, their local hospital, and the rest is history! My dad is now on his 45th day (and counting) of (relatively) no pain! Halleluiah! The bad news is that, for better or worse, he will forever have pancreatitus and will, therefore, always be subject to pain, but at least now it’s a manageable pain and he can once again live a normal life. So, to celebrate my dad’s newfound good health and his 64th birthday, which was on the 16th of December, the GC and I purchased four tickets to the MB “Crazy Love” show. Because I love surprises, we waited until the day before the concert to tell my dad of our plans and he started bawling upon opening the box and seeing the tickets. One of the best moments of my life, right there.

Thanks to another hook-up from fellow stalker David, I was again able to secure FABULOUS seats to the show – in fact they were the EXACT same seats that we sat in during the previous MB concert! My dad almost died when he saw how close we were to the stage! Thank you, David!

The arena was literally JAM-PACKED with people, so the fact that we were able to get tickets at all, let alone such great ones, was absolutely incredible!

MB’s opening act was, again, Naturally 7 , an acoustic group that specializes in what they call “vocal play” – i.e. they perform without the assistance of instruments, but instead use their voices and bodies to simulate various musical instruments and sounds. And I have to say that they were absolutely A-MA-ZING! If I hadn’t been there, witnessing the whole thing with my own eyes, I would have been CONVINCED that they had instruments onstage with them!

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After Naturally 7 performed for about an hour, the lights went down and it was time for Mr. Buble to come out. He opened up the show with a rousing rendition of “Cry Me A River” and, let me tell you, the crowd went absolutely wild! But no one more so than me and my dad! My dad’s mouth literally hung open – and I am fairly certain that he also teared up a bit – upon seeing Michael step out onto that stage and realizing how very close to him we were.



I can easily say that Monday night’s concert was JUST as fabulous as the one we saw in April, if not more so! Before seeing the show, I was a little worried that it would simply be a carbon copy of the previous concert and that all of Michael’s jokes were, in actuality, scripted and were not as off-the-cuff as they had seemed. But I am VERY happy to report that that was not the case AT ALL! Even though the song list was, for the most part, identical to April’s show, it truly felt as if we were attending a completely different concert, mostly due to the fact that all of Michael’s jokes and monologues were new and spontaneous. He truly plays off and engages the crowd and all of the hilarious stories we heard this time around were different than the ones he told at the previous show. LOVE IT!



And, as I mentioned last time, Buble is FUNNY! Like ABSOLUTELY HILARIOUS! His show is equal parts concert/stand-up comedy act. At one point he introduced his pianist Alan Chang, who has been with him since 2003, by saying, “He is my friend, my pianist, my writing partner, my musical director, and . . . my part-time lover,” and then he broke out into a spontaneous rendition of Stevie Wonder’s 1985 hit “Part-Time Lover”. LOL LOL LOL Michael is also a fabulous impersonator and can speak in just about any accent imaginable, which he did throughout the night. He also did a fabulous impersonation of Elin Nordegren for us, during which he danced across the stage, pretending to wear clogs, while reprimanding Tiger Woods for his lascivious ways. Afterwards he said, “I’m sure she doesn’t really sound like that, but in my head she does.”

It is also readily apparent not only how much the guy loves being onstage, but how much he enjoys interacting with his fans. One lady in the front row had a sign stating, “Michael, I’ve been with you for FORTY shows!” Well, Michael took one look at that sign, said “I have GOT to give you a hug!”, immediately jumped down to the floor, and embraced the woman. As you can imagine, I just about died over that one! I mean, is that all it takes to get a hug from Michael Buble? Oh GC, you know what that means! Next year we are going to at least forty of his shows!

The most unique aspect of an MB concert, though, is that while there you feel as if you are hanging out with the singer in his living room. Even though there are 14,000 people surrounding you, due to his easy-going and sincere nature, Michael somehow manages to make the whole thing seem intimate and personal.

And his show is FUN! Michael is a barrel of energy and spends the entire two hours sliding across the stage, spinning around, and bouncing up and down. His jubilance is absolutely contagious and he has somehow even managed to make a fan out of the GC, who, prior to April’s concert, could just take or leave the guy.

As was the case last time, Michael was accompanied onstage by nothing more than a microphone, a stool, and his amazing band. There were no histrionics, no big dance numbers, no special effects. It was just a man and his voice and, let me tell you, he ABSOLUTELY BROUGHT DOWN THE HOUSE! He had that audience on its feet for the entire second act of the show! Even my mom and dad were standing and dancing for the last hour! So incredibly cool!

Also, much the same as last time, my favorite segment of the show definitely had to be the big Michael Jackson Tribute/”Twist & Shout” number. Michael introduced the segment by saying he was going to sing a song from the movie that won the 1986 Academy Award for Best Picture – Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Then he said, “No, I’m just kidding – Ferris Bueller did not actually win the Oscar that year, but it TOTALLY should have!” LOVE IT! LOVE IT! LOVE IT!

At one point during the concert, Michael actually walks through the audience over to the “B-Stage”, which is located on the other side of the venue. While there he sang an absolutely beautiful acoustic version of his hit song “Home” accompanied only by his guitar player. I don’t remember him singing the song in that manner during the April show and it turned out to be one of my favorite performances of the entire evening. Sigh!

Michael ended the show with his new song “Hollywood” while accompanied by Naturally 7 and it was FABULOUS. I absolutely LOVE that song!

He, of course, came back out after “Hollywood” to sing an encore, during which a cloud of confetti burst from the sky setting the stage for “Let It Snow”. Because the Christmas tune is one of my dad’s very favorite Buble songs, we could NOT have been more excited to hear it.

As always, Michael finished his encore with the Leon Russell-penned “Song For You”, which he says he hopes to end every show with for the rest of his life.

All in all, it was an ABSOLUTELY amazing night and the BEST possible present we could have ever given my dad in honor of his newfound good health! Amazingly enough, my mom actually saw the Beatles perform live in concert when she was a teenager and she said that the Michael Buble show was far more exceptional. Talk about a compliment!

A BIG, HUGE THANK YOU to fellow stalker David from both me and my dad for hooking us up with these amazing tickets! You rock, my friend!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Sadly, you can’t – last Monday night’s show was the last of Michael Buble’s “Crazy Love” Tour. But you can find out information about the singer’s upcoming appearances on his official website here. And you can follow Tory Class, MB’s Tour Marketing Manager, on Twitter at @ToryonTour here.

