Famous houses – Page 23 – IAMNOTASTALKER

May 26, 2010May 26, 2010

Jan’s Duplex from “Beautiful Girls”

One of the locations that I was most excited about stalking while in Minnesota three weeks ago (and I can hardly even believe that it’s already been three weeks!) was the duplex where Jan (aka Martha Plimpton) lived in fave movie Beautiful Girls. The residence is actually located in Hopkins, a city about thirteen miles west of Minneapolis and a bit out of the way from the other Beautiful Girls locations. I found this spot, once again, thanks to Owen and his Beautiful Girls master locations list and, as far as I can tell, it is the only locale from the movie that can be found in the Hopkins area. It always strikes me as odd when one location from a particular film is not in close proximity to any of the other locations used and I often wonder about the decision-making process that led producers to choose an out-of-the-way locale. The one that most boggles my mind is the main house from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, which is located in Long Beach, California – a good 1,700 miles away from every single other FB location, all of which can be found in Chicago, Illinois. Were the filmmakers honestly unable to find a house in the entire state of Illinois at which to film? While that doesn’t sound very likely to me, it must have been the case, otherwise why would they journey all the way to California just to film at that one, solitary location? The whole thing doesn’t make sense, either way, but I digress. Even though Jan’s duplex was a bit out of the way, because it holds a very special place in my heart, I just had to stalk it anyway.

[ad]

Jan’s duplex shows up repeatedly throughout Beautiful Girls, in the scenes in which her incredibly jealous former boyfriend, Paul Kirkwood (aka Michael Rapaport), who works as a snow plow driver, is shown finishing off his shift each morning by burying her driveway with snow, making it so that she can’t open her garage door. Let me tell you, it is absolutely hilarious to watch the joy with which Paul does this each and every day.

And then, towards the end of the movie, something shifts in Paul and he realizes that his relationship with Jan is truly over. In one of the final scenes, he is shown early one morning, tears streaming down his face, removing all of the snow from Jan’s driveway, while she looks on from the second-story window. Even though I have seen Beautiful Girls over thirty times, watching that scene never fails to bring tears to my eyes. It’s an incredibly touching moment in the movie and was the reason I wanted to stalk Jan’s house so badly. In fact, just being there in person, standing in the duplex’s driveway and looking up at that second-story window, made me teary-eyed. God, I love that movie!

And even though there have certainly been some changes to the property since filming took place there back in 1996, Jan’s duplex is, for the most part, very recognizable. I was completely floored over the fact that, even though the paint color is now different, the decorative wood “V’s” on the front of the house were still in place.

As were the mailbox and address plaque which appeared in the movie. So darn cool! I honestly can’t recommend stalking this location enough! Being there in person brought back many fond memories of the movie for me and the residence was easily one of my favorite stalking stops in all of Minnesota.

Big THANK YOU to Owen for finding this location! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Jan’s duplex from Beautiful Girls is located at 113-115 6th Avenue North in Hopkins, Minnesota. Jan lived in Unit 113.

May 12, 2010May 12, 2010

The “Beautiful Girls” Houses

As I remarked last week, one of my very favorite films of all time is the 1996 flick Beautiful Girls. But, being that no one that I’ve mentioned the movie to as of late has ever even heard of it, I’m guessing it was pretty much a sleeper hit, despite its all-star cast. Nevertheless, I’ve absolutely loved the film ever since it first came out almost fifteen years ago and have probably seen it no less than thirty times. So, when I found out that my dad had been accepted to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, a light bulb immediately went off in my head, as I had a somewhat vague recollection that Beautiful Girls had been filmed in the North Star State. A quick visit to the movie’s IMDB filming locations page confirmed my beliefs – the entire thing had been shot on location in the Land of 10,000 Lakes! So, I immediately called upon “the Team” – aka fellow stalkers Owen, Chas from Itsfilmedthere, and Mike, from MovieShotsLA – to see if they could help me track down some of the locales featured in the flick, which they, sure enough, did. Amazingly enough, just a few days later, Owen sent me an email with an attachment and, let me tell you, I just about died upon opening it. Somehow he had gotten his hands on the master location list from the movie – a document which detailed EACH AND EVERY LOCATION WHERE BEAUTIFUL GIRLS WAS SHOT! I’m not kidding! I was so excited I just about had a heart attack right then and there! I had hoped that one of the Team would be able to track down the homes belonging to Willie (aka Timothy Hutton) and Marty (aka Natalie Portman) in the flick, but never in my wildest dreams did I ever think that I’d be able to stalk pretty much every location which appeared in the movie. THANK YOU, OWEN! 🙂

For those who have yet to see Beautiful Girls – which I am rapidly discovering is most people! – the movie centers around a young piano player named Willie Conway, who returns to his hometown, the fictional Knights Ridge, Massachusetts, in order to attend his high school reunion and to make some life-changing decisions about his future. While home, he spends time with his old high school buddies and meets his new next-door neighbor, a precocious thirteen year old named Marty, whom he immediately befriends. According to Wikipedia, screenwriter Scott Rosenberg came up with the idea for Beautiful Girls while spending time in his hometown of Boston while waiting for a response from Disney about a little script he had just submitted to them titled Con Air. He said, “It was the worst winter ever in this small hometown. Snow plows were coming by, and I was just tired of writing these movies with people getting shot and killed. So, I said, ‘There is more action going on in my hometown with my friends dealing with the fact that they can’t deal with turning 30 or with commitment’ – all that became Beautiful Girls.” Director Ted Demme said of the setting of the film, “[I] wanted to make it look like it’s Anytown, USA, primarily East Coast. And I also wanted it to feel like a real working-class town.” Demme found his Anytown, USA in the city of Stillwater, Minnesota, where most of the sites from the movie are located, including the two I most wanted to stalk – the homes belonging to Willie and Marty.

