The Hideaway Saloon from “90210”

The Hideaway Kagel Canyon (26 of 26)

While watching the Season 5 episode of 90210 titled “Misery Loves Company” a few months back, I became just a wee bit mesmerized by the Hideaway, the biker bar where Naomi Clark (AnnaLynne McCord) and Adrianna Tate-Duncan (Jessica Lowndes) tried to track down Naomi’s lost wedding ring.  The series’ fabulous costume designer, Kime Buzzelli, had posted pictures of the site on her Instagram page (@kbuzzy), so I commented asking for its real name (for whatever reason, I had incorrectly assumed that the name shown in the episode was a fake).  She wrote back right away (she’s great about interacting with fans) saying, “It was this place called the Hideaway and it was LEGIT!  Loved it.”  When I told her I was going to have to stalk it in the near future, she replied, “I’d love to go back, it seems like it’s actually like we shot it. Smile  Perfect amount of tough and scary.”  So I immediately added the place to my To-Stalk list and dragged the Grim Cheaper right on over there a few weeks later.  And I just have to say here that I am seriously depressed over the fact that 90210 was cancelled.  Yes, the show had gone downhill in recent months (The Hangover-themed “Dude, Where’s My Husband” episode starring a few of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills was a definite low point), but I still loved watching it and am beyond sad that, come next season, I will no longer be able to.  And I swear, if Annie Wilson (Shenae Grimes) and Liam Court (my man Matt Lanter) do not get together in the final episode, CBS will be receiving a very strongly worded letter from me!  Winking smile

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The Hideaway, which was constructed in 1917, originated as a stagecoach stop.  It went through a few different incarnations after that, but started serving alcohol in (I believe) 1947 and has been going strong ever since.

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The Hideaway Kagel Canyon (4 of 26)

I am fairly certain that the decidedly rustic décor has not changed much since the property’s beginnings almost a century ago.

The Hideaway Kagel Canyon (8 of 26)

The Hideaway Kagel Canyon (15 of 26)

The Hideaway is actually the perfect name for the site because it is completely hidden away from view.  So much so that the GC and I almost drive right past it!  As you can see below, it is tucked below the road and virtually impossible to see.

The Hideaway Kagel Canyon (22 of 26)

The Hideaway Kagel Canyon (23 of 26)

The place is so seemingly remote and peaceful – it even butts up to a little stream! – that it is hard to believe it is located just one mile from the busy 210 Freeway.

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The Hideaway Kagel Canyon (20 of 26)

And while I originally thought that the hitching posts out front were a décor choice, I was way off!

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The Hideaway Kagel Canyon (12 of 26)

While we were exploring the place, the GC spotted more hitching posts in the back of the bar, as well as, ahem, evidence of horses having been on the premises, and a sign stating, “Do not tie horses to fence.”  According to a 2001 L.A. Weekly article, the Hideaway is one of only three bars in the county that allows patrons to hitch their steeds to the posts out front.  How incredibly cool is that?

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The Hideaway Kagel Canyon (18 of 26)

The Hideaway’s payphone booth, which is painted to look like wood, is pretty cool, too.

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The Hideaway Kagel Canyon (7 of 26)

Unfortunately, the Hideaway was not yet open when we showed up to stalk it (it opens at 11 a.m. on weekends), so we were not able to venture inside.  We did happen to meet a few nearby homeowners who were nice enough to fill us in on the site’s filming history, though.  And being that the bar offers karaoke (my favorite!), as well as live music, dancing, darts, and pool, I am going to have to drag the GC back there one evening when it is open.

The Hideaway Kagel Canyon (10 of 26)

The Hideaway Kagel Canyon (16 of 26)

In the “Misery Loves Company” episode of 90210, Naomi convinces Adrianna to go for a Thelma & Louise-style road trip up the coast, “minus the Grand Canyon suicide dive, of course.”  During the drive, the two stop to skinny-dip in a natural spring (why not?) leaving their designer duds behind in Naomi’s convertible (of course).  As you can guess, the clothes – and Naomi’s wedding ring, which was in her pants pocket – get stolen and, acting on a tip from some local hippies who happen to be walking by, the girls head to a biker bar just up the road in order to confront the culprits.  (In that episode’s side story, Liam gets kidnapped by his psycho bodyguard who plans to take him to Mexico in a three foot by five foot box.  Oh, and Annie gets shot.  There’s a reason the GC has turned to me while watching 90210 over the past couple of weeks and said of the series’ cancellation, “Really, you didn’t see this coming?”  Winking smile)

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The real life interior of the bar was also used in the episode.

