Elvis Presley locations – IAMNOTASTALKER

January 29, 2013January 29, 2013

Lester Siegel’s House from “Argo”

Today’s post is the very first blog written from my new home in the desert. The Grim Cheaper and I moved last Wednesday (it took over 15 hours!) and are finally getting settled in to our Palm Springs pad. There is still quite a bit left to complete, though, and, while the hyper-organized/anal/OCD-side of me has a hard time doing anything while there are still boxes to be unpacked and rooms to be organized, I decided to do a little blogging today, regardless. My posts over the next couple of weeks will most likely be intermittent, though, while we continue to settle in. And now, on with the post! Another filming location from fave movie Argo that I found thanks to the fabulous Los Angeles Times article forwarded to me by Mike, from MovieShotsLA, was the home where Hollywood producer Lester Siegel (Alan Arkin) lived. And I just have to say here how desperate I am to stalk LA/Ontario International Airport, which masqueraded as the Tehran airport in Argo. I have a flight scheduled out of there in early March and, let me tell you, I canNOT wait! But I digress. Anyway, I dragged the GC right on out to stalk Lester Siegel’s mansion a few weekends ago, shortly before our big move.

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In real life, Lester’s mansion actually belongs to actress Zsa Zsa Gabor and her longtime husband, Frederic Prinz von Anhalt, who seems to be a rather accident-prone individual – in October 2010, Frederic swallowed a bee that then stung him in the throat; in December 2010, after mistaking nail glue for eye drops, he accidentally glued his own eye shut; and in September 2011, he was hit by a car while walking in Beverly Hills. Yikes! Although there are quite a few conflicting reports about the property’s history online (many of which seem to have been propagated by Gabor and Frederic themselves), the fact of the matter is that the residence was originally built in 1955 for John and Gladys Zurlo. And while famous recluse Howard Hughes did rent the dwelling for a time in the 1960s (and apparently wore a hole in the carpet thanks to his notorious pacing), he never owned the place nor was it built for him. Gabor has also reportedly stated that she bought the pad directly from Hughes, but according to the Zurlos’ granddaughter, Barbara Yobs, the couple themselves sold the home to Gabor in 1973 for $250,000. For the record, it is further untrue that Elvis Presley ever lived on the premises, as Gabor has also claimed. Anyway, due to failing health and mounting medical bills, Gabor and Frederic put the property on the market in June 2011 for $15 million. It has yet to sell, though, so in the meantime the couple has been leasing the place out to film crews. HBO’s yet-to-be released Liberace biopic Behind the Candelabra also made use of the estate last year.

Sadly, as you can see below, aside from the front gate, very little of the dwelling is visible from the street. Back in June 2011, fave website CurbedLA posted quite a few real estate photographs, though, which you can check out here. As stated in a Huffington Post article, the home “was built in the ‘50s and doesn’t look as if it has been redecorated since. It is lavish and sings old over-the-top Hollywood glamour.” Yep, that pretty much sums it up. The Hollywood Regency-style dwelling boasts seven bedrooms, seven baths, 8,878 square feet of living space (or 6,393 depending on which real estate listing you check), one acre of land, 270-degree views of downtown Los Angeles and the Pacific Ocean, a grand salon, staff quarters, a bar, a rooftop terrace, indoor and outdoor entertaining areas, and a pool. Supposedly, Zsa Zsa swam naked in said pool every morning (yuck!) and also entertained such luminaries as Queen Elizabeth, Bob Hope, Ronald and Nancy Reagan, Elizabeth Taylor, Kirk Douglas, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Frank Sinatra, and Henry Kissinger on the premises.

Quite a few areas of the house were used in Argo, including the front exterior;

the circular entry-way (LOVE those red walls!);

the formal living room;

the bar;

and the backyard and pool.

A great aerial view of the house was also shown in the flick. Man, what I wouldn’t give to see the inside of that place!

On an Argo side-note – for those interested in how much of the movie was actually true (and the vast majority of it was – even the part about the Iranian government hiring professional carpet-weavers to piece together documents and photographs that had been shredded by American diplomats just prior to the embassy being taken hostage!), you can check out a fabulous Slate.com article here.

You can find me on Facebook here and on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And be sure to check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Zsa Zsa Gabor’s house, aka Lester Siegel’s mansion from Argo, is located at 1001 Bel Air Road in Bel Air.

