Famous houses – Page 19 – IAMNOTASTALKER

December 20, 2010December 20, 2010

Adrianna’s New Rental from “90210”

Back in July of 2009, fellow stalker Jennie wrote to me asking for some help in tracking down a location that appeared in both the 1996 Aaron Spelling television series Kindred: The Embraced and the current reality show Celebrity Fit Club. Because I had never seen either of the shows, though, for this particular stalking venture I had to call in the team – aka Chas, from ItsFilmedThere, Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and fellow stalker Owen – and, magically, Chas came through in record time. He somehow managed to track down a Celebrity Fit Club crew member who told him that the show was primarily filmed at a convent in Los Feliz that belonged to the Los Angeles Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. I immediately added the place to my ever-growing “To Stalk” list, but, for whatever reason, never made it out to actually see it in person. So, you can imagine my surprise when I recognized the property as the mansion Adriana Tate-Duncan (aka Jessica Lowndes) rented on the recently-aired Season 3 episode of 90210 titled “Holiday Madness”. I literally just about fell out of my chair and dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out to stalk the place that very weekend.

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From what I’ve been able to gather online, it appears that the property no longer belongs to the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, but is now owned by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and is known as the Cardinal Timothy Manning House of Prayer for Priests. (Although there is a Facebook page which claims that the property is now the International Institute of Theological and Tribunal Studies and is owned by the Graduate Theological Foundation of Indiana, so I’m not really sure what the story is.) Regardless of who currently owns it, though, the structure was originally built in 1928 as a private home for Los Angeles broadcasting/automobile tycoon Earl C. Anthony, a man who not only brought major league baseball to Southern California for the first time, but who was also part of the team that invented gas stations and the car radio. The Anthony House, as it later came to be known, was designed by architect Bernard Maybeck, the same man who gave us the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. Anthony had commissioned his previous abode to be built by the legendary Greene & Greene architecture firm, but once Anthony, who owned several Packard automobile dealerships at the time, caught wind of the fact that one of the Greene brothers had purchased a car made by a competing brand, he refused to work with the architects on any subsequent projects and hired Maybeck to build his Los Feliz home. LOL! Maybeck incorporated Italian Villa, French Chateau, Spanish Mediterranean, and Tudor elements into the design of the mansion and it wound up costing a whopping $500,000 to construct. At the time it was the most expensive house in Hollywood. After Anthony’s widow passed away in the early 1950s, the mansion was purchased by Sir Daniel J. Donohue and his wife, who, in 1971, bequeathed the entire property to the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, who continued to own it until earlier this year.

Sadly, the 8.5-acre property is closed to the public and not much of it is visible from the street, but, as I’ve said many times before, that’s why God created aerial views! And you can see some fabulous close-up pictures of the former convent on the I.I.T.T.S. Facebook page here.

In the “Holiday Madness” episode of 90210, the former convent was used as Adrianna’s new, massively huge, $20,000-per-month rental.

Both the interior and the exterior of the property were used extensively in the episode . . .

. . . especially during Adrianna’s Christmas party scenes.

As I mentioned above, the property is also used extensively each season on the hit reality television show Celebrity Fit Club.

The Anthony House was also the site of the wine festival in the Season 4 episode of Brothers and Sisters titled “The Wine Festival”.

The property has also appeared in episodes of The A-Team, Dirty Sexy Money, Knight Rider, Dynasty, Airwolf, Falcon Crest, The Greatest American Hero, and Hart to Hart.

Big THANK YOU to Chas, from ItsFilmedThere, for finding this location! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Adrianna’s new house from 90210, aka the former Los Angeles Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary convent, is located at 3431 Waverly Drive in Los Feliz.

December 15, 2010December 14, 2010

Mike and Carol Brady’s Homes from the Pilot Episode of “The Brady Bunch”

