Eli Wallach – IAMNOTASTALKER

December 16, 2014December 15, 2014

The Grill on the Alley from “The Holiday”

This past weekend, while wandering through my local Target with the Grim Cheaper, I happened to spot a DVD of fave movie The Holiday on sale for $3.99! When I saw that the special features included a commentary with director Nancy Meyers and a making-of featurette, I just about flipped my lid and immediately snapped the DVD up. (Though I have seen The Holiday more times than I can count, because I own it on iTunes, I had never seen any of the special features.) It was perfect timing, too, since I am now (finally) in the midst of writing my Christmas-themed posts. I had also just stalked The Grill on the Alley, which was featured in the flick, this past November while my friends Lavonna, Kim, Melissa and Maria were in town (that’s Melissa and Maria above), so I was most excited to listen to the commentary from that portion of the film.

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The Grill on the Alley was originally founded in January 1984 by a man named Bob Spivak. The food industry ran in Bob’s veins – his grandfather owned a Los Angeles ice cream/chocolate shop in the early 1900s and his father was the founder of the Redwood House, now known as the Redwood Bar & Grill, which was featured in Bridesmaids and which I blogged about here. In 1982, at the age of 39 and after a long tenure working in a grocery store and a short tenure owning a soup/salad restaurant, Bob found himself at a transition point in life. Recently divorced, without a job and living on his father’s couch, he decided he wanted to open an upscale steakhouse in Beverly Hills, one that offered fabulous customer service and no-nonsense food. He found financial backers fairly quickly and then secured a space to lease. The only problem with the 4,600-square-foot spot was that its main frontage was on an extremely traffic-y block of Wilshire Boulevard, on a stretch of street that did not allow parking until after 7 p.m. each day. (The Wilshire side of the building is pictured below.)

The location did have a rear entrance, though, reached via a side alley off of Dayton Way, which gave Bob an idea. In a February 2014 The Hollywood Reporter article, he explains, “I went to the building department and asked to place the entrance on the alley. They wouldn’t let me due to an ordinance against businesses opening onto an alley that they had in place. So I pulled maps and realized I had less than an inch of Dayton frontage and went to a hardware store, bought a mailbox and painted 9560 Dayton on it. Just made that address up. Then I went to the post office, mailed myself a letter, got it delivered and showed the canceled stamp to the building department. They approved it!”

That “less than an inch of Dayton frontage” is denoted with red arrows below. What a great story!

Thanks to its proximity to the headquarters of the William Morris Talent Agency, The Grill soon became the place “to lunch” in Beverly Hills. Just a few of the power players and their clients who have been spotted dining there over the years include Michael Ovitz, Sumner Redstone, Rupert Murdoch, Ron Meyer (father of Jennifer Meyer), Tom Brokaw, Vin Scully, Steven Spielberg, Bruce Springsteen, Fred Astaire, Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Muhammad Ali, Brian Grazer, Ron Howard, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Barbra Streisand, Johnny Carson, Katie Holmes, Sean Penn, Madonna, Drew Barrymore, Joel McHale, and Michael Douglas.

The Grill remains insanely popular to this day, over thirty years after its founding. In fact, the eatery has spawned six additional Grill on the Alley locations, as well as the casual dining chain The Daily Grill, of which there are currently 21 outposts.

While we were stalking the place, we had the pleasure of meeting The Grill’s longtime maître d’, Pamela Gonyea . . .

. . . as well as the restaurant’s wine education coordinator, Carmen Rupe, both of whom could NOT have been nicer. Bob maintains that The Grill’s customer service philosophy is, “The answer is yes – now what was the question.” And we were certainly given that treatment despite the fact that we were not even dining on the premises! Carmen and Pamela spent quite a bit of time answering all of our questions about the various filmings that have taken place there over the years and they also let us take all of the photographs of the place that we wanted. Carmen even led us over to the center of the dining room to show us exactly where The Holiday had been filmed!

In The Holiday, The Grill on the Alley is where Iris Simpkins (Kate Winslet) takes Arthur Abbott (Eli Wallach) for dinner shortly after meeting him. Before inviting him to dine with her, Iris asks Arthur if he is busy that evening, to which he gives his famous line, “Busy? Honey, I haven’t been busy since 1978.”