[ad]

I am very happy to report that Willie’s house, which is pictured above, looks very much the same today as it did back in 1996 when Beautiful Girls was filmed – minus the snow, of course. As fate would have it, the owner of the property happened to be outside when we arrived to stalk the place and he truly could NOT have been nicer. And, although he didn’t purchase the home until 2005, long after Beautiful Girls had been filmed, he knew quite a bit about the movie and what areas of the house had been used in it.

As you can see in the house’s real estate listing from 2005, the interior scenes were not actually filmed on the premises. The home’s real life interior is absolutely gorgeous, while its onscreen counterpart was pretty dismal and dreary. In the movie, Marty comments to Willie, “It’s a lonely house, you don’t mind me saying.” And I have to say that the set dressers and production designers did an excellent job of building a set which did, indeed, look very lonely.

According to the now-owner, the only “interior” of the house that was used in the movie was the second story window, from which Willie talks to Marty late one night in a set-up which Marty describes as “Romeo and Juliet – the dyslexic version.” 😉

Marty’s house is located right next-door to Willie’s, and it, too, looks much the same as it did in the movie.

The only difference I noticed is that the fence which surrounded the property in the movie is not there in real life.

And, of course, I just had to re-create the scene in Beautiful Girls is which Marty is shown “mashing snow” in her side yard – even though there was no actual snow for me to mash. 🙂

And I was SUPER excited to discover that the little space under the house where Marty stored her sled in the movie was there in real life, too. So darn cool! I can’t tell you how heartwarming it was for me to stalk these two residences, as almost all of my favorite scenes from Beautiful Girls took place there. If you are at all a fan of the movie, I highly recommend stalking the houses as they are sure to bring back some great memories.

On a side note – my absolute favorite scene from Beautiful Girls was the ice-skating scene with Marty and Willie, which you can watch by clicking above. And while I did not get to stalk the lake where that scene was filmed, I do know its location, thanks to Owen. For those who are interested, Marty and Willie’s ice skating lake is Lake William, which is located on Minnetonka Boulevard in Shorewood, Minnesota.

BIG, HUGE THANK YOU to Owen for finding this – and every other Beautiful Girls – location for me! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Willie Conway’s house from Beautiful Girls is located at 1337 2nd Street South in Stillwater, Minnesota, about 25 miles east of Minneapolis. Marty’s house is located right next-door at 1341 2nd Street South.

May 11, 2010May 10, 2010

The “Grumpy Old Men” Houses

A few locations that my family and I stalked this past week while spending time in the North Star State were the homes which appeared in the 1993 comedy Grumpy Old Men. I found these locations thanks to fellow stalker Lavonna, who, a few weeks before my trip out to the Midwest, gifted me with the stalking tome Shot On This Site: A Traveler’s Guide to the Places and Locations Used to Film Famous Movies and TV Shows. In the book, author William A. Gordon states that the residences belonging to John Gustafson (aka Jack Lemmon), Max Goldman (aka Walter Matthau), and Ariel Truax (aka Ann-Margret) in the flick could all be found on the 1100 block of Hyacinth Avenue East in St. Paul. No actual address numbers were given, though, so before I left for Minnesota, I scanned through the movie with my laptop in hand and found the exact house numbers thanks to Google Street View. Yay! 🙂

In the flick, John Gustafson and Max Goldman are, as the title suggests, two grumpy old men, and long time adversaries, who live next door to each other in what is supposedly Wabasha, Minnesota. When the beautiful Ariel Truax moves in across the street, both men, of course, fall madly in love with her and comedy ensues. I just re-watched the movie last night (such a great flick!) and was shocked to discover how much filming was actually done on location on Hyacinth Avenue East. In fact, according to IMDB’s Grumpy Old Men trivia page, so much filming was done outside in Minnesota’s inclement weather that Walter Matthau actually developed double pneumonia. 🙁 Anyway, I am very happy to report that the homes look much the same in person as they did onscreen in Grumpy Old Men, but I must say that it was very jarring to see them during the Spring, sans snow and surrounded by greenery.

Ariel Truax’s gorgeous colonial-style, hilltop home is the residence which is shown most often in the flick. Due to the many trees surrounding the property, though, I was unable to get a great shot of the place.

Pictured above is what the residence looks like head on. There are so many trees that you can hardly see the house! It truly is beautiful, though.

