Don’t forget to read my latest post for L.A.mag.com, about the Griswold house from National Lampoon’s Vacation. My articles typically get published in the late morning/early afternoon hours.
The Guesthouse Hotel from “National Lampoon’s Vacation”
Once fellow stalker Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, tracked down the Town House Motel from National Lampoon’s Vacation (which I blogged about here) a couple of weeks back, he set about trying to find the hexagon-shaped pool where Clark W. Griswold (Chevy Chase) went skinny dipping with The Girl in the Ferrari (Christie Brinkley) in the 1983 flick. After, as he said, “putting in more Google search permutations and combinations than I can count,” he came across the locale right in the heart of Norwalk, of all places. As you can imagine, I was absolutely chomping at the bit to stalk it as soon as he gave me the address (I was thisclose to driving from Palm Springs to Norwalk for the day), but did not manage to make it out there until last week when the Grim Cheaper and I were in L.A. for a brief visit.
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While sleuthing – and only after looking at a lot of results pages – Owen was led to this Panoramio photograph of a phone booth in Norwalk, on which a commenter named Joe Gattuso happened to mention that he was fairly certain a nearby hotel named the Guesthouse International was used in the filming of National Lampoon’s Vacation. So Owen did a Google search for images of the Guesthouse pool and, sure enough, it was the spot where Clark had skinny dipped. Woot woot!
The Griswold clan – Clark and his wife Ellen (Beverly D’Angelo), son Rusty (Anthony Michael Hall) and daughter Audrey (Dana Barron) – check into the Guesthouse International, which is said to be located about ten hours outside of Los Angeles, towards the end of National Lampoon’s Vacation. While there, Clark and Ellen get into a fight and Clark winds up heading to the hotel bar alone, where he encounters The Girl in the Ferrari. Sadly, the Guesthouse’s lounge area has been completely remodeled in recent years, according to the super nice hotel employee that I spoke with, and no longer looks anything at all like it did in Vacation. Boo! (It was closed at the time that I was stalking the hotel, so I was not able to get any photographs of it in its current state.)
After a few drinks, Clark and The Girl in the Ferrari decide to go skinny dipping in the hotel’s pool (“This is crazy! This is crazy! This is crazy!”) and end up waking up all of the guests, including Clark’s family, while doing so.
I am fairly certain that the area where the scene took place is right about where the Jacuzzi (which was not there when the movie was filmed) is today.
At the time of the filming, the hotel was known as the Saddleback Inn. You can see a photograph of it from that era here. Amazingly enough, despite a name change (that resulted from what I am guessing was a change of ownership), the place still looks pretty much exactly the same today as it did in 1982 when Vacation was filmed. Seriously, how cool is that? Over three decades later and the place is still completely recognizable! LOVE IT!
I am fairly certain that one of the hotel’s actual rooms was also used in the filming, but because the hotel interiors have since been updated, it is impossible to tell. You can see some photographs of what the rooms currently look like here.
Today, the Guesthouse International Hotel boasts 230 rooms, 8 acres, 6 buildings, 2 pools, 1 Jacuzzi – and a partridge in a pear tree. 
According to the Desert USA website, President Ronald Reagan even stayed there at one point in time.
I was absolutely floored to see the pride that the Guesthouse takes in its cinematic history. Signs stating that Vacation was filmed on the premises are posted throughout the lobby and by the pool. I so wish more hotels would do this sort of thing!
The super nice employee that I spoke with also informed me that the lobby area was used in the filming of the Lifetime movie Drew Peterson: Untouchable. Unfortunately though, I could not find a copy of the production with which to make screen captures for this post.
For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.
Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, for finding this location! 
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: The Guesthouse International Hotel, where Clark skinny dipped in National Lampoon’s Vacation, is located at 12500 Firestone Boulevard in Norwalk. You can visit the hotel’s official website here. There are two pools located on the premises – the one that appeared in Vacation is the larger of the two, located on the eastern side of the property, closest to the lobby.
The Town House Motel from “Vacation”
As I mentioned in last Wednesday’s post, fellow stalker Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, recently got on a kick of tracking down missing locations from his all-time favorite comedy, the 1983 classic National Lampoon’s Vacation. One of the locales he managed to find was the Town House Motel in Glendale, where Clark W. Griswold (Chevy Chase) and his family – wife Ellen (Beverly D’Angelo), son Rusty (Anthony Michael Hall) and daughter Audrey (Beverly Hills, 90210’s Dana Barron) – spent the first night of their road trip from Chicago to Los Angeles. [I also did some digging and pinpointed the gas station where Clark tried to fill the new Wagon Queen Family Truckster (it’s the Little America Hotel at 2515 East Butler Avenue in Flagstaff, Arizona) and the rest stop where he danced with a sandwich (it’s the Shaw Creek Rest Area near 25090 Highway 160, just east of El Dorado Lane, in South Fork, Colorado).] And while Owen informed me that the Town House Motel was, sadly, no longer standing, I figured since I was already in the area stalking the car dealership from the film, I might as well drop by.
