Celebrity Houses – Page 3

January 11, 2011December 6, 2013

The Avalon Hotel – The Former Beverly Carlton Where Marilyn Monroe Once Lived

Another location that the Grim Cheaper and I stalked while in the Beverly Hills area two weekends ago was the historic Avalon Hotel, where my girl Marilyn Monroe once lived for a period of about three years back in the 1950’s. During that time, the property was a residential motel known as the Beverly Carlton that was first opened in 1948 and was designed by legendary graphic designer Alvin Lustig. And while the hotel was actually considered to be a moderately priced accommodation for its time, besides Marilyn, such stars as Mae West, Lucille Ball, and Desi Arnaz often stayed there. In the 70s and 80s the hotel became rundown, underwent several remodels, and was transformed into both a retirement home and an apartment complex. In 1998, property developer Brad Korzen purchased it and enlisted his now-wife, Kelly Wearstler of KWID Designs, to give the place an extensive reboot. In doing so, Wearstler and her team researched the original design elements of the hotel, which they obtained from photographs taken by famed photographer Julius Shulman for a 1948 Forum Magazine article, and it was those original designs that ended up serving as the inspiration for the entire remodel.

The result is that the property looks VERY much the same today as it did back in the 1950’s when Marilyn lived there! Love it!

I first learned about the Avalon a few years back when Cold Case star Kathryn Morris posed for an InStyle Magazine photo shoot on the hotel grounds. I became quite obsessed with the Avalon Hotel sign pictured above, but had assumed it was a fake that had been created for the shoot. Looking back, why I never thought to Google the terms “Avalon Hotel” is absolutely beyond me, but as they say hindsight is 20/20. Then last Christmas, I was flipping through Southwest Airline’s Spirit Magazine while on the plane ride home from visiting my grandmother in Reno, when I happened upon an article about the Avalon and noticed a picture of that same unique sign from the InStyle photographs. Well, I just about fell over upon realizing that the Avalon was in fact a real life hotel and immediately added its address to my ever-growing To-Stalk list. It wasn’t until much later, though, while doing some cyber-stalking on the internet, that I discovered that my girl Marilyn had once called the place home. So incredibly cool!

According to the super nice desk clerk that we spoke with while stalking the place, MM actually lived at the Beverly Carlton during several different periods of her life – first in 1948 and then again in 1951 through 1952, for a total of about three years time. The hotel is comprised of three different buildings – the Olympic, the Beverly, and the Canon – and the desk clerk informed us that Marilyn lived in Room 305 of the Beverly building, which is pictured above, although I have read some conflicting reports online, so I am not sure if that information is entirely accurate. What is for certain, though, is that during her tenure at the hotel, Marilyn rented a one-room studio apartment, which you “>can see a photograph of here. The starlet posed for numerous photo shoots while living on the premises – both inside of her actual studio and next to the hotel’s hour glass-shaped pool. You can see many of the photographs from those particular shoots here. I cannot tell you how cool it was to look through those pictures and see Marilyn standing in a location that still looks EXACTLY the same today as it did when she posed there almost six decades ago.

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Celebrities who have been spotted at the Avalon in more recent years include Jacinda Barrett, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jessica Biel, Justin Timberlake, Guy Pearce, Eva Longoria, William Baldwin, Selma Blair, Jonah Hill, Kate Hudson, Ryan Phillipe, Abbie Cornish, Terrance Howard, Tilda Swinton, Superbad’s Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Grey’s Anatomy’s Jessica Capshaw, Numb3rs’ David Krumholtz, House, M.D.’s Jennifer Morrison and Jesse Spencer, Entourage’s Kevin Connolly, sisters Hilary and Haylie Duff, and 90210’s Shenae Grimes, Michael Steger, and Ryan Eggold.

The front desk clerk also let us know that in the Season 4 episode of I Love Lucy titled “L.A. At Last”, the Avalon stood in for the Beverly Palms Hotel where Lucy Ricardo (aka Lucille Ball), Ricky Ricardo (aka Desi Arnaz), Ethel Mertz (aka Vivian Vance), and Fred Mertz (aka William Frawley) stayed while vacationing in Los Angeles. Lucy and Ricky’s hotel room set from that episode is now on display at the Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Center in Jamestown, New York, which I think is just about the coolest thing ever!