[ad]

John Gustafson’s home also appeared numerous times in the flick and, as you can see in the above screen captures and photographs, looks much the same today as it did in 1993 when Grumpy Old Men was filmed. All that was missing in real life was the little firewood cover/roof located on the side of the residence which John climbed down several times in the movie. I am guessing that the roof was just a prop that was added for filming, though, and was never actually there in real life.

For whatever reason, the exterior of Max Goldman’s home was never shown in its entirety in Grumpy Old Men, but you can sort of see a good view of it in the above screen captures. All three residences also appeared in the movie’s 1995 sequel, Grumpier Old Men.

Ironically enough, while we were stalking the homes, my mom noticed a residence for sale down the street and went to go look at it. She immediately started yelling for me to come check out the “For Sale” sign in the front yard, in which the real estate agent had called the residence “the Grumpy Old Men house”. According to the real estate brochure, in 1993, the home’s then-owners were paid $500 for their property to appear in the background of the flick. They were also given an invite to the movie’s premiere at the State Theatre in Minneapolis. How incredibly cool is that? Even cooler is the fact that the real estate agent not only mentioned Grumpy Old Men on the “For Sale” sign, but made it the basis for the home’s entire marketing scheme! Love it, love it, love it!

So, when I re-watched the flick last night, I was SUPER excited to see the residence in the background of the opening scene. So darn cool!

Pictured above is the home’s real estate brochure – which I, of course, took! 🙂 And you can check out the property’s real estate listing here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Grumpy Old Men houses are all located on Hyacinth Avenue East in St. Paul, Minnesota. John Gustafson’s house can be found at 1133 Hyacinth Avenue East, Max Goldman’s house can be found at 1137 Hyacinth Avenue East, and Ariel Truax’s house can be found at 1122 Hyacinth Avenue East.

May 7, 2010May 7, 2010

“The Mary Tyler Moore Show” House

Well, after three days and a whopping (insert sarcasm here) three tests (including a blood test, an ultra-sound, and a CAT scan, each of which my dad has undergone numerous times with his doctors at home over the past two years), we have been discharged from the Mayo Clinic sans diagnosis. The doctor’s sole recommendation was to see a pain specialist back in L.A. UGH! Would Dr. House have given up so easily? I don’t think so! Oh, if only the real world was like T.V.! Anyway, we are heading back to Minneapolis tomorrow (where I will hopefully get to do a bit more stalking) and then we are flying to Los Angeles on Saturday morning. As I said yesterday, though, our trip wasn’t a total waste – we had a blast in Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Stillwater. So, now, on with the stalking! Another Minneapolis filming location that fellow stalker Owen clued me onto was the apartment house where Mary Richards lived during the first five seasons of the iconic television series The Mary Tyler Moore Show. And, even though I have yet to watch even one episode of the show, as I mentioned yesterday, I just had to stalk the place because of its huge significance in television history. On The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Mary supposedly lived in Unit D of a large apartment house located at 119 North Weatherly Avenue in Minneapolis, Minnesota. And, while the show was filmed primarily in the Hollywood area, all of the exteriors were shot on location in the Great Lake State. The series was created by producers James L. Brooks and Allan Burns in 1970 and the two included a highly-detailed description of their leading lady’s studio apartment in the original treatment of the pilot script. As you can see on fave website Hooked on Houses, where a copy of that script is posted, Mary’s apartment was originally described as “A room. Actually an entire apartment, but a single large room. There are some – mostly of the working-girl variety – who would consider this place a “great find”: ten-foot ceilings, pegged wood floors, a wood-burning fireplace, and, most important, a fantastic ceiling-height corner window.” Location scouts found that window – and the incredibly picturesque house to which it belonged – near the Lake of the Isles on Kenwood Parkway in Minneapolis. And, although actress Mary Tyler Moore never actually set foot inside of the residence, production designers did, whereupon they painstakingly measured and photographed the now-famous third-floor window so that it could be replicated on a soundstage at CBS Studios. And, thus, one of the most well-known sets in television history was born.

As the television series grew in popularity, so did Mary’s Queen Anne-style residence. The “Mary Tyler Moore house”, as it soon came to be called, became an almost immediate tourist attraction, overwhelming and angering the then-owner. According to journalist Neal Karlen’s January 12, 1995 New York Times article about the property, actress Mary Tyler Moore stated that the woman who owned the place during the time the show was being filmed, “was overwhelmed by people showing up and asking if Mary was around.” Oh, to have such a problem! 😉 To prohibit location managers from shooting additional exterior footage of her home, the owner hung huge signs reading “Impeach Nixon” all over the property in 1973. It was at that point that producers decided to move Mary Richards to a new dwelling – a one-bedroom apartment in the Riverside Towers complex in Downtown Minneapolis. But that didn’t stop Mary’s former house from being a major tourist destination. As of 1995, it was still drawing as many as THIRTY tour buses A DAY, even though The Mary Tyler Moore Show had been off the air for close to two decades! But as Mary Tyler Moore herself said, “The outside of the house was so warm, cozy and soothing. As the nest of all these characters who invaded people’s hearts, the house was going to receive similar affection.” And it still does today, over thirty years later.

