Dylan McDermott – IAMNOTASTALKER

May 27, 2020May 31, 2020

Golden Tip Gasoline from “Hollywood”

Who knew what we needed right now was a happy retelling of Hollywood history? Ryan Murphy, apparently! And he sure delivers with his new Netflix series, aptly titled Hollywood. Loosely based upon an actual high-end prostitution ring run out of a 1940s Tinseltown gas station, the show is a feast for the eyes when it comes to locations! Apartment buildings, offices, restaurants – every spot featured is prettier than the last. At the center of it all is Golden Tip Gasoline, a gleaming yellow and white Streamline Moderne site that had me drooling as soon as it came onscreen. So, of course, I set out to find it. Thankfully, doing so was a snap thanks to this Eastsider article which chronicled the October 2019 filming of “a new Netflix drama set in 1940s Hollywood” at Luis Lopez Automotive. One look at the photos of the Atwater Village repair shop dressed in all of its retro glory told me it was the right place. So to the top of my To-Stalk List it went and I headed over there while doing some socially-distant stalking in L.A. last week.

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Luis Lopez Automotive was originally constructed as a Mobil station in the 1930s. You can check out an early photo of it here. It is amazing how little of the structure has been altered over the years!

Per Eastsider, the adjacent repair shop was added sometime in the 1940s.

The locale didn’t become Luis Lopez Automotive until Luis Lopez Sr. took over in 1968. The photo of him featured on the homepage of the shop’s website looks like it was ripped straight out of a scene from Hollywood!

Luis’ son, Luis Lopez Jr., worked at the garage throughout his childhood, eventually becoming full-time in 1995. He runs the place today.

With its sleek lines, dotting of palm trees and brilliant blue sky backdrop, the shop is definitely cinematic!

I couldn’t stop snapping photos!

Considering its picturesque aesthetic and retro look, it’s no surprise the site wound up in Hollywood. It is out of Golden Tip Gasoline (a double entendre if I’ve ever heard one!) that Ernie West (Dylan McDermott) runs his very lucrative prostitution ring, employing young Hollywood hopefuls like Jack Castello (David Corenswet) and Archie Coleman (Jeremy Pope) to, ahem, “service” Tinseltown’s elite.

Though the station does boast a yellow and white color scheme onscreen, production did away with its amber paint trim for the shoot, I’m guessing to give it a cleaner look.

A secondary overhang and additional pumps were also added to the northeast side of the station for the filming.

Though my images above and below were taken from slightly different angles than the screen captures, they show what that area looks like in real life.

Despite the alterations, Luis Lopez Automotive is still very recognizable from its Hollywood stint.

The only thing missing is the fabulously retro Golden Tip sign.

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: Luis Lopez Automotive, aka Golden Tip Gasoline from Hollywood, is located at 2751 Fletcher Drive in Atwater Village.

January 16, 2014January 16, 2014

El Cabrillo from “L.A. Story”

Last April, in the midst of my slightly-obsessive L.A. Story location-finding mission, fellow stalker Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, tracked down a couple of the movie’s crew members for me, one of whom was extremely helpful. After he assisted us in the finding the crash intersection from the flick, I inquired about the garden where Harris K. Telemacher (Steve Martin) and Sara McDowel (Victoria Tennant) turned into children in one of the movie’s more fanciful scenes. I was actually under the assumption that the locale was most likely a set, but the crew member advised me otherwise and responded that the scene was shot in “a famous old Hollywood courtyard building.” Well as soon as I read those words, I knew exactly where filming had taken place. It was a spot I had even stalked and blogged about before! As it turns out, Harris and Sara’s garden is the courtyard of El Cabrillo, the condominium complex from both the television series Chuck and the 1997 romantic comedy ‘Til There Was You.

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El Cabrillo, which was constructed in 1928, was designed by prolific husband-and-wife architecture team Arthur and Nina Zwebell. (The couple also designed Villa Primavera from In a Lonely Place and the Chaplin Court apartment complex.) Legend has it that Cecil B. DeMille commissioned the structure as housing for travelling actors. The two-story, ten-unit building features a central courtyard, a tiered Moorish fountain, wrought-iron detailing, carved fireplaces, Catalina tiling, and wood-beamed ceilings. Luminaries such as singer Stevie Wonder, director Lowell Sherman, actress Ann Harding, costume designer Kent Warner, makeup artist Perc Westmore, and playwright John Willard all called the property home at one time or another. In 2005, the building was renovated by designer Xorin Balbes and turned into condos. A gorgeous, albeit small (if my calculations are correct, it measures 462 square feet) one-bedroom, one-bath unit (with no parking!) sold for $430,000 ($41,000 over asking price!) last June. You can check out some pictures of it here. The place may be tiny, but it is absolutely idyllic.