The Season 5 episode of Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List titled “Paris is My New BFF”, in which Paris Hilton guest-starred, was filmed on location at the Avalon’s pool area.

And 90210 star Jessica Lowndes recently posed for Zooey Magazine’s October 2010 issue at the Avalon, which you can see photographs of here. You can also watch a behind-the-scenes video of the shoot by clicking above.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Avalon Hotel, aka the former Beverly Carlton Hotel where Marilyn Monroe used to live, is located at 9400 West Olympic Boulevard in Beverly Hills. Marilyn Monroe lived in the hotel’s Beverly Building, the entrance of which is located at 412 South Beverly Drive. You can visit the hotel’s official website here.

December 14, 2010December 6, 2013

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 8, 2010December 8, 2010

The Kaufmann House – One of the World’s Most Famous Houses

I thought I’d take another break from my wedding blogging today to write about a location that has occupied a spot at the very top of my “To-Stalk” list for over two years now, but had, for whatever reason, eluded me up until this past weekend when the Grim Cheaper and I headed to Palm Springs for a little pre-Christmas getaway. While we were there, I made it a point to finally, finally stalk what is known as one of the most iconic and, perhaps, most famous houses in the entire world; a residence that is as well-known, if not more so, than the White House, the Playboy Mansion, Neverland Ranch, and Fallingwater all put together, architecturally speaking at least – Richard Neutra’s legendary Kaufmann house.

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The Kaufmann house was originally built in 1946 by world-renowned mid-century modernist architect Richard Neutra. Amazingly enough, the residence was commissioned by Edgar J. Kaufmann Sr., the very same man who also commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to construct another of the world’s most famous houses – the property known as Fallingwater in Mill Run, Pennsylvania. It is amazing to me that two of the most iconic dwellings in the entire world were constructed for the same man, especially since they were designed by different architects. I can’t even imagine owning one of the residences, let alone both of them! But I digress. Anyway, Neutra designed the International-style Kaufmann House, or Kaufmann Desert House as it is also known, out of steel, aluminum, glass, and stone at a cost of $295,000. Famed photographer Julius Schulman’s 1947 images of the home turned the place into an architectural landmark virtually overnight, but, sadly, after Kaufmann’s death in 1955, the property sat vacant for several years. In the time period that followed, the pinwheel-shaped dwelling went through a succession of different owners – singer Barry Manilow even occupied the place for a few years – and a slew of unsightly renovations. In 1993, the Kaufmann House was purchased for a cool $1.5 million by an architectural historian named Beth Harris and her husband, an investment manager named Brent. The two quickly set about a massive painstaking and costly restoration of the entire property, bringing it back to its original glory. In a mind-boggling-bit of trivia, though, according to an October 2007 New York Times article, at the time the duo bought the residence, it had not only been on the market for over three and a half years, but was being listed as a “teardown”!

The Harrises had not actually originally set out to buy the home, but had been stalking the property (so love it!) when Brent noticed a “For Sale” sign situated among the overgrown foliage. The purchase turned out to be a fateful one, though, being that the couple’s decision to restore the residence is largely credited with setting into motion the massive mid-century modernist restoration movement that Palm Springs is now known for.

The Kaufmann House is not only considered to be one of Richard Neutra’s finest designs, but also one of the most important examples of mid-century modernist architecture in the entire world and one of the most publicized homes in architectural history. The property has been featured in countless magazines and periodicals over its 64-year history, including Palm Springs Life, Time, and Life Magazine, as well as in numerous architectural books. In 1996, it was designated a Class 1 Historic Site by the Palm Springs Historic Site Preservation Board.

When the Harrises divorced in 2007, they decided to sell their beloved property. But a unique house deserves a unique sale, so it was put up for purchase via an auction at Christie’s. Most unusual about the sale, though, was the fact that Christie’s categorized the home not as a residence or a piece of property, but as a work of art! The house sold at auction for a whopping $19.1 million, but fell out of escrow shortly thereafter. It hit the market once again a few months later, this time as a regular real estate sale, for just under $12.9 million, but I don’t believe it ever sold and it looks as if it has since been taken off the market.