December 21, 2010
Adrianna’s New Rental from “90210”

Back in July of 2009, fellow stalker Jennie wrote to me asking for some help in tracking down a location that appeared in both the 1996 Aaron Spelling television series Kindred: The Embraced and the current reality show Celebrity Fit Club. Because I had never seen either of the shows, though, for this particular stalking venture I had to call in the team – aka Chas, from ItsFilmedThere, Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and fellow stalker Owen – and, magically, Chas came through in record time. He somehow managed to track down a Celebrity Fit Club crew member who told him that the show was primarily filmed at a convent in Los Feliz that belonged to the Los Angeles Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. I immediately added the place to my ever-growing “To Stalk” list, but, for whatever reason, never made it out to actually see it in person. So, you can imagine my surprise when I recognized the property as the mansion Adriana Tate-Duncan (aka Jessica Lowndes) rented on the recently-aired Season 3 episode of 90210 titled “Holiday Madness”. I literally just about fell out of my chair and dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out to stalk the place that very weekend.

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From what I’ve been able to gather online, it appears that the property no longer belongs to the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, but is now owned by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and is known as the Cardinal Timothy Manning House of Prayer for Priests. (Although there is a Facebook page which claims that the property is now the International Institute of Theological and Tribunal Studies and is owned by the Graduate Theological Foundation of Indiana, so I’m not really sure what the story is.) Regardless of who currently owns it, though, the structure was originally built in 1928 as a private home for Los Angeles broadcasting/automobile tycoon Earl C. Anthony, a man who not only brought major league baseball to Southern California for the first time, but who was also part of the team that invented gas stations and the car radio. The Anthony House, as it later came to be known, was designed by architect Bernard Maybeck, the same man who gave us the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. Anthony had commissioned his previous abode to be built by the legendary Greene & Greene architecture firm, but once Anthony, who owned several Packard automobile dealerships at the time, caught wind of the fact that one of the Greene brothers had purchased a car made by a competing brand, he refused to work with the architects on any subsequent projects and hired Maybeck to build his Los Feliz home. LOL! Maybeck incorporated Italian Villa, French Chateau, Spanish Mediterranean, and Tudor elements into the design of the mansion and it wound up costing a whopping $500,000 to construct. At the time it was the most expensive house in Hollywood. After Anthony’s widow passed away in the early 1950s, the mansion was purchased by Sir Daniel J. Donohue and his wife, who, in 1971, bequeathed the entire property to the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, who continued to own it until earlier this year.

Sadly, the 8.5-acre property is closed to the public and not much of it is visible from the street, but, as I’ve said many times before, that’s why God created aerial views! And you can see some fabulous close-up pictures of the former convent on the I.I.T.T.S. Facebook page here.



In the “Holiday Madness” episode of 90210, the former convent was used as Adrianna’s new, massively huge, $20,000-per-month rental.

Both the interior and the exterior of the property were used extensively in the episode . . .

. . . especially during Adrianna’s Christmas party scenes.



As I mentioned above, the property is also used extensively each season on the hit reality television show Celebrity Fit Club.



The Anthony House was also the site of the wine festival in the Season 4 episode of Brothers and Sisters titled “The Wine Festival”.

The property has also appeared in episodes of The A-Team, Dirty Sexy Money, Knight Rider, Dynasty, Airwolf, Falcon Crest, The Greatest American Hero, and Hart to Hart.

Big THANK YOU to Chas, from ItsFilmedThere, for finding this location! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Adrianna’s new house from 90210, aka the former Los Angeles Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary convent, is located at 3431 Waverly Drive in Los Feliz.

December 20, 2010
The “Six Feet Under” Flower Shop – One of the Last Places James Dean Was Seen Alive

I promise to get back to my wedding blogging in the near future, but for today I thought I’d do a post about a location that I stalked this past weekend – the Blossom d’Amour flower shop where Ruth Fisher (aka Frances Conroy) worked on the hit HBO television series Six Feet Under. While doing some research on the Fisher & Sons Funeral Home from the series, which I blogged about back in October, I came across the IMDB trivia page for the show which stated that Ruth’s floral shop was actually a former gas station – but not just any gas station. As it turns out, it is the station where James Dean stopped to fill up the tank of his Porsche 550 Spyder on the afternoon of September 30, 1955 while on his way to Salinas where he was scheduled to participate in a car race. The twenty-four year old actor was tragically killed just a few hours later, at approximately 5:45 p.m., when his Porsche collided with a Ford Tudor driven by a man named Donald Turnupseed at the intersection of Highways 46 and 41 in Cholame, California. For whatever reason, that gas station was later transformed into a floral shop/car wash named A Touch of Romance and it was that floral shop that was eventually featured on Six Feet Under. Quite a bit of history for a tiny, non-descript florist located on a sleepy corner of L.A.’s San Fernando Valley!

I was hoping that there would be some sort of plaque or photograph on display commemorating the shop’s unique and storied history, but, sadly, I couldn’t find anything of the sort while I was stalking the place. It is absolutely mind-boggling to me that a person could very well get their car washed at this location or purchase some flowers for a loved one without ever realizing that they were standing on hallowed ground!



It became even more mind-boggling to me when I found out that a picture of Dean had actually been taken on that fateful day while he was gassing up his car! As fate would have it, photographer Sanford Roth was traveling with the actor to Salinas to document his race and he happened to snap a photograph of Dean while at the service station. I think it goes without saying that if I owned that shop, I would have a HUMONGOUS copy of that photograph on display so that my customers would know the significance and the history of the property. Geez, why do I always have to think of everything??



In the Season 1 episode of Six Feet Under titled “Brotherhood”, Ruth gets a job working at the Blossom d’Amour floral shop and she continues to work there throughout much of the show’s second season. She also ends up becoming romantically involved with the shop’s Russian owner, Nikolai, for a time. And I am very happy to report that the shop still looks pretty much exactly the same today as it did when Six Feet Under was being filmed.

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For those who are interested in locations of this sort, I HIGHLY recommend picking up a copy of Chris Epting’s two books James Dean Died Here: The Locations of America’s Pop Culture Landmarks and Marilyn Monroe Dyed Here: More Locations of America’s Pop Culture Landmarks (I LOVE that last title, by the way!), both of which were gifted to me by fellow stalker Lavonna a few months back. They are FABULOUS books which feature hundreds of famous – and infamous – locations. I just discovered that Epting also recently released a third book in the series, Elvis Presley Passed Here: Even More Locations of America’s Pop Culture Landmarks, so guess which item has just been added to this stalker’s Christmas list!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: A Touch of Romance, aka the Six Feet Under flower shop, aka the gas station where James Dean filled his Porsche with gas on his fated last day, is located at 14325 Ventura Boulevard in Sherman Oaks.