Sadly, El Cabrillo is gated and its gorgeous interior courtyard is not visible from the road.

I did manage to snap the picture below via a crack in the gate, though.

Even from the outside, El Cabrillo is an idyllic little spot.

Check out that balcony – what an oasis!

In L.A. Story, Harris and Sara are shown walking into a neon-lit store window on Melrose Avenue (you can read about that location here). The window then turns into a magical garden, complete with flowers that bloom in an instant, statues that move, a sparkling waterfall, and the power to transform Harris and Sara into children. Very little of the garden is actually shown in the scene, which is why I believed it was a set.

In the 1997 romantic comedy ‘Til There Was You, El Cabrillo masqueraded as La Fortuna, the bucolic apartment building where Gwen Moss (Jeanne Tripplehorn) lived. And while the exterior of El Cabrillo was shown several times in the flick . . .

. . . I am fairly certain that the courtyard was a set. As you can see below as compared to these photographs, while sharing similar elements, El Cabrillo’s courtyard is significantly smaller than the one that appeared in ‘Til There Was You.

El Cabrillo’s central fountain is also more ornamental than the fountain shown in ‘Til There Was You.

El Cabrillo was also where reluctant spy/Burbank Buy More employee Chuck Bartwoski (Zachary Levi) lived in the television series Chuck. According to a 2007 The Hollywood Reporter article, Chuck producers were looking for a courtyard apartment complex “reminiscent of old Hollywood/Echo Park” for their hero to call home. They ultimately decided on El Cabrillo. Location manager Kelly Harris is quoted in The Reporter as saying that the Cabrillo “offered many interesting textures — concrete blocks, wood-spindle balconies, private balconies, an impressive interior courtyard turret and a courtyard fountain and provided an amazing background for our characters to interact.” And while the pilot was shot on location at the actual complex, a replica of the building was constructed on a soundstage at Warner Bros. Studios for the remainder of the show’s run. I got to see the set once on one of my many WB visits and it was absolutely amazing how real it looked. The screen captures pictured below are from Chuck’s pilot episode and show El Cabrillo’s real life courtyard.

These screen captures are from the second episode of Season 1, titled “Chuck Versus the Helicopter,” and show the soundstage re-creation that was used throughout the remainder of the series.

A commenter on Hooked on Houses’ fabulous post about El Cabrillo stated that the building was also where Rupert Giles (Anthony Head) lived on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I never watched the series, but fellow stalker Ashley, of the Drewseum, was a die-hard Buffy fan and had done some investigating on Giles’ apartment a few months back. She was nice enough to share her findings with me. As she discovered, the exterior of Giles’ building was actually El Pueblo in Los Feliz, the very same apartments used on Melrose Place, and the interior was just a set. Ashley also sent me several screen captures of Giles’ pad and I almost fell over when I saw how similar it was to the El Cabrillo condo that sold in June. Check out those matching arched stairways! I have a feeling that the set of Giles’ apartment was modeled after a real life El Cabrillo interior.

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, from the When Write Is Wrong blog, for helping me to find this location. Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: El Cabrillo, from L.A. Story, is located at 1832-1850 North Grace Avenue in Hollywood.

October 12, 2011September 29, 2017

The “American Horror Story” House

Last week, fellow stalker Owen sent me an email with a tip, as well as this Curbed LA article, about a Haunted-Hollywood-type location that he thought I might be interested in stalking – the imposing brick and marble abode which figures as the focal point of the new television series American Horror Story. And right he was! I had just TiVo-ed the premiere episode of the show the previous night and could hardly wait to sit down and watch it. And I was not disappointed – American Horror Story is absolutely riveting! The fact that Owen had already tracked down the main location used in it was like icing on the cake! Randomly enough, another fellow stalker named August sent me an email this past Thursday evening in which he also tipped me off to the location of the American Horror Story house, along with a link to the exact same Curbed LA article that Owen had also sent! I figured the universe was most definitely trying to tell me something, so I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out to stalk the place this past weekend.