The 5-bedroom, 6-bathroom, 3,200-square foot home, which sits on over 2 full acres of land, features floor-to-ceiling sliding (or “disappearing”) glass walls, indoor-outdoor living space, a wall of moveable aluminum sheets that can either be closed to keep out the sun or opened to take advantage of the mid-afternoon breeze, a second-story “gloriette” or outdoor sleeping area, a separate viewing platform, a large pool, a tennis court, and striking mountain views. You can check out some fabulous interior photographs of the Kauffman House here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Kaufmann house is located at 470 West Vista Chino in Palm Springs.

November 5, 2010June 16, 2011

The Canyon Country Store Where Jennifer Aniston Used to Work

I just recently finished reading Jennifer: The Unauthorized Biography, a FABULOUS book about my girl Jen Aniston written by Sean Smith, a famed British biographer who has also penned bestselling bios about J.K Rowling, Britney Spears, and Justin Timberlake. According to the brief blurb about Smith featured on the book’s first page, the U.K. newspaper The Independent once dubbed the author a “fearless chronicler” and I honestly couldn’t agree with that sentiment more. The guy is a meticulous researcher and, while you wouldn’t think there would be much information about Jen that I didn’t already know, Smith managed to dig up a few factoids that had me spinning with excitement – one of which being that the actress once worked at the Canyon Country Store – a deli/market in Laurel Canyon – for a few months before becoming famous. Smith happened upon the market by chance, actually. At the time she worked there, Jen was living just up the road from the store in a home at the end of Ridgemont Drive and, while venturing up to her former abode while doing research for his book, Smith decided to stop in for a bite to eat at the small grocery store. While there, he happened to ask the owner if Jen had ever frequented the place and was shocked to discover that she had actually once worked there! According to Tommy, the market’s longtime owner, Jen did a little bit of everything at the store – from working the cash register to stocking shelves to making sandwiches at the deli counter. When she started landing jobs in the entertainment industry, she quit working at the market, but would still pop in regularly to buy cigarettes and other essentials. Well, as you can imagine, I just about died upon learning that information and immediately dragged my husband right on out to stalk the place.

The Canyon Country Store has actually been around since the early 1900s. At the time it was known as the Bungalow Inn Lodge and area hunters would congregate there each night to host picnics. The Inn burned down in 1929 and was subsequently rebuilt out of a more substantial brick material. A kitchen was added to the premises a few years later, whereupon food was served to hungry patrons. The property eventually evolved into a grocery store and then finally into the delicatessen/market/fine wine shop/coffee bar that it is today. During the ‘60s, the store became a regular hangout for Jim Morrison and his musician friends, who all lived nearby and would often gather together on the market’s front patio for spontaneous jam sessions. Everyone from Joni Mitchell to Three Dog Night to Frank Zappa has performed live at the market at one time or another. In his famous song “Love Street”, Jim sings of “this store where the creatures meet”. That store is none other than the Canyon Country Store and “Love Street” is actually Rothdale Trail, the street that runs behind the market which Jim and his longtime girlfriend Pamela Courson referred to as “Love Street” because of the many hippies and love children that would walk down it each day.

I had the pleasure of meeting Tommy while we were stalking the Canyon Country Store and, let me tell you, the guy could NOT have been nicer!!! Not only did he take us on our own little private tour of the place, but when I asked if I could snap some photographs, he suggested that I get behind the main counter and pretend to use the cash register like Jen used to do when she worked there! Well, as you can imagine, I just about had a heart attack upon hearing his offer and immediately jumped behind the counter to snap a quick pic. So incredibly cool! He also told us that Jen was an amazingly nice person and that she truly listened when speaking with people, which is a very rare quality indeed!

Tommy also informed us that when Jen was married to Brad Pitt, the two would often stop by to say hi and to grab a bite to eat at Pace Italian Restaurant, which is located directly below the market and is a place I am going to have to stalk in the very near future!

Because so many celebs live in Laurel Canyon, the Country Store is regularly frequented by stars. Sophia Loren, Jessica Biel, and Pamela Anderson have all been spotted there in the past and actress Christina Applegate (pictured above) is apparently a regular.

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And the store is also a filming location! The market was featured at the very beginning of the 1980 horror movie The Fog, although it looked quite different at that time. You can see a photograph of the market as it looked during the ’80s here. The Canyon Country Store has also been featured in the movies Breezy, Rainbow Drive, and the aptly-titled Laurel Canyon – none of which I have ever seen. 🙁

Tommy was also nice enough to walk us down to Jim Morrison and Pamela Courson’s former house, which is located directly behind the Country Store. You can check out some great interior photographs of the home, which is currently for sale for a cool $1,199,000, here.