December 17, 2010
The Shannen Doherty “Badass” Book Signing

This past Tuesday night, the Grim Cheaper, fellow stalker Erika, and I all headed out to the Grove Shopping Center in Los Angeles to attend the Shannen Doherty Badass book signing and, as you can probably well imagine, I could NOT have been more excited about it! As I was telling the GC on our drive over there, I can count the number of celebrities that I would absolutely DIE to meet on one hand and Shannen is in the top three of that list – and has been for the past twenty years. Number one and number two are, of course, Jennifer Aniston and Michael Buble. And while I know that Beverly Hills, 90210 has been off the air for more than a decade now and that Shannen left the show way back in 1994,for whatever reason, Brenda Walsh has left a permanent footprint on my heart and she is still my very favorite television character of all time. I’m sure that when I’m in my nineties, I’ll still be watching my DVDs of the series and shaking my cane at the television set in anger every time Kelly Taylor does something mean to Brenda.    So, when I found out that I would have the opportunity to meet my teenage idol, it was almost more than I could bear! As you can see in the above photograph, I even made a “Team Brenda” shirt for the occasion.

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When we arrived at the signing, we were given the informational sheet pictured above and I just about had a heart attack upon reading the words, “Posed photography WILL BE allowed.” I absolutely could NOT believe it as I am quickly discovering that the vast majority of celebrities, sadly, do not pose for photographs at signings. I was also floored when I found out that Shannen would be personalizing books because Raquel Welch had refused to do so when I went to her book signing back in April and I’m still kind of ticked off about it. So, needless to say, once I found out that I would be able to get a photograph with my girl AND a personalized autograph, I was beyond, BEYOND excited. I literally had butterflies in my stomach the entire time I was waiting in line!

And then when Shannen came out I just about died!! She looked absolutely STUNNING! She’s tiny in person, probably about 5’2”, and in FABULOUS shape – her arms are to die for! It’s amazing to me that she is almost forty years old ‘cause she definitely does not look it. I absolutely LOVED, LOVED, LOVED her outfit, too. It was classy, simple, and understated. Very Jen Aniston! Oh, and she was also wearing Christian Louboutin high heels! Love it!



Shannen started out the signing by posing for a few minutes for the paparazzi who had been invited to the event. I am not sure f it was Barnes & Noble or Shannen’s people who actually invited the paparazzi, but I would like to go on the record here and state that it was a FABULOUS idea! Because they were allowed to stand at the front and take pictures for the first five minutes of the signing, the photogs were not pushy or obnoxious and once they got their shots, they left. It was all pretty painless and, in my never-to-be-humble opinion, the perfect way to handle things. When I went to the Tori Spelling book signing at Vroman’s back in July, the paparazzi were chasing Tori through the parking lot and absolutely swarming her and the fans. It was all very chaotic and after seeing how differently the paparazzi behaved at Shannen’s signing, I am convinced that allowing them inside is the way to go.

Because Erika, the GC, and I were in the middle section of the line, we got to watch Shannen interact with quite a few people while we waited and – and I honestly cannot say this enough! – she was SO incredibly nice! She took her time with people, engaged them in conversation, and seemed genuinely happy to be speaking with her fans. I know there are those out there who will say that she’s an actress and that the whole thing was simply an act, but I did not get that impression AT ALL. Shannen seemed INCREDIBLY genuine. I know that SD got a bad rap while on 90210, but in my heart of hearts (and after my bad experience meeting Jennie Garth a few years back), I just do not believe the hype. Something in my gut told me she was going to be a sweetheart and, as it turned out, she was! I’ve read in countless interviews that Shannen is a very honest, upfront person and that she doesn’t take any guff off of anyone (which also describes me to a T, actually), and while there are those who equate honesty and strength with meanness, I can honestly say that, in person, Shannen came across as bubbly, warm, and genuine. If it’s at all possible I love her even more now than I did before.

When I finally got up to the front of the line, I was literally shaking I was so darn excited! And Shannen noticed my “Team Brenda” shirt immediately which was so incredibly cool.



When she started signing my book, I told her how much I had adored her for the past twenty years and that she was in my top three list of celebrities that I’d do just about anything to meet.

The picture above is her reaction to that statement. She was truly shocked and touched that she was in my top three and promptly asked who the other two were. When I told her Jen Aniston and Michael Buble, she said that she was happy she was in good company. Then I told her that I had been to the MB concert the previous night (which I will be blogging about soon, I am just waiting on some pictures from my dad) and she asked if I had gotten to meet him. When I told her no, she said jokingly, “That bastard!” She then asked if I had ever met Jen before and when I told her that I had, she said, “Isn’t she such a sweetheart?” LOVE IT! Shannen then told me that I should have played Kelly Taylor on 90210 since I kind of have the same hair as Jennie Garth, to which I said, “And then we could have become best friends!”

And here you have it! The photograph that I’ve been waiting over twenty years to take! Me and Shannen Doherty! Sigh!

Pictured above is what Shannen signed in my book. It reads, “Lindsay, So honored I’m in your top 3! <3 Shannen Doherty” So cute!

Fellow stalker Erika was actually lucky enough to have met and taken a picture with Shannen last year while at a restaurant in Malibu, so she printed up an 8 x 10 copy of the photograph they had taken together in the hopes that Shannen would sign it. Shannen’s reaction upon being shown the photo, which you can see above, was absolutely priceless. So incredibly cute! She even remembered meeting Erika and taking the picture with her! And not only did she sign the picture, but Erika had actually printed out three copies of it just in case one got ruined while en route to the signing and Shannen signed ALL THREE!

Erika’s pic with Shannen also turned out fabulous.

All in all it was an ABSOLUTELY fabulous night and Shannen could NOT have been nicer! She and David Caruso are without a doubt the two nicest, friendliest celebrities I have EVER met in my ENTIRE life!

On a Brenda Walsh side note – Jack, the owner of the real life Walsh house, recently gave me the 90210 keepsake to end all 90210 keepsakes! When it was originally decided that filming would take place at his house, producers came around and changed a few things on the property, most notably adding the famous Walsh basketball hoop to the front of the garage. Another change they made, though, was to swap out many of the home’s windows with new ones, including three in the room that was supposed to belong to Brenda. Those windows remained on Jack’s house for the following twenty years, until this past Fall when he had some of them replaced, including all of the ones in Brenda’s room. He subsequently gave the former windows to his brother to use for scrap wood, which I just about died upon hearing. Scrap wood????? Really?????? As fate would have it, though, one window got left behind in his garage and he offered it to me! As you can imagine I just about had a heart attack over that one! As you can also imagine, because it is a rather large window, the GC was not AT ALL happy when I came walking in our front door with it! We ended up hanging it behind our bed, though, and it looks fabulous! Even the GC now loves it as he thinks it gives our bedroom a “New York” feel. Every time I walk into my bedroom now, I can’t help but pinch myself upon seeing it! I mean, I’ve got Brenda Walsh’s window hanging in my bedroom! I honestly think I can die a happy woman now!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: You can purchase “Badass” by clicking here. You can find out about upcoming events at the Barnes & Noble Bookstore at the Grove by clicking here or on my Upcoming Celebrity Events page here.