Earlier this week while perusing through fellow stalker Chas’ website, ItsFilmedThere, I came across his Brady Bunch page which details numerous filming locations from the beloved 1970s series and, let me tell you, I almost fell off my chair! Especially when I saw that he not only had listed the location of the house where Mike Brady (aka Robert Reed) lived in the pilot episode of the series, which was titled “The Honeymoon”, but also the address of the home where Mike and Carol (aka Florence Henderson) tied the knot in that very same episode! How I had never noticed those locations on his site before is beyond me, especially since I am absolutely obsessed with the series! I immediately texted Chas to find out how he managed to track the two locations down and as it turns out he had, in typical Chas fashion, contacted the show’s creator Sherwood Schwartz! Chas always somehow manages to go straight to the source, so to speak, when seeking out locations. I recently enlisted his help in finding Chez Quis restaurant where Ferris Bueller (aka Matthew Broderick) pretended to be Abe Froman in fave movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and what did Chas do? You guessed it – he somehow managed to track down actor Jonathan Schmock who played the restaurant’s snooty maître d’ in the scene. As it turns out, Chez Quis restaurant was actually the now-defunct L’Orangerie restaurant in West Hollywood, but that’s a whole other story for a whole other post that I promise to write very soon. Anyway, Chas got a message delivered to Sherwood Schwartz asking him for information about the Brady houses and who should call him back but writer/producer Lloyd Schwartz – aka Sherwood’s son! So incredibly cool! So, once I had the addresses I immediately ran out to stalk both of the locations. YAY! Thank you, Chas! Smile

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The mid-century modern-style house pictured above is where architect Mike Brady lived with his three sons, Greg (aka Barry Williams), Peter (aka Christopher Knight), and Bobby (aka Mike Lookinland), in the “Honeymoon” episode of the series. For whatever reason, when the second episode, titled “Dear Libby”, aired, Mike and the rest of the Brady clan were shown living in a different house – the Studio City abode that was featured on every episode of the series thereafter.

Amazingly enough, the “Honeymoon” episode house still looks almost EXACTLY the same today as it did when the episode was filmed over 42 years ago!

Even the three plants on the front porch are still strikingly similar to how they appeared in the episode! Love it, love it, love it!

Located just about three miles west of Mike’s house is the residence belonging to Carol Brady’s parents, which is the spot where Mike and Carol tied the knot in the pilot episode.

Sadly though, while the house still looks very much the same as it did onscreen, there is now a large wall which surrounds the property and substantially obstructs the view of it from the road. UGH!

Mike and Carol’s wedding took place in the home’s backyard, which is, of course, also not visible from the street.

But you can catch a glimpse of it in the above aerial view.

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Chas, from ItsFilmedThere, for finding these locations! Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Mike Brady’s house from the pilot episode of The Brady Bunch is located at 12049 Iredell Street in Studio City. Carol Brady’s parents’ house, where the Brady wedding took place, is located at 4101 Longridge Avenue in Sherman Oaks.

December 8, 2010December 8, 2010

The Kaufmann House – One of the World’s Most Famous Houses

I thought I’d take another break from my wedding blogging today to write about a location that has occupied a spot at the very top of my “To-Stalk” list for over two years now, but had, for whatever reason, eluded me up until this past weekend when the Grim Cheaper and I headed to Palm Springs for a little pre-Christmas getaway. While we were there, I made it a point to finally, finally stalk what is known as one of the most iconic and, perhaps, most famous houses in the entire world; a residence that is as well-known, if not more so, than the White House, the Playboy Mansion, Neverland Ranch, and Fallingwater all put together, architecturally speaking at least – Richard Neutra’s legendary Kaufmann house.

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The Kaufmann house was originally built in 1946 by world-renowned mid-century modernist architect Richard Neutra. Amazingly enough, the residence was commissioned by Edgar J. Kaufmann Sr., the very same man who also commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to construct another of the world’s most famous houses – the property known as Fallingwater in Mill Run, Pennsylvania. It is amazing to me that two of the most iconic dwellings in the entire world were constructed for the same man, especially since they were designed by different architects. I can’t even imagine owning one of the residences, let alone both of them! But I digress. Anyway, Neutra designed the International-style Kaufmann House, or Kaufmann Desert House as it is also known, out of steel, aluminum, glass, and stone at a cost of $295,000. Famed photographer Julius Schulman’s 1947 images of the home turned the place into an architectural landmark virtually overnight, but, sadly, after Kaufmann’s death in 1955, the property sat vacant for several years. In the time period that followed, the pinwheel-shaped dwelling went through a succession of different owners – singer Barry Manilow even occupied the place for a few years – and a slew of unsightly renovations. In 1993, the Kaufmann House was purchased for a cool $1.5 million by an architectural historian named Beth Harris and her husband, an investment manager named Brent. The two quickly set about a massive painstaking and costly restoration of the entire property, bringing it back to its original glory. In a mind-boggling-bit of trivia, though, according to an October 2007 New York Times article, at the time the duo bought the residence, it had not only been on the market for over three and a half years, but was being listed as a “teardown”!

