Cruel Intentions – IAMNOTASTALKER

September 28, 2018September 29, 2018

California Market Center from “Cruel Intentions”

For such a quintessentially “New York” movie, quite a lot of Cruel Intentions was shot in L.A., which I’m only just now discovering. A few of the more prominent West Coast locales include the modern pad where Blaine Tuttle (Joshua Jackson) lived (it’s actually the Benton House in Brentwood), the Rosemont Estate’s ornate indoor pool (that can be found at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles), Penn Station (downtown L.A.’s 7th Street/Metro Center Station in real life), and, as I recently learned thanks to my friend Owen (of the When Write Is Wrong blog), the office of Sebastian Valmont’s (Ryan Phillipe) therapist, Dr. Greenbaum (Swoosie Kurtz), which is really California Market Center, also in downtown L.A. I headed right on out to stalk the site on a sunny Saturday morning shortly after Owen told me about it in June, but what I did not realize is that the wholesale fashion mart is closed on weekends. So that particular mission was thwarted. I wasn’t able to re-stalk the place until mid-September and, this time, I made sure to hit it up on a weekday.

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The California Mart, as it was initially called, was established by New York lingerie manufacturers Harvey and Barney Morse. Upon moving to L.A. and working the SoCal fashion trade in the 1930s, the brothers discovered there was a need for a centralized spot where retailers could look for and secure merchandise. As Edna Bonacich and Richard P. Appelbaum explain in their 2000 book Behind the Label, “Buyers would come to Los Angeles with their checkbooks in hand, yet wind up spending days wandering through the sprawling Los Angeles basis in a sometimes futile search for suitable manufacturers. The Morse brothers saw an opportunity.” The duo purchased a plot of land for their new marketplace on East 9th and South Los Angeles Streets in 1952 and the complex’s first building was completed in 1963.

The mart’s second building was constructed in 1965 and the third in 1979. All three were designed by the Victor Gruen Associates architecture firm.

The result of their efforts is a sprawling 1.8-million-square-foot marketplace that the L.A. Times dubbed “the heartbeat of the Los Angeles apparel industry” in 1987.

The Morse family continued to own the California Mart until 1994 when it was lost to foreclosure. The site was soon snapped up by the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States, who set about refurbishing the interior and increasing tenancy. In 2000, Equitable Life sold to Hertz Investment Group for a cool $90 million. Though the company renamed the vast plaza “California Market Center,” many still refer to it by its original moniker.

In 2005, the complex was acquired for $135 million by Jamison Realty Inc. They subsequently sold it last June for a whopping $440 million to New York-based real estate company Brookfield, who are planning to renovate the space and make it more publicly accessible. (Perhaps keeping it open on weekends might be a good start. Winking smile ) Bert Dezzutti, the head of Brookfield’s Western region, recently told the Los Angeles Times, “We want to open it up literally and figuratively to the street and to pedestrian flow to invite people into space that is somewhat blocked off and difficult to access now.” I really hope their punch list doesn’t include altering the market’s fabulous lobby.

The gorgeous atrium-like space . . .

. . . is capped by a magnificent glass ceiling that is not only stunning to look at, but allows copious natural light to flow in and provides beautiful views of the mart’s three modernist-style buildings.

The 13-story complex currently houses numerous meeting venues and event spaces, more than 1,200 apparel showrooms, a theatre, a print shop, a food court, a fashion school (Otis College of Art and Design), a bank, a large parking garage, and some of the nicest public restrooms in all of downtown.

You can check out some more photographs of the market here.

Cruel Intentions made spectacular use of the complex’s lobby.

It is there that, in the 1999 drama’s opening scene, Sebastian leaves his latest therapy session just seconds before Dr. Greenbaum learns that he has not only seduced her daughter, Marci (a pre-American Pie Tara Reid), but has posted nude photographs of her online.

Dr. Greenbaum catches up with Sebastian in the market’s atrium and proceeds to scream at him from the second floor.

In typical Sebastian fashion, while Dr. Greenbaum is ranting and raving, he meets a cute girl and informs her that he is taking her to lunch.

The California Market Center lobby looks exactly the same today as it did onscreen 19 years ago. To say I was ecstatic to finally be seeing it in person is an understatement. And while I was a bit nervous that the powers that be would yell at me for taking photographs of the space, I am happy to report that all of the security guards and employees I spoke with could not have been nicer.