[ad]

The house, which was built in 1878 and was designed by architect Edward Stebbins, originally boasted 6 bedrooms, 6 bathrooms, and 6,461 square feet of living space. The dwelling was converted into an apartment home, much like it was portrayed to be on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, for a short time, but was transformed back into a single-family residence sometime before the year 1988, at which time the property was purchased by Evan Maurer, the then-director of the Minneapolis Art Institute. Evan and his wife, Naomi, at first regretted the purchase of the home due to the amount of attention it attracted, but in time they came to understand the appeal. Years later Evan said, “In some ways, it’s like we’re caretakers living inside a monument. Mary is a myth, but myths have great power. They answer questions, and they set up value systems. There’s something in the Mary ethos that’s very important to very many people. She’s the greatest mythic hero from this region since Paul Bunyan.” Evan also called the house “Minnesota’s version of Graceland”. Love it!

In 2005, a high school English teacher named Don Gerlach purchased the property from the Maurers for $1.1 million and gave the entire pad an extensive makeover and a significant add-on with the hopes that he would be able to flip it for a profit in a little over a year’s time. Which is exactly what he did. In August of 2007, Don sold the home, which currently boasts 8 bedrooms, 9 bathrooms, a crafts room, a billiards room, an exercise room, nanny’s quarters, and a whopping 9,161 square feet of living space, for $2.8 million. During the renovation, the size of the kitchen was quadrupled and it now features four ovens, two refrigerators, two dishwashers, and a five-foot wide stovetop! Not kidding! Honestly, who needs a kitchen with TWO refrigerators and FOUR ovens??? My parents have two ovens at their house and I must say that they do come in handy on Thanksgiving, but FOUR ovens? Really? The new owners must do a heck of a lot of entertaining! 😉 You can watch a news report about the house which was filmed in 2006 here and you can see some great interior pics of the current interior on fave website Hooked on Houses here.

On The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Mary Richards’ apartment was located behind the third-story Palladian windows pictured above. At the time the show was filmed, the area behind that window was, in actuality, just an unfinished attic. Today, it houses a media room, which the owners call the “Mary Tyler Moore Suite”. Love it!

The interior of Mary’s studio, which is pictured above, only ever existed, of course, on a soundstage in Hollywood.

The Kenwood neighborhood, where The Mary Tyler Moore house is located, is an absolutely beautiful area comprised of huge, picturesque houses with large, rolling front lawns . . .

. . . all situated around the gorgeous, tree-lined Lake of the Isles which boasts beautiful views of Downtown Minneapolis. I would LOVE to live there!

Big THANK YOU to Owen for telling me about this location! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Mary Richard’s apartment house from The Mary Tyler Moore Show is located at 2104 Kenwood Parkway, in the Kenwood area of Minneapolis, Minnesota.

April 28, 2010April 27, 2010

Viola’s Mansion from “Monster-in-Law”

The second Monster-in-Law location that I set my sights on tracking down this past weekend was the gargantuan mansion owned by Viola Fields (aka Jane Fonda) in the flick. Once again, fellow stalker Nick had done most of the legwork on this one by discerning that the house was located in Pasadena and had been built in 1927 by famed Los Angeles-area architect Wallace Neff, the very same man who was responsible for designing King Gillette Ranch (aka the Biggest Loser Ranch) and the dwelling where Brad and Jen lived during most of their five year marriage. But even though Nick had provided me with that wealth of information, for some reason, I had a very difficult time finding this particular residence. As fate would have it, not only did Wallace Neff design quite a few homes in the Pasadena area, but the vast majority of them were Mediterranean in style and extremely similar in appearance to the Monster-in-Law mansion. So, I once again headed over to fave bookstore Vroman’s with the hope that it could provide me with some Wallace Neff insight. And, sure enough, it did! As was the case with Kevin’s house from Monster-in-Law, which I blogged about yesterday, Viola’s mansion was chronicled in the very first book in which I looked – Wallace Neff: Architect of California’s Golden Age.

[ad]

In real life, the Monster-in-Law mansion is known as the “George O. Noble House” and, as I mentioned above, it was designed by Wallace Neff in 1927. The Spanish Revival-style abode boasts six bedrooms, five bathrooms, and a whopping 8,971 square feet of living space. And, while it once sat on over three acres of land, much of the parcel was subdivided in later years and the property currently encompasses “only” 1.2 acres. Sadly, though, not much of the residence is visible from the street.

But, as I’ve said before, that’s why God created aerial maps! 😉 As you can see in the above image, the George O. Noble House is not only stunning, but absolutely ginormous!

The mansion was featured quite a few times in Monster-in-Law . . .

. . . most notably in the scene in which Charlie Cantilini (aka Jennifer Lopez) and Kevin Fields (aka Michael Vartan) get married.

ScreenShot4309

And, thanks to a photograph provided in the book Architectural Realism, you can see that the mansion’s real life interior was also used in the flick.

The George O. Noble House also appeared in the 2009 horror flick Drag Me to Hell as the residence belonging to Clay Dalton’s (aka Justin Long’s) parents. And, as was the case with Monster-in-Law, the real life interior of the residence was also used in the movie.