The Harrises had not actually originally set out to buy the home, but had been stalking the property (so love it!) when Brent noticed a “For Sale” sign situated among the overgrown foliage. The purchase turned out to be a fateful one, though, being that the couple’s decision to restore the residence is largely credited with setting into motion the massive mid-century modernist restoration movement that Palm Springs is now known for.

The Kaufmann House is not only considered to be one of Richard Neutra’s finest designs, but also one of the most important examples of mid-century modernist architecture in the entire world and one of the most publicized homes in architectural history. The property has been featured in countless magazines and periodicals over its 64-year history, including Palm Springs Life, Time, and Life Magazine, as well as in numerous architectural books. In 1996, it was designated a Class 1 Historic Site by the Palm Springs Historic Site Preservation Board.

When the Harrises divorced in 2007, they decided to sell their beloved property. But a unique house deserves a unique sale, so it was put up for purchase via an auction at Christie’s. Most unusual about the sale, though, was the fact that Christie’s categorized the home not as a residence or a piece of property, but as a work of art! The house sold at auction for a whopping $19.1 million, but fell out of escrow shortly thereafter. It hit the market once again a few months later, this time as a regular real estate sale, for just under $12.9 million, but I don’t believe it ever sold and it looks as if it has since been taken off the market.

The 5-bedroom, 6-bathroom, 3,200-square foot home, which sits on over 2 full acres of land, features floor-to-ceiling sliding (or “disappearing”) glass walls, indoor-outdoor living space, a wall of moveable aluminum sheets that can either be closed to keep out the sun or opened to take advantage of the mid-afternoon breeze, a second-story “gloriette” or outdoor sleeping area, a separate viewing platform, a large pool, a tennis court, and striking mountain views. You can check out some fabulous interior photographs of the Kauffman House here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Kaufmann house is located at 470 West Vista Chino in Palm Springs.

December 3, 2010December 3, 2010

Brenda Leigh Johnson’s House from “The Closer”

I thought I’d take a little break from writing about my nuptials today as I figure there are more than a few stalkers out there who are not at all interested in reading about wedding planning, even when there is a filming location element tied in to it. Anyway, a few days ago I was going through some old photographs on my computer when I came across a location that I stalked way back in November of 2008, but for whatever reason had completely forgotten to blog about – the adorable Craftsman-style house where Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson (aka Kyra Sedgwick) lived during the first three seasons of the TNT drama The Closer. When my dad and I saw the series being filmed in Pasadena back in October of 2008, I happened to ask one of the crew members if he knew where Brenda’s house was located. And while he couldn’t remember the exact address, he did tell me that the property could be found on Gramercy Place in Hollywood, not too far from Raleigh Studios where the series is lensed. Even with that detailed information, though, it took me quite a while to track down the house.

Gramercy Place actually begins at Marathon Street, just one block north of Melrose Avenue where Raleigh Studios is located, so I decided to begin my search there. Because I happened to be in the area at the time, this particular stalking venture took place in person in my car, rather than via Google Street View. Armed with a screen capture of the house, I drove south on Gramercy Place keeping my eyes peeled for the brown bungalow and was quite shocked to discover that, after only three blocks, the street ended – and, sadly, the property was nowhere to be found. I immediately called up Mike, from MovieShotsLA, to ask if there happened to be two streets in Hollywood with the name Gramercy, but he said there were not. He also informed me that Gramercy was a long street, which only added to my confusion, as I was ON Gramercy at the time and could only drive three blocks. So, a bit deterred, I returned home and set about doing some cyber-stalking on my computer. What I soon discovered was that Gramercy WAS, in fact a fairly long street, as after it stops at Maplewood Avenue it picks up again four blocks later at Beverly Boulevard. Because I am absolutely TERRIBLE with directions (my mom says I couldn’t find my way out of a paper bag), that thought had never even occurred to me! And, yes, I really am that blonde! Anyway, once I figured out that bit of information, it didn’t take me long to locate Brenda’s house and I dragged the Grim Cheaper right out to stalk the place just a few days later.

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Brenda moved into the Craftsman-style home pictured above in the Season 1 episode of The Closer titled “The Big Picture”, after the previous owner was found dead inside of it. After deciding that she and her fiance, Fritz Howard (aka Jon Tenney), need a larger abode a few seasons later, she moved out of this location and into a duplex located two miles away.