July 25, 2012July 24, 2012

Elvis Presley’s Honeymoon Hideaway

While visiting my parents in the Coachella Valley last month, Mike, from MovieShotsLA, suggested that I do a re-stalk of the desert home where Elvis Presley and his new bride, Priscilla, spent their honeymoon in 1967. I had originally stalked and blogged about the property way back in March 2008, when my website was just a few months old, but because the post (which you can read here) was a mash-up of sorts about several Palm Springs-area celebrity vacation homes, Mike thought it would be a good idea to re-visit the location and dedicate a post solely to it. So I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on over there on our way out of town.

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The Elvis Honeymoon Hideaway, as it is commonly known, was designed in 1960 by architect William Krisel for real estate developer Robert Alexander, owner of the The Alexander Construction Company, who built the pad himself, at a cost of $300,000, for his wife, Helene. Together, Alexander and Krisel had constructed almost 2,000 homes in the Palm Springs-area, most notably in what came to be referred to as the “Alexander Tract”, which, according to a February 2009 Palm Springs Life article, historian Alan Hess called the “largest Modernist housing subdivision in the United States”.

The design of the house consists of four perfect circles built on three levels and incorporates many circular elements, including a 64-foot circular banquette couch that surrounds a circular fireplace and a circular-shaped kitchen that curves around a rounded stove. And, as you can see below, the pathway leading to the front door is made up of overlapping circular steps.

I absolutely LOVE the musical clefs on the home’s front gate, by the way.

And the rock outside which declares that Elvis honeymooned on the premises. As I’ve said countless times before on this blog, why don’t more owners of famous homes do this??? LOVE IT! But I digress.

When Look Magazine published an eight-page feature on the property called “The Way-Out Way of Life” in September 1962 (which you can take a look at here), “The House of Tomorrow”, as it was dubbed, became wildly famous, as did the Alexanders. Sadly, the couple, who were said to be the movers and shakers of the Palm Springs social scene at the time, were killed in a plane crash on November 14th, 1965. Elvis, who first heard about the dwelling from his manager, Colonel Tom Parker (who lived nearby at 1166 North Vista Vespero), ended up leasing the property a little less than a year later, on September 16th, 1966, at a rate of $21,000 per year. And while the singer and his then girlfriend, Priscilla Beaulieu, were set to be married on the grounds, when the media caught wind of the impending nuptials, plans were changed and the couple was whisked away to Las Vegas for an impromptu ceremony at the Aladdin Hotel on May 1st, 1967. That afternoon, the newlyweds returned to their Ladera Circle home, where Elvis famously carried Priscilla over the threshold. Lisa Marie was born exactly (like to the day!) nine months later, on February 1st, 1968, by which time the couple had moved into a ranch located in Memphis, Tennessee.

The two-bedroom, four-bath, 4,695-square-foot home, which was restored to its original glory in 1990, features a pool, an outdoor stage, a tennis court, a fruit orchard, a private garden, floor-to-ceiling windows, panoramic views of the Santa Rosa Mountains, and a honeymoon master suite (natch!). You can check out some fabulous interior photographs of the residence here. The dwelling is currently used as venue for weddings and private events, and – wait for it! – guided tours of the property are also given on a daily basis at a rate of $25 per person. How cool is that?

And the home is also a filming location! In the 1998 made-for-TV movie Poodle Springs, the exterior of the abode stood in for the residence where Philip Marlowe (James Caan) lived with his wife, Laura Parker-Marlowe (Dina Meyer – aka Beverly Hills, 90210’s Lucinda Nicholson).

The interior and backyard scenes were shot elsewhere, though – most likely at a home in Los Angeles.

And while the 1998 made-for-television movie Elvis and Me, which was based on Priscilla Presley’s 1985 book of the same name, supposedly filmed some scenes at the Honeymoon Hideaway, I scanned through it prior to writing this post and did not spot the house anywhere.

The Honeymoon Hideaway is also a popular spot for photo shoots and such stars as Jenny McCarthy, Elisabeth Shue and Jennifer Jason Leigh have all posed there for such noted lensmen as Mario Testino, Mark Seliger and Annie Leibovitz.

Be sure to “Like” IAMNOTASTALKER on Facebook here and “Friend” me on my personal page here. You can also check out the IAMNOTASTALKER About Me page here and you can follow me on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And you can take a look at my latest post about one of my favorite to-go meals on my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Big THANK YOU to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for suggesting that I write another post about this location! Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Elvis Honeymoon Hideaway is located at 1350 Ladera Circle in Palm Springs. You can visit the home’s official website here. Tours of the property, tickets for which can be purchased here, are given on a daily basis at a cost of $25 per person.