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As you can see below, the Hideaway even has a little anteroom for dancing and is much larger than its exterior would have you believe.

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Due to its rugged look and isolated feel, the Hideaway has been a favorite of location scouts since way back when.  Thanks to the Falcon Crest website, I learned that in the Season 1 episode titled “The Tangled Vines”, which first aired in 1981, the watering hole masqueraded as the supposed Tuscany Valley-area bar where Lance Cumson (Lorenzo Lamas) took his cousins Cole Gioberti (William R. Moses) and Vickie Gioberti (Jamie Rose) for a drink.  Both the exterior . . .

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. . . and the interior of the bar were used in the scene.

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In the 2000 black comedy Drowning Mona, the Hideaway stood in for the Verplanck, New York-area bar where Murph Calzone (Mark Pellegrino) worked.

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The interior of the bar also appeared in the movie.

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How much does Casey Affleck, who plays Murph’s brother, Bobby in the flick, look like Zac Efron, by the way?

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In The Dukes of Hazzard: The Beginning, the Hideaway was where Daisy Duke (April Scott) worked.  At least I think it’s where she worked.  Unfortunately, the movie was not available to stream anywhere online, so I was only able to watch a preview of it and while I did spot the Hideaway, I am not exactly sure of what function it served in the 2007 flick.

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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.

Big THANK YOU to 90210 costume designer Kime Buzzelli for telling me about this location!  Smile  You can check out Kime’s official website here.

The Hideaway Kagel Canyon (9 of 26)

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: The Hideaway, from the “Misery Loves Company” episode of 90210, is located at 12122 Kagel Canyon Road in Kagel Canyon.  You can visit the bar’s official website here.

Alfred Hitchcock’s House from “Hitchcock”

Hitchcock House - Interior (5 of 11)

Hold on to your hats, my fellow stalkers, ‘cause today’s post is going to be a long one!  A couple of months ago, Mike, from MovieShotsLA, called me up to let me know that he had just watched a screener of the 2012 biopic Hitchcock (he works at a high-profile production company) and, knowing my penchant for the Master of Suspense, suggested I run right out and see it for myself as soon as possible.  Thankfully, because Helen Mirren, who played Alma Reville, Hitch’s wife, in the flick, had been nominated for a Screen Actors Guild award, Fox Searchlight had made a digital screener available for SAG members and I was able to watch it shortly after Mike’s call.  I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed the film and learned quite a bit lot about the legendary director that I had not previously been aware of.  The locations (all of which are in L.A.) and design of the movie were quite stellar, to boot!  And while I recognized that the exterior of the Hitchcock household had been portrayed by Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes’ former Beverly Hills manse (which I blogged about here), what I did not realize (until Mike told me) was that the interiors were filmed at a residence in Pasadena – one that I was actually quite familiar with and had even blogged about before, way back in October 2008.  Because the post did not cover the full filming history of the home, though, I figured the place was most-definitely worthy of a re-stalk and ran right out to do just that a few days before our move.

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The gargantuan Tudor mansion pictured below was originally constructed in 1902 as a Craftsman-style winter home for a Chicago novelist named Gertrude Potter Daniels.  Just three years later, in 1905, the property was sold to a new owner, Salt Lake City mining magnate Susanna Bransford Emery Holmes, aka “Utah’s Silver Queen”, and her husband Colonel E.F. Holmes.  The couple moved into the property fulltime in 1910 and immediately began an extensive $37,00- renovation project that significantly altered the dwelling.  Holmes dubbed her new residence, which was completed in 1922, “El Roble” in honor of a massive oak tree that once stood on the premises.