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I, of course, had to grab a bite to eat while I was stalking the market, which the Grim Cheaper was not too happy about, especially when he discovered that the deli sandwich he ordered was going to cost him $8.99. He later said it was one of the best sandwiches he had ever eaten, though, and had to concede that it was worth every penny. 🙂 I opted for the market’s chicken salad, which was simply AMAZING! Honestly, some of the best chicken salad I’ve ever had in my entire life, and that means a lot coming from me as I am VERY picky about my chicken. I honestly cannot recommend eating at the Canyon Country Store enough – it is FABULOUS!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Canyon Country Store is located at 2108 Laurel Canyon Boulevard in Laurel Canyon. Jim Morrison and Pamela Courson’s former home is located just behind the store at 8021 Rothdell Trail. You can order Sean Smith’s biography of Jennifer Aniston here.

October 18, 2010October 15, 2010

The House Where Matt Damon and Ben Affleck Lived While Writing “Good Will Hunting”

A few months back, Mike, from MovieShotsLA, was doing some research on the town of Eagle Rock when he came across a Wikipedia page which mentioned that Matt Damon and Ben Affleck had lived in the Los Angeles neighborhood – in a home on Hill Drive – while writing the screenplay for their 1997 Oscar-winning movie Good Will Hunting. I found it a bit hard to believe that Matt and Ben, two twenty-something actors trying to make it in “the biz”, would have been living in a San Gabriel Valley suburb and not in the heart of Hollywood, but as it turns out Ben had previously attended Occidental College, which is located in Eagle Rock, for a brief period of time, so he would have been familiar with the area. According to IMDB, of his living situation at the time, Ben said, “I lived all over the place. I lived in Hollywood, then I moved. [Matt Damon] and I got money from School Ties and we blew it all in a couple of months. We made $35,000 or $40,000 each and thought we were rich. And we were shocked later on to find out how much we owed in taxes. We were appalled: $15,000! What? But we rented this house on the beach in Venice and 800 people came and stayed with us and got drunk. Then we ran out of money and had to get an apartment. It was like everything was exciting. So we lived in Glendale and Eagle Rock and we lived in Hollywood, West Hollywood, Venice, by the Hollywood Bowl, all over the place. We’d get thrown out of some places or we’d have to upgrade or downgrade depending on who had money.” So, while Mike and I were in Eagle Rock this past Monday, we decided to try to track down the exact house where they twosome had lived while writing their famous screenplay. As it turns out, it wasn’t too hard to locate. Using my Blackberry, I fairly quickly came across this Curbed LA Article about an Eagle Rock home for sale in which a reader had commented that it was “rumored to be the house where Matt Damon and Ben Affleck allegedly wrote Good Will Hunting”. I then Googled the property’s address and found countless other websites which further substantiated that the twosome had once called the place home. So, we immediately headed right on over to stalk the place.

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Come to find out, Mike and I had actually already stalked this location earlier that same day! We had come across the Tudor/fairytale-style home while driving to another locale in Eagle Rock a few hours prior and Mike immediately noticed its odd gate and even odder architecture, so he stopped to snap some pics. When we pulled back up to the property a few hours later after finding Matt and Ben’s former address online, we both just about died!

Matt and Ben’s former residence, which is known as both the ‘”Brauch House” and “Ma Castle” in architectural circles, was originally built in 1923 by the architecture team of Egasse & Brauch. Of the design, Brauch, who built the house as his personal residence, said, “In this particular instance, Norman lines, such as were left by the descendents of the Vikings, following their peregrination of the ante-medieval period, were the main source of inspiration.” Apparently, when it was first built, the interior of the home featured numerous wall murals depicting the Norse warriors in action. The Brauch House is actually made up of two separate dwellings – a 4 bedroom, 2 bathroom, 2,187-square foot main house . . .

. . . and a detached guest cottage which is located directly behind it. And while I can’t say with absolute certainty that Matt and Ben ever actually lived on the premises, it is my best guess that if they did, the two stars, who were struggling financially at the time, most likely lived in the guest property and not in the main house.