While we were stalking Brenda’s house, some people happened to be standing outside and I asked them if they were the owners. They weren’t, but, as it turns out, they knew the owner quite well. I, of course, immediately started asking them all sorts of questions about The Closer being filmed on the property and, amazingly enough, not a one of them had any idea what on earth I was talking about. Then, one of the guys said, “Oh wait, a couple of years ago a TV show did film here, but I have no idea what it was.” Then as the group walked away I heard one of the ladies say to the other, “What in the heck is The Closer ?” LOL Some people, I swear!!!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Closer house is located at 133 S. Gramercy Place in Hollywood.

November 10, 2010November 9, 2010

Dr. Mott’s House From “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle”

Another The Hand That Rocks the Cradle location that I stalked while vacationing in the Pacific Northwest this past May was the ultra-modern abode which belonged to Dr. Victor Mott (aka John de Lancie) and his wife, Peyton Flanders (aka Rebecca De Mornay), in the 1992 thriller. Amazingly enough, I didn’t actually remember the Mott home from the one time I viewed the movie almost two decades ago, but my good friend and fellow stalker Kerry, who lives in Washington State, insisted I stalk the place while we were up there and drove me and the Grim Cheaper by it on our final day in Seattle. And thank goodness she did, too, because the dwelling is nothing short of spectacular! In fact, how it is possible that I didn’t remember it from the film is absolutely beyond me!

In real life, the Mott residence, which seems to have been constructed almost entirely out of windows, boasts 4 bedrooms, a whopping 6 bathrooms, and 3,750-square feet of living space. The home was actually built in 1991, the same year that The Hand That Rocks the Cradle was lensed, so my guess is that it was vacant at the time of filming which is how producers came to use it in the movie.

The Mott house is featured in quite a few scenes in The Hand That Rocks the Cradle and, as you can see in the above screen captures, looks very much the same today as it did nineteen years ago when the movie was filmed. There have been a few subtle changes made to the residence over the years, of course, including the addition of a substantial amount of foliage around the front perimeter of the property, which wasn’t there at the time of the filming.

The residence’s front porch area has also been altered since The Hand That Rocks the Cradle was filmed and now features a blue-shingled overhang and brown wooden front doors, neither of which, in my never-to-be-humble-opinion, seem to fit in well with the rest of the abode. I much prefer the movie version of the front porch as to how it is currently designed.

It appears as if a window has also since been added to the rear portion of the home’s second story, as well. Other than those few changes, though, the property looks almost exactly the same in person as it appeared onscreen in The Hand That Rocks the Cradle. Love it! And, although you can’t quite tell in the above photograph due to the crappy weather we were experiencing that day, the breathtaking views of Downtown Seattle and Puget Sound that were shown in the movie are the real life views that can be seen from the actual home. Sigh!

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The real life interior of the property was also used for a few scenes in the movie as well.

As you can see in the above screen capture, and as was the case with the Bartel home which I blogged about yesterday, the property’s real life address was referred to in the movie in the scene in which Marlene Craven (aka Julianne Moore) looks at the real estate flyer for Dr. Mott’s former house.

Big THANK YOU to my good friend and fellow stalker Kerry for bringing me to this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Dr. Mott’s house from The Hand That Rocks the Cradle is located at 2502 37th Avenue West in the Magnolia neighborhood of Seattle, Washington.

November 9, 2010November 8, 2010

The “Hand That Rocks The Cradle” House

Another location that I stalked while visiting the Pacific Northwest this past May was the gorgeous Victorian-style residence where the Bartel family – Claire (aka Annabella Sciorra), Michael (aka Matt McCoy), Emma (aka an absolutely adorable pre-Californication Madeline Zima), and baby Joey (aka Eric, Jennifer, and Ashley Melander) – and their nanny, Peyton Flanders (aka Rebecca De Mornay), lived in the 1992 thriller The Hand That Rocks the Cradle. Even though I had actually only seen the movie once – almost two decades ago when it was first released in theatres – the Bartel home made such an impression on me that an image of it has been imprinted on my mind ever since. It is absolutely amazing to me how iconic the dwelling still is all these years later. Even more amazing to me is the fact that the home pictured above wasn’t actually the producer’s first choice for the filming of The Hand That Rocks the Cradle. They originally approached the owners of a different Tacoma-area Victorian residence – one that was chosen seven years later to stand in for the Stratford family home in the 1999 teen comedy 10 Things I Hate About You. But because The Hand filmmakers wanted to paint over some interior woodwork, cut holes in several walls, and temporarily remove all of the real life furnishings and decor, the 10 Things homeowners turned down the offer and a different property located just over a mile to the west was chosen instead. And the rest, as they say, is history. There’s a quote from the now-defunct Movieline Magazine that I’ve had pinned up on my bulletin board for over twenty years now which reads, “It is always fascinating to learn how an actress came to play a role in which she is so perfect for the part that you can’t imagine anyone else ever having been considered.” Well, the same can be said for houses, and it especially holds true for The Hand That Rocks the Cradle house – I honestly can’t imagine any other residence ever having been considered for the Bartel home.