March 9, 2012March 8, 2012

The Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine Temple

Another location that I stalked while my good friend Nat was in town a few weeks ago was the Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine Temple – a ten-acre public oasis located on Sunset Boulevard in Pacific Palisades that was established by spiritual leader/Kriya Yoga guru Paramahansa Yogananda in 1950. Because Nat is a dedicated yogi, I thought she would love visiting the site. Little did I know how much the Grim Cheaper and I would enjoy it, too. And while the Lake Shrine is not actually a filming location, because it is located on the site of a former movie studio, I thought my fellow stalkers might be interested in it, as well.

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I first learned about the Lake Shrine Temple from Laura Randall’s fabulous book Peaceful Places Los Angeles: 100 Tranquil Sites in the City of Angels, which I gifted to the GC for Christmas a few years back. In the tome, Randall states, “Among my collection of peaceful places, this may be the most famous one in all of Los Angeles.” How was it possible, then, that this stalker had never before heard of it? As it turns out, the Lake Shrine is one of Southern California’s best kept secrets.

The site where the Lake Shrine Temple now sits was originally part of an 18,460-acre plot of land that made up Inceville – Hollywood’s first modern movie studio, which was established by producer Thomas Ince in Santa Ynez Canyon in 1912. For the next four years, hundreds upon hundreds of silent western-style films were shot on the lot. Sadly, in January 1916, a few days after Thomas had opened a second studio in Culver City, a fire ravaged Inceville, destroying numerous sets. That fire was the first of many and, by 1922, the lot was rendered virtually useless. In 1927, after the land had changed hands several times, a real estate developer named Alphonzo Bell, Sr. began hydraulically grading a portion of the site in the hopes of building a new residential community there. As fate would have it, Bell ran out of money mid-excavation and walked away from the project, leaving a large vacant basin that, thanks to the many underground springs in the area, ended up filling with water. The basin was neglected until 1940 when H. Everett “Big Mac” McElroy, an assistant superintendent of construction at 20th Century Fox studios, and his wife stepped in and purchased the ten-acre parcel. Because construction materials were in short supply due to World War II, the couple then had their Mississippi-style houseboat, Adeline, moved to the property and they resided on it for the next few years. That houseboat still sits on the lake to this day (pictured above).

Mac and his wife eventually built themselves a new residence – one that was modeled after a mill house and which featured a two-and-a-half ton, fifteen-foot working waterwheel that irrigated the land. The mill house now serves as the Lake Shrine’s museum and gift shop.

With their new home completed, the couple then began construction on a three-story replica of 16th-Century Dutch windmill (which has since been transformed into the Shrine’s chapel) . . .

. . . as well as a neighboring boat dock and landing. As you can see above, the grounds are so idyllic they look like they were created by Walt Disney!

In the late 1940s, the McElroy’s sold their enchanting lakeside oasis to an oil magnate, who promptly moved into the windmill and set about making plans to build a hotel on the premises. According to the Lake Shrine’s official website, fate stepped in when the magnate had several dreams about his property becoming a “Church of All Religions”. Those dreams prompted him to sell his acreage to Paramahansa Yogananda, founder of the Self-Realization Fellowship, who further landscaped the area and turned it into an open-air shrine dedicated to all religions. Today, thousands of people each year stop by the Lake Shrine in order to meditate, pray, or simply just sit and appreciate its vast beauty. According to Seeing Stars, not only was Elvis Presley a frequent visitor to the site, but the memorial service for former Beatle George Harrison was also held on the premises.

The Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine currently consists of the Golden Lotus Archway, which was designed by Paramahansa Yogananda;

the Mahatma Gandhi World Peace Memorial – a “wall-less temple” which houses a portion of the Indian spiritual leader’s ashes (the only portion of his ashes to be interred outside of India, in fact);

picturesque waterfalls;

sprawling lawns;

verses from various religious texts displayed on plaques;

statues of Jesus Christ, Saint Francis of Assisi, Bhagavan Krishna, Buddha, and the Madonna and Child;

a sunken garden and grotto;

and various animals, including swans;

and, my personal favorite, turtles! Hard to believe that all of that tranquility is situated on a busy stretch of Sunset Boulevard! The Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine is an absolutely AMAZING sanctuary that is a must-see for both visitors to the city and longtime Angelinos alike. I honestly cannot more highly recommend stalking the place!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine Temple is located at 17190 Sunset Boulevard in Pacific Palisades. You can visit the official Lake Shrine website here. The site is open to the public Tuesday through Saturday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and both parking and admission are free.