Dustin Hoffman – IAMNOTASTALKER

May 29, 2015May 29, 2015

Caesars Palace from “The Hangover”

My recent trip to Las Vegas with the Grim Cheaper was magical, due in large part to the fact that we stayed at Caesars Palace. Neither the GC nor I had ever stayed there before and, while planning our trip, I decided to see what the rates were. I happened to find a remarkably inexpensive one and booked it immediately. It was a fortuitous decision because the four nights we spent there were spectacular.

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As luck would have it, when we checked in we were given an upgraded room in the Palace Tower. It was absolutely gorgeous – and huge.

The bathroom was massive as well and featured a huge Jacuzzi tub and stand-alone shower.

We also had a pretty stunning view of the Garden of the Gods Pool Oasis area.

Construction on Caesars Palace began in 1962. The property was the brainchild of hotelier Jay Sarno, who also owned the popular Cabana Motel chain. According to this article, Sarno purposely left off the apostrophe in the resort’s name because having it “’would mean that it was the place of only one Caesar.’ He wanted to create the feeling that everybody in the hotel was a Caesar.” The site opened to the public on August 5th, 1966. You can read an extremely extensive history on the hotel here.

At the time of its inception, Caesars Palace consisted of a single 14-story tower with 680 rooms.

Today, the site is comprised of six towers, 3,960 hotel rooms, a 300,000-square-foot convention center, a 4,296-seat circular theatre modeled after the Colosseum in Rome, and a 636,000-square-foot shopping center known as The Forum Shops at Caesars. In short, the property is massive!

The front of Caesars Palace is marked by a 135-foot driveway flanked by 18 fountains.

In 1967, daredevil Evel Knievel tried to jump across the 141-foot long fountain situated directly in front of the hotel, but failed and wound up in a coma for the next 29 days.

You can watch that failed jump below.

In 1989, Evel’s son Robbie attempted the jump and was successful. You can watch a video of Robbie’s jump below.

Caesars’ humongous Garden of the Gods Pool Oasis was modeled after the Pompeii baths of ancient Rome.

Sadly, because the GC and I were in Las Vegas for a working trip and were busy most of each day, we were not able to partake of the pool facilities.

Caesars Palace has been featured onscreen countless times over the years – far more times than I could ever chronicle here, but I will name a few of its more notable appearances. The hotel’s most famous role was in The Hangover. It was there that Phil (Bradley Cooper), Stu (Ed Helms) and Alan (Zach Galifianakis) threw an epic bachelor party for Doug (Justin Bartha) in the 2009 breakout hit. The movie made extensive use of the Caesars property, including the front entrance;

lobby;

check-in desk;

(love the shot of the Wolf Pack below);

a hallway, which (according to Hannah Allen, the Director of TV and Film Production for Caesars Entertainment, who was nice enough to fill me in on the shoot) was a hallway on the 24th floor of the Augustus Tower;

the Augustus Tower’s 24th floor elevator bay (again, thank you, Hannah!);

an Augustus Tower elevator (once again, thanks to Hannah);

the roof;

and the Garden of the Gods Pool Oasis.

For the scene in which Stu, Phil and Alan take note of Doug’s mattress on the hotel’s roof, a fake statue was installed in the area noted with a pink arrow in my photograph below.

The hotel’s actual roofline is pictured below.

“Some guys just can’t handle Vegas!”

Sadly, the guys’ spectacular villa was not an actual Caesars room, but a set created inside of a soundstage at Warner Bros. Studio in Burbank. The set was modeled, in part, after the hotel’s lux Emperors Suite.

The casino where the Wolf Pack gambled in The Hangover was not located at Caesars Palace, but at the since closed Riviera, which, sadly, is set to be demolished in the near future.

Stu, Alan and Phil returned to Caesars Palace for 2013’s The Hangover Part III.

Thanks to Hannah, I learned that an actual Caesars suite was used in Part III – the Constantine Villa in the Octavius Tower –

which Stu and Alan climbed down to from Caesars’ roof.

The Constantine Villa also appeared in Think Like a Man Too.

The 2014 comedy gave audiences a much better view of the suite.

Think Like a Man Too was filmed almost exclusively at Caesars Palace.

Caesars also made an appearance in Rain Man. It was there that Raymond Babbitt (Dustin Hoffman) counted cards for his brother Charlie Babbitt (Tom Cruise) in the 1988 classic (as Alan said in The Hangover, “He practically bankrupt a casino and he was a re-tard.”). The casino floor looks much different today, though, and is virtually unrecognizable from its appearance in Rain Man.