Matt had originally written Good Will Hunting as a play while in a creative writing class when he was a student at Harvard University. After landing a role in the 1992 film Geronimo: An American Legend, Damon dropped out of college and moved to Los Angeles to pursue his acting career full time. He eventually moved in with his long-time friend Ben, at one point crashing on his couch for an extended period of time. One fateful night, Matt showed the play to Ben and the two decided to turn it into a movie in which they would star. They ended up selling the screenplay to Miramax a few years later for a reported $600,000 and the rest, as they say, is history! You can see some great interior photographs of the Brauch House on the Curbed LA website here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Matt Damon and Ben Affleck (supposedly) lived at 2327 Hill Drive in Eagle Rock while writing the screenplay for Good Will Hunting.

October 8, 2010October 7, 2010

The “Poison Ivy” Mansion

Back in early August, Drew Barrymore aficionado Ashley, from the Drewseum website, challenged me to find the large pink mansion belonging to the Cooper family – Sylvie (aka Sara Gilbert), Darryl (aka Tom Skerritt), and Georgie (aka Cheryl Ladd) – in the 1992 thriller Poison Ivy. But because I was just a few weeks away from my upcoming wedding at the time, I didn’t get a chance to do any research on it. Thankfully though, fellow stalker Terri stepped in and managed to track down the location for us! Terri had discovered a message board thread on the IMDB Poison Ivy page on which a commenter had stated that the Cooper mansion was located in a “section of Los Feliz called the Oaks”. She then used Google Street View and managed to track down the massively large residence, which amazingly enough looks very much the same today as it did back in 1992 when the movie was filmed! Thank you, Terri!

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In real life, the 13,000-square foot, 5 bedroom, 9 bathroom home, which sits on over a half acre of land, was first built in 1926 and, according to my buddy E.J. over at The MovielandDirectory, belonged to Geena Davis in the early 90s, although that is a claim that the Thelma & Louise actress denies. The Geena Davis rumor was actually featured in a small blurb in the September 1997 issue of Los Angeles Magazine, which states that the extensive property was purchased for $1.3 million in 1992 by the “Sav-On Trust” (believed to be created by Geena) and that an extensive remodel of the residence was subsequently begun. After the roof, windows, and doors had been removed from the estate, though, the remodel was abruptly stopped and the property left in ruins. At one point, squatters even moved into the residence, which is located in a very affluent neighborhood. Sav-On Trust sold the decrepit property to a new owner in 1995 for $1,050,000, with the trust actually carrying the majority of the loan. When the new buyer defaulted on his payments, the home went into foreclosure, with Geena still denying that she had anything to do with the property. Why she didn’t want to be associated with the home, I don’t know, but she doesn’t have much of a leg to stand on being that the trustee of the Sav-On Trust is none other than Greg Kress – Geena Davis’ business manager. Hmmmm. Anyway, the remodel on the property was finally completed in the late 1990s and the mansion is absolutely beautiful today. The home, which you can see some fabulous interior photographs of here, currently boasts a 1,000-bottle wine cellar, a private gym, a game room, an infinity pool, a movie theatre, TWO elevators, a cigar room, a grotto, a spa, a library, and striking views of Los Angeles. Talk about living the high life!

The Cooper mansion figured quite prominently in Poison Ivy and both the interior and the exterior of the property appeared in the flick.

The mansion’s garage area . . .

. . . and main balcony were also used repeatedly in the movie, although both look quite a bit different now. An addition to the house has since been added on to the garage area and a turret has been added next to the balcony.

The exterior stairwell that was formerly located next to the garage has also since been removed.

And the stairs that led to the front of the property in the movie have now been replaced by a sloping driveway. Even with all of those changes, though, the home still looks almost exactly the same today as it did in Poison Ivy. And I so love that it is still almost the same color pink!

Randomly enough, just a few days after stalking it, I spotted this very same location while watching the pilot episode of the new series Law & Order: Los Angeles. The residence showed up in the very beginning of the episode, which was titled “Hollywood”, as the burgled home of teenaged actor Colin Blakely (aka Travis Van Winkle) . Being that I had just stalked the place a few days beforehand, I literally just about fell over when I saw it.

Especially when I noticed the home’s real life address plaque pass by in the background of one of the scenes. So darn cool!

The real life interior of the estate was also used in the episode.

Big THANK YOU to Ashley, from the Drewseum website, for challenging me to find this location and to Terri for actually tracking it down! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Poison Ivy mansion is located at 2208 West Live Oak Drive in Los Feliz.

