Dynasty – IAMNOTASTALKER

March 16, 2020March 14, 2020

Joe and Love’s New House from “You”

I apologize to those who don’t follow me on Instagram or Facebook for not posting updates about my dad here. He was finally moved out of the ICU a couple of days ago, thank God, and is currently progressing in the right direction. Unfortunately, the Wi-Fi and cell signal in the ICU were nil, to the point that I could not even use my cell phone as a hotspot, which explains my lack of new posts. Now that I can get online again, my blogging schedule should return to normal. And I figured what better spot to kick things off with than the house Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley) and Love Quinn (Victoria Pedretti) moved into in the final episode of You’s second season, titled “Love, Actually.”

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One look at the place, with its traditional architecture, large set-back from the street and insane curb appeal, and I knew it was likely located in Cameron Woods, a highly photogenic neighborhood in Van Nuys that is used for filming all.the.time. Situated at the southern end of Orion Avenue, the charming two-block enclave is a latticework of picket-fenced suburban homes, each one seemingly prettier than the last. It’s like a studio backlot come to life! An address number of 6301 was visible on the curb in the episode, so I promptly headed over to 6301 Orion on Google Street View and, sure enough, there was Joe and Love’s new pad looking back at me!

In real life, the idyllic property, built in 1951 but recently remodeled, boasts 2,969 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 4 baths, a kitchen with Caesarstone counters, a butler’s pantry, countless built-ins, a laundry room, multiple fireplaces, hardwood flooring and wainscoting throughout, a pool, a pond, a motor court, a cabana, gorgeous landscaping, and a 0.58-acre plot of land.

The stunning pad (you can check out interior photos of it here) last sold for $1,885,000 in January 2018.

It is not hard to see how the place came to be used on You. A quintessential slice of Americana, the home perfectly encapsulates the normalcy and traditionalism that Joe will never be able to subscribe to. No amount of white picket fencing or manicured shrubberies can tame his obsessive and murderous ways. Instead, the pad serves as a prison of his own making. As he says upon moving in, “Not every Siberia is cold. Some are 73 and sunny with eco-conscious landscaping.”

Though one of the series’ most notable locales, the residence only appears in a single segment – “Love, Actually’s” closing scene.

Along with the front exterior, the property’s backyard is also featured in the episode, as you can see in the screen capture as compared to the MLS image below.

Considering Cameron Woods’ prolific filming history, it should come as no surprise that Joe and Love’s house has popped up in other productions.

In 1984, it portrayed the home of Mother Blaisdel (Diana Douglas) in the Season 4 episodes of Dynasty titled “The Vigil” . . .

. . . and “The Voice Part 3.”

The pad’s interior also appeared in the episodes, but it looked very different at the time.

The Dixie Chicks race through the house Ferris-Bueller-style in their 1999 “Ready to Run” music video, which you can watch here.

More recently, the property was featured as the home of a man who falls off his roof while installing Christmas decorations in the Season 2 episode of 9-1-1 titled “Merry Ex-Mas,” which aired in 2018.

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: Joe and Love’s new house from the final episode of the second season of You is located at 6301 Orion Avenue in Van Nuys’ Cameron Woods neighborhood.

April 5, 2010April 6, 2010

The “Just Married” Mansion

Since we are currently knee-deep in the middle of wedding planning, a few weeks ago my fiancé and I decided to sit down and finally watch the 2003 movie Just Married for the very first time. And I have to say that I absolutely LOVED it! While watching it, though, I became obsessed with finding the gargantuan, red brick, Tudor-style mansion where Sarah (aka Brittany Murphy) and her family lived in the flick, which as luck would have it, wasn’t too hard to track down. Thanks to IMDB’s Just Married filming locations page, I discovered that the mansion was located at 160 South San Rafael Avenue right here in Pasadena. So, I immediately dragged my fiancé right over there the following morning. We had a sad surprise awaiting us when we arrived at the front gates, though – the mansion was no longer there. It had completely burned to the ground in a massive fire back in October of 2005. SO SAD.

All that currently remains of the once massive mansion are its front gate, guard house, and red brick retaining wall. I can’t tell you how depressing this was to discover, being that the now-fallen house was something of a historic landmark in Pasadena. The residence which once stood on the property was originally built in 1929 for British thoroughbred horse breeder Jack Pease Atkin for $500,000. The home was designed by famed celebrity architect Paul Revere Williams, who is best known for being the very first African American member of the American Institute of Architects and for designing the Beverly Hills Hotel and the Jet-Age Theme Building, aka Encounter Restaurant, at LAX. He also built Jennie Garth and Peter Facinelli’s house, but I digress. The three-story mansion boasted 21 rooms, three stories, a 1,200 square foot gate house, over 12,000 square feet of living space, and sat on a lot measuring 3.3 acres. The house’s love affair with the movies began early on, in the 1930s, when Atkins decided to rent his property out to film crews in order to raise money to fund soup kitchens for the downtrodden in Depression-era L.A. And the filming never stopped. In 2004, the home was purchased by Michael Armand Hammer, the grandson of oil tycoon Armand Hammer, who also founded the famed Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Culture in Westwood. Hammer immediately set about completely restoring the entire property. Sadly, though, a massive fire broke out at approximately 9:20 p.m. on the night of October 5, 2005, one month before he was set to move in. Over 80 firefighters were called in from neighboring cities to fight the blaze and it took them over three hours to even contain it. Flames were still burning the following morning and ended up causing over $20 million worth of damage and completely gutting the property. According to some neighbors that I spoke with while stalking the place, rumor has it that the fire was started due to a dispute between contractors. What a complete and total shame! No charges were ever filed in the case and the 3.3 acre vacant lot is currently for sale for a whopping $10 million. You can see some great aerial views of the mansion before and after it was burned on Zillow.