The American Horror Story house was originally built sometime during the early 1900s (the home’s official website says it was built in 1902, but Curbed LA and various other sites state that it was most likely constructed in 1908) by Alfred F. Rosenheim as his personal residence. The prominent Los Angeles architect also designed the Majestic Theatre on Broadway, the Herman W. Hellman Building in Downtown Los Angeles (L.A.’s very first first ten-story building), the Doheny Mansion’s glass conservancy and palm house in West Adams, and the Second Church of Christ Scientist, also in West Adams. The Rosenheim residence, which in 1999 was declared Los Angeles’ Historic-Cultural Monument Number 660, features a 9,660-square-foot, three-story main house, 7 bedrooms, 7 baths, Tiffany stained-glass windows, as well as Tiffany glass doors and light fixtures, maid’s quarters, a library, a hand-painted Japanese gold- and silver-leafed ceiling, a formal dining room, six different Batchelder fireplaces, a solarium, and a 1,600-square-foot basement. According to the Paradise Leased blog, upon its unveiling, the Los Angeles Times stated that the mansion was “magnificently appointed” and featured “almost every conceivable modern convenience and luxury” – including an intercom system that is still in working condition to this day!

In 1918, Rosenheim sold his self-designed abode to a mining tycoon named A.J. McQuatters, who used the mansion as his winter home. The property went through a succession of different residents in the following years, including character actor Edward Everett Horton, who leased the home for a short while, and the Sisters of Social Service, who converted the dwelling into a convent. In 1954, the Sisters also built a 50-foot-long, 4,500-square-foot detached chapel on the premises. That chapel has since been transformed into a recording studio. According to Curbed LA, the Rosenheim house has been on and off the market since 1999 and is currently for sale for a cool $4.5 million.

As you can see above, the residence, which sits on a 3/4-acre, corner plot of land and is truly magnificent in person, is actually much larger than its façade would lead you to believe. The place is absolutely GINORMOUS!

American Horror Story House–For Sale

You can watch the home’s real estate video by clicking above.

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The pilot episode of American Horror Story opens up in the year 1978 and shows two twin boys wreaking havoc on a dilapidated old mansion.

The real life interior of the property, which you can see pictures of here, was used in the filming of those scenes, although it was dressed considerably to appear neglected and run-down.

The episode then switches to the present day where it begins to follow the story of the Harmon family – mother Vivien (aka Connie Britton), father Ben (aka Dylan McDermott), and daughter Violet (aka Taissa Farmiga, who, in real life, is the younger sister of Up in the Air’s Vera Farmiga) – who has moved from Boston to Los Angeles in order to start a new life after suffering a considerable series of misfortunes. The family purchases the old mansion, which has since been fixed-up, despite being told about the previous owners’ murder-suicide, which took place shortly beforehand.

The real life interior of the house, in its actual state, is used extensively as the interior of the Harmon residence. You can see more interior photographs of the property here.

Oddly enough, though, the series does not make use of the property’s kitchen, which you can take a look at here. As you can see, it looks nothing like the kitchen that is shown on TV.

Thanks to fellow stalker Robert, from the Movie Locations and More website, I learned that the Rosenheim home was also used in the Halloween-themed Season 4 episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer titled “Fear, Itself”, as the Alpha Delta fraternity house where Buffy Summers (aka Sarah Michelle Gellar) and her friends attended a Halloween party.

The interior scenes look to have been shot at a different location, though.

Except for the scene in which Oz (aka Seth Green) turned into a werewolf, which was filmed inside of one of the property’s real life bathrooms.

There seems to be quite a bit of erroneous information about the home’s filming history floating around online. According to the property’s official website, it appeared in a 1950’s movie named Old Blue Eyes which starred Frank Sinatra, although I can find no such production listed on Frank’s IMDB page. And according to this website, the house was also used in 2002’s Spiderman and 2007’s Because I Said So, but I scanned through both of those movies earlier today and did not spot the place anywhere. That same website also states that the residence appeared in Seabiscuit, but because I do not own the film and could not find it to rent or stream anywhere, I was not able to verify that.

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalkers Owen and August for telling me about this location! Smile

Stalk It: The American Horror Story house is located at 1120 Westchester Place in the Country Club Park section of Los Angeles.