A few other Monster-in-Law locations can also be found in the Pasadena area, including the Ross House, which I blogged about yesterday, and the Bundy House, aka the Governor’s mansion from Benson, which was used as the home of one of Charlie’s dog walking employers (pictured above). And, yes, I did also find Charlie’s apartment building from Monster-in-Law. Tune in tomorrow for that location. 🙂

Big THANK YOU to Nick for helping me find this location! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The George O. Noble house, aka Viola’s mansion from Monster-in-Law, is located at 675 Burleigh Drive in Pasadena. The Governor’s Mansion from Benson is located at 1365 South Oakland Avenue in Pasadena.

April 27, 2010April 27, 2010

Charlie and Kevin’s House from “Monster-in-Law”

A couple of weeks ago, fellow stalker Nick challenged me to track down all of the residences used in the 2005 romantic comedy Monster-in-Law, including Charlie Cantilini’s (aka Jennifer Lopez’s) Mediterranean-style apartment building, Kevin Fields’ (aka Michael Vartan’s) Craftsman house, and Viola Fields’ (aka Jane Fonda’s) opulent mansion. Nick had already done most of the heavy lifting for this particular hunt by narrowing down the cities in which each of the dwellings was located. All that was left for me to do was pinpoint the exact address of each location. So, this past Saturday night, my fiancé and I finally sat down to watch Monster-in-Law for the first time. I didn’t actually expect to like the movie, but I have to say that I was very pleasantly surprised – it’s a really cute flick! Anyway, the first house I set my sights on finding was the large Craftsman bungalow where Kevin, and later Charlie, lived in the movie. Nick had ascertained that this particular house was located somewhere in Pasadena and I had a hunch that, due to its stunning Craftsman-style architecture, it was most likely a famous residence. So, on Sunday morning, I headed over to fave bookstore, Vroman’s, to take a peek at some Pasadena area architectural guidebooks and, sure enough, I found the Monster-in-Law house in the very first one in which I looked. Yay!

[ad]

In real life, the Monster-in-Law house is known as the Ross House and it was designed in 1911 by Alfred and Arthur Heineman, the same architectural team who was responsible for giving us Dylan’s house from Beverly Hills, 90210 and the Eppes house from the television series Numb3rs. The Heineman brothers built the residence, which features Craftsman, Asian, and Neo-Classical design elements, for a rancher named Winslow Ross at a cost of $8,000. The house, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, boasts Batchelder tile work, a hand-painted mural, four bedrooms, three bathrooms, and a whopping 4,657 square feet of living space. And, let me tell you, it is absolutely beautiful in person!

The exterior of the Ross House showed up numerous times in Monster-in-Law.

As did the home’s large front porch.

But, according to the behind-the-scenes information featured in the movie’s DVD extras, the interiors were not filmed on location at the residence, but on a soundstage at Culver Studios in Culver City. As you can see in these photographs of the real life house, the actual interior doesn’t much look like its onscreen counterpart, which is pictured above. You can check out a more in-depth view of the set where filming took place on fave website Hooked On Houses.

While watching Monster-in-Law on Saturday night, I spotted an unusual-looking street sign in the background behind Jane Fonda in a scene that had been filmed in front of the house. I was hoping it would give me some sort of clue as to the residence’s exact location, but, try as I might, I could not for the life of me make out what the sign said. As it turned out, I didn’t end up needing the sign to find the house, but when I stalked the place on Sunday, I was absolutely dying to see that sign in person and of course, just had to take a picture with it. 🙂

Big THANK YOU to Nick for helping me find this location! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Ross House, aka Charlie and Kevin’s house from Monster-in-Law, is located at 674 Elliott Drive in Pasadena.

April 12, 2010April 12, 2010

The “Confessions of a Shopaholic” House

While doing some research for my Who’s The Boss? post quite a few months back, I came across this website which chronicles all of the movies that have ever been filmed in the city of Fairfield, Connecticut and just about died when I saw the 2009 flick Confessions of a Shopaholic on the list. As I’ve mentioned before, I wasn’t all that big a fan of the movie (I actually just re-watched parts of it while making today’s screen captures and have to say that it’s even worse the second time around), but the book that the movie was based on is my ABSOLUTE FAVORITE NOVEL OF ALL TIME. For those of you who have yet to read Confessions of a Shopaholic, please don’t let its craptastic cinematic counterpart scare you off. The novel is a literary masterpiece – well, for a “chick lit” book, anyway. 😉 But I digress. Anyway, as luck would have it, fellow stalker Owen just happens to live in the Fairfield area so I had an inkling that he might know the exact location of the main house used in the movie. And, sure enough, he did! Owen had come across the home’s address back in 2008 while doing some research on the Leonardo DiCaprio/Kate Winslet film Revolutionary Road, which was also filmed in Fairfield. And even though he had absolutely no interest in ever seeing Shopaholic, nor did he even know what the movie was about really, he wrote the address down in his stalking files anyway! And that right there is why we’re friends! 🙂 So, because I have no immediate plans to visit the state of Connecticut, I asked Owen if he wouldn’t mind stalking the house for me, which he happily did. Thank you, Owen!