Hollywood rumors about the mansion have been circling around Pasadena pretty much since the time the house was built, the two most prevalent of which being that it was owned at one time by former Beatle Paul McCartney and that it was used as Bruce Wayne’s manor in the 1960s television series Batman. Both of those rumors are completely false. And while I am not sure how the Paul McCartney story came to be, the Batman rumor is easy enough to figure out. The real Wayne Manor is located just a few houses up the road at 380 S. San Rafael Avenue and looks extremely similar in appearance to the Just Married mansion. Batman and Paul McCartney aside, though, the Atkin’s house has a Hollywood resume any actor would envy.

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In Just Married, the mansion, which was supposedly located in Beverly Hills, belonged to Sarah’s extremely wealthy father, who co-owned both the Dodgers and the Lakers in the flick. For whatever reason, though, the exterior of the house was never shown in its entirety, but the front gate area did appear quite a bit.

As did the front door/front porch . . .

. . . and the intercom outside of the main gate, which was used as a running joke throughout the movie. And, even though it wasn’t the same exact intercom which appeared in Just Married, I just had to pose for a pic with it. 😉

Thankfully, the area where Sam (aka Ashton Kutcher) played flag football with Sarah’s family is still intact and is visible through the front gate.

The mansion also stood in for the Carlton Hotel in several episodes of TV’s Dynasty.

The residence was also featured in the 1985 movie Clue, but as you can see in the above screen capture, some movie magic was definitely employed in the production.

According to some reports that I read online, while the real life driveway, retaining wall, front porch and bottom half of the mansion’s exterior were used in Clue . . .

. . . producers had a matte painting added to the top portion of the house to make it appear larger and more sinister than it actually was.

In the 1991 movie Mobsters, the mansion belonged to Arnold Rothstein (aka F. Murray Abraham), but only the interior of it was ever shown.

In 2003’s Hollywood Homicide, it belonged to Jerry Duran (aka Martin Landau) who gave part time real estate agent Sergeant Joe Gavilan (aka Harrison Ford) 72 hours to sell it.

I am fairly certain that the real inside of the home was used in the movie, as well.

According to several books, the mansion also stood in for the home of Rocky Balboa in Rocky V, but as you can see in the above screen captures, while the two properties resemble each other, they are not in fact the same. There are also reports which state that the mansion was featured in the 1979 Peter Sellers’ movie Being There, but I just re-watched that film last night and did not see it anywhere. I am guessing that it was either not in fact used in the movie or that it was used solely for interior shots.

The mansion also supposedly appeared in The Bells of St. Mary’s, Sweet Bird of Youth, Three Men and a Little Lady, True Confessions, an episode of Murder, She Wrote, and in both the movie Topper and the subsequent television series of the same name, but because I don’t own any of those productions I have not been able to verify that information.

UPDATE – Fellow blogger Petrea from the Pasadena Daily Photo website just sent me this amazing photograph that a friend of hers named Dave Thompson took of the Just Married mansion shortly after it was destroyed in the 2005 fire. Thanks, Petrea!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Just Married mansion was formerly located at 160 South San Rafael Avenue in Pasadena. Sadly, the area is currently just a vacant lot.

December 1, 2009December 1, 2009

Big Oaks Lodge from “Beverly Hills, 90210”