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I am very happy to report that The Hand That Rocks the Cradle house looks remarkably the same today as it did eighteen years ago when it appeared in the movie. The residence has been painted a different color since that time and there is a quite a bit more foliage surrounding the property now, but otherwise it is still completely recognizable.

Even the light post/address marker located near the front porch is still there in real life, although the top of it is shaped a bit differently now.

The backside of the house and the garage area also appeared in the flick . . .

. . . although both have been remodeled quite a bit since filming took place.

The real life interior of the home was also used extensively in the filming.

Amazingly enough, the owners of the house decided to leave the famous Hand That Rocks the Cradle greenhouse, which played a pivotal role in the movie and which was built solely for the filming, intact after the flick had wrapped, which I think is just about the coolest thing ever! Even cooler still is the fact that there is a scene in the movie in which Michael calls 911 and says to the police, “We live at 808 Yakima”, which is the home’s actual address. I love it when real life details like that are included in a script!

In real life, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle house, which was originally built in 1891, boasts 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, and a whopping 6,105 square feet of living space. And while the residence is absolutely beautiful in person, I prefer the white color it was painted in the movie, as opposed to the yellow color it is currently painted today.

On a celebrity-sighting side-note – While doing some grocery shopping this past Sunday afternoon, I happened to run into actress Kimmy Robertson, who played Cathy in fave movie Don’t Tell Mom The Babysitter’s Dead. I just about died when I realized who she was and, despite the Grim Cheaper’s objections, followed her outside to ask if she wouldn’t mind taking a photograph with me. Kimmy was SUPER, SUPER nice and even chatted with us about Don’t Tell Mom for a bit. I think she found me a bit odd when I told her how upset I was that the All American Burger on Sunset Boulevard – which stood in for Clown Dog restaurant in the movie – had recently been torn down, but she and her dog Cleo happily posed for a pic with me nonetheless. So incredibly cool!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Hand That Rocks the Cradle house is located at 808 North Yakima Avenue in Tacoma, Washington.

November 4, 2010March 30, 2011

Stu’s House from “The Hangover”

One location that I have been on the lookout for for over a year now is the adorable bungalow where Stu Price (aka Ed Helms) and his girlfriend Melissa (aka Rachael Harris) lived in fave movie The Hangover. I absolutely fell in love with Stu’s home the moment I saw it in the flick and, thanks to its Craftsman-style architecture, became convinced that it was most likely located in the Pasadena area. Thankfully, I had spotted an address number of 1325 on the front of the house while watching the movie, so as soon as I got home from the theatre I immediately began searching all of the 1300 blocks in Pasadena for the property. When that failed, I moved my hunt first to South Pasadena and then to Altadena, but came up completely empty-handed on both ends. I was still absolutely convinced, though, that the property had to somewhere in the San Gabriel Valley. And oh, how wrong I was! Enter Mike, from MovieShotsLA, who decided to help me in my Hangover quest by searching for the home outside of the Pasadena city limits. And sure enough, it wasn’t long before he found it, in a place I never would have even thought to look – West Hollywood. So, a couple of weeks ago, after our tour of Paramount Studios, I took fellow stalkers Lavonna, Beth, Debbie, and Connie, who were all in town visiting from Ohio, right on over to WeHo to do some Hangover stalking.

The house was used in the very brief, but extremely funny scene in which Phil Wenneck (aka Bradley Cooper), Alan Garner (aka Zach Galifianakis), and Doug Billings (aka Justin Bartha) pick up Stu before heading to Las Vegas, where Doug’s bachelor party is being held. And I am very happy to report that the incredibly picturesque home looks exactly the same in person as it did onscreen.

