Lana Clarkson’s Former House

Lana Clarkson's House (7 of 7)

Way back in July, Mike, from MovieShotsLA,  and I took a little stalking trip to the Venice Beach/Marina del Rey area.  Now I should explain here that stalking with Mike is an experience in and of itself.  The guy has lived in Los Angeles his entire life and has absorbed so much location information during that time that he is literally like a walking-talking map of filming locations and movie stars’ homes.  So when we ventured out to the Venice Canals – one of the most beautiful spots in L.A. – and he started rattling off information about almost every single dwelling that we passed, I had to get out my iPhone and start taking notes, lest I forget it all.  The residence that I was most excited to learn about, as I thought it would fit in perfectly with my Haunted Hollywood postings, was the tiny cottage where actress Lana Clarkson lived at the time of her death.

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As I mentioned in my post about the Venice Beach Cotel, where SanDeE* (my girl Sarah Jessica Parker) lived in L.A. Story, the seaside city was founded by a real estate developer and wealthy tobacco heir named Abbot Kinney who was looking to create “The Venice of America” on the shores of sunny Southern California.  In the early 1900s, Kinney purchased some coastal acreage just south of Santa Monica and proceeded to built his dreamland.  In the process, he drained sixteen miles of area marshes and turned them into a series of saltwater canals, made complete with idyllic bridges and singing gondoliers.  Sadly, while beautiful, the canals were built far too shallow, resulting in poor water circulation.  In the late 1920s, they were declared a public health hazard and the vast majority of them filled in and turned into streets.  Today, only six small waterways, totaling two miles, and four original bridges remain.  As you can see below, what was saved is now an absolutely magical little enclave and one of the most picturesque spots in L.A.  I actually hate the Venice area – it is extremely seedy and far over-crowded – but I love, love, love the canals.

Lana Clarkson's House (2 of 4)

Lana Clarkson's House (4 of 4)

Tucked away, so much so that one could visit Venice without ever realizing they were there, the canals are situated between South Venice Boulevard, Eastern Court, 28th Avenue, and Strongs Drive.

Lana Clarkson's House (1 of 4)

Lana Clarkson's House (3 of 4)

Lana Clarkson’s former home is located at the southern end of the canals.  The tiny 1-bedroom, 1-bath waterfront cottage, which was originally built in 1905, boasts a scant 454 square feet of living space and sits on a small 0.09-acre plot of land.  The six-foot tall actress, who was best known for the 1985 film Barbarian Queen, had rented the residence, at $1,200 per month, since at least 2001.  According to a September 2007 Vanity Fair article written by Dominick Dunne, Lana fixed up the bungalow on her own dime and her bedroom, which was painted red with black doors, was decorated with photographs of her idol, Marilyn Monroe.  Apparently, at the time the article was written there were plans to tear the abode down, but I am very happy to report that, as of a few months ago, the place was still standing.  You can check out a picture of what the house looked like back when Lana lived there, or shortly thereafter, on the Find a Death website here.

Lana Clarkson's House (5 of 7)

Lana Clarkson's House (4 of 7)

The pictures below show the view from Lana’s former back porch.

Lana Clarkson's House (1 of 7)

Lana Clarkson's House (2 of 7)

Lana Clarkson was famously shot to death at record producer Phil Spector’s Alhambra mansion (which I blogged about here) during the early morning hours of February 3rd, 2003.   While Spector claimed that the 40-year-old actress had committed suicide, a jury disagreed and he was convicted of her murder on April 13th, 2009 and sentenced to 19-years-to-life in prison.  You can read a full account of the events of February 3rd, 2003 on the Find a Death website here.  I actually saw Phil in person back in September 2007 during his first trial (I was serving as a juror in a nearby courtroom) and I honestly don’t know what was scarier – his spaced out eyes or his spaced out hair!

Lana Clarkson's House (6 of 7)

Lana Clarkson's House (3 of 7)

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 finding this location!  Smile

Lana Clarkson's House (4 of 7)

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: Lana Clarkson’s former home is located at 3005 Grand Canal in Venice.