In Confessions of a Shopaholic, the residence pictured above belongs to Graham (aka John Goodman) and Jane (aka Joan Cusack), the parents of Becky Bloomwood (aka Isla Fisher), the movie’s heroine. The house only actually appears in a few brief scenes in the flick and, oddly enough, only a partial view of the exterior is ever shown.

[ad]

The home’s front door is the area that got the most screen time in the flick, but even that was featured only very briefly. I am surprised that the producers didn’t choose to show more of the house onscreen, as it is a SUPER cute abode and actually looks exactly like the type of place I pictured Becky growing up in while reading the book.

I am very happy to report that the Confessions of a Shopaholic home looks EXACTLY the same in person as it did onscreen.

Even the residence’s real life address plaque and mailbox were used in the filming. SO LOVE IT! 🙂

Filming at the house took place on April 9 of 2008 and I am fairly certain that the interior was also used in the production. You can see some photographs of the filming taken by a Fairfield, Connecticut resident here.

Big THANK YOU to Owen for finding this location and stalking it for me! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Confessions of a Shopaholic house is located at 16 Essex Street in Fairfield, Connecticut. The movie also filmed a scene at Greenwich Point Park, which is located on Tods Driftway, off of Shore Road, in Greenwich, which is about 20 miles west of Fairfield.

April 8, 2010April 7, 2010

Isabel’s House from the “Bewitched” Movie

Last week, fellow stalker Tony, from the On Location in Los Angeles flickr page, asked for my help in tracking down the residence belonging to Isabel Bigelow (aka Nicole Kidman) and her loyal cat, Lucinda, in the 2005 movie adaptation of the television series Bewitched. So, I, of course, immediately called upon “The Team” – aka fellow stalkers Owen, Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and Chas, from ItsFilmedThere – to see if they could help me find it. Which they, of course, did! Owen fairly quickly came upon fave website Hooked on Houses’ awesome write up about the cottage which stated that it was located somewhere in L.A.’s San Fernando Valley. And because the house’s address number – 4427 – was also visible in the movie, we had two very strong leads to follow. Owen immediately began searching the Valley – once he figured out exactly what part of Los Angeles constituted “The Valley”, something I have still not yet been able to do 😉 – for houses with a “4427” address number and voila, it wasn’t very long before he found the correct one. YAY! Thank you, Owen! So, bright and early yesterday morning, I headed out to stalk the place.

[ad]

In Bewitched, Isabel discovers the house pictured above during a walk and immediately decides it would be the perfect place to start her new, “normal”, non-witch life in which she has vowed to stop using magic. She does, of course, continue to use magic – fairly soon after making the decision not to, in fact – and, with a simple twitch of her nose, has a “for rent” sign put on the residence’s front lawn and immediately leases the place and moves right in. It’s not very hard to see why producers chose to use the charming colonial style cottage featured in the movie, as it is extremely picturesque and idyllic. It’s exactly the type of place I’d imagine a witch seeking normalcy to want to live. Heck, I would LOVE to live there, myself!

As you can see in the above screen captures and photographs, Isabel’s house looks almost EXACTLY the same in person as it appeared onscreen, right down to the address plaque, white front porch bench, and red front door. Love it!

In fact, the only differences I noticed in real life were the absence of Isabel’s single-car garage and the shutters on the window just to the left of it.

As you can see in the above photographs, that single-car garage is not there in real life. There is a detached two-car garage located directly behind and to the right of the house, though, which leads me to believe that Isabel’s garage was simply a facade that producers had built solely for the filming. And, according to Hooked on Houses, only the exterior of the real life residence was used in Bewitched. The absolutely adorable interiors, sadly, only ever existed on a studio soundstage.

On an ironic side note – According to IMDB’s Bewitched Trivia Page, in real life Isabel’s home was once owned by Bewitched director Nora Ephron’s parents’ friends. Ephron had visited the residence numerous times during her childhood and when it came time to scout locations for the movie, she remembered the house and thought it would be perfect to use as her lead character’s abode. What Nora didn’t realize, however, was that her parents’ friends who once owned the house were none other than Larry Berns and his wife, Sandra Gould – an actress who is best known for playing nosy neighbor Gladys Kravitz on the Bewitched television series. Cue the Disney music, ‘cause it truly is a small world after all!

Big THANK YOU to Owen for finding this location! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Isabel’s house from the Bewitched movie is located at 4427 Radford Avenue in Studio City.

April 6, 2010May 12, 2010

Wayne Manor From the “Batman” Television Series

Just up the street from the Just Married mansion which I blogged about yesterday is the residence which stood in for Wayne Manor, aka Batman’s abode, in the 1966 television series and movie of the same name. As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, the Batman mansion and the Just Married mansion are quite often mistaken for each other due to a myriad of reasons. So, to set the record straight – and since we already were in the area a couple of weeks ago doing some Just Married stalking- I decided to drag my fiancé a few hundreds yards up the road to also stalk Bruce Wayne’s pad. Sadly, though, not very much of it is visible from the street.