September 27, 2010September 24, 2010

Liberace’s Former Home

A couple of weeks ago, while doing some stalking in the Valley, I became a bit obsessed with locating the home where legendary pianist Liberace lived back in the 1950s. I first heard about this location, ironically enough, from comedian and Whose Line Is It Anyway? star Ryan Stiles, who also owned the property at one point in time. I got to know Ryan – and several other members of The Drew Carey Show cast and crew – after some extra work I did on the series in the summer of 2000. For about a year I would fairly regularly meet up with “the Drew Crew”, as I liked to call them, after the show taped every Tuesday night at the now-defunct Dalt’s Grill in Burbank. During one of those outings, Ryan mentioned that he lived in a Sherman Oaks-area home that had once belonged to Liberace and that the home had a piano-shaped swimming pool in the backyard, which I thought was just about the coolest thing ever! Being that that conversation took place almost a decade ago, though, I’m not quite sure what made me think of it two weeks ago, but for whatever reason, as my fiancé and I drove through the Valley my mind flashed on that piano-shaped pool and I immediately pulled out my blackberry and started cyberstalking the place. I fairly quickly stumbled upon this Los Angeles Times article from July of 2007 which listed the address of Liberace’s former house and immediately dragged my new husband right on over to stalk it.

Liberace himself designed the L-shaped house, which, of course, was decorated with a piano motif throughout, in 1953 and he and his mother, Francis, moved in that very same year. As his fame grew, fans would reportedly hop the fence into his backyard to catch a glimpse of the entertainer at home and the property was eventually deemed far too accessible for a man who was, at the time, the highest-paid entertainer in the entire world. Liberace moved out of the 4-bedroom, 4-bathroom, 3,907-square foot home sometime in or around 1958 and migrated to the Palm Springs area, while Francis stayed behind. Amazingly enough, the property still looks much the same today as it did when Liberace first built it over 57 years ago. So darn cool!

The residence made headlines in July of 1957, when Francis was attacked by two masked men while throwing away trash in the garage. At the time, Liberace was involved in a $20 million libel lawsuit against Confidential Magazine which had featured a recent cover story insinuating that the entertainer was gay. Liberace had given a deposition earlier that day and it is widely believed that the attack on his mother was a direct result of the lawsuit, although the perpetrators were never identified.

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Sadly, the piano-shaped pool that I had so loved hearing about from Ryan Stiles cannot be seen from the street. But thankfully it is visible via Bing’s aerial views and was also featured in a Life Magazine photoshoot from 1954. Oh, what I wouldn’t give to see that pool in person!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Liberace – and Ryan Stiles’ – former home is located at 15405 Valley Vista Boulevard in Sherman Oaks.

June 2, 2010June 1, 2010

The Malibu House from “Spanglish”

A few weeks ago, fellow stalker Nick was driving along the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu with his family when he happened to pass by a home that looked extremely familiar to him. He immediately asked the driver of the car to pull over so that he could get a better look and, upon closer inspection, realized that the property was none other than the spot where John and Deborah Clasky (aka Adam Sandler and Tea Leoni, respectively) spent the summer with their family and their spunky housekeeper Flor Moreno (aka Paz Vega) in the 2004 dramedy Spanglish. Nick emailed me as soon as he returned home that day to let me know the good news and, let me tell you, I just about passed out from excitement as I had been looking for the Spanglish house for just about as long as I could remember. Yay! So, the very next weekend I dragged my fiancé out to the ‘Bu to finally do some Spanglish stalking!

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I am very happy to report that the Spanglish house looks much the same in person as it did onscreen in the movie. In real life, the Clasky’s Malibu home, which was built in 1934, boasts 5 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, and a whopping 3,418 square feet of living space. And, according to my friend E.J. over at the Movieland Directory, the place also has a celebrity connection as it once belonged to “Pretty Woman” singer Roy Orbison.

Unfortunately, we were strapped for time the day we stalked the Spanglish house and were not able to pop around back to sneak a peek at the beach-side of the property, which appeared quite a few times in the movie.

But, as you can see in these photographs of the home from a Malibu rental website (the Spanglish house’s listing can be found in the third row and third column of the page), the real life interior was also used in the filming. According to the website, the home is currently available as a summer rental for a whopping $45,000 per month!