Before I left on my New York vacation just about two months ago, Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and I spent a day together stalking in and around the San Fernando Valley. And even though we had a long list of places to stalk, the location we were most excited about seeing had to be a place called Big Oaks Lodge, which was used in the Season 2 episode of Beverly Hills, 90210 entitled “Camping Trip”. Before arriving at Big Oaks Lodge, I was actually a little nervous about the drive up there, though, as I had read that the place was located completely out in the middle of nowhere, but, as it turns out, it’s not really as out in the middle of nowhere as I had thought. The Lodge is located a brief twenty minute drive from the City of Santa Clarita, and while the road which leads there is remote, windy, and lacks a Starbucks, it’s really not a bad ride at all. 🙂 Big Oaks Lodge was originally built in the 1920s as a rest stop and eatery for traveling stagecoaches. In the 30s, 40s, and 50s, the Lodge and its surrounding area became something of a Hollywood hotspot for the likes of such legends as gangster “Pretty Boy” Floyd and the original Brangelina – Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford – who even ended up building their own private cabin near the restaurant. In later years, the property served as a training spot for boxers like Mike Quarry and Michael Doakes and even boasted its own outdoor ring, which has since been removed. The Lodge now serves as a meeting place and rest stop and features not one, but two different eateries on the property. The first is a little food stand named the Char House, which serves up such culinary staples as hamburgers, chili, and tri-tip sandwiches and is popular with the Harley Davidson set. The Lodge’s more upscale restaurant is named Cavi and it specializes in authentic homemade Italian food. The Lodge is still popular with celebrities to this day and has played host to talk show host Jay Leno and members of the band ZZ Top.

Big Oaks Lodge is actually much smaller than I expected it to be and consists solely of the main lodge area, which houses Cavi restaurant, the Char House shed, an outdoor patio, and two small cabins, which can be rented out nightly. While stalking the place, Mike and I had the good fortune of meeting one of the Lodge’s owners, who absolutely could NOT believe that we had driven all the way out to Big Oaks just to see a location from an episode of 90210 which had aired over 18 years ago. And, let me tell you, he just about fell over when we showed him Mike’s portable DVD player, where we had the “Camping Trip” episode all cued up. LOL 🙂 The owner told us we were free to walk around the property and take all of the photographs we wanted. And you really should have seen the two of us! We could not have been more excited and were screaming like little schoolgirls pretty much the entire time! “Oh, look there’s the firewood shed!” and “Ohmigod, there’s the tree Brandon leaned against!” LOL We were both pretty bummed out, though, that neither of the Lodge’s restaurants were open while we were there, as we had hoped to grab a bite to eat during our stalk. 🙁 But you know what that means, don’t you? My fiancé will definitely be getting dragged out there in the near future so that I can re-stalk the place. 🙂

In the “Camping Trip” episode, thanks to a patch of bad weather, Brandon, Brenda and the gang get stuck at Big Oaks Lodge while on their way to a camping trip in Yosemite. The entire episode was pretty much shot on location at the Lodge and made use of the entire Big Oaks property, which I am happy to report still looks very much the same as it did on 90210. Pictured above is Big Oaks’ front entrance, which showed up several times in the episode.

The firewood storage area, which looks a bit different today than it did when 90210 was filmed, was the spot where the gang first took shelter from the rain after pulling over at Big Oaks.

Had to do it! 🙂 LOL

The “Char House” restaurant stood in for the Lodge’s main office where Brenda and Dylan booked a cabin for the group to spend the night.

Once upon a time there were actually ten different cabins located on the Big Oaks property, but today there are only two and both of those cabins were featured in the “Camping Trip” episode. The 90210 gang stayed in the wood shingled lodge, which at the time of the filming was painted red, but is now a light grey color.

And the Newlyweds stayed in the rock cabin located directly next door.

And although a full exterior shot of the rock cabin was never shown during the episode, as you can see in the above screen capture and photograph, the front door still looks exactly the same today as it did during the filming. Love it! And I was very excited to find out that the real life interiors of both cabins were also used extensively in the episode. Unfortunately, though, the owner didn’t have his keys on him while we were there, so he was not able to take us on a tour of the cabins. 🙁 Next time!

The picnic table area in front of the Char House was used as the location where the gang fretted about Dylan and Brandon’s early morning disappearance.

The road in front of the Lodge and the main parking area showed up in the scene in which Brandon and Dylan return to the campsite after their little hiking mishap.

And finally, a large tree in the Lodge’s dirt parking lot – aka “Brandon’s tree” – was featured as the spot where Brandon contemplated life after his near death experience of almost falling off a cliff. So, of course, I just had to pose like him! 🙂

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A little bit of 90210 trivia for you – The highly dramatic scene where Dylan downed a few airplane bottles of liquor (pictured above) was not actually filmed at Big Oaks Lodge, but in the backyard of the real life Walsh house! Mike and I learned that little tidbit of information from the owner of Casa Walsh during our private tour of the home. 🙂 So cool!

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According to the Big Oaks Lodge website, the property has also been featured in the movies Frances, Enough, American Gun, and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, and in episodes of the television series Dynasty and Highway to Heaven, and in commercials for AT&T and Vonage. It’s a very cool place and I highly recommend stalking it, especially to fans of the original 90210!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Big Oaks Lodge from Beverly Hills, 90210 is located at 33101 Bouquet Canyon Road in Santa Clarita, just nine miles north of where Bouquet Canyon Road intersects with Plum Canyon Road. You can visit the Big Oaks Lodge website here. Cavi restaurant is open Wednesday through Sunday, beginning at 5 p.m. The Char House is open Saturdays and Sundays, starting at 11 a.m.