Hannah informed me that the escalator that Charlie and Raymond famously rode down in the movie was removed when Caesars’ convention center was remodeled in 2009. Such a shame!

Rain Man’s escalator scene was re-created in The Hangover, complete with “Iko Iko” playing in the background. Because the re-creation was shot at the Riviera, sadly, that escalator will soon be gone, too.

The suite where Charlie and Raymond stayed in Rain Man is an actual Caesars room, the Emperors Suite (which, as I mentioned earlier, served as the inspiration for the Wolf Pack’s room in The Hangover). It looks quite a bit different today, though. You can check out some current photos of it here.

The room, which is located in the Forum Tower, was numbered 7416 in Rain Man, but looks to be numbered 6316 today. It is an extremely popular room thanks to its appearance in the movie and is still referred to as “the Rain Man suite,” 27 years after the film originally premiered!

The scene in which Charlie lets Raymond drive took place in front of Caesars’ main entrance.

Isabel Fuentes Whitman (Salma Hayek) worked at Caesars Palace in the 1997 romcom Fools Rush In.

After getting married, she and her new husband, Alex Whitman (Matthew Perry), spend the night in the Rain Man suite.

Caesars Palace was also featured in the Coen Brothers’ 2003 dark romantic comedy Intolerable Cruelty.

Miles (George Clooney) and Marilyn (Catherine Zeta-Jones) also spend their wedding night in the Rain Man suite in the movie.

Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) gambles at Caesars Palace in the beginning of Iron Man.

In Ocean’s Eleven, Elliot Gould describes “the three most successful robberies in the history of Vegas,” one of which took place at Caesars in 1987.

Joyce Brewster (Barbra Streisand) and Andrew Brewster (Seth Rogen) spend a night at the hotel in the 2012 comedy The Guilt Trip.

One of the hotel’s real life rooms – one that looked very much like ours – was used in the filming.

Caesars Palace also made appearances in Godzilla, The Electric Horseman, Rocky III, Oh, God! You Devil, History of the World: Part I, The Sopranos, 21, Showgirls, My Giant, The Only Game in Town, 2012, and The Incredible Burt Wonderstone.

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

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Emma for putting me in touch with Hannah so that I could get all of my filming questions answered! Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Caesars Palace (not the real one – Caesar never actually lived there), from The Hangover, is located at 3570 South Las Vegas Boulevard in Las Vegas. You can visit the hotel’s official website here.

April 21, 2015October 5, 2015

Hatfield’s Restaurant from “Chef”

Today’s location is a bit of a bummer, I’m afraid. Ever since seeing the movie Chef (one of my favorites of 2014), I was itching to stalk Hatfield’s restaurant, which appeared quite extensively throughout the flick. So when I discovered that it had recently closed, I was devastated. But I ventured on over to see the exterior of it in person, nonetheless, while I was in L.A. a few weeks ago.

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Hatfield’s restaurant was established by Karen and Quinn Hatfield in 2006. The fine dining eatery was originally located in a small space on Beverly Boulevard, but moved to 6703 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood in 2010.

The Melrose Avenue space had housed a restaurant named Citrus until 2001 and then went through a succession of different occupants, including Alex, Meson G, and Red Pearl Kitchen. When the Hatfields leased the site, they remodeled the interior, creating an open space filled with bright white accents. While I was hoping to get a peek of that interior via the front windows, due to the way the restaurant is set up, not much was visible, unfortunately.

For reasons that were not specified, Hatfield’s closed its doors in December 2014 and the property that once housed it currently sits vacant. Karen and Quinn have since opened Odys & Penelope Churrasco and Grill in the Fairfax district and they still operate The Sycamore Kitchen in that same neighborhood, as well.

In Chef, Hatfield’s masked as the Gaellic-style Brentwood eatery named Gauloises where Carl Casper (Jon Favreau) worked.

I fell in love with the restaurant’s open kitchen while watching Chef and was dying to stalk – and photograph – it. A place like that is just screaming to be photographed! I sincerely hope that whoever takes over the space leaves its design intact.

According to a May 2014 Eater LA interview with Favreau, who wrote, produced, directed and starred in Chef, the kitchen is what made him choose the site for filming. He says, “Cinematically it was wonderful. When you build a restaurant on a stage for a Hollywood film it looks so perfect. This one had a beauty to it and was very well laid out. I loved how the front and back of the house you could see the open kitchen – you could see in – that was fun for the cameraman. Kitchens aren’t usually aesthetically pleasing places in reality; they’re generally hot and crowded. The visual aspect of it isn’t a priority. This one is.”