Just two doors down from the Clasky’s summer home is the house where Deborah went searching for a translator for Flor after first arriving in Malibu. And while the property has definitely been modernized in recent years, it is still very recognizable from Spanglish. According to fave website Big Time Listings, that home also has a celebrity connection as it formerly belonged to makeup artist and special effects master Stan Winston.

Big THANK YOU to Nick for finding these locations! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Clasky’s summer home from Spanglish is located at 21628 Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu. The house where Deborah finds a translator for Flor is located two doors down at 21622 Pacific Coast Highway.

April 30, 2010April 29, 2010

Carol Burnett’s Childhood Home

A few weeks ago, fellow stalker Lavonna gifted me with a copy of one of her all-time favorite books, Carol Burnett’s autobiography entitled One More Time: A Memoir. I finished reading the tome this past week and, let me tell you, I absolutely loved it! Even though I’ve never been a huge Carol Burnett fan – not that I had anything against the comedienne, I just didn’t really know all that much about her – I literally couldn’t put the book down. It’s a fascinating, and somewhat heartbreaking, story about growing up in Depression-era Hollywood with an alcoholic mother and an alcoholic father and a very loving, if at times off-beat, grandmother. One of the things I liked best about the book was the fact that in it Carol dolled out quite a few addresses, one of which being the Hollywood apartment building where the actress lived for over a decade during her formative years. Carol was actually born in Texas and spent the first few years of her life with her grandmother “Nanny” and her great-grandmother “Groggy” in a home located at 2803 West Commerce Street in San Antonio. Her parents, Louise “Lou” Burnett and Joseph “Jody” Burnett, had moved to Los Angeles in the early 1930s in order to make it in the movie industry, leaving their infant daughter behind in the Lone Star State. Lou and Jody ended up divorcing a few years later and didn’t send for Carol until she was seven, at which point she and her grandmother said goodbye to Texas and headed West where they moved into a one bedroom studio apartment in a building named the Hollywood Arms. So, of course, as soon as I finished the book, I had to run right out and stalk the place.

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Because Carol had been raised pretty much since infancy by her grandmother, she chose to stay with Nanny and not her mother upon moving into the Hollywood Arms. Nanny and Carol settled into Room 102, a studio apartment on the building’s first floor, just a few doors down from Lou. The tiny room, which Carol described as a “12 foot by 16 foot box”, was comprised of a kitchenette, a tiny bathroom, and one single Murphy bed, which is where Nanny slept. Carol bunked on a small couch in a corner of the room and used the shower rod in the bathroom as her closet. During her childhood years, she spent quite a bit of time on the building’s roof, staring up at the Hollywood sign and dreaming of one day becoming a famous actress. She would also often play “movie star” on the roof with her best friend and neighbor, Illomay Sills. Carol and Nanny remained residents of Room 102 for the next fourteen years, until 1954, when the wanna-be actress migrated to New York to pursue a career on Broadway. Nanny stayed behind at the Arms until Lou passed away in 1959, at which point Carol moved her to a bigger apartment a few blocks away on Cherokee Avenue.

With all of the changes in Hollywood in recent years, I wasn’t sure if Carol’s former apartment building would still be standing today. But, thankfully, it is! The 49-unit building, which was originally built in the 1920’s, was purchased by a real estate development company named StarPoint Properties in 2003 and underwent an extensive renovation and restoration process shortly thereafter. And, while the exterior supposedly looks much the same today as it did when Carol lived there back in the ‘40s, the building and surrounding area are much more upscale now than they were then. You can see some current interior photographs of the building here.

And, let me tell you, I just about died when I noticed that one of the hallway windows was open while I was stalking the building yesterday, allowing me a quick glimpse of the interior. I could only just barely see the entrance to Room 104, which I am assuming is located just two doors down from Carol and Nanny’s old studio, which, unfortunately, was not visible. Oh, how I would have loved to have seen the doorway to Room 102! And, believe me, I tried, but my neck just wouldn’t crane that far. 😉

In 1985, long after she had become a star and her beloved grandmother had passed away, Carol returned to the Hollywood Arms and Room 102 to revisit old memories. The new occupants graciously left the premises for an hour, so she could spend a bit of time in her childhood home. Of the experience she said, “You think when you’re gonna go back that it’s going to look different . . . maybe smaller, because you’re taller, I don’t know, but this is just the way I remembered it: the same walls, the same size, the same colors.” The above photograph was taken during her visit in 1985.