As Owen later discovered and informed me, an actual CA Market Center suite was also used in the scene as the interior of Dr. Greenbaum’s office.

As you can see in the screen capture as compared to the Google aerial image of the buildings located just north of the complex (both of which are pictured below), the view from the doctor’s windows match that of the actual mart.

California Market Center also popped up in the Season 4 episode of Starsky and Hutch titled “The Groupie,” which aired in 1978, as the spot where Det. Ken ‘Hutch’ Hutchinson (David Soul) and Det. Dave Starsky (Paul Michael Glaser) went undercover as a swimsuit buyer and a fashion photographer, respectively.

The mart’s real life interior also appeared in the episode, but it looks quite a bit different today than it did onscreen 39 years ago.

Stay tuned on Monday, folks, for the start of my annual Haunted Hollywood postings! I can’t wait!

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

Big THANK YOU to my friend Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, for finding this location! Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: California Market Center, aka Sebastian’s therapist’s office from Cruel Intentions, is located at 110 East 9th Street in downtown Los Angeles. You can visit the center’s official website here. The property is only open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., so plan accordingly.

August 1, 2018August 1, 2018

7th Street/Metro Center Station from “Cruel Intentions”

We all have those movie scenes – the ones so dramatic, so full of romance or even so disturbing (like this, for example) that, for better or worse, they remain ingrained in our memories. Two of my favorites happen to be from the same film and, oddly, it’s a film I don’t even like – 1999’s Cruel Intentions. The first, as mentioned in my recent post on the Fletcher-Sinclair Mansion, is the scene in which Annette Hargrove (Reese Witherspoon) implores Sebastian Valmont (Ryan Phillippe) to take himself less seriously by making adorably silly faces. The other is the escalator scene. Ladies, you know what I’m talking about, amirite? For those who haven’t seen it (and if not, I urge you to check it out ASAP), here’s a rundown – after a major argument, Sebastian shows up at what is supposedly Penn Station in New York to surprise Annette. As she heads up an escalator upon debarking her train and sees him waiting for her at the top, she says “I’m impressed,” to which he responds, “Well, I’m in love.” Hearts of teenage girls everywhere broke wide open for Phillipe while watching the scene – mine included. So when I recently learned via The Worldwide Guide to Movie Locations that the 7th Street/Metro Center Station in downtown L.A. portrayed Penn Station in the bit, I just about fell over from excitement and immediately added the site to my To-Stalk List. I made it out to the station a few weeks later and was thrilled to see the place looking virtually frozen in time from its onscreen stint almost twenty years ago.

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7th Street/Metro Center Station is located beneath Figueroa Tower on the corner of South Figueroa and West 7th Streets in downtown’s Financial District.

Completed in 1988, the 24-story structure, originally known as Home Savings Tower, mixes Chateauesque and post-modern styles.

The station’s entrance can be found at the building’s southwest corner, beneath a gorgeous mural titled “City Above.”

Painted by Terry Schoonhoven in 1991, the imagery of the colorful piece appears to change drastically as riders journey up the escalators to the street or down to the subway.

The depot itself, the first subway station to open in Los Angeles since the city shut down subterranean transportation in 1955, debuted in February 1991 to much fanfare. The site’s lower level, which was behind schedule, opened two years later.

Very little of the terminal can actually be seen in Cruel Intentions. Thankfully, an elevator is visible behind Sebastian at one point which helped me pinpoint the exact spot where filming took place.

In the iconic scene, Annette and Sebastian reunite on the station’s first level mezzanine, at the set of escalators that abut the elevator just past the turnstiles near the 7th & Figueroa Street entrance. That area is pictured below.

The escalator that Annette rides up in the segment actually moves downward in real life, so it was a bit hard to get a matching shot of her POV. The image below is the closest I got.

Despite the directional switch, thanks to the fact that the camera pans down in the scene, stepping onto that escalator made me feel like I was actually living out the movie. I swear I could almost make out “Colorblind” playing in the background.

The segment also features a blurred view of the station’s ceramic tile art installation titled The Movies: Fantasies and The Movies: Spectacles, hand-painted by Joyce Kozloff, as Annette and Sebastian inevitably kiss. Sigh!