December 16, 2010
Mike and Carol Brady’s Homes from the Pilot Episode of “The Brady Bunch”

Earlier this week while perusing through fellow stalker Chas’ website, ItsFilmedThere, I came across his Brady Bunch page which details numerous filming locations from the beloved 1970s series and, let me tell you, I almost fell off my chair! Especially when I saw that he not only had listed the location of the house where Mike Brady (aka Robert Reed) lived in the pilot episode of the series, which was titled “The Honeymoon”, but also the address of the home where Mike and Carol (aka Florence Henderson) tied the knot in that very same episode! How I had never noticed those locations on his site before is beyond me, especially since I am absolutely obsessed with the series! I immediately texted Chas to find out how he managed to track the two locations down and as it turns out he had, in typical Chas fashion, contacted the show’s creator Sherwood Schwartz! Chas always somehow manages to go straight to the source, so to speak, when seeking out locations. I recently enlisted his help in finding Chez Quis restaurant where Ferris Bueller (aka Matthew Broderick) pretended to be Abe Froman in fave movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and what did Chas do? You guessed it – he somehow managed to track down actor Jonathan Schmock who played the restaurant’s snooty maître d’ in the scene. As it turns out, Chez Quis restaurant was actually the now-defunct L’Orangerie restaurant in West Hollywood, but that’s a whole other story for a whole other post that I promise to write very soon. Anyway, Chas got a message delivered to Sherwood Schwartz asking him for information about the Brady houses and who should call him back but writer/producer Lloyd Schwartz – aka Sherwood’s son! So incredibly cool! So, once I had the addresses I immediately ran out to stalk both of the locations. YAY! Thank you, Chas!

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The mid-century modern-style house pictured above is where architect Mike Brady lived with his three sons, Greg (aka Barry Williams), Peter (aka Christopher Knight), and Bobby (aka Mike Lookinland), in the “Honeymoon” episode of the series. For whatever reason, when the second episode, titled “Dear Libby”, aired, Mike and the rest of the Brady clan were shown living in a different house – the Studio City abode that was featured on every episode of the series thereafter.

Amazingly enough, the “Honeymoon” episode house still looks almost EXACTLY the same today as it did when the episode was filmed over 42 years ago!

Even the three plants on the front porch are still strikingly similar to how they appeared in the episode! Love it, love it, love it!

Located just about three miles west of Mike’s house is the residence belonging to Carol Brady’s parents, which is the spot where Mike and Carol tied the knot in the pilot episode.

Sadly though, while the house still looks very much the same as it did onscreen, there is now a large wall which surrounds the property and substantially obstructs the view of it from the road. UGH!

Mike and Carol’s wedding took place in the home’s backyard, which is, of course, also not visible from the street.

But you can catch a glimpse of it in the above aerial view.

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Chas, from ItsFilmedThere, for finding these locations!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Mike Brady’s house from the pilot episode of The Brady Bunch is located at 12049 Iredell Street in Studio City. Carol Brady’s parents’ house, where the Brady wedding took place, is located at 4101 Longridge Avenue in Sherman Oaks.

December 15, 2010
Granville Towers – Portia de Rossi’s Former Home

I just recently finished reading Portia de Rossi’s new memoir Unbearable Lightness and I have to say that it was easily one of the best books I have ever read in my entire life! I literally could NOT put it down. The memoir is a harrowing account of the actress’ long-time eating disorder which consumed her life during the years she portrayed Nelle Porter on the hit television series Ally McBeal. Besides being a fabulous read, the book’s topic really hit home with me as I was once told by an acting teacher that I was “stocky” and needed to lose weight if I wanted to make it in this business. I was a size two at the time. Needless to say the notion of “there is no such thing as too thin” is alive and well in Hollywood. Thankfully I had a strong foundation to fall back on at home and was able to blow off my acting teacher’s words – and eventually her class. But it is easy to see why someone like Portia, who was already deeply insecure over the fact that she was gay and whose family lived a world away in Australia, would falter in that sort of environment. Her story is both heartbreaking and fascinating and I honestly cannot recommend reading it enough. Anyway, in the book, Portia talks about living in a penthouse unit at the legendary Granville Towers in West Hollywood, so as soon as I finished reading the tome, I immediately ran right out to stalk the place.

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The Granville Towers, which was originally an apartment building named The Voltaire, was built in 1930 in the French Revival style by architect Leland Bryant, who also designed one of my favorite hotels in Southern California – the Sunset Tower Hotel on Sunset Boulevard. The 7-story, 40-unit property was a celebrity magnet from the very beginning and such stars as Ann Sothern, Jack Lord, Arthur Treacher, Janet Gaynor, and Rock Hudson called the place home. My girl Marilyn Monroe even stayed there for a brief while after her divorce from Joe DiMaggio in 1954. In the 1980s, the property was transformed into a luxury hotel at which point it was renamed The Granville. A few years later it was transformed yet again, this time into an upscale condominium building, and Hollywood luminaries once again began calling the place home. Just a few of the celebrities who have lived there in more recent years include Nicole Scherzinger, Ashley Greene (her boyfriend Joe Jonas is a frequent visitor), Mickey Rourke, Brendan Fraser, David Bowie, Amy Locane, and Michael Michele.