According to Nancy Meyers’ DVD commentary, The Grill on the Alley was chosen for the scene because it is a place that Arthur, a former Hollywood screenwriter, and his colleagues would have frequented in their day. Nancy had the two seated at a regular table in the center of the Grill’s dining room to show they are just regular people, not the “Hollywood elite.” Apparently the booths that line the perimeter of the restaurant are considered prime real estate in real life and where the show biz power players are usually seated.

I, of course, just had to pose for a picture in the same spot where the movie was filmed.

Carmen and Pamela also informed us that The Grill had been featured in the Season 5 episode of Entourage titled “Fantasy Island.”

In the episode, The Grill on the Alley was the spot where Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier) discussed the upcoming movie Danger Beach with producer Carl Ertz (Kim Coates). Notice that Vincent and Carl were seated in a perimeter booth in the scene.

Pamela was even visible in the episode!

Pamela and Carmen also let us know that the Season 5 episode of The Hills titled “Keep Your Enemies Closer” had been shot at the restaurant. In the episode, The Grill was where Stephanie Pratt went on a date with a DJ named Robert.

On a side-note – I would like to wish a very HAPPY BIRTHDAY today to my dad, who, despite being chronically ill, always finds a way to regularly do special, extraordinary things for my mom, the GC and me. I love you so much! (That’s me and my dad pictured below during one of my very first trips to Disneyland.)

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Grill on the Alley, from The Holiday, is located at 9560 Dayton Way in Beverly Hills. You can visit the restaurant’s official website here.

June 26, 2014August 28, 2014

New “Los Angeles” Magazine Post – Eli Wallach’s House from “The Holiday”

Today’s Los Angeles magazine post was written in honor of the legendary actor Eli Wallach, who passed away yesterday at the age of 98. Wallach portrayed one of my favorite movie characters of all time. Rest in peace, dear Arthur Abbott. You can read the post here. My columns typically get published in the late morning/early afternoon hours.

December 22, 2011December 21, 2011

Arthur Abbott’s House from “The Holiday”

Another location from the 2006 movie The Holiday that I set out to track down last week for my Christmas-themed stalking posts was the large Mediterranean-style abode where Arthur Abbott (aka The Misfits’ Eli Wallach) lived. Thanks to the flick’s production notes, I knew that the property was located somewhere in Brentwood and that it “reflected the glamour of old Hollywood”. So I spent quite a few fruitless hours searching aerial views of the area before coming up completely empty-handed. Enter Mike, from MovieShotsLA, who so graciously offered up his stalking services and spent almost the entire day scouring Brentwood streets looking for the house. And I am very happy to report that he did, indeed, find the place – without the help of a crew member or knowledge of an address number to guide him. Whoo-hoo! Thank you, Mike! So, I, of course, ran right out to stalk the residence this past weekend.

Amazingly enough, while we were stalking the place, not only was the front gate standing open, affording us a small peek at where filming of The Holiday had taken place, but two different super-nice neighbors also happened to walk by and informed us that the property has belonged to comedienne Phyllis Diller for over forty years now! How incredibly cool is that? And, in an ironic twist, fellow stalker E.J., of The Movieland Directory website, wrote to me yesterday morning after seeing my post on Miles’ house from The Holiday to let me know that he was fairly certain he knew where Arthur’s abode was located – he thought it might just be Phyllis Diller’s residence in Brentwood. As it turns out, E.J. has a good friend who formerly lived near Phyllis and when E.J. watched The Holiday for the first time over five years ago, he recognized the home immediately. As I responded in my email to him yesterday, “Where the heck were you last week when we were looking for the place???” LOL

In real life, Arthur Abbott’s home, which was originally built in 1914, boasts 8 bedrooms, 5 baths, 9,266 square feet of living space, and a 1.23-acre plot of land.

And, as you can see in the above aerial view, it also features an incredibly cool central courtyard that I am undeniably in love with!

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In The Holiday, Iris Simpkins (aka Kate Winslet) befriends Arthur Abbott, the elderly man who lives next door to the house where Iris is spending a two-week Christmas vacation thanks to a home swap with Amanda Woods (aka Cameron Diaz). (I blogged about Amanda’s residence way back in June of 2010.) As Iris soon discovers, Arthur is an accomplished Hollywood screenwriter and he winds up changing her life and infusing her with “gumption”, a trait that she had somehow lost along the way.