Amazingly, the escalator bit wasn’t an original element of the Cruel Intentions storyline. Per a script I found online dated February 10th, 1998 (which is about four months before filming began), the train station scene initially lacked dialogue and simply consisted of Annette disembarking from a train at Grand Central Station to find Sebastian standing in the busy concourse waiting for her. She runs to him and they kiss. End scene. I would love to know what motivated the change. Did the director take one look at 7th Street/Metro Center Station’s escalator layout and become inspired? Being that locations typically serve as my inspiration, I’d like to think that was the case.

Cruel Intentions is not the only production to have made use of 7th Street/Metro Center Station. Lt. Sam Cole (Tom Sizemore) ventures out of the depot at the end of the Season 1 episode of Robbery Homicide Division titled “Hellbound Train,” which aired in 2003.

In the 2004 thriller Collateral, Annie (Jada Pinkett Smith) and Max (Jamie Foxx) run into the station and onto a train in an attempt to escape from Vincent (Tom Cruise).

That same year, the site appeared in two episodes of 24. It is at 7th Street/Metro Center Station that Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) and his team set up a stakeout to catch Arthur Rabens (Salvator Xuereb) in Season 3’s “11:00 A.M. – 12: 00 P.M.” . . .

. . . and “12:00 P.M. – 1:00 P.M.”

The entrance to the station also appears in the Season 6 episode of 24 titled “7:00 A.M. – 8 A.M,” which aired in 2007 . . .

. . . though interiors were shot about 15 miles away at North Hollywood Station located at 5391 Lankershim Boulevard in North Hollywood.

Both the subway’s Figueroa and 7th Street entrance . . .

. . . as well as its other entrance at West 7th and South Flower Street make brief appearances in the 2009 family comedy Hotel for Dogs.

Richard Castle (Nathan Fillion) and Kate Beckett (Stana Katic) investigate the death of a subway maintenance worker at the station in the Season 3 episode of Castle titled “Murder Most Fowl,” which aired in 2010.

The depot and its 7th & Flower entrance also pop up in Castle’s Season 7 episode titled “Kill Switch,” which aired in 2014.

Taylor Swift dances at 7th Street/Metro Center Station (barefoot, no less!) in her 2018 music video for “Delicate,” which you can watch here.

The station’s 7th & Flower entrance masks as the entrance to New York’s Chamber Street Station in the Season 1 episode of For the People titled “Rahowa,” which aired in March of this year.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: 7th Street/Metro Center Station, aka Penn Station from Cruel Intentions, can be reached from the bottom level of the Home Savings Tower, which is located at 660 South Figueroa Street in downtown Los Angeles. The escalator that appeared in the movie is situated just beyond the turnstiles at that entrance, in front of the elevator. Be advised, you will need to purchase a TAP card and buy a fare to access the area featured in the scene.

June 27, 2018June 26, 2018

The Valmont Mansion from “Cruel Intentions”

I have never been a fan of the movie Cruel Intentions (though the 1999 drama does feature one of my favorite onscreen moments). But during my April 2016 trip to the Big Apple, my good friend/fellow stalker Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong blog, took me to stalk the Upper East Side estate that portrayed the Valmont Mansion – where step-siblings Kathryn Merteuil (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Sebastian Valmont (Ryan Phillippe) lived and wreaked havoc on their friends and enemies – in the flick, and I pretty much fell in love with the place on sight. Known as the Harry F. Sinclair House as well as the Fletcher-Sinclair Mansion in real life, the massive French Gothic-style pad is nothing short of stunning. So, in spite of my disdain for Cruel Intentions, I figured the residence was most-definitely blog-worthy.

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Commissioned by railroad tycoon Isaac Fletcher in 1897, the Harry F. Sinclair House took two years to complete. The impressive C.P.H. Gilbert-designed dwelling was modeled after William K. Vanderbilt’s Petit Chateau, formerly located about 30 blocks south at 660 Fifth Avenue. The limestone masterpiece was furnished with an extensively carved façade, a mansard roof, an ornate wooden staircase, a library, a parlor, a ballroom, and an elevator. When Fletcher passed away in 1917, he left the estate, as well as his extensive art collection, to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which immediately turned around and sold the place to industrialist Harry Ford Sinclair.

Shortly after serving 6.5 months in jail for his part in the infamous Teapot Dome Scandal, Sinclair departed the UES manse, selling it to longtime bachelor Augustus Van Horne Stuyvesant Jr., who lived out the remainder of his days there as a virtual recluse. Upon Stuyvesant’s passing in 1953, his furnishings and décor were sold off and the residence was left vacant.