The culinary scenes in Chef are absolutely beautiful – and not just because of the design of Hatfield’s kitchen. Eater LA characterizes the sequences as “food porn” and that’s a pretty accurate description. Roy Choi, the chef behind the immensely popular Korean taco food truck fleet Kogi, consulted on the movie. According to Jon, before coming onboard Choi said, “’I’ll do it but you have to get the kitchen right. Movies always get it wrong. I’ll do everything you need. I’ll train you, do the menus, look over your scripts, help you in the editing room. Whatever you want. But you have to promise you’ll get the details right.’ I said that’s all I ever want to do. That’s the way I work. That’s exactly what I had in mind as well.” Favreau even attended a French culinary school and worked in some of Choi’s restaurants prior to filming, which becomes obvious while watching the flick. Favreau’s hands move like an artist when handling his dishes. Check out this grilled cheese-making scene and you’ll see what I mean. Just make sure you have some sliced sourdough and cheddar on hand ‘cause cravings are sure to follow!

Hatfield’s was also where Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) and Mellie Grant (Bellamy Young) sat through a terse staged lunch in the Season 3 episode of Scandal titled “Ride, Sally, Ride.”

The space also masks as Jimmy’s, the restaurant belonging to Jimmy Martino (John Stamos), in the new Fox series Grandfathered. The interior of the eatery . . .

. . . and the kitchen area are featured on the show.

Exterior filming, though, takes place at Faith & Flower, located in The Watermarke Tower at 705 West 9th Street in downtown Los Angeles. That same building is also where Jimmy lives on the show.

During the space’s stint as Meson G (which you can check out some photographs of here), it masked as New York restaurant Nolita for the pilot episode of the 2005 television series Kitchen Confidential. I had never heard of the show, which was created by Darren Starr and starred cuties Bradley Cooper and Owain Yeoman, prior to doing research for this post, but it looks great! You can check it out for free on Hulu.

Thanks to my friend Molly, from the fabulous DIY/lifestyle website Almost Makes Perfect, I learned that David Boreanaz was punked at Meson G during Season 6 of Punk’d.

In 2008, when the site housed Red Pearl Kitchen, it appeared in the Season 4 episode of The Hills titled “We’ll Never Be Friends” as the spot where Doug Reinhardt took Lauren Conrad on a date.

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: Hatfield’s restaurant, from Chef, was formerly located at 6703 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. The space is currently closed and awaiting a new tenant.

December 23, 2014December 22, 2014

Blockbuster Video from “The Holiday”

I cannot believe that Christmas is only two days away! This whole month (year, in fact) has flown by! Sadly, this will be my last post of the season (excluding one that will run on L.A. magazine’s website on Thursday). I will be taking the rest of the week off to do some last-minute shopping and to celebrate Christmas with my family. For my final holiday-themed post, I thought it would only be fitting to write about another The Holiday location – the Blockbuster Video featured in the 2006 romantic comedy.

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I had read online a while back that the Blockbuster used in The Holiday was located somewhere in Brentwood, so I did a simple Google search for “Blockbuster” and “Brentwood” and was led to a former location of the once-popular video store chain at 11770 San Vicente Boulevard. Today, the space houses a branch of the First Republic Bank, but thanks to the fact that several of its features have remained the same despite the change of hands, I was able to determine that it was the right spot.

First, I was able to match a tree located on San Vicente Boulevard across from First Republic Bank to the tree visible outside of the Blockbuster in the scene (though my photograph below was taken from a slightly different angle than that of the film).

For those who have never visited the area, San Vicente Boulevard is lined with a large central median that is dotted with numerous unusually-shaped trees, as you can see below.

Thanks to their highly unique formations, it was not hard for me to pinpoint the one featured in The Holiday.

The store’s large three-paned windows (denoted with Christmas tree arrows below) also match what appeared onscreen.

The windowed corner doorway from the Blockbuster in the movie also correlates to that of First National Bank, although it has been altered slightly in order to make room for the addition of an ATM vestibule.

In The Holiday, Blockbuster is where Iris Simpkins (Kate Winslet) and Miles (Jack Black) shop for the next videos on their friend Arthur Abbot’s (Eli Wallach) list of movies featuring strong, gumption-filled female characters. It’s funny to think about the fact that if the movie was being filmed today, only eight years after it was actually shot, this scene would be an impossibility considering the fact that video stores simply do not exist anymore – at least not in the L.A. area. (Outside of Vidiots, that is.) If The Holiday was shot today, Miles and Iris would instead have to peruse titles at a Redbox kiosk inside of a grocery store or online via the Netflix catalog, neither of which would have made for a very compelling scene.