Hitchcock House - Interior (1 of 11)

Hitchcock House - Interior (2 of 11)

Today, the dwelling, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2004, boasts a three-story, twenty-room, 7,300-square-foot main home, ten bedrooms, six baths, a 1.35-acre plot of land, a two-story freestanding gate house (pictured), chauffeur’s quarters, a pergola, and formal gardens.  You can check out some fabulous photographs of what lies behind the mansion’s front gates here.

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Hitchcock House - Interior (8 of 11)

As you can see below, the land on which the home sits is absolutely gargantuan in size – as is the home itself.

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Hitchcock House - Interior (4 of 11)

The beautiful residence, which once belonged to Occidental College, was featured as the Pasadena Showcase House of Design in both 1975 and 1996 and its gardens have appeared twice in Sunset Magazine.  The place has also been spotlighted countless times onscreen.

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Hitchcock House - Interior (10 of 11)

As I mentioned above, the exterior of Alfred and Alma’s mansion in Hitchcock was actually that of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes’ former Beverly Hills home.  (Big THANK YOU to Mike for making the Hitchcock screen captures which appear below.)

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The interiors were a mixture of both El Roble in Pasadena and studio sets.  The areas of El Roble that appeared in Hitchcock include the wood-paneled study, which you can see a real life photograph of here;

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the living room, which you can see a real life photograph of here;

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and the entryway, which you can see a real life photograph of here.

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The Hitchcocks’ bedroom;

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bathroom;

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and kitchen were all sets constructed on a studio soundstage.

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To create the rich interiors of the Hitchcock homestead, production designer Judy Becker consulted historic photographs of the couple’s actual former residence in Bel-Air (which I blogged about here).  Of the refrigerator pictured below, set decorator Robert Gould (whose father, as fate would have it, served as a second unit director on the original Psycho) said in a fabulous November 2012 Los Angeles Times article , “We chose the fridge because of the interesting handle with the round detail.  It had an innuendo of a peep hole, a subtle way of referencing Hitchcock’s voyeurism throughout the film.”  I absolutely love learning little tidbits like that!  God is in the details, as they say.

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In the fabulous 1978 comedy Foul Play, El Roble stood in for the supposed San Francisco-area residence belonging to Archbishop Thorncrest (Eugene Roche).

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During Season 4 of Falcon Crest, El Roble appeared several times as the mansion where Cole Gioberti (William R. Moses) and Melissa Agretti Cumson Gioberti (Ana Alicia) lived.

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In the Season 2 episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation titled “Cross Jurisdictions”, the house was where former chief of detectives Duke Rittle (John Kapelos) was tortured and killed.

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In the Season 3 episode of Ghost Whisperer titled “Unhappy Medium”, El Roble was where the Drake family – Susan (Dawson’s Creek’s Mary-Margaret Humes), Nikki (a very young Elisabeth Moss), and Sydney (Austin Highsmith) – lived.

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In the Season 4 episode of The Closer titled “Fate Line” (which I actually got to watch being filmed – you can read my blog post about the experience here), El Roble was the residence of murdered horror movie producer Sean Thompson (who was never actually seen onscreen).

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In the Season 4 episode of Greek titled “Agents for Change”, El Roble stood in for the home belonging to Evan Chambers’ (Jake McDorman’s) parents, Mr. Chambers (Kevin Kilner) and Mrs. Chambers (Kathryn Harrold).

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According to fave website OnLocationVacations, the yet-to-be released movie The Pretty One, starring Zoe Kazan and Jake Johnson, did some filming at El Roble this past June.  And while an April 1996 issue of Los Angeles Magazine stated that The Godfather was also filmed on the premises, I scanned through the flick while doing research for this post and did not see the mansion pop up anywhere.

Hitchcock House - Interior (6 of 11)

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.

Big THANK YOU to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for telling me about this location and for providing all of the Hitchcock screen captures.  Smile

Hitchcock House - Interior (11 of 11)

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: The home used for the interior of Alfred Hitchcock’s residence in Hitchcock is located at 141 North Grand Avenue in PasadenaTom Cruise and Katie Holmes’ former mansion, which stood in for the exterior of the Hitchcock house, is located at 918 North Alpine Drive in Beverly Hills.