The House Where Nick Adams Died

Nick Adams House (4 of 7)

As I have mentioned a few times over the past couple of months, fellow stalker E.J., from The Movieland Directory website, recently published an e-book about Old Hollywood titled Unscripted: Hollywood Back-Stories, Volume 1 (which you can purchase on Nook here and on Kindle here).  The book, which I devoured in less than a day, features countless historical locations, one of which – the Beverly Hills house where Rebel-Without-a-Cause actor Nick Adams was found dead in 1968 under “mysterious and still-unexplained” circumstances – I thought would be perfect for my Haunted Hollywood postings.  So I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on over there just a few days later.

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While I have never actually seen Rebel Without a Cause (I know, I know – and I call myself a stalker!), Unscripted features an entire chapter dedicated to the flick and the premature death of four of its young stars.  [James Dean passed away in a car crash on September 30th, 1955 at the age of 24.  Sal Mineo was stabbed to death in 1976 at age 37 in what appeared to be a robbery gone wrong.  Natalie Wood famously drowned off the island of Catalina at the age of 41 in 1981.  (You can read my blog posts on the hotel where she stayed the night before her death here and the restaurant where she ate one of her last meals here.)  And Nick Adams was found dead of an apparent drug overdose on February 7th, 1968.  He was 36.]  When I read the sentence, “In a bizarre coincidence, each would die tragically, at a rate of one per decade, before and after the film’s October 27, 1955 release”, I was immediately intrigued and decided that I just had to stalk Adams’ then home.

Nick Adams House (2 of 7)

Nick Adams House (5 of 7)

At the time of his death, Adams, who was going through a divorce, had just returned from Rome after his latest movie, Murder in the Third Dimension, had been scrapped shortly before production was set to begin.  Upon arriving in Los Angeles, Nick rented a two-story, three-bedroom, two-bath, 1,810-square-foot Cape Cod-style residence in the Trousdale Estates area of Beverly Hills.  As the story goes, he was supposed to have dinner with his divorce lawyer, former L.A.P.D. officer Ervin “Tip” Roeder, on the night of February 7th, 1968.  When Nick failed to show up at the restaurant, Roeder headed over to the 1957-era house to check on him.  And while Roeder did not notice anything amiss, when no one answered his many knocks at the door, he headed to the back of the property, forced open a window and ventured upstairs, where he found Nick, fully clothed, sitting on the floor next to his bed, his eyes staring blankly ahead.  The actor was dead at 36.  You can see a photograph of Adams being removed from his home on the Find a Death website here.

Nick Adams House (1 of 7)

Nick Adams House (7 of 7)

The coroner, Dr. Thomas Noguchi, who also performed the autopsies of Marilyn Monroe, Robert F. Kennedy, Sharon Tate, and (coincidentally) Natalie Wood, found a lethal combination of paraldehyde (an anticonvulsant) and Promazine (an antipsychotic) in Adams’ system, which he believed would have killed the actor instantly.  His death was ruled an accidental suicide, even though, according to several sources, including John Austin’s 1970 book Hollywood’s Unsolved Mysteries and Ken Schessler’s 1997 book This is Hollywood, no pill bottles or syringes were found in the home.  Of the death, Schessler says, “To this day, police are still puzzled as to how the drugs had entered his system, as no means of ingestation were ever found near his body.”  It appears that someone’s wires got crossed somewhere along the way, though, because according to the February 8th, 1968 edition of the Los Angeles Times, “a number of stoppered bottles containing prescription drugs were in a medicine cabinet.”  Either way, the truth of Adams’ death seems to have been buried along with the young actor and the circumstances surrounding it the fodder of stalkers like me ever since.

Nick Adams House (3 of 7)

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 E.J., from The Movieland Directory website, for informing me of this location!  Smile

Nick Adams House (6 of 7)

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: The house where Nick Adams died is located at 2126 El Roble Lane in Beverly Hills.