Around that time, the Ukrainian Institute of America, a foundation established to promote Ukrainian art, culture, music, and literature, was looking to expand into a new, larger headquarters. The group quickly honed in on the Fletcher-Sinclair Mansion, snatching it up for $225,000 in 1955. Today, the site, which has been painstakingly restored and preserved, plays host to special events, art exhibitions, auctions, performances, concerts, lectures, and, of course, filming. Best of all – it is open to the public! Sadly, neither Owen nor I realized that when we stalked it, otherwise we most certainly would have ventured inside to see the stunning interior, which you can check out some photographs of here, here, and here.

The Fletcher-Sinclair Mansion popped up numerous times throughout Cruel Intentions.

Only the exterior of the estate was featured in the flick, though.

The lavish interior of Sebastian and Kathryn’s home was just a set built inside of a soundstage in Los Angeles. Production designer Jon Gary Steele had this to say of his concept of the Valmont Mansion, “Most of the story takes place in modern-day New York, but when you walked into the Valmont townhouse, I wanted you to feel like you were walking into a Parisian ballroom. The furniture in the living room was very Louis XIV. We stripped the wood and reupholstered it in a much more modern fabric so the room didn’t feel totally period. Then we added bronze chairs and a bronze table. I didn’t want it to feel like only one piece of the film was period and everything else was modern-contemporary. I wanted the audience to feel like it was a period piece, but once they examined the room and noticed the detail, they would realize the contemporary additions. Because these people have blue-blood money and are very much world travelers, I put in a little bit of everything. There are a lot of French buildings in New York. It’s not uncommon to find people like this now living in places like this.” Interestingly, the set was constructed long before locations managers had secured an estate to serve as the exterior of the Valmont Mansion. When the Harry F. Sinclair House was ultimately chosen, Steele was shocked to discover that the interior closely mirrored his design, “right down to the similar moldings and comparable room dimensions.”

Cruel Intentions is hardly the first production to feature the pad.

In the 1987 comedy Hello Again, the Fletcher-Sinclair Mansion portrays the home of Junior Lacey (Austin Pendleton), where Lucy Chadman (Shelley Long) and her sister, Zelda (Judith Ivey), go to ask for funding to start a day care center at the Knickerbocker Hospital.

The interior of the property appears in the movie, as well.

The manse pops up as the exterior of the Manhattan pied-à-terre of Estella (Gwyneth Paltrow) and Ms. Dinsmoor (Anne Bancroft) in 1998’s Great Expectations. Interiors were shot elsewhere, though.

The Fletcher-Sinclair Mansion appears numerous times as the both the 1876 and present-day interior of “Albany House,” the home of Leopold (Hugh Jackman), in the 2001 romance Kate & Leopold.

Only the inside of the pad is featured in the flick. The exterior of Leopold’s mansion can be found at 1 Hanover Square in New York’s Financial District.

The property also portrays the alternate-reality home of the Suarez family in the Season 4 episode of Ugly Betty titled “Million Dollar Smile,” which aired in 2010.

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

Big THANK YOU to my friend/fellow stalker Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong blog, for taking me to this location.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Harry F. Sinclair House, aka the Fletcher-Sinclair Mansion, aka the Valmont Mansion from Cruel Intentions, is located at 2 East 79th Street on New York’s Upper East Side.

October 9, 2017June 22, 2018

The “One Hour Photo” House

Today’s location is not spooky – at all, in fact. It’s actually quite exquisite. But it did figure rather heavily in the creepiest scene from one of the creepiest movies I’ve ever seen, so I thought it would only be fitting to include it in my Haunted Hollywood postings. I am talking about the contemporary residence where the Yorkin family – Will (Michael Vartan), Nina (Connie Nielsen) and Jakob (Dylan Smith) – lived in One Hour Photo. I first got interested in tracking down the ultra-modern pad after coming across this The Straight Dope message board while researching Lacy Park, another of the 2002 thriller’s locations. In the thread, user Ins&Outs&What-have-yous inquired if anyone had any information on the dwelling, though no one seemed to. Shortly thereafter, I found my way to this page on the FilmGrab site in which a commenter named Melissa also inquired about the Yorkin home. Her query did not garner any responses, either. So, since facts about the house seemed to be nil, I decided it was my duty to track the place down and blog about it come October.