In the scene, Miles, a film scorer, walks around Blockbuster picking up various DVD titles and humming their theme songs loudly to Iris. He happens to pick up The Graduate at one point and sings Simon & Garfunkel’s “Mrs. Robinson,” at which time the camera pans over to reveal Dustin Hoffman perusing titles in a different part of the store. Hoffman shakes his head and says, “Can’t go anywhere!” Amazingly, that bit was not planned. According to director Nancy Meyer’s DVD commentary, Dustin happened to be eating next door to the Brentwood Blockbuster at the time the scene was being filmed. Upon leaving the restaurant, he noticed the film trucks and popped in to see what was being shot. He knew Nancy and decided to hang out for a bit to watch. When The Graduate portion of the scene was being filmed (the scene had been included in the original script and was not simply added because Hoffman was randomly on set), Dustin asked if he could make a cameo and Nancy, of course, said yes. He then adlibbed the “Can’t go anywhere!” line. Such a great story behind what turned out to be one of the movie’s funniest moments.

You can watch Dustin’s cameo by clicking below.

While doing research for today’s post, I learned that the same retail complex that formerly housed the Blockbuster from The Holiday also once housed the infamous Mezzaluna restaurant, where Nicole Brown Simpson ate dinner the night of her murder and where Ronald Goldman worked as a waiter. Today, that portion of the property is home to a Peet’s Coffee & Tea outpost. You can check out a photo of what it looked like when Mezzaluna was still in operation here.

On a side-note – The Grim Cheaper and I have recently become obsessed with the new podcast Serial. We are currently in the midst of listening to Episode 6: The Case Against Adnan Syed, so, please, no spoilers from those who have finished the series! Sarah Koenig, the podcast’s host, reminds me quite a bit of myself when it comes to doing research. Her investigation into the existence of a payphone at the Security Boulevard Best Buy in Baltimore, Maryland was exactly on par with many of the location hunts I have been a part of over the years. Speaking of the payphone mystery, I am absolutely fascinated by it! It is the one detail of the story that remains constantly stuck in my head and I am convinced that my friend Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, and I could get to the bottom of the whole thing and prove once and for all whether or not the Best Buy in question ever had a payphone on the premises. Are you listening, Owen? Let’s get on this!

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Blockbuster Video from The Holiday was formerly located at 11770 San Vicente Boulevard in Brentwood. Today, the site houses a branch of First Republic Bank. Pete’s Coffee & Tea, the former site of Mezzaluna restaurant, is located at the opposite end of the same shopping complex at 11750 San Vicente.

March 7, 2012March 7, 2012

The “Rain Man” Convenience Store

Back in February, while doing research on the Hollywood Hills apartment building where Charlie Babbitt (Tom Cruise) lived in 1988’s Rain Man, I came across a September 2004 article on the Palm Springs Life website titled “Quiet on the Set” about filming in the Coachella Valley. And, let me tell you, I just about fell out of my chair when I read the (rather poorly written) words, “The wind energy farms on Interstate 10 are another popular attraction. Tom Cruise and Valeria Golino drove past the Palm Springs windmills in the opening minutes of Rain Man. Cruise exits from a convenience store at Windy Point on Highway 111 and puts sun block on the nose of his autistic brother, Dustin Hoffman.” Prior to reading the article, I had no idea whatsoever that any Rain Man filming had taken place in the area. So I, of course, immediately started searching through aerial views of Windy Point trying to locate the convenience store and, amazingly enough, it was not long before I found it! Yay! So I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out there to stalk the place two weekends ago while on our way to visit my parents in the Desert.

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In Rain Man, Charlie and his brother, Raymond Babbitt (Dustin Hoffman), stop at the convenience store towards the end of their long cross-country road trip. It is there that Charlie puts sunscreen on Raymond’s nose causing Raymond to say that his face feels “very slippery”. LOL

Remarkably, the convenience store still looks very much the same today as it did when the movie was filmed way back in 1988.

I absolutely LOVE that the two poles which appeared in the background of the Rain Man scene are still there in real life, almost two and a half decades later! SO INCREDIBLY COOL!

While we were stalking the place, the GC and I ventured inside to see if any of the employees happened to know about the filming and, amazingly enough, the woman behind the counter did! She informed us that the signs that were posted on the store back in 1988 when Rain Man was filmed were still there until just recently, when the property’s new owner had them replaced with the “Food Shop” sign pictured above. Oh, why, oh why did I not know about this location sooner? Ugh!