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Towards the beginning of Vacation, Clark and the gang spend the night at a roadside lodging somewhere outside of St. Louis, Missouri. They wind up at the motel unexpectedly, after Clark, who has fallen asleep at the wheel, pulls in there accidentally. In the scene, the Griswold’s Wagon Queen Family Truckster (newly-adorned with graffiti that spells out “Honky Lips” LOL) goes careening down West Campus Street, heading south. It then veers across East Colorado Street and straight into the parking lot of the Town House Motel, losing a few pieces of luggage in the process.
While watching the scene, Owen had spotted an address number of “1510” above the property’s front entrance. From there, he did a Google search for “1510,” “motel” and “Los Angeles,” and one of the first results to pop up was an eBay sale for a 1950s matchbook from the Town House Motel located at 1510 East Colorado Street in Glendale. As he quickly discovered via a Street View search of that address, though, the structure had been bulldozed and a new, much larger hotel was now standing in its place. Sadness! You can check out what the Town House used to look like here and here.
The new property is named the Glendale Lodge and, as you can see below, it looks nothing at all like the former Town House.
I am fairly certain that one of the Town House’s real life rooms was also used in the filming, although the vibrating bed was most likely a prop. 
For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Los Angeles magazine online. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.
Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, for finding this location! 
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: Glendale Lodge, aka the former site of the Town House Motel from Vacation, is located at 1510 East Colorado Street in Glendale.
Lou Glutz Motors from “Vacation”
Fellow stalker Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, recently embarked upon a mission to try to track down some of the unknown locations from one of his favorite movies, the 1983 classic Vacation. He had quite a bit of success, too, managing to pinpoint two elusive spots, one of which was the Norwalk motel where Clark W. Griswold (Chevy Chase) skinny-dipped with The Girl in the Ferrari (Christie Brinkley) – a place I was absolutely dying to stalk while in L.A. two weeks ago, but unfortunately, the long trek down to that area made it unfeasible to do so. Anyway, Owen’s quest had me reviewing some of the movie’s more well-known locales, including Glendale Dodge Chrysler Jeep, which I had long been aware stood in for the supposed Chicago, Illinois-area Lou Glutz Motors in the flick. Even though I lived mere miles from the dealership for over 13 years, because I assumed it had long since been remodeled, I figured it was not worth a stalk. So when I saw via Google Street View that the spot remained virtually unchanged from its onscreen appearance three decades ago (yes, three decades!) I was absolutely floored and decided that I had to write a blog post on it, stat!
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In the opening scene of Vacation, Clark arrives at Lou Glutz Motors with his son, Rusty Griswold (Anthony Michael Hall), to pick up the Antarctic blue Super Sports Wagon with the CB and optional Rally Fun Pack that he ordered for his family’s upcoming road trip to Los Angeles. After turning in his “ol’ gas guzzler,” he learns from salesman Ed (Eugene Levy) that the car he purchased has not actually arrived yet. And while Ed tries to steer Clark to a “damn fine” Wagon Queen Family Truckster in metallic pea, Clark, who is not your “ordinary, everyday fool,” cannot be deterred from the auto that he originally ordered.
That is until his old car comes back from the wrecking area, completely flattened. As you can see in the photographs above and below, aside from a difference in paint color and the addition of some bright red awnings, the dealership has been pretty much left untouched since Vacation was filmed in 1983! Despite several changes in ownership, the exterior stairway, the plants below it, the screen above the service bay, and even some of the directional road markings all still look exactly the same as they did onscreen.
The exterior of the showroom also remains in its 1983 state, minus the addition of a second set of doors.
The Star Lincoln-Mercury dealership that was visible in the background of the scene also still looks exactly the same as it did onscreen, but I, unfortunately, did not snap any photographs of it.
I honestly cannot express how cool it was to stalk this location and to see in person how closely it still resembles the images of it that are ingrained in my memory from having watched the flick so many times over the years. LOVE IT!
I would like to wish all of my fellow stalkers a very happy Thanksgiving. I will be taking the next few days off to celebrate the holiday with my family, but I promise to be back on Monday with a whole new location. And be sure to check out my latest Los Angeles magazine post, which will be published tomorrow.
For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Los Angeles magazine online. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 
Stalk It: Glendale Dodge Chrysler Jeep, aka Lou Glutz Motors from Vacation, is located at 900 South Brand Boulevard in Glendale.