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Finding this spot took quite a while, I am loathe to admit. I knew from the movie’s production notes that the Yorkin home was located somewhere in Brentwood. My first stab at tracking down its exact address was to do a Google search for “Brentwood” and “modern house,” which yielded a slew of links to a slew of gorgeous properties, but none of them were the Yorkins’. I then added “filming” to the mix and scoured countless more links and images – so many that I ultimately do not remember the exact details of how I was finally led to the right place. At some point, though, I came across the video below which showed the pad as it appeared in an episode of Californication. The clip’s caption proved especially forthcoming, providing not only the property’s name, Benton House, but its architect, Ray Kappe. From there, Google prompted me to 90210Locations’ Californication page which detailed the residence’s exact address –136 South Canyon View Drive. Thanks, 90210Locations! I ran right out to stalk the place shortly thereafter.

In 1989, psychologist/mom/architecture buff Dr. Esther Benton purchased a large home on a shaded plot of land in Brentwood with the intention of performing a vast remodel. She commissioned Kappe for the job, but the incredibly prolific architect wound up razing the structure and rebuilding in his signature style instead, generating magic out of glass, wood and concrete. His creation, which took three years to complete (from 1991 to 1994), was designed with the working mom in mind. The residence boasts three large rooms, or “suites” as a 1998 New York Times article described them – a master bedroom suite, a suite for Esther’s daughter, and an office suite, which Kappe fashioned with a swiveling wall so that the doctor could “watch over the house without interrupting her time at work.” The property is also fashioned with 20-foot ceilings, a large skylight, Douglas fir embellishments, multiple fireplaces, a sunken bathtub, a frameless glass shower, and a towering glass and steel staircase. Zillow estimates the pad is worth a whopping $8.9 million today! Though absolutely stunning, as you can see in photos here and here, sadly none of it is visible from the street.

But, as I’ve said before, that’s why God created aerial views.

For those who have not seen One Hour Photo, the movie centers on Seymour Parrish (Robin Williams), aka Sy, a Sav-Mart photo developer who becomes obsessed with the Yorkins, a family whose film he regularly develops. Though things are definitely not perfect in Will, Nina and Jakob’s world, through Sy’s eyes, the family and their home is idyllic, arcadian and devoid of any typical everyday problems. As Williams is quoted as saying in the film’s production notes, “In the outside world Sy stands out, especially when you get near the Yorkins’ house, which is very warm and incredibly beautiful, almost painfully beautiful because it is his idealized home.” Production designer Tom Foden further describes the dwelling as “representing a place of dreams and ideals.”

In the movie’s creepiest scene, Sy ventures into the Yorkins’ residence while they are away and proceeds to look through their things, put on their clothes, use their bathroom, watch their TV, and generally just make himself at home. In the end, it turns out the experience was all just a fantasy taking place in Sy’s mind, but because Williams played the role to such creepy perfection, the segment is seriously disturbing. The real life interior of the Benton House was utilized in the scene . . .

. . . as well as throughout other portions of the film.

When I first started looking into the Yorkin home, I couldn’t help but think about how much it resembles the residence belonging to Sebastian Stark (James Woods) on the television series Shark. So I was not too surprised to discover during the course of my research that the Shark pad was designed by Ray Kappe’s son, Finn Kappe. That property, one of my favorite TV homes ever, can be found at 2315 Live Oaks Meadow Road in Malibu.

What I was absolutely bowled over to learn, though, was that the inside of the Benton House was utilized as the inside of Sebastian’s home in Shark’s pilot episode, which aired in 2006. I had always assumed the Live Oak Meadows residence had been used for both interiors and exteriors! You can check out photos of the inside of that property here. As you can see, it looks nothing like Sebastian’s pad.

The Benton House interior was later re-created on a soundstage for the filming of all of Shark’s subsequent episodes. That set re-creation is pictured below. (And yes, that’s a young Matt Lanter – my favorite actor – in the second screen capture! <3)

In the Season 1 episode of Californication titled “Girls, Interrupted,” which aired in 2007, the Benton House plays itself. Well, sort of. In the episode, Hank Moody (David Duchovny) takes his ex-wife, architecture enthusiast Karen (Natascha McElhone), to see the home of director Todd Carr (Chris Williams). Though said to be in Bel Air and not Brentwood, the pad is described as a Ray Kappe house in the segment.

The residence’s interior also appeared in the episode.

Back in 1999, the Benton House popped up in Cruel Intentions as the supposed Long Island, New York-area home of Blaine Tuttle (Joshua Jackson).