The neighbors that we spoke with also informed us that filming at the property took about three weeks to complete, which leads me to believe that the real life interior was used in the production.

Big THANK YOU to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for finding this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Arthur Abbott’s house from The Holiday is located at 163 South Rockingham Avenue in Brentwood.

August 12, 2011December 6, 2013

The Washoe County Courthouse from “The Misfits”

As promised, while visiting my grandmother in Reno last month, I did indeed bring along a copy of The Misfits on DVD and we did indeed watch it. Prior to gathering around her television set, my grandma informed me that she had actually seen The Misfits once before, back in 1961 when it first came out in theatres. How incredibly cool is that! When I asked her if she had enjoyed it, she said “No, not particularly.” Ha! My grandmother has never been one to mince words. Winking smile She told me that the movie was a bit too depressing for her taste and that the horse-wrangling scenes seriously disturbed her. Now, having seen the flick myself, I can say that her analysis was spot on. The Misfits was seriously depressing and I had to fast-forward through each and every one of the scenes involving horse-wrangling. I must say, though, that it was, as always, thoroughly enjoyable to see my girl Marilyn Monroe onscreen in what many consider to be her finest performance. Every time MM would enter a scene, my mom, who watched the film with us, would say, “God, she was beautiful!” And it is so true! The camera certainly loved Marilyn and she was absolutely luminous in The Misfits, which, as fate would have it, was the last picture the starlet ever completed.

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A very brief, but important scene from The Misfits, which was filmed almost in its entirety in the Silver State, takes place at the Washoe County Courthouse in Downtown Reno, a building which is still in use to this day. So I, of course, just had to drag my dad and my grandma out to stalk the place while we were in town. (My mom, who had just had back surgery, decided to sit this one out.) The absolutely beautiful, neo-classical-style courthouse was originally designed in 1911 by Frederic DeLongchamps, in what was to be the prolific Nevada-area architect’s very first solo commission. The stunning structure, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1986, cost $250,000 to construct and features a copper dome, towering Corinthian columns, a large portico, terrazzo tile flooring, and a stained glass ceiling.

Sadly though, as you can see above, no photography whatsoever is allowed inside of the building. According to the Yahoo! Travel website, more marriage licenses have been given out at the Washoe County Courthouse than at any other courthouse of its size in the entire country. Consequently, due to Reno’s lenient divorce laws (the city’s waiting period for a divorce in the early 1900s was only six months; in 1927 that waiting period was shortened to three months; and in 1931 it was shortened yet again to a scant six weeks!), countless marriages have ended within the courthouse walls, as well, resulting in the city being dubbed “The Divorce Capital of the World”. In the 1930s alone over 33,000 divorces were granted at the historic courthouse, which is, I am guessing, how The Misfits came to be filmed there.

In The Misfits, Guido (aka Eli Wallach, whom my sharp-as-a-tack, 86-year-old grandmother immediately recognized as Arthur Abbot from fave movie The Holiday), drives Roslyn Taber (aka Marilyn Monroe) and her friend Isabelle Steers (aka Thelma Ritter) to the Washoe County Courthouse so that Roslyn can be granted a – you guessed it – divorce. Guido drops the two women off on the northeast corner of South Virginia Street and Court Street in the scene, just across the road from the courthouse, which you can see in the background in the two screen captures pictured above.

Roslyn and Isabelle then cross South Virginia Street and head to the courthouse, where they run into Roslyn’s soon-to-be ex-husband, Raymond Taber (aka Kevin McCarthy), and have a brief confrontation with him on the front steps. I find it absolutely amazing that the courthouse not only still looks exactly the same today as it did in 1961 when The Misfits was filmed, but that the place is still in use almost a full century after its inception. SO INCREDIBLY COOL!

While stalking the courthouse, I was under the mistaken assumption that Marilyn had walked up the north side of the front steps in The Misfits and I had my dad take a photograph of me posing there. It was not until I got home and re-watched the scene that I realized that Marilyn had actually walked up the south side of the steps. Ugh, I am such a blonde sometimes! Ah well, I guess I will just have to go back and re-stalk the place during my next visit to Reno!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The official address of the Washoe County Courthouse from The Misfits is 75 Court Street in Downtown Reno, but the front of the building and the area that appeared in the movie is actually located around the corner at 117 South Virginia Street.