Portia de Rossi lived in the building’s north tower penthouse from the late 1990s through mid-2002. Of first seeing the penthouse apartment, she said, “I felt as though I had been transported to an artist’s loft in a city like Philadelphia, which was much more exciting to me than where I actually was. Where I was, was predictable. But the apartment made me think there was more to life than being an actress on a David Kelly show.” She signed the papers on the spot and immediately set about transforming the upstairs attic loft into a workout room. Of her makeshift gym, she says, “The treadmill was really the only thing up there and was perfectly centered in the attic, between the wall of windows that showcased the industrial city that was the roof of the Sunset 5 and the east windows through which I could see all the way downtown. The wall opposite the smokestacks acted as a bulletin board where I had taped pieces of paper. Mostly the pieces were exaggerated to-do lists. I say ‘exaggerated’ because they said things that were more like goals that I wanted to achieve than things that needed to be done. The largest piece of paper with the boldest writing stated ‘I WILL BE 105 POUNDS BY CHRISTMAS’.” She also fastened a list of cards to the wall just to the left of her to-do list. Each card featured a number, beginning at 111 and running backwards. Portia was 111 pounds at the time and each time she lost a pound, she would remove a card. Of her weight wall, she says, “It helped keep me focused and it helped me to remember that once I’d achieved the new lower weight and the card stating my previous weight was gone, that I could never weigh that much again; that the old weight was gone. It was no longer who I was. It was getting more difficult to lose weight as I got thinner, so I needed all the incentive and motivation I could muster. Putting my weight on the wall was a clever thing to do as it always needed to be in the forefront of my mind, otherwise I might’ve forgotten and walked on the treadmill instead of run, sat instead of paced. I once saw a loft where a famous writer lived, and all over the wall was his research for the novel he was writing. He described the book to me as his life’s work, his magnum opus. I felt like controlling my weight was my magnum opus, the most important product of my brain and was worthy of devoting a wall to its success.” See what I mean? Absolutely riveting – and harrowing – stuff!

The Granville is a truly beautiful building and features a 24-hour doorman, valet parking, a lobby with a piano, an indoor pool and spa, and a large garden patio area complete with statuaries and fountains. You can view some great interior photographs of the building here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Granville Towers is located at 1424 North Crescent Heights Boulevard, just south of Sunset Boulevard, in West Hollywood.

December 14, 2010
Our Movie Locations-Themed Scavenger Hunt

My good friend/party planner extraordinaire Natalie Drees has become famous in our circle over the past few years for creating absolutely amazing customized scavenger hunts. She plans one for pretty much every event she hosts and not only are they insanely fun, but they also provide a fabulous way for people to get to know each other. So, once it was decided that our rehearsal dinner would take place at POP Champagne & Dessert Bar in Old Town Pasadena and that all of our family and friends would be invited, I asked Nat if she wouldn’t mind creating a movie locations-themed hunt to cap off our evening. And, thankfully, she said yes! Because Nat lives in San Francisco and therefore does not know the Pasadena area all that well, though – nor is she particularly into this thing that we call stalking – she enlisted the help of fellow stalker Owen to carry out the endeavor. And I have to say that the two pulled it off beautifully!

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Natalie figured that most of our guests wouldn’t be quite as into filming locations as I am, so she based the scavenger hunt not around finding where a specific production was filmed, but around finding particular restaurants and bars in Pasadena that also happened to be filming locations. If teams could subsequently figure out what was filmed at each particular restaurant or bar – by talking to their servers or using their iPhones – extra points would be awarded, but filming location knowledge was not in any way required to participate. Besides figuring out which location each clue referred to, teams would also be required to obtain specific items from each location in order to complete the hunt. As always, each team was given a set of pens, a bag to collect all of our scavenger hunt items, and a book detailing our assignment, the rules of the game, and the clues.

The booklets were handed out at the end of the rehearsal dinner at POP Champagne Bar and my best friend Kylee, who was managing the hunt, gave all of the teams five minutes to read them over, before yelling out “On your mark . . . get set . . . go!”. At that point our entire group of fifty literally RAN out of the restaurant! It was like a mass exodus and I can only imagine what our fellow diners were thinking! LOL The scavenger hunt clues read as follows:

Clue Number 1 –

It’s been said “men want

a lady on the street . . .”

Perhaps women want

An “uomo” who can take the heat.

Once they find him,

They’ll take some “pane”.

Bring it back to the judge

And you’ll “vincere”.

The solution to Clue Number 1 was the restaurant Il Fornaio, which was featured in the 2000 movie What Women Want and was actually the very first movie I ever saw being filmed upon moving to Los Angeles. Before purchasing a house, my parents and I lived in an apartment in Old Town Pasadena and we would walk down to Il Fornaio to grab a bite to eat at least once a week. We got to know quite a few people who worked at the eatery and one night one of the servers let us know that Mel Gibson was going to be filming a movie at the restaurant the very next day. So, my mom and I, of course, headed back there bright and early the following morning to watch! It was an extremely cool experience for both of us and while we did not get to meet Mel Gibson, he did wave to us and say ‘hi’ several times while on his various cigarette breaks. Anyway, Nat came up with the brilliant idea of using foreign words in each clue which correlated to the type of food served at the restaurants we were supposed to visit. In the case of Il Fornaio, which is Italian, she used several Italian words – “uomo” translates to “man”, “pane” to “bread”, and “vincere” to “win”. Well, once I read the words “women want”, I knew exactly which restaurant the clue was referring to and my team (which consisted of me and the GC, my best friend Robin and his girlfriend Steffi, and Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and his fiancé Ame) immediately headed on over there. Unfortunately though, my mom, of course, also immediately figured out the answer to the clue and was right on our heels! In the movie, Il Fornaio appeared in the scene in which Nick Marshall (aka Mel Gibson) has lunch with his daughter Alex Marshall (aka Ashley Johnson) after buying her a prom dress.

One of the rules of the game was that all teams would have to purchase a round of drinks at each and every bar, so as not to anger the various managements by having large groups of people running in and out of the restaurants, causing a disruption. When we arrived at Il Fornaio, Mike suggested that we each get a shot as we could drink them quickly and then be on to our next location. Well, I am a complete and total lightweight and typically do not drink anything other than champagne and I really did not want to be doing shots at each and every bar we went into the night before my wedding, so I quickly ixnayed that idea. But the next thing I knew, my friend Steffi had six full shot glasses lined up in front of her. I immediately said, “No, I can’t drink a shot!” to which she replied, “These are champagne shots!” I had no idea what on earth a champagne shot was, but she informed me that she had asked the bartender to pour a bit of champagne into six shot glasses. The bartender at first balked at the idea, but when Steffi explained that I was a soon-to-be bride who only drank champagne, she agreed and poured us our “champagne shots”. We are holding them in the above photograph and I can honestly say that that particular moment was one of my favorites of the entire wedding. So incredibly cute!!!!!!

Clue Number 2 –

Don may ride a white horse

To get to this filmed bar.

If he were in gay Paris

This would be more on par.

Once he arrived

A “serviette” he’d obtain.

In Pasadena it’s this,

Hopefully without a stain.

