Haunted Hollywood – Page 7

October 28, 2015September 29, 2017

Chateau Bradbury Estate from “The Craft”

I am devastated that the month of October is almost over! It seemed to come and go so fast this year! But I do have to say that I am really excited for Halloween (T minus two days and counting!), even though the end of October is always bittersweet for me. Especially since I have so many Haunted Hollywood locales left over in my stalking backlog. I always tend to overdo things when it comes to those particular posts. I currently have a “stalkpile” of over fifty (!) spooky locations and only two days left to blog about them. Yet I know that won’t stop me from over-stalking Haunted Hollywood locales again next year. It’s a habit I can’t shake. One spot that I stalked last October, but never got around to blogging about is a massive residence known as the Chateau Bradbury Estate that has appeared in countless productions over the years, many of them of the horror variety. Last week, while watching The Craft prior to writing my post about the El Adobe Studio Building, I was shocked to see the Chateau make an appearance. So I knew I couldn’t postpone covering it any longer.

[ad]

The Chateau Bradbury Estate was originally designed in 1912 by architect Robert David Farquhar for Minerva Polk. Minerva was the daughter of Colonel Lewis Leonard Bradbury, who established what is now the city of Bradbury when he acquired 2,750 acres of the Rancho Azusa de Duarte land grant in 1881. I had actually never heard of Bradbury, which sits nestled between Monrovia and Duarte, prior to researching this post. That shouldn’t come as a surprise, though. While the municipality is continually ranked one of the wealthiest in the entire nation, it is also one of the tiniest. The city (and yes, it is a city – it was incorporated in 1957) boasts only 900 residents and measures a scant two square miles. And while it does have a city hall, it lacks a post office, library, school, gas station and coffee shop. (No Starbucks? Egads!) Ironically enough (and I am guessing due to some sort of subdivision or annexation of land that occurred at some point), the Chateau Bradbury Estate is not actually situated in Bradbury, but in its neighbor to the south, Duarte.

According to Zillow, the French Normandy-style manse boasts 4 bedrooms, 3 baths, 5,625 square feet of living space, and a 2.06-acre plot of land.

The Chateau Bradbury Estate has gone through several owners over the years and for a time grew dilapidated and run-down. According to this website, local kids used to refer to the place as a haunted house. Love it! The property was purchased by a new owner in the ‘90s, who rehabilitated it and leased it out regularly as a wedding venue/special events location. Today, the site is some sort of religious space known as the Hon Los Temple. Unfortunately, virtually none of it can be seen from the street.

Not even through the front gate.

In The Craft, which premiered in 1996, Chateau Bradbury was where Nancy Downs (Fairuza Balk) got revenge on Chris Hooker (Skeet Ulrich) by hurling him out of a window while at a party.

The home’s interior was also used in the filming. You can check out some photographs of that interior here. It is pretty spectacular.

I first found out about the Chateau Bradbury Estate thanks to The Location Scout website, on which the residence’s many horror movie appearances are chronicled. Much of the filming information below I learned from The Location Scout, so a big thank you goes out to them! In the Season 1 episode of Tales from the Crypt titled “Lover Come Hack to Me,” which aired in 1989, the manse stood in for the abandoned house where Peggy (Amanda Plummer) and Charles (Stephen Shellen) took shelter after being stranded in the rain on their honeymoon.

The interior of the manse also appeared in the episode, though all of the scenes were rather darkly lit.

In the 1994 made-for-television movie Confessions of Sorority Girls, Chateau Bradbury was the home of Mrs. Masterson (Natalija Nogulich).

The property masked as Hochstatter Mental Hospital that same year in the straight-to-video Ghoulies IV.

The residence’s interior was also utilized in the flick.

In 1997’s Grosse Pointe Blank, the Chateau Bradbury Estate served as the home of Debi Newberry (Minnie Driver). It is featured several times throughout the movie, most notably in the ending scene in which Martin Q. Blank (John Cusack) saves Debi’s father’s life.