On a Rain Man side-note – I am itching to track down the laundromat where Charlie made a phone call to his business partner, Lenny (Ralph Seymour), and learned that the four Lamborghinis he was trying to sell had all been repossessed. The GC has a hunch that it is located in Nevada, somewhere near Red Rock Canyon, and I think he might be right. I have not had time to do any research on it, though, but thought I would put it out there to my fellow stalkers. Does the location look familiar to anyone?

And on a Palm Springs side-note – while in the Desert last week, fellow stalker Kim informed me that a celebrity golf tournament was going to be taking place on Sunday, March 4th. So, much to the GC’s chagrin, I, of course, just had to stalk it. I ended up having an AMAZING time and really cannot thank Kim enough! The stars (all of whom were incredibly nice) that I met while there were scratch golfer Oliver Hudson (Kate Hudson’s brother and Goldie Hawn’s son), from Dawson’s Creek and Rules of Engagement;

Sam Page, from Shark (such a cutie!);

Patrick Warburton, aka “David Puddy” from Seinfeld;

Rob Morrow, from Numb3rs and Northern Exposure (SO amazingly nice – LOVE HIM!);

Richard Karn, aka “Al Borland” from Home Improvement;

Mike Inez, from Alice in Chains;

Christopher McDonald, aka “Shooter McGavin” from Happy Gilmore (it was so incredibly cool to see “Shooter” play golf in person!);

guitarist/songwriter/music producer Steve “The Colonel” Cropper (he was also a member of The Blue Brothers band in both the 1980 and 2000 movies of the same name);

Cheech Marin;

and Alice Cooper. Such a fabulous day! Thank you, Kim! Smile

You can check out a great article about several Midwest Rain Man filming locations that I stumbled upon yesterday while doing research for this post on the Road Trip Memories blog here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The convenience store from Rain Man is located at 60490 Overture Drive, about two miles south of where State Route 111 meets the Interstate 10 Freeway, in Palm Springs.

February 9, 2012February 8, 2012

Charlie Babbitt’s Apartment from “Rain Man”

A couple of weeks ago, I read on fellow stalker Lisa’s Finding the Famous blog that the apartment building where Charlie Babbitt (Tom Cruise) lived in the 1988 movie Rain Man was located somewhere in the Hollywood Hills. I, of course, immediately started trying to track down the building’s exact location and fairly quickly found the information I was seeking thanks to my buddy E.J. over at The Movieland Directory. E.J.’s website has actually been on a “hiatus” since January 8th of this year, while it is being updated from its previous database of 20,000 movie locales and celebrity addresses to one of over 90,000. And while that all sounds well and good, this stalker has been simply lost without the website, as I use it almost daily as a resource. When I emailed E.J. to tell him of my plight, he immediately sent over an extremely large Excel spreadsheet containing all 90,000 of his extensively-researched addresses for me to refer to at will. Um, how do I even begin to say thank you for that??? Needless to say, the gesture was GREATLY appreciated. And while I have to admit that I am, for whatever reason, supremely Excel-challenged, I have been using his database regularly and was able to find the location of the Rain Man apartment building with sufficient ease. Thank you, “Ctrl-F” and thank you, E.J.! So I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out there to stalk the place this past weekend.

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Charlie Babbitt’s apartment building shows up only once, and very briefly, towards they end of Rain Man, in the scene in which Charlie brings his newly-found autistic brother, Raymond Babbitt (Dustin Hoffman), home to Los Angeles after a long road trip across America. It is at the building that Raymond freaks out after setting off the fire alarm while attempting to cook Eggo Waffles in a convection oven.

The area of the apartment building shown in Rain Man is not the front exterior, but the west side, which, thankfully, still looks much the same today as it did when the movie was filmed in 1988, despite the fact that almost two and a half decades have since passed. The only difference I could spot is that the chain link fence which once surrounded the pool has since been replaced with a wooden fence. But otherwise, the place looks exactly the same in person as it did onscreen. So incredibly cool!

The front exterior of the building is pictured above. According to fave website Zillow, the dwelling was originally constructed in 1926 and measures 3 bedrooms, 3 baths, and 2,201 square feet. And while I could not find much information about the place online, I am guessing that it is comprised of 3 separate apartment units. I also learned from E.J.’s extensive files that actor Brad Pitt once lived on the premises sometime during the ‘90s, so the property has quite an extensive claim to fame!

I am fairly certain that the real life interior of the building was also used in the filming of Rain Man, although I, unfortunately, could not find any interior photographs of the place online with which to verify that hunch. And, legend has it that a lithograph of Tom Cruise, that was given to him during the production, still hangs in the property’s laundry room to this day. Oh, what I wouldn’t give to get in there to see that!