The solution to Clue Number 2 was Cheval Blanc Bistro, which I blogged about back in December of last year and which was used in the original Father of the Bride movie as the spot where George Banks (aka Steve Martin) takes Bryan MacKenzie (aka George Newbern) for a drink. Because there are not many French restaurants in Old Town Pasadena, this was an easy one. Also tipping me off to the clue’s answer was the fact that Don is my dad’s name, aka the name of the “father of the bride”. Amazingly enough, my mom and her team were hot on our tail upon arriving at this particular bar, as well! My aunt Lea, who was on my mom’s team, had asked the bartender at Il Fornaio if she knew of any French restaurants in the area and the bartender told her that the only place she could think of was Cheval Blanc. My mom’s best friend, who speaks fluent French, immediately said “Cheval Blanc means white horse! That’s the place!” and they took off for the restaurant. At Cheval Blanc we were required to obtain a “serviette”, aka a “napkin”.

Both my team and my mom’s team spent quite a bit of time at this restaurant and ordered a round of drinks and relaxed since we were so far ahead of all of the other groups. And amazingly enough, my mom’s team happened to meet an actor while at Cheval Blanc and they got his autograph for an extra 50 points! He wasn’t anyone famous, but he did have his own IMDB page, so he counted as a “star”.

Clue Number 3 –

You can get a roll

In California’s 91105.

This filming location

You may not recognize.

You won’t need a fork,

But two pieces of wood

To experience

Lindsay’s favorite hood.

The answer to Clue Number 3 was, of course, Maikobe Japanese Restaurant – aka the former Ruby’s Diner which stood in for the Peach Pit on my favorite show of all time Beverly Hills, 90210. For anyone who knew anything about me or anything about the city of Pasadena for that matter, this clue was a no-brainer. In an unfortunate twist of bad luck, though, Maikobe had unexpectedly closed its doors just a few days before our rehearsal dinner, so when we showed up there for the scavenger hunt, we could not go inside to obtain our “two pieces of wood”, aka a set of chop sticks. Mike immediately started looking around for other sushi restaurants in the area and noticed one directly across the street from Maikobe (perhaps this is why the place went out of business! ) and ran right on over to grab some chopsticks. BUT, amazingly enough, my mom’s team had happened to grab a set of chop sticks at Sushi Roku near Il Fornaio earlier during the hunt (they had gone in to collect matchbooks for extra points and the hostess had, for whatever reason, also given them chopsticks!), so as soon as her team realized Maikobe was closed, they immediately started running to the last stop on the hunt and ended up coming in first place! So, yes, even though Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and I were on the same team, we LOST the scavenger hunt!!!!! Unbelievable!!!! But at least now you can see where I get my stalking skills from! In our family, the apple definitely does not fall far from the tree! On a side note – you can see a great picture of what Maikobe looked like back when it was Ruby’s Diner here.

Clue Number 4 –

At this Latin lounge with a fitting name

Their life together they can star living

Before their honeymoon, as husband and dame.

Ask for this in your drink-o.

Tie it in a knot with your tongue

To get an extra cinco.

The solution to Clue Number 4 was Vive Lounge, where fave movie A Lot Like Love was filmed. At the time the movie was filmed, the place was a Chinese-Malaysian fusion restaurant named Nonya, but that eatery closed down back in 2006 whereupon Vive moved in. Amazingly enough, very little of the décor was changed upon the transition and the restaurant still looked almost exactly the same as it did in the movie. Because there is only one Latin-themed lounge in Pasadena, my mom and her team were easily able to figure out what location the final clue was referring to. Especially once they realized that “vive” translates to “live” in Spanish. For winning the hunt, each member of my mom’s team was awarded with a bag of microwave popcorn and a pass for a free movie at any AMC Theatre. So incredibly cool! All in the all, the scavenger hunt turned out FABULOUS and all of our guests, even those who seriously lagged behind, absolutely LOVED it. It was the perfect end to a perfect evening. On a sad side note, though – the GC and I walked by Vive this past Friday night and discovered that it had closed it doors! I can only hope that the new owners also choose to keep the original Nonya’s décor so that all of us stalkers can still appreciate it.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Natalie Drees can create customized scavenger hunts for parties and corporate events based upon any and all sorts of themes. You can contact her via her event planning website Pop Planning. Il Fornaio, from What Women Want, is located at 24 West Union Street in Old Town Pasadena. You can visit Il Fornaio’s website here. Cheval Blanc Bistro, from Father of the Bride, is located at 41 South De Lacey Avenue, also in Old Town Pasadena. You can visit the Cheval Blanc website here. The former Maikobe restaurant, aka the Peach Pit from Beverly Hills, 90210, is located at 45 South Fair Oaks Avenue in Pasadena, but is currently vacant. Vive Lounge, the former Nonya restaurant from A Lot Like Love, is located at 61 North Raymond Avenue in Pasadena, but is also currently vacant. You can visit the former Vive Lounge website here.

December 13, 2010
Our Rehearsal Dinner at POP Champagne & Dessert Bar

As I’ve mentioned many times before on this blog, POP Champagne & Dessert Bar in Old Town Pasadena is my very favorite restaurant and, even though I wasn’t even engaged at the time, when I first walked through its front doors over a year and a half ago, I immediately knew it was the place where I wanted to hold the rehearsal dinner for my wedding. The only problem was that the Grim Cheaper and I had long been planning on getting married in Malibu and having a rehearsal dinner at a restaurant located over fifty miles away from the wedding venue wasn’t exactly the most viable of options. After the GC finally proposed, though, and we sat down to begin our wedding planning, my mom suggested that we hold the actual wedding rehearsal in the backyard of my parent’s Pasadena home, which is located just about two miles from POP, and an idea was born – our nuptials would be a two-city celebration! Much to the GC’s chagrin, I had long before decided that all of our wedding guests would be invited to our rehearsal dinner. Because weddings seem to go by in such a blur and because the vast majority of our guests were from out of town, I did not want the time spent with our closest loved ones to be limited to one short evening. I was a little worried, though, that our family and friends might be upset over the fact that each night’s festivities would be held in a different city, which would entail everyone having to rent a car AND moving hotel rooms from one night to the other. As it turned out, though, people absolutely LOVED the idea! Because most of our family and friends were not from the area, many of them told me afterwards that they loved getting to experience two very different parts of Southern California over the course of our wedding weekend. YAY!

Holding the rehearsal in my parents’ backyard actually turned out to be very memorable for my family, because just two weeks after the wedding my mom and dad put their beloved house up for sale – the same house they had lived in for the better part of a decade. So, it was nice to make one last and very significant memory there before we had to say good-bye. And yes, as you can see in the above photographs, during the rehearsal I did wear the Carrie Bradshaw veil that my best friend, Kylee, made for my Sex and the City-themed bachelorette party.