The property’s interior was also utilized in the film.

In the 2000 thriller The Stray, the mansion belonged to Kate Grayson (Angie Everhart).

The interior was used in that movie, as well.

In the Season 3 episode of Bones titled “Death in the Saddle,” which aired in 2007, the mansion stood in for the Ambassadora, a country inn in Virginia that caters to people interested in “pony play fantasy.” Oddly enough, while the exterior was used in the filming . . .

. . . the establishing shot shown was of a different residence. That property, which was where Reed Standish (Christopher McDonald) lived in Dutch, can be found at 20181 Northridge Road in Chatsworth.

The interior of the Chateau Bradbury Estate also appeared in “Death in the Saddle.”

The residence masked as Cherrymount Academy for Girls in 2003’s Scream Bloody Murder.

In the 2005 television series South of Nowhere, Ashley Davies (Mandy Musgrave) lived at Chateau Bradbury.

The pad appeared as two different locations in the Season 7 episode of 24 titled “Day 7: 9:00 p.m. – 10:00 p.m.” The front exterior . . .

. . . and the interior first popped up as the home belonging to Senator Blaine Mayer (Kurtwood Smith).

And the back of the property later appeared as a café in the episode.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Big THANK YOU to The Location Scout website for much of the filming information that appears in this post!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Chateau Bradbury Estate, aka the party house from The Craft, is located at 2232 California Avenue in Duarte.

October 27, 2015September 29, 2017

Hall of Justice

In the early hours of August 5th, 1962, screen star Marilyn Monroe was found dead in the bedroom of her Brentwood home. Later that same day, her body was brought to the Hall of Justice in downtown Los Angeles for an autopsy. I only learned that factoid a couple of years ago and immediately became fascinated with the building. Upon doing further research, I became even more enthralled with the structure thanks to its long-standing connection to L.A.’s criminal element and dark underbelly. Figuring the place would be perfect for a Haunted Hollywood post, I set out to stalk it last fall. I was obviously having a blond moment that day, though, and mistakenly stalked the Los Angeles County Hall of Records instead. But this year I got it right!

[ad]

The Hall of Justice was designed in 1925 by the Allied Architects Association and, according to the Los Angeles Conservancy website, is “the oldest surviving government building” in L.A.’s Civic Center.

The granite exterior of the Beaux Arts-style structure is comprised of four identical facades.

The 14-story building was originally constructed to house the Los Angeles county court and jail facilities. Upon its completion, it contained 750 jail cells, 17 courtrooms, a morgue, and office space for court employees and law enforcement officers.

The top four floors of the structure housed the jail facilities, which, at one point or another, were home to some of the city’s most notorious criminals including Charles Manson, Sirhan Sirhan, and Bugsy Siegel. A few celebrities also did time there, such as Evel Knievel, who was jailed on assault charges (and famously hired twenty limousines to transport each of the inmates who were released the same day he was) and Robert Mitchum, who, as detailed in this Los Angeles magazine post, served an almost sixty-day sentence for smoking marijuana.

Countless famous trials took place at the Hall of Justice, as well, including those of Manson, Sirhan Sirhan, and Charlie Chaplin. Oh, if those walls could talk!

The morgue facilities were housed in the Hall of Justice’s basement. It was there that Marilyn’s autopsy was conducted by deputy coroner Dr. Thomas Noguchi, who determined the star’s cause of death as probable suicide from acute barbiturate poisoning. That determination has been disputed by fans, armchair detectives and conspiracy theorists alike ever since. So much so that District Attorney John Van de Kamp ordered a review of Marilyn’s death in 1982. The resulting 29-page report on the matter, which took three and a half months to compile, stated that “no credible evidence” of foul play was found. Doubters and theories continue to abound, though.

Dr. Noguchi also performed the autopsy of Robert F. Kennedy at the Hall of Justice on June 6th, 1968.