According to Zillow, the residence, which was built in 1928, boasts ten bedrooms, six bathrooms, a whopping 16,599 square feet of living space, and sits on over five acres of land! And if you look at the above photographs, it is very easy to see why the property is often confused with the Just Married mansion that burned down in October of 2005. Not only are both houses gargantuan, set far back from the road, and Tudor/Gothic Revival in style, but both were constructed almost entirely out of brick by the very same architect, Paul Revere Williams, and bear a striking resemblance to each other. Further adding to the confusion between the properties is the fact that they are located within blocks of each other on the very same street, San Rafael Avenue, in Pasadena and have both been featured in countless productions over the years.

Because the location rumors about the two mansions have been running rampant for so very long, this weekend I decided to try to get my hands on as many of the productions filmed on the premises as I could to try to set the record straight once and for all. And I didn’t do too bad – the only movies I wasn’t able to track down were Topper, Three Men and a Little Lady, Executive Action, The Gumball Rally, The Bells of St. Mary’s, Sweet Bird of Youth, and True Confessions. If anyone has those movies or has seen them in the past, can you let me know which, if either, of the San Rafael mansions was featured in them?

As I mentioned above, the mansion’s most famous appearance was as Wayne Manor in the 1966 television series Batman and the subsequent movie of the same name that was made that very same year. But its resume hardly ends there.

The residence was also used as both the St. Audrey’s Home for Boys where Grace (aka Emma Thompson) was taken in by a nun . . .

. . . and as Roman Strauss’ (aka Kenneth Branagh’s) home in 1991’s Dead Again.

In the first Rush Hour movie, the mansion stood in for Los Angeles’ Chinese Consulate.

As you can see in the above photograph and screen capture, though, the exterior gate which appears in that movie is not the home’s real life gate.

In 1999’s Bowfinger, the mansion was used as the residence of action star Kit Ramsey (aka Eddie Murphy).

[ad]

And in that flick the home’s real life gate does actually appear and was the site of one of the movie’s funniest scenes.

In Scary Movie 2, the mansion stood in for Hell House/Kane Manor where most of the film’s action takes place.

In X-Files: Fight The Future, it was used as the Somerset, England home of the Well-Manicured Man (aka John Neville).

According to some reports that I found online, the mansion was also featured in 1986’s Stand By Me, which seemed a bit odd being that I had always heard that Stand By Me was filmed almost in its entirety in the state of Oregon. After re-watching the flick earlier today, though, I believe that the mansion did appear once at the very end of the movie as the residence of “The Writer” (aka Richard Dreyfuss). As you can see in the above screen captures, the front driveway area does match that of the Batman mansion. Why would they come all the way to Pasadena to film this one brief scene, though, when the rest of the movie was filmed hundreds of miles away in Oregon, you ask? Well, according to IMDB’s Stand By Me trivia page, an actor named David Dukes was originally cast in the role of “The Writer”. After his scenes were shot, though, and filming had wrapped, they re-cast the role with actor Richard Dreyfuss and re-shot all of his character’s scenes. So, since the Richard Dreyfuss scenes were filmed at a later date – I am guessing after principal photography in Oregon had already wrapped – it makes sense that they would have been shot somewhere in the L.A. area, closer to where the film was being edited.

And if you’ll notice in the above screen captures, which were taken from the movie Dead Again, the mansion’s front window and the view from it does sort of match that which appeared in Stand By Me, which makes me think that the property was actually used in the movie, although I don’t have any concrete proof to back that up.

Fellow stalker Ivan just sent me the above screen captures from the television series Land of Giants, in which Wayne Manor stood in for the residence belonging to Uncle Trojar in the episode entitled “Collector’s Item”. And, yes, the mansion was blown up t the end of that episode. Thank you, Ivan! 🙂

According to fave website OnLocationVacations, the mansion was also the site of some filming from the upcoming Dinner For Schmucks movie starring Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, and Zach Galifianikis. Besides being a filming location, the mansion was also the Pasadena Showcase House of Design in 1997. So, I hope that at least partially puts to rest some of the locations rumors about the two landmark San Rafael Avenue mansions. If I come across any further information, I will post it here! And please let me know, dear readers, if you come across any information yourselves!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Wayne Manor from the Batman television series is located at 380 South San Rafael Avenue in Pasadena. Unfortunately, the residence is not very visible from the street. To see the best views of the home, drive just a bit north of where the main gates are located.

April 5, 2010April 6, 2010

The “Just Married” Mansion

Since we are currently knee-deep in the middle of wedding planning, a few weeks ago my fiancé and I decided to sit down and finally watch the 2003 movie Just Married for the very first time. And I have to say that I absolutely LOVED it! While watching it, though, I became obsessed with finding the gargantuan, red brick, Tudor-style mansion where Sarah (aka Brittany Murphy) and her family lived in the flick, which as luck would have it, wasn’t too hard to track down. Thanks to IMDB’s Just Married filming locations page, I discovered that the mansion was located at 160 South San Rafael Avenue right here in Pasadena. So, I immediately dragged my fiancé right over there the following morning. We had a sad surprise awaiting us when we arrived at the front gates, though – the mansion was no longer there. It had completely burned to the ground in a massive fire back in October of 2005. SO SAD.