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Lisa, from the Finding the Famous blog, for informing me of this location and to my friend E.J., of The Movieland Directory website, for tracking it down. Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Charlie Babbitt’s apartment building from Rain Man is located at 8800 Evanview Drive/1599 Sunset Plaza Drive in the Hollywood Hills. The area of the building that was shown in the movie can be seen from Evanview Drive, just west of where it intersects with Sunset Plaza Drive.

September 8, 2011September 7, 2011

Wattles Mansion from “Troop Beverly Hills”

After re-watching Troop Beverly Hills a couple of weeks back and subsequently stalking the mansion where the Nefler family lived, I became just a wee bit obsessed with tracking down some of the other locales featured in the 1989 flick. Thankfully IMDB had quite a few sites listed on its Troop Beverly Hills filming locations page, one of which was Wattles Mansion – a historic and oft-filmed at Hollywood estate that, amazingly enough, I had never before heard of. So I immediately dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out to stalk the place the following weekend.

Wattles Mansion was originally built in 1907 by Myron Hunt and Elmer Grey, the legendary Los Angeles-area architects who were also responsible for designing the Ambassador Hotel, the Huntington Art Gallery, Pasadena’s Wentworth Hotel (now the Langham), Occidental College (aka California University from fave show Beverly Hills, 90210), the California Institute of Technology, and the Beverly Hills Hotel. The large Mission Revival-style dwelling was commissioned by a wealthy Omaha, Nebraska native named Gurdon Wallace Wattles to be used as his family’s winter residence. The estate, which sat on 49 acres and was called“Jualita”, featured 6,167 square feet of living space, seven bedrooms, seven bathrooms, a wood-paneled library with a hand-painted ceiling, black-and-white checkerboard marble flooring, a terracotta tile terrace, wood-beamed ceilings, and a full basement. The home’s extensive 5-acre formal garden area consisted of a Japanese Garden, an Italian Rose garden, a Spanish garden, an American garden, a palm court, sparkling ponds, and several fruit orchards. In an amazing show of generosity, Gurdon opened his beloved gardens to the public upon moving into his new home and it was not long before they became a wildly popular tourist attraction.

After Gurdon passed away in 1932, his widow, Julia Vance, and their son, Gurdon Wallace Wattles Jr., continued to live at the mansion. In 1968, they sold the property to the City of Los Angeles and the Department of Parks and Recreation subsequently took over. Sadly, the city lacked the money necessary to maintain the large estate and it quickly fell into a serious state of disrepair. Gurdon’s formerly glorious gardens were taken over by drug dealers, squatters, and vandals, and what they didn’t destroy, a series of mudslides in the 1980s did. Thankfully, in 1983 the Hollywood Heritage preservation group leased the property and began a massive restoration project before moving in and using the historic mansion as their headquarters. It was at that time that the abode, which is a City of Los Angeles Cultural Monument, became a popular filming location. For reasons that are not entirely clear, Hollywood Heritage was served with an eviction notice in 2008 and finally vacated the property in May of 2009. The mansion is currently being maintained by the Los Angeles Department of Parks and Recreation once again. (I snapped the interior pictures through one of the estate’s front windows.)

The piece of property, which you can see in the above aerial view, is now made up of three separate areas.

The section denoted with a pink square above, which measures 4.2 acres, was turned into a community garden in 1975 and has been continuously maintained by local residents. It is private and not open to the public. The middle section, which is denoted with a blue square, is a park known as Wattles Garden Park. It is open to the public daily from dusk until dawn. The mansion and formal garden area, which is denoted with a purple square above, is not open to the public, but is available for use as a special event and wedding venue.

And although the formal gardens are not accessible to the public, from what was visible from the park, that area once again appears to be in a sad state of disrepair. According to sign a posted on the premises, a restoration is currently in progress, so hopefully they will not look that way for long.

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Wattles Mansion actually stood in for two different locations in Troop Beverly Hills. It first appeared as the Beverly Hills Rest Haven where Phyllis Nefler (aka Shelley Long) and her group of Wilderness Girls performed their community service requirement.

While there, Phyllis and her daughter, Hannah (aka Jenny Lewis), taught a group of senior citizens how to do the “Freddy” dance, so I, of course, just had to do a little recreation of that scene while I was stalking the place. Winking smile

In a later scene, the northern-facing side of Wattles Mansion and the formal garden area were used as the location of the “khaki” fashion show that was hosted by Robin Leach and featured cameos by Pia Zadora and Dr. Joyce Brothers.