As you can see in the above screen captures and interior images of the property (which I snagged off of a real estate listing that I found online yesterday), the actual interior of the home was also used in the filming of The Hangover. The areas used include the kitchen;

one of the bathrooms;

the dining room;

and the living room – the fireplace of which you can just barely see in the above screen capture.

The window where Stu and Melissa sat in the scene is located just to the left of the abode’s front door. Unfortunately, though, the real estate website did not include an interior photograph of that exact spot. Nor did the listing make any reference to the home’s cinematic history, which is a total abomination in my eyes! I mean, come on, did the real estate agent honestly not realize that mentioning the property’s appearance in one of the biggest movies of 2009 would add value to the home? Sigh! Why do I have to think of everything? 😉

The 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom, 1,746-square foot dwelling, which was originally built in 1919, was sold this past August for a cool $1.2 million. Interestingly enough, while searching property records for the house yesterday, I came across information that former Beverly Hills, 90210-actress Lindsay Price and her then-husband, producer Shawn Pillar, owned the home from October 2003 through March 2006. So incredibly cool!

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On a Hangover side note – Before meeting up with me a couple of weeks ago, fellow stalkers Lavonna, Debbie, Connie, and Beth went on a tour of Warner Brothers Studios, where The Hangover 2 is currently being filmed, and while there they spotted both Bradley Cooper and Zach Galifianakis. The actors were being shuttled around on a golf cart at the time and while Zach tried to shield his face from view, Bradley Cooper was nice enough to turn around and wave to the girls. So cute! 🙂

Big THANK YOU to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for finding this location and to fellow stalkers Lavonna and Beth for loaning me the above photographs of Zach and Bradley to publish in this post! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Stu Price’s house from The Hangover is located at 1325 North Ogden Drive in Hollywood. You can check out the home’s real estate listing here.

October 29, 2010September 29, 2017

The Fisher & Sons Funeral Home from “Six Feet Under”

One location that I stalked well over a year ago, but for whatever reason have yet to blog about, is the Victorian-style residence which stood in for the supposed North Hollywood-area Fisher & Sons (and later Fisher-Diaz) Funeral Home on the immensely popular HBO series Six Feet Under. Amazingly enough, up until yesterday morning, I had never seen even one episode of the show and, unfortunately, I have to say that after watching the pilot episode yesterday morning, I wasn’t all that impressed with it. It’s a bit of an odd series. The only part I enjoyed was one of the opening scenes in which David Fisher (aka a pre-Dexter Michael C. Hall) tells a supposedly grieving widower (played by Harper Roisman) that his wife is at peace now, to which the widower replies, “If there’s any justice in the universe, she’s shoveling sh*t in hell!” LOL LOL LOL

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But while I didn’t especially like the pilot, I did absolutely fall in love the main house featured in it. In real life, the property is known as the Auguste Marquis Residence and it was originally built in the Queen Anne/Eastlake style (much like the “Thriller” house that I blogged about yesterday) in 1904 and is Los Angeles’ 602nd historic cultural monument. The dwelling, which currently houses the Filipino Federation of America, boasts 5 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a whopping 6,324 square feet of living space, and sits on over half an acre of land. The home was originally built for a Swiss native named Auguste Rodolphe Marquis, who worked for Death Valley’s Johnnie Consolidated Gold Mining Company, from which he made a considerable fortune. The property was purchased shortly after the second World War by General Hilario Camino Moncado, a native of the Philippines and founder of the Filipino Federation. His heirs still own the property to this day.

The Auguste Marquis Residence was featured each week as the home where the dysfunctional Fisher Family – siblings David, Nate (aka Peter Krause), and Claire (aka Lauren Ambrose) and their mother Ruth (aka Frances Conroy) – lived and operated their mortuary business on Six Feet Under, which ran from 2001 through 2005.

In real life, the Fisher & Sons Funeral Home sign is, of course, not there.

And while the home was mostly just used for establishing shots, some occasional filming was also done onsite there throughout the series five year-run, as was the case with the pilot episode, screen captures of which are pictured above.

The interior of the Fisher home was a set that was built on a soundstage at the Columbia/Sunset Gower Studios in Hollywood and, from what I’ve been able to discern online, looks nothing like the interior of the actual Auguste Marquis Residence. A short film named Good Night was also filmed on location at the Six Feet Under funeral home in September of 2009 and Don Cunanan, the set photographer, snapped some pictures of the filming, in which you can see some of the residence’s real life interior. You can take a look at those photographs here.