The Hall of Justice was severely damaged during the Northridge earthquake in 1994 and was subsequently shuttered for the two decades following. Beginning in 2004, the building underwent a massive 10-year, $231-million restoration and finally re-opened in late 2014. While many historic décor elements were left intact, including the ornate columned loggia, several areas were gutted. The morgue where Marilyn’s autopsy was conducted was a casualty of the renovation. The majority of the courtrooms and jail cells were also removed. One block of cells, which is said to include the cell where both Manson and Sirhan Sirhan were incarcerated, was kept intact and moved to the basement (yes, the same basement where Marilyn was autopsied) and will eventually be part of a public exhibit. You can check out some great pre-renovation photos of the building here (man, I would have loved to have toured it during that time!) and some fabulous post-renovation photos here.

The Hall of Justice is also a filming location!

The building was featured numerous times in establishing shots on the television series Perry Mason.

And it appeared each week in the Season 3 and 4 opening credits of Get Smart.

The building was also featured in The Big Fix, The Distinguished Gentleman and Absolute Power, none of which I had copies of with which to make screen captures for this post.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Hall of Justice is located at 211 West Temple Street in downtown Los Angeles.

October 26, 2015September 29, 2017

The Occult Store from “The Craft”

I often receive emails from fellow stalkers who are planning trips to Los Angeles and want some help in tracking down a favorite film or television location. The emails always give me a pang of recognition. I was that stalker once upon a time. During one of my first trips to L.A., I was absolutely desperate to see the Walsh house from Beverly Hills, 90210. I had forgotten my trusty tour book at home, though. This was long before the days of filming location blogs and websites, so without the book I was pretty much out of luck. I knew the house was somewhere in Altadena, so my mom and I headed that way and I asked literally everyone I encountered if they could point me in the right direction. No one could, but I did finally make it to Casa Walsh that day and finally seeing it in person was worth all the work it took to get me there. Assisting fellow stalkers in similar quests is one of the reasons I started this site. So when I received an email back in May from a reader named Nathan who was desperate to track down the occult store from the 1996 horror/fantasy flick The Craft before an upcoming trip to L.A., I promised him I would help. I was having a little trouble finding the place, though, so I called upon expert stalker Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and he wound up tracking it down within minutes. Thank you, Mike! Nathan was floored over Mike’s find and ventured over there while in town this past July. I loved hearing about his visit and how meaningful it was for him to be there. Figuring the place would be perfect for my Haunted Hollywood posts, I, too, ran out to stalk it recently.

[ad]

The occult shop from The Craft is located in Hollywood’s El Adobe Studio Building. The small Spanish-style strip mall was originally built in 1928 and, according to the You Are Here website, was designed by architects Arthur Kelly and Joe Estep.

In the book The Story of Hollywood, author Gregory Paul Williams contends that the site was the “world’s first mini-mall,” constructed on farmland owned by D.P. Baldwin. Of the evolution of the property, Williams says, “The original farmer’s stalls later became a grocery store. Baldwin created the L-shaped building around it as rental spaces for artists who worked in the movies.” That grocery store, El Adobe Market, still operates on the premises today. You can check out a 1935 image of the El Adobe Studio Building here and one from 1970 here. As you can see, not much of the complex has changed over the years.

Along with the El Adobe Market, today the center houses a pharmacy, a furniture store, and several live-work studio office spaces. You can check out some interior photos of an El Adobe office that is currently for rent here. What an incredibly cool place to work!

The occult store makes a few appearances in The Craft. It first pops up in the beginning of the movie, in the scene in which Nancy Downs (Fairuza Balk), Bonnie (Neve Campbell), and Rochelle (Rachel True) take Sarah Bailey (Robin Tunney), the new girl in school, shopping. The women return to the store several times throughout the flick.

Though the whole El Adobe Studio Building is featured in the movie, the actual storefront that served as the occult shop is located in the northwest corner of the complex.