She also stipulated that day that “this’ll be the last time I’ll ever see it, I know that . . . ”, but, in fact, she was wrong. In 1998, Carol and her daughter, Carrie Hamilton, began a five year process of co-writing a play based on Carol’s childhood. They named the play “Hollywood Arms” in honor of Carol’s former home. In 2001, while in the midst of the writing process, Carol went back to the Arms building and was shocked to find the place undergoing StarPoints Properties massive renovation. When she discovered that Room 102 was vacant, she immediately rented it to use as her writing office. Prior to moving in, Carol and her daughter burned sage in every corner of the tiny studio in the hopes of removing the bad spirits and sad memories. “Hollywood Arms” went on to become a hit, but sadly Carrie passed away in January of 2002, a few months before the show opened on Broadway. You can read more about the play here.

Big THANK YOU to Lavonna for giving me One More Time: A Memoir, which led me to write this post. 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Hollywood Arms, aka Carol Burnett’s childhood home, is located at 6434 Yucca Street in Hollywood. Carol and her beloved Nanny lived in Room 102.

April 8, 2010April 7, 2010

Isabel’s House from the “Bewitched” Movie

Last week, fellow stalker Tony, from the On Location in Los Angeles flickr page, asked for my help in tracking down the residence belonging to Isabel Bigelow (aka Nicole Kidman) and her loyal cat, Lucinda, in the 2005 movie adaptation of the television series Bewitched. So, I, of course, immediately called upon “The Team” – aka fellow stalkers Owen, Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and Chas, from ItsFilmedThere – to see if they could help me find it. Which they, of course, did! Owen fairly quickly came upon fave website Hooked on Houses’ awesome write up about the cottage which stated that it was located somewhere in L.A.’s San Fernando Valley. And because the house’s address number – 4427 – was also visible in the movie, we had two very strong leads to follow. Owen immediately began searching the Valley – once he figured out exactly what part of Los Angeles constituted “The Valley”, something I have still not yet been able to do 😉 – for houses with a “4427” address number and voila, it wasn’t very long before he found the correct one. YAY! Thank you, Owen! So, bright and early yesterday morning, I headed out to stalk the place.

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In Bewitched, Isabel discovers the house pictured above during a walk and immediately decides it would be the perfect place to start her new, “normal”, non-witch life in which she has vowed to stop using magic. She does, of course, continue to use magic – fairly soon after making the decision not to, in fact – and, with a simple twitch of her nose, has a “for rent” sign put on the residence’s front lawn and immediately leases the place and moves right in. It’s not very hard to see why producers chose to use the charming colonial style cottage featured in the movie, as it is extremely picturesque and idyllic. It’s exactly the type of place I’d imagine a witch seeking normalcy to want to live. Heck, I would LOVE to live there, myself!

As you can see in the above screen captures and photographs, Isabel’s house looks almost EXACTLY the same in person as it appeared onscreen, right down to the address plaque, white front porch bench, and red front door. Love it!

In fact, the only differences I noticed in real life were the absence of Isabel’s single-car garage and the shutters on the window just to the left of it.

As you can see in the above photographs, that single-car garage is not there in real life. There is a detached two-car garage located directly behind and to the right of the house, though, which leads me to believe that Isabel’s garage was simply a facade that producers had built solely for the filming. And, according to Hooked on Houses, only the exterior of the real life residence was used in Bewitched. The absolutely adorable interiors, sadly, only ever existed on a studio soundstage.

On an ironic side note – According to IMDB’s Bewitched Trivia Page, in real life Isabel’s home was once owned by Bewitched director Nora Ephron’s parents’ friends. Ephron had visited the residence numerous times during her childhood and when it came time to scout locations for the movie, she remembered the house and thought it would be perfect to use as her lead character’s abode. What Nora didn’t realize, however, was that her parents’ friends who once owned the house were none other than Larry Berns and his wife, Sandra Gould – an actress who is best known for playing nosy neighbor Gladys Kravitz on the Bewitched television series. Cue the Disney music, ‘cause it truly is a small world after all!

Big THANK YOU to Owen for finding this location! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Isabel’s house from the Bewitched movie is located at 4427 Radford Avenue in Studio City.