On a coincidental side note – I was floored to spot Mountain View Cemetery, which I just blogged about this past Tuesday, featured quite extensively in the pilot episode of Six Feet Under, as the site of the funeral of Nathaniel Samuel Fisher (aka Richard Jenkins).

And I’d like to wish all of my fellow stalkers a VERY happy Halloween! Hope your holiday is fun and candy-filled!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Filipino Federation of America – aka Fisher & Sons funeral home from Six Feet Under – is located at 2302 West 25th Street in the West Adams District of Los Angeles.

October 28, 2010September 29, 2017

The “Thriller” House

Today, in honor of Halloween, I thought I’d blog about what is arguably the most famous haunted house of all time – the Victorian-style residence that was featured in the 1983 music video “Michael Jackson’s Thriller”. Even though I’ve actually already blogged about this location once before (way back in December of 2007 when I first started my site!), because I mixed it in with a post about Halliwell Manor from Charmed which is located on the same street, I thought it was about time that the “Thriller” house was given proper recognition with its very own post. Especially since my dad recently transferred our VHS recording of “The Making of Michael Jackson’s Thriller” onto a DVD so that we could finally watch it again, being that neither of us has owned a working VCR in about five years time. I used to watch the “Making Of” special almost weekly as a child and was absolutely ENTRALLED with it. And I am very happy to report that over twenty-seven years later, the behind-the-scenes special is JUST as enthralling. 🙂 I wish the Jackson family would release it on DVD as I’d love to have a copy that wasn’t taped off of television.

In real life, the property is known as the Sanders House and it was originally built in 1887! Yes, you read that right – the residence is over 123 years old! It was commissioned by a man named Michael Sanders who ran a storage warehouse in Los Angeles at the time. The Queen Anne/Eastlake-style home boasts 4 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, and 3,532 square feet of living space – which I was shocked to discover as the residence looks to be much smaller from the street. The property was originally a single family residence, but has since been converted into a duplex-type dwelling, and has been undergoing an extensive restoration project for the past decade. In 1971, the home was declared a cultural historic monument and the entire 1300 block of Carroll Avenue, where the “Thriller” house is located, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. You can see some fabulous historic photographs of the “Thriller” house and its neighboring homes here. And you can read a more in-depth write-up on the history of the Sanders House on fave website Big Orange Landmarks here.

I was only at the “Thriller” house for about ten minutes yesterday and no less than three different groups of fellow stalkers showed up to take pictures of the place while I was there – and it was in the middle of the day no less! Simply amazing! I was really hoping that the “Thriller” homeowners would have decorated their abode for Halloween, but as it turns out they are not currently very thrilled about the publicity that their property’s famous history generates. According to a SUPER nice neighbor whom I spoke with while I was stalking the place yesterday, shortly after Michael Jackson passed away in June of last year, a deplorable fan stole the mailbox from the “Thriller” house and the homeowner is still pretty upset about it – especially being that the mailbox was the original one which was installed when the residence was first built over 123 years ago! I can’t even believe that a person would have the audacity to not only trespass on someone else’s property, but to then steal something from that property while doing so. It is people like that who give us harmless stalkers a bad name and it makes me madder and madder the more I think about it. Not only did that thief sour the residents on the magic of owning and living in the “Thriller” house, but they also destroyed part of a historic landmark in the process. UGH! Don’t even get me started!

The super nice neighbor also informed me that the 1300 block of Carroll Avenue is THE place to be on Halloween. One year he counted over 2,000 trick-or-treaters knocking on his front door alone! Halliwell Manor from Charmed (pictured above) is already decked out for the occasion, but the neighbor said that all of the houses on the block – not just the famous ones – typically have lines of about twenty to thirty people standing out in front of them all night long. Amazing! I would SO love to stalk the neighborhood on Halloween, but I already have plans to spend the holiday in Santa Barbara this year. Ah well, there’s always next year.

Only the exterior of the “Thriller” house was used in the filming of the music video.

All of the interior scenes were shot on a soundstage somewhere in Los Angeles.

You can watch the video “Michael Jackson’s Thriller” by clicking above.

The “Thriller” house was also used as the residence of Finn (aka Reynaldo Rosales) in the Season 4 episode of Charmed titled “Size Matters’”.