As Geoff from 90210Locations also informed me, the Benton House portrayed the residence of Samantha Winslow (Susan Sarandon) during the fifth season of Ray Donovan.

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

Big THANK YOU to Geoff, of 90210Locations, for finding this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Yorkin house from One Hour Photo is located at 136 South Canyon View Drive in Brentwood.

July 4, 2008February 13, 2009

The Millennium Biltmore Hotel

One of my favorite places to visit in all of LA is the Millennium Biltmore Hotel, located in Downtown Los Angeles. The hotel is also a favorite of film producers and it has been used in more productions than I can blog about. The hotel was built in 1923 and at the time was simply called The Biltmore. The building is absolutely gorgeous inside and out and definitely looks like it came out of a different era. Besides being a popular filming location, the hotel has played host to the Academy Awards on eight separate occasions between the years of 1931 and 1942. The hallway on the way to the hotel pool has many framed photographs of old time Hollywood celebrities who stayed at the Biltmore.

Movie buffs will probably most easily recognize the Biltmore from the first Beverly Hills Cop movie where it was used as the hotel where Eddie Murphy sets up camp during his stay in Beverly Hills. Molly Ringwald’s prom from Pretty in Pink was held in the hotel’s Crystal Ballroom, a room which was also used in Rocky III, The Sting, Ghostbusters, Alien Nation and The Fabulous Baker Boys. The Biltmore’s indoor art deco style pool was the pool where Ryan Phillipe and Reese Witherspoon take a midnight dip in the movie Cruel Intentions. The pool was also used in Bugsy and The Fan.

The movie Bachelor Party also filmed extensively at the Biltmore where it was used as the location of Tom Hanks’ wild bachelor party. And yes, they really did put a live donkey in the hotel’s elevator during the filming! Both Bachelor Party and Beverly Hills Cop were filmed in the Biltmore’s former lobby. Currently that room is a part of the hotel’s Smeraldi’s restaurant and is used for high tea and dinner. Today, the lobby is located in the hotel’s former Music Room, which was used in 1960 by JFK as the location of his official campaign headquarters. The Music Room’s ornate glass and wrought-iron ceiling (pictured below next to the “Stalk It” paragraph) was the model for the dining room ceiling of the ship in The Poseidon Adventure.

Alfred Hitchcock used the Biltmore’s 11 story high back staircase for the vertigo sequences in his 1958 movie of the same name. Hang over the ledge of the staircase on the 11th floor and you might catch a bit of vertigo yourself! In all, over 300 productions have been filmed at the hotel, including Species, The Nutty Professor, Independence Day, Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion, True Lies, The American President, In the Line of Fire, Mother, and the short lived TV show Vanished. Britney Spear’s Overprotected video was filmed in a large hallway just off the lobby of the hotel. You can watch that video here. Once you’ve visited the Biltmore, you will recognize it popping up all over the big and small screens.

The Gallery Bar is one of my favorite spots at the Biltmore. It is dark and quiet and definitely evokes an aura of Old Time Hollywood. The Bar was most recently used in National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets as the location of Abigal’s date at the beginning of the movie. But the Gallery Bar’s main claim to fame is its signature drink – the Black Dhalia Martini, named for one of LA’s most famous unsolved murder cases. Actress Elizabeth Short, whose nickname was the Black Dhalia, walked out the Biltmore Hotel doors on January 9, 1947 at approximately 6:30pm. She was never seen again. Her mutilated body was found six days later in an abandoned field. The last person to ever see the Black Dhalia alive was the Biltmore doorman who tipped his hat to her as she walked south down Olive Avenue. Although garnering widespread media attention and public fascination that exists even to this day, the case has yet to be solved.

The last time I stayed at the Biltmore, there were FIVE separate productions being filmed in and around the hotel – a car commercial, a fitness water commercial, the TV shows Alias and Standoff, and the pilot episode of Capitol Law with Joshua Jackson. I was especially excited to see Josh because Pacey was always my favorite Dawson’s Creek character. I so heart Josh! The grainy photo to the left is one I snapped of him during filming. 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Millennium Biltmore Hotel is located in Downtown Los Angeles at 506 South Grand Avenue. I highly recommend staying there if you find yourself in the LA area. The rooms are exquisite and extremely reasonable. Be sure to ask the hotel’s concierge about the Biltmore’s filming history – they usually have some great stories to share and they will also give you a print out of every single production ever filmed at the hotel.