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Because fifty people would be attending, I did not want our rehearsal dinner to be a formal, sit-down event. I wanted our friends and family to be able to mingle and get to know each other and a formal sit-down dinner would not have been very conducive to that. So, we asked Kristin and Matt, the owners of POP Champagne Bar, if they could create a cocktail party-type atmosphere for us and they ended up pulling it off beautifully! In fact, they couldn’t have facilitated it better had I given them a roadmap! They wound up giving us the entire front portion of the restaurant and had several different groupings of tables and chairs set up for people if they wanted to sit down, while servers walked around with tray-passed food. There was also a buffet table set up with wine and champagne and a sampling of the food so that guests could also help themselves. The evening turned out perfect! Not only did the GC and I get to walk around and talk to all of our closest friends, but most of our guests also spent the evening mingling and speaking with different groups of people, so, by the time the wedding rolled around, everyone had really gotten know each other, which was so incredibly cool! And while I realize that it is a (large) added expense, if you can swing it, I honestly cannot more highly recommend inviting all of your guests to the rehearsal dinner. Doing so made our special day that much more memorable.

Not to mention the food was ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE – and almost unbelievably reasonably priced. There are several different special events menu choices available at POP and we chose the most expensive one, which was only $12 per person! Included in that price were seven different menu items of our choosing. We ended up picking the deviled eggs with chive truffle, bacon onion, and blue cheese flavoring (my favorite), POPcorn chicken (pictured above to the right), chorizo and Anaheim chili meatballs, sliders with three different toppings including bacon-gorgonzola mayonnaise, Pasilla chili-chorizo, and goat cheese & date (the GC’s favorite), the flatbread pizza du jour, wild mushroom and goat cheese bruschetta, and olive, mushroom, and sun-dried tomato flavored tapenade crostini (pictured above to the left). And there was no shortage of food! Amazingly enough, after two and a half hours of being there, Matt informed us that we hadn’t even eaten fifty percent of the food we had paid for! LOL For dessert we picked the three-item menu at $6 per person which included chocolate-covered strawberries, a trio of homemade cookies, and the house-made churros served with three different dipping sauces – spiced warm chocolate, Dulce de leche, and creamy strawberry. Because the bottles of wine and champagne offered at POP are all on the pricier side, Matt offered to special order some lower-priced options for our rehearsal dinner. We told him the amount we wanted to spend per bottle and gave him free reign to choose the brands he thought best and he ended up picking out some spectacular options for us. So not only was the party absolutely fabulous – all of our guests were raving about both the atmosphere and the food – but it was also completely affordable! And while not yet a filming location (although it was almost chosen to be in the soon-to-be released No Strings Attached movie, which would have been just about the coolest thing ever!), POP has become something of a celebrity hangout as of late. Such stars as Mila Kunis, Denzel Washington, Marc Curry, and The Bachelor’s Jason Mesnick and Molly Malaney have all been spotted there and ’80s pop star Tiffany even threw herself a birthday party at the restaurant! Love it!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: POP Champagne & Dessert Bar is located at 33 East Union Street in Old Town Pasadena. You can visit the restaurant’s official website here.

December 10, 2010
La Quinta Resort & Club

Brace yourselves, my fellow stalkers, ‘cause today’s post is going to be a long one! As I mentioned yesterday, the Grim Cheaper and I spent this past weekend in Palm Springs and we came to do so thanks to an extremely serendipitous course of events. Last Wednesday night, I was curled up on my couch reading the December issue of fave publication Los Angeles Magazine when I came across an advertisement for La Quinta Resort & Club which stated that Frank Capra had written the screenplay for It’s A Wonderful Life while staying at the legendary hotel. In honor of the iconic movie, the resort was featuring an It’s a Wonderful Life-themed Christmas celebration each night throughout the month of December. I, of course, just about had a heart attack upon reading those words and immediately informed the GC that we would be making a trip out to the desert in the coming weeks. Well, not five minutes later, my mom called to inform me that she and my father were heading to Palm Springs for the weekend and that she had booked a room at . . . you guessed it – La Quinta Resort! Talk about the stars aligning! She asked if the GC and I would like to join them for the weekend and I started packing my bags pretty much right then and there.

The resort, which was originally named Hotel La Quinta meaning “country retreat”, was first opened in 1926 by Walter H. Morgan, heir to the Morgan Oyster Company fortune. Morgan had moved from his native San Francisco to the Palm Springs area in 1921 after purchasing 1,400 acres of land in what was then known as “Happy Hollow”. He decided to use that land to build an intimate and exclusive hotel where his rich and famous friends could be pampered while escaping the hustle and bustle of the city. He enlisted Pasadena-area architect Gordon Kaufman, who is most famous for constructing the Santa Anita Racetrack in Arcadia and the L.A. Times Building in Downtown Los Angeles, to design the hotel, which was to be modeled after a Spanish hacienda. The retreat, which consisted of 20 individual casitas, a restaurant, a lobby, and a nine-hole golf course (the Coachella Valley’s first golf course, in fact!) was constructed at a cost of a whopping $150,000. The resort officially opened to the public in January of 1927 – although Morgan had hosted a select group of his friends there in December of the previous year – and became enormously popular over the next decade and a half, mostly due to word of mouth among Los Angeles’ elite, and counted such stars as Greta Garbo, Clark Gable, Ginger Rogers, Bette Davis, Robert Montgomery, and Erroll Flynn as its guests. World War II sadly took its toll on the hotel, though, thanks to gas rationing which prevented people from traveling long distances. In 1942, the property closed its doors at which point the US Army took over and the Army Tank and Army Air Corps Division made use of the premises. After the war ended, the resort was sold and once again became a popular getaway for the rich and famous, as it remains to this day. A private airstrip even had to built on the property to accommodate those guests traveling by air. In 1982, the City of La Quinta was incorporated, becoming one of only two cities on the West Coast to be named in honor of a hotel. The other? Beverly Hills, which became incorporated in 1914 and was named after the Pink Palace, aka the Beverly Hills Hotel.

Today, La Quinta Resort & Club, which is a part of the Waldorf-Astoria Collection of hotels, is an absolutely BEAUTIFUL retreat consisting of 796 different rooms and suites, most of which are individual single-story dwellings or “casitas” situated around sprawling courtyards and pools. And even though the resort is staggeringly HUGE – besides having 796 rooms, it also currently boasts 23 tennis courts, 4 restaurants, a 23,000-square foot spa, 41 pools, 53 Jacuzzis, and 5 golf courses – somehow the property has managed to maintain an intimate, small hotel-feel. Because the rooms are spread across a vast 45 acres of land, the grounds are extremely quiet and private. So private, in fact, that it almost felt as if my parents, the GC, and I were the only people on the property the entire weekend. So love it!