Wattles Mansion was also used extensively as the demon-haunted home inherited by Jonathan Graves (aka Peter Liapis) in the 1985 horror-comedy Ghoulies.

The real life interior of the mansion, including the kitchen area and the formal library, appeared in Ghoulies, as well. You can check out some great interior photographs of the place here.

Randomly enough, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit’s Mariska Hargitay made her feature film debut in Ghoulies. She is pictured in the grey sweater above. The actress was just 21 at the time that the movie was filmed.

Wattles Mansion also appeared in Diana Ross’ ultra-weird 1985 music video for her single “Eaten Alive”, which was co-written by none other than the King of Pop himself, Michael Jackson.

Eaten Alive Music Video–Filmed at Wattles Mansion

You can watch that video by clicking above.

In the 1989 movie Rain Man, Wattles Mansion stood in for the institution where the psychiatric evaluation of Raymond Babbitt (aka Dustin Hoffman) took place.

Wattles was where Jose (aka Jacob Vargas) first met Maria (aka Jennifer Lopez) in the 1995 flick My Family.

And finally, the mansion popped up in the Season 3 episode of The O.C. titled “The Man of the Year” as the supposed Montecito-area boarding school attended by Marissa Cooper’s (aka Mischa Barton’s) sister, Kaitlin (aka Willa Holland).

Until next time, Happy Stalking – and Happy Voting! Don’t forget to vote for me today to be the new face of About Me! Smile

Stalk It: Wattles Mansion, from Troop Beverly Hills, is located at 1824 North Curson Avenue in Hollywood. The interior of the mansion and formal garden areas are not accessible to the public, but Wattles Park is open daily from dawn until dusk. You can visit the official Wattles Mansion website here.

April 27, 2011April 26, 2011

The Piru Creek Bridge from “Burlesque”

Another location that the Grim Cheaper and I visited this past weekend while doing some stalking in the Heritage Valley was the Union Pacific Railroad Piru Creek Bridge which stood in for the supposed Iowa-area bridge that Ali (aka Christina Aguilera) walked across during the opening scene of Burlesque. I once again found this locale thanks to Gary, from the Seeing Stars website, who added the bridge to his Burlesque filming locations page just a couple of weeks ago. In an odd twist, though, when we showed up to stalk the structure we discovered that there were, in fact, two very similar-looking bridges located directly next to each other and I was unsure of which one exactly had appeared in the flick. The GC ended up taking photographs of both of them, though, and I am so incredibly grateful that he did because, as it turns out, they have each appeared on the silver screen in various productions!

The two Piru Creek bridges that we stalked are pictured above via an aerial view. Because I, unfortunately, could not find much information about either of the structures online, for the purposes of clarity I will refer to the bridge denoted with the pink arrow above as the Burlesque Bridge and the bridge denoted with the blue arrow above as the Enough bridge (it had a very brief onscreen appearance in the 2002 flick Enough which starred Jennifer Lopez, but more on that later).

The Burlesque bridge was first built in 1902 and measures 320 feet in length. The steel, through-truss structure is a Ventura County historical landmark and formerly serviced the Union Pacific Railroad.

In the opening scene of Burlesque, Ali is shown very briefly walking across the bridge while on her way to the local bus depot to purchase a train ticket to Los Angeles. You can see some photographs of Christina Aguilera filming the scene on the Zimbio website here.

Sadly, the Burlesque bridge is largely inaccessible to the public, which was highly disappointing as I was hoping to walk across it just like Ali had done in the movie.

And while it has been reported that the Burlesque bridge was the site of the train crash in the 1994 rom-com I Love Trouble, as you can see in the above screen capture, that information is incorrect. The train crash scene was actually filmed on the Sespe Creek Bridge, which you can see a photograph of here, in the neighboring town of Fillmore.

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Just south of the Burlesque bridge, on the opposite side of Center Street, is the bridge which appeared in Enough. As you can see in the above photographs, despite a difference in color and despite being wide enough for cars to drive on, it is strikingly similar in appearance to the Burlesque bridge.

And while I could find no historical information whatsoever about the structure online, I am happy to report that it is much more accessible than the Burlesque bridge. While one cannot actually walk across it, it is easily viewable from Center Street.

In the 2002 thriller Enough, the high-speed car chase between Slim Hiller (aka Jennifer Lopez) and Robbie (aka Noah Wylie) ends at the bridge when Robbie crashes his SUV into a steel beam that has fallen across the span.

At the end of the scene, Slim is shown driving off of the bridge and west onto Center Street.