All that currently remains of the once massive mansion are its front gate, guard house, and red brick retaining wall. I can’t tell you how depressing this was to discover, being that the now-fallen house was something of a historic landmark in Pasadena. The residence which once stood on the property was originally built in 1929 for British thoroughbred horse breeder Jack Pease Atkin for $500,000. The home was designed by famed celebrity architect Paul Revere Williams, who is best known for being the very first African American member of the American Institute of Architects and for designing the Beverly Hills Hotel and the Jet-Age Theme Building, aka Encounter Restaurant, at LAX. He also built Jennie Garth and Peter Facinelli’s house, but I digress. The three-story mansion boasted 21 rooms, three stories, a 1,200 square foot gate house, over 12,000 square feet of living space, and sat on a lot measuring 3.3 acres. The house’s love affair with the movies began early on, in the 1930s, when Atkins decided to rent his property out to film crews in order to raise money to fund soup kitchens for the downtrodden in Depression-era L.A. And the filming never stopped. In 2004, the home was purchased by Michael Armand Hammer, the grandson of oil tycoon Armand Hammer, who also founded the famed Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Culture in Westwood. Hammer immediately set about completely restoring the entire property. Sadly, though, a massive fire broke out at approximately 9:20 p.m. on the night of October 5, 2005, one month before he was set to move in. Over 80 firefighters were called in from neighboring cities to fight the blaze and it took them over three hours to even contain it. Flames were still burning the following morning and ended up causing over $20 million worth of damage and completely gutting the property. According to some neighbors that I spoke with while stalking the place, rumor has it that the fire was started due to a dispute between contractors. What a complete and total shame! No charges were ever filed in the case and the 3.3 acre vacant lot is currently for sale for a whopping $10 million. You can see some great aerial views of the mansion before and after it was burned on Zillow.

Hollywood rumors about the mansion have been circling around Pasadena pretty much since the time the house was built, the two most prevalent of which being that it was owned at one time by former Beatle Paul McCartney and that it was used as Bruce Wayne’s manor in the 1960s television series Batman. Both of those rumors are completely false. And while I am not sure how the Paul McCartney story came to be, the Batman rumor is easy enough to figure out. The real Wayne Manor is located just a few houses up the road at 380 S. San Rafael Avenue and looks extremely similar in appearance to the Just Married mansion. Batman and Paul McCartney aside, though, the Atkin’s house has a Hollywood resume any actor would envy.

[ad]

In Just Married, the mansion, which was supposedly located in Beverly Hills, belonged to Sarah’s extremely wealthy father, who co-owned both the Dodgers and the Lakers in the flick. For whatever reason, though, the exterior of the house was never shown in its entirety, but the front gate area did appear quite a bit.

As did the front door/front porch . . .

. . . and the intercom outside of the main gate, which was used as a running joke throughout the movie. And, even though it wasn’t the same exact intercom which appeared in Just Married, I just had to pose for a pic with it. 😉

Thankfully, the area where Sam (aka Ashton Kutcher) played flag football with Sarah’s family is still intact and is visible through the front gate.

The mansion also stood in for the Carlton Hotel in several episodes of TV’s Dynasty.

The residence was also featured in the 1985 movie Clue, but as you can see in the above screen capture, some movie magic was definitely employed in the production.

According to some reports that I read online, while the real life driveway, retaining wall, front porch and bottom half of the mansion’s exterior were used in Clue . . .

. . . producers had a matte painting added to the top portion of the house to make it appear larger and more sinister than it actually was.

In the 1991 movie Mobsters, the mansion belonged to Arnold Rothstein (aka F. Murray Abraham), but only the interior of it was ever shown.

In 2003’s Hollywood Homicide, it belonged to Jerry Duran (aka Martin Landau) who gave part time real estate agent Sergeant Joe Gavilan (aka Harrison Ford) 72 hours to sell it.

I am fairly certain that the real inside of the home was used in the movie, as well.

According to several books, the mansion also stood in for the home of Rocky Balboa in Rocky V, but as you can see in the above screen captures, while the two properties resemble each other, they are not in fact the same. There are also reports which state that the mansion was featured in the 1979 Peter Sellers’ movie Being There, but I just re-watched that film last night and did not see it anywhere. I am guessing that it was either not in fact used in the movie or that it was used solely for interior shots.

The mansion also supposedly appeared in The Bells of St. Mary’s, Sweet Bird of Youth, Three Men and a Little Lady, True Confessions, an episode of Murder, She Wrote, and in both the movie Topper and the subsequent television series of the same name, but because I don’t own any of those productions I have not been able to verify that information.

UPDATE – Fellow blogger Petrea from the Pasadena Daily Photo website just sent me this amazing photograph that a friend of hers named Dave Thompson took of the Just Married mansion shortly after it was destroyed in the 2005 fire. Thanks, Petrea!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Just Married mansion was formerly located at 160 South San Rafael Avenue in Pasadena. Sadly, the area is currently just a vacant lot.