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Upon check-in, we were given a booklet which not only detailed the hotel’s legendary history, but also listed many of the luminaries who have stayed there over the years. It was at that moment that I knew that La Quinta was my kind of place! Just a few of the stars who have vacationed there at one time or another include Drew Barrymore, Danny DeVito, Jim Belushi, Annette Bening, Sean Connery, Clint Eastwood, Kevin Costner, Simon Cowell, Casey Kasem, Diane Keaton, Ben Kingsley, Ginger Rogers (who got married on the property in 1953), Harvey Keitel, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Ray Charles, Harry Connick Jr., Neil Diamond, Cyndi Lauper, Justin Timberlake, Al Pacino, Matthew Perry, Tom Hanks, Katherine Hepburn, Adam Sandler, Katie Holmes, Gregory Hines, Shirley Temple, Mark Wahlberg, and Bruce Willis. I could literally go on and on and on! Several presidents have also checked into the hotel over the years, including George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Gerald Ford, Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, and Calvin Coolidge. And numerous sports stars have also stayed there, including Andre Agassi, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Roger Clemens, Roger Federer, Wayne Gretzky, Ken Griffey Jr., Magic Johnson, Joe Montana, Bruce Jenner, Michael Jordan, Jack Nicklaus, and Arnold Palmer. I was most excited to find out, though, that the King of Pop himself, Michael Jackson, had once visited the hotel!

Well, let me tell you, once I heard that MJ had vacationed there, I became ABSOLUTELY OBSESSED with finding out exactly which room he had stayed in. So, I immediately sought out the resort’s concierge and ended up speaking with a woman who literally could NOT have been nicer. Truth be told, though, EVERYONE at the hotel was INCREDIBLY nice! Anyway, the concierge told me that she was fairly certain the hotel had a detailed list of what particular rooms various celebrities had stayed in over the years and that she would try to track it down for me. And track it down she did! And even though Michael Jackson was not named on the list, due to the fact that it hadn’t been updated in quite a few years, the concierge did some research and managed to find out exactly where he had stayed during his visit – Room 735, otherwise known as Hacienda Grande. YAY!



So, I, of course, immediately dragged my parents right on over to stalk it. According to the concierge, Hacienda Grande is the resort’s largest room and boasts its own living room with a fireplace, an entertainment center, a dining room, kitchen area, a separate master bedroom, a private pool, a private Jacuzzi, a carport, and a private walled patio. Oh, how I wish we could have seen the inside of it!



The concierge also told us that Britney Spears had stayed in Room 225 – El Presidente – while at the resort. El Presidente is the resort’s presidential suite and it consists of a one-bedroom casita AND a one-bedroom guest house, along with a parlor room, a dining room, a kitchen area, two bathrooms, a fireplace, and a private patio, pool, and spa. Actors Jerry Lewis and Cliff Robertson have also stayed in Room 225 in the past.

The concierge also told me that in each room where a celebrity has stayed, the hotel has put a replica of that celebrity’s star from the Hollywood Walk of Fame on display. How incredibly cool is that? (And yes, you can call up and ask to stay in the “Drew Barrymore” or “Mark Wahlberg” room, for example.) My mom happened to book Casita Number 936 for our stay and I just about died upon opening the front door and seeing the above-pictured star on the wall. As it turns out, Robert Wagner had once stayed in our room! SO INCREDIBLY COOL! Especially since my grandma had gifted me with his autobiography Pieces of my Heart: A Life last Christmas and I absolutely LOVED it.



Casita 936 was absolutely gorgeous and consisted of a king bed and a queen-sized sleeper sofa, a fireplace, a HUGE bathroom . . .

. . . and an absolutely ENOURMOUS private walled patio which boasted gorgeous pool and mountain views. I seriously did not want to leave!

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, Frank Capra wrote It’s A Wonderful Life while staying at the resort. The legendary director/screenwriter first came to La Quinta in the late 1920s while writing the screenplay for It Happened One Night. After the movie won a staggering five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Screenplay, Capra became superstitious, calling the hotel his “Shangri-La for script-writing”, and returned there to pen many of his subsequent screenplays, including Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Lost Horizon, You Can’t Take It With You, and, of course, It’s A Wonderful Life. Frank, and his wife Lucille, always stayed in the same room while vacationing at the resort – Suite 136 in the San Anselmo Casita – and their room is now marked with both a memorial placard and a memorial bench. According to one of the staff members that I spoke with, the very typewriter that Frank used to write those famous scripts is still on display inside of the room! So incredibly cool! The staff member even offered to take me on a tour of Frank’s former casita and to show me the typewriter, but when he radioed to get a set of keys brought to him, was told it was occupied. Such a bummer!

As you can see in the above picture, the theme of the resort’s month-long winter celebration is apparent as soon as one sets foot on the property!

As you turn into the resort’s long, palm tree-lined driveway, you are immediately greeted with a large saying “You are now in Bedford Falls”, which looks EXACTLY like the sign that was featured in the movie It’s A Wonderful Life. So incredibly cool!

The resort’s Plaza area is awash with Christmas decorations . . .

. . . which, thanks to thousands of Tivoli lights, only gets more spectacular at night!

The pathway leading to the Plaza is decorated with hundreds of candle-lit luminarias, as you can see in the above photograph.

And there is also a HUGE, 43-foot white fir tree flanking the front of the property.

Best of all, though, is the fact that the hotel projects It’s A Wonderful Life onto the wall of the Plaza’s Salon de Fiesta each evening!

Oh, and the front of the resort is also rigged to “snow” each night, which you can kind of see in the above photograph. SO INCREDIBLY COOL!

Legend has it that Irving Berlin also penned the song “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas” while staying at the historic hotel and, as fate would have it, we happened to walk to into the lobby on Saturday night while some carolers were singing that very song. I cannot tell you how cool it was to be sitting in front of the resort’s roaring fireplace, hearing Berlin’s famous words being sung while looking out at the very landscape that inspired them!

I am fairly certain this goes without saying, but I honestly cannot recommend stalking La Quinta Resort & Club enough! It is a truly magical, truly unique place and I loved every minute of being there!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: La Quinta Resort & Club is located at 49-499 Eisenhower Drive in La Quinta. You can visit the hotel’s official website here. Frank Capra stayed in Room 136 in the San Anselmo Casita, Robert Wagner stayed in Room 936, Britney Spears stayed in Room 225 – El Presidente – and Michael Jackson stayed in Room 735 – Hacienda Grande.

December 9, 2010