Thanks to fave stalking book Hollywood Escapes: The Moviegoer’s Guide to Exploring Southern California’s Great Outdoors, I learned that the Enough bridge was also featured as the plane crash site in 1992’s Hero. Considering how deathly afraid I am of flying, I CANNOT believe that I actually had to scan through the plane crash scene to make the above screen captures. Shudder!

The Enough bridge was also featured during the opening scene of the 1974 movie The California Kid.

Thanks to the Confederate General Lee Fan Club website, I learned that the Enough bridge was also featured in two episodes of The Dukes of Hazzard. It first appeared in the Season 1 episode of the show titled “Luke’s Love Story” during the Hazzard County Obstacle Derby scene.

It later appeared at the very end of the Season 1 episode titled “Route 7-11” as the spot located just over the Hazzard county line where Luke Duke (aka Tom Wopat) and Cooter (aka Ben Jones) dropped off their friend Dewey Stovall (aka Paul Brinegar).

Big THANK YOU to Gary, from the Seeing Stars website, for finding this location.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Piru Creek Bridges, which are depicted in the above aerial view, are both located on Center Street in Piru, above Piru Creek, about 1,000 feet east of the Downtown area. The Burlesque bridge is located on the northern side of Center Street, while the Enough bridge is located on the southern side. And while the Enough bridge is easily visible from Center Street, you can catch the best glimpses of the Burlesque bridge from Piru Canyon Road about 1000 feet east of Orchard Street.

February 25, 2009August 20, 2013

The Robinson House from “The Graduate”

A few weeks back fellow stalker Scott, from the Film in America website, asked me if I knew the location of the Robinson house and the Braddock house from the 1967 movie The Graduate. He told me that he feared the locations of those homes were lost to history being that the movie was filmed over forty years ago and the addresses didn’t seem to be posted anywhere. So I just had to get Mike from MovieShotsLA on the case – and sure enough he found the houses. Well, the house, actually, but I’ll get to that later. 🙂 While doing some cyberstalking Mike came across this Wikipedia article stating that the Robinson home was located on North Palm Drive in Beverly Hills, and after a quick search of Google Maps he found the house, right where Wikipedia said it would be. 🙂

The Robinson house looks much different today than it did back in 1967 when The Graduate was filmed. At the time of filming, the home had an all white exterior while today it has a red brick facade. My initial belief was that the brick exterior was added to the house sometime after filming had been completed, but after seeing the above screen capture, I realized that, in actuality, the home has always been brick. When The Graduate was filmed the bricks were just painted white. 🙂

Because the Robinson house looks so very different today than how it appeared onscreen forty years ago, I was shocked Mike was able to locate it. But he found two “landmarks” of a sort on Mrs. Robinson’s house that he used while searching Palm Drive. The first landmark was the wierd brown wooden design that appears to the left of the front door. The second was the house’s small peaked roof area. Both are pictured above. But here’s where things get really weird!

While looking at aerial images of the Palm Drive house, I realized that the pool area and backyard looked a whole lot like Benjamin Braddock’s backyard from the movie. Armed with a pretty big hunch I grabbed my Graduate DVD and fast-forwarded through the entire thing. And sure enough, my hunch was correct – the front of the Braddock house is never shown in the Graduate – only the backyard is shown. And after looking at all of the Braddock backyard scenes one more time, I realized that the Braddock house and the Robinson house were one in the same! LOL

So last week I dragged my boyfriend out to Beverly Hills to stalk the (one and only) Graduate house and while I was there taking photographs the owner happened to drive up. So, of course, I just had to talk to her! 🙂 I asked her if she lived in the home at the time The Graduate was filmed and her mouth pretty much just fell to the floor and she said “HOW did you know this was The Graduate house?” LOL I told her that my friend Mike was a master stalker and that he had found the house by doing some cyber-stalking. She confirmed that her home was indeed used in The Graduate, but said that she didn’t live in it at the time. She said that when she purchased the house about twenty years ago, the real estate agent was marketing it as “the Robinson house”. LOL Then I asked her if her backyard was in fact Benjamin Braddock’s backyard and once again her mouth just hung open. Apparently she didn’t realize who she was dealing with! LOL She told me that, in actuality, Benjamin Braddock’s backyard existed only on a soundstage, but that his backyard and pool area were indeed modeled after hers. I’m not sure she’s entirely correct on that, though. While I have no doubt that her backyard was re-created on a soundstage and that most of the filming probably took place there, if you watch some of the Graduate pool scenes closely it becomes obvious that at least some filming did actually take place at the Palm Drive home.

So, there you have it, the mystery of The Graduate houses is finally solved. 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Graduate house is located at 607 North Palm Drive in Beverly Hills.