I originally thought that the storefront was a part of the Adobe Pharmacy, which stands at the southwest corner of the El Adobe Studio Building, but Nathan ventured inside the drugstore while he was there and that does not appear to be the case. The Craft occult store seems to be a separate space. (Big THANK YOU to Nathan for the photos below!)

I am unsure if the interior of that space was used in the filming of The Craft or if the inside of the occult shop was just a set.

From the way things were shot, though, I would guess interiors were lensed in the actual space.

Unfortunately, that particular unit sits behind a locked fence which bars the interior from view, so I was unable to catch a glimpse of it. I am also unsure of what the space currently houses, but I believe it is some sort of office.

I am fairly certain, though, that if the actual interior was used that it was dressed considerably for the filming and looks quite a bit different in person. I would also guess that the stained glass window shown at the top of the stairs in the movie was a fake.

I am also fairly certain that the occult store from The Craft was based upon Panpipes Magical Marketplace located at 1641 North Cahuenga Boulevard in Hollywood. The site, which was originally founded in 1961, has the distinction of being the oldest occult shop in the U.S. And it is also a filming location! Panpipes has appeared in such productions as Unsolved Mysteries, Witchboard 2, Dream On, The Rockford Files, Hardball and North Mission Road. The owners also regularly serve as consultants for television shows and movies that deal with metaphysical themes. Interestingly, Fairuza Balk spent quite a bit of time at Panpipes while researching her role for The Craft and wound up buying the place in 1995. The actress owned it through 2001, before selling it to its current owners.

The mural that Sarah and the girls walk by on their way to the occult shop in The Craft is real, though it has been changed since the movie was shot in 1996.

The mural actually appears to change regularly. As you can see below, it looked completely different when Nathan stalked the El Adobe Studio Building in July . . .

. . . than it did when I was there earlier this month.

The cast of The Craft also posed for a promotional still in front of the mural during the filming, which I was pretty floored to come across while researching this post.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Nathan for challenging me to find this location and to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for tracking it down! Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: El Adobe Studio Building, aka the occult shop from The Craft, is located at 5201-5209 Hollywood Boulevard in Los Feliz.

October 21, 2015September 29, 2017

The Weller Residence from “Castle”

What is it about Victorian-style dwellings that lends itself so well to scary movies and television shows with a spooky theme? I so often find myself blogging about Victorians this time of year. (There’s the Mills View House from House, the Blankenhorn Lamphear House from Teaching Mrs. Tingle, and the Miller and Harriott House from the Halloween themed episode of Modern Family titled “Open House of Horrors,” just to name a few.) Today’s post is in that same vein. Last May, I happened upon an absolutely uh-ma-zing Queen Anne residence while stalking the Girls United group home from The Fosters. Figuring it had to have acted as a filming location at some point, I snapped some photos of it and was floored to later discover that not only had it appeared onscreen, but as a spooky old hotel no less!

[ad]

In real life, the house is known as the Weller Residence and it was built in 1894 for a businessman named Zachariah Weller. In the book Beautiful America’s California Victorians, author Kenneth Naversen suggests that the property may have been fashioned upon a design found in a pattern book created by mail-order architect G.F. Barber.

Oddly, when the Weller Residence was originally built it stood in a different location, at what was then 401 North Figueroa Street in Echo Park. That address is now 401 North Boylston Street. In 1900, the area became populated with large oil derricks, several of them popping up around Zachariah’s home. It was not a pretty sight. You can see a photograph of what it looked like at that time here. So Weller did the only rational thing – he broke the house into two pieces and moved it about 3,000 feet north to a vacant plot of land at 824 East Kensington Road. He also had the property wired for electricity at that time. The Weller Residence has the distinction of being the first home in the area to feature electrical power.

Zachariah Weller passed away in 1903. The home remained in his family through 1953, when it was purchased by Albert and Helen McNellis. Their son still owns it to this day.