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And fellow stalker Angela from Florida alerted me to the fact that the dwelling was also used as the residence of Madam Serena (aka Zelda Rubinstein) in the 1989 movie Teen Witch. It is quite ironic that the house belonged to a woman named Serena in the flick, as the star of Teen Witch was none other than Robin Lively – real life sister of Blake Lively, who plays the famous Serena van der Woodsen on TV’s Gossip Girl.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The house from “Michael Jackson’s Thriller” is located at 1345 Carroll Avenue in the Angelino Heights section of Los Angeles, just a few miles north of Downtown. The Halliwell sisters’ house from Charmed is located two doors east of the “Thriller” house at 1329 Carroll Avenue. And Holly’s Nashua house from the “Employee Transfer” episode of The Office is located just around the corner at 1347 Kellam Avenue. If you stalk any of these locations, please, please do not trespass and, for God’s sake, do NOT steal, touch, or destroy ANYTHING while there!

October 19, 2010October 18, 2010

The “Black Sheep” House

Another location that Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and I stalked last Monday afternoon was the supposed Buckley, Washington-area home where Mike Donnelly (aka Chris Farley) lived in the 1996 comedy Black Sheep. Fellow stalker Owen tracked down this location – along with pretty much every other locale which appeared in the movie – quite a few months back and the place has been on my To-Stalk list ever since. But because I rarely make it out to the Eagle Rock area, I had yet to visit the place – nor had I ever watched Black Sheep before. So, after Mike and I stalked the house last Monday afternoon, I finally sat down to watch the movie. And I have to say that I was very pleasantly surprised. Even though I am a sucker for screwball comedies, for whatever reason I had not really expected to like the flick at all. I ended up laughing all the way through it, though, especially during the scene in which Mike gets pulled over for driving seven miles per hour on the freeway. LOL!

Owen found Mike Donnelly’s home thanks to one of the Black Sheep crew members who remembered that the residence was located somewhere in Eagle Rock. Even with that bit of information, though, I’m amazed that Owen was able to track the place down, because producers had installed a fake address number of 612 for the filming. UGH! I so hate it when they do that!

It takes a lot more than a simple change of address to fool us stalkers, though! As you can see in the above screen capture, a home with a 4-digit address number was clearly visible in the background of one of the scenes filmed at the Donnelly residence. Once Owen saw that four digit number, he knew that the Donnelly address had to be a fake. He then immediately set about using Google Street View to search all of the blocks in Eagle Rock with four-digit addresses. And sure enough, it wasn’t long before he found the right house. Yay!

In reality, the Donnelly residence, which features 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, and 1,782 square feet of living space, is a lot cuter and far better maintained in person than it appeared in the film.

The house only actually appears twice in Black Sheep. It first shows up in the scene in which Steve Dodds (aka David Spade) first goes to meet Mike Donnelly. Later on in the movie, the house is featured briefly in the scene in which the two men discover that Governor Tracy (aka Christine Ebersole) has fixed the election.

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I am fairly certain that the real life interior of the property was also used in that particular scene.

After watching Black Sheep earlier this week, I became obsessed with stalking the Governor’s Mansion which appeared throughout the flick. Sadly though, fellow stalker Chas, from ItsFilmedThere, informed me that, while Owen had also found this property, it was torn down quite some time ago and another home built in its place, which is absolutely mind-boggling to me! How (or WHY!) someone would tear down such a large and stately piece of property just to build a new one is absolutely beyond me. Chas and I were discussing it yesterday, though, and he came up with a possible explanation. He thinks there quite possibly could have been a fire at the property, which would have forced the owners to demolish whatever was left standing and start anew. I searched for property records on the home, though, to see if I could dig up any further information, but came up completely empty-handed. UGH! The only thing I can say for sure is that the Governor’s Mansion from Black Sheep is no longer standing.

There is some good news, though! For whatever reason, the mansion is still visible via certain angles on Bing Maps. As you can see above, when the Bing aerial view is angled south, the image shows a vacant lot.

BUT when you angle the map east, the Governor’s Mansion magically appears.

AND if you then switch back to the south view once again, the front of the home will sometimes show up. So darn cool!

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Owen for finding these locations!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Mike Donnelly’s house from Black Sheep is located at 5158 Highland View Avenue in Eagle Rock. The Governor’s Mansion from the movie was formerly located at 874 West Potrero Road in Westlake Village, but has since been torn down and replaced with a new residence.