The Weller Residence was declared a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument in 1979.

The two-story house boasts ten rooms, pocket-wood doors, vintage crystal chandeliers, hardwood flooring, a large front porch, a second story balcony, and a peaked tower.

The property is absolutely spectacular in person! It is easily one of the most beautiful Victorians I have ever seen. Not to mention one of the largest. You can read a more in-depth account of its history on the Big Orange Landmarks blog.

The Weller Residence was featured in the Season 5 episode of Castle titled “Scared to Death.” In the episode, which was an homage to horror movies (Wes Craven even had a cameo!), Richard Castle (Nathan Fillion) and Kate Beckett (Stana Katic) investigated the death of a young girl, Val Butler (Alison Trumbull), who died three days after receiving a DVD that predicted her exact time of death, a la The Ring. Images of the dwelling appeared in the DVD that Val was sent, which Castle watched at the beginning of the episode.

Beckett’s team later discovers that the Victorian pictured in the DVD is Port Campbell’s Brunswick Inn. To convince Beckett that the property deserves investigating, Castle tells her, “The inn must be the place where some unspeakable horror befell the spirits. Think about it! The Ring, Psycho, The Shining – it’s when we get to the creepy old motel that everything starts really going south.” Love it!

The interior of the Weller Residence also appeared in the episode. While Beckett is exploring the hotel with Javier Esposito (Jon Huertas), she says, “It doesn’t look like there’s anyone here.” To which Javier says, “Doesn’t look like anyone’s been here this century!”

On a side-note – I’m pretty sure that Matthew Del Negro (whom I met recently – you can see my photo with him here) had a featured extra role as a policeman in “Scared to Death.”

The Weller Residence also appeared as the old Winterborn house in the 1980 CBS Children’s Mystery Theatre episode titled “The Treasure of Alpheus T. Winterborn,” which I was floored to discover starred none other than Keith Coogan, who is married to my friend Pinky Lovejoy, of the Thinking Pink blog.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Weller Residence, aka Brunswick Inn from Castle, is located at 824 East Kensington Road in Echo Park. The Girls United group home from The Fosters is located just up the street at 766 East Kensington.

October 19, 2015November 3, 2017

The Phillips Mansion

The Grim Cheaper always tells me that it is not about the destination, but the journey. He’s right. Getting lost can have its perks. While driving around looking for Spadra Cemetery (which I blogged about on Friday) a couple of weeks ago, we happened upon a seemingly abandoned mansion set back from the road behind a chain link fence. The site appeared to be beckoning to me, so we pulled over for a closer look.

[ad]

As it turns out, the property is known as Phillip’s Mansion and it is one of Pomona’s oldest residences. The pad was originally constructed in 1875 by a wealthy rancher named Louis Phillips, who I wrote about in my Spadra Cemetery post.

According to the The Historical Society of Pomona Valley, the three-story, eight-room estate was built in the Second Empire or “Classic Haunted Mansion” style of architecture (I didn’t even know there was such a thing, but LOVE it) at a cost of $20,000. The exterior was fashioned out fired bricks that were hand-made on the premises, while the ornate interior featured gas lighting, sixteen-foot tall ceilings, a whopping six fireplaces (!!!!), and cherry and maple woodwork. Phillips, who in 1892 the Los Angeles Times named the “richest man in Los Angeles County” with an estimated net worth of around $3 million, lived there until his death in 1900. His wife continued to reside at the mansion until she passed away in 1918. Both are buried at Spadra Cemetery. Their tombstone was, sadly, upended by vandals a few years back, the sight of which only adds to the spookiness of the graveyard.

After it was sold, Phillips Mansion was used for a variety of purposes. At one point in time, the site was turned into apartments and then it later served as a dorm for Cal Poly Pomona foreign exchange students. Over the years, the property fell into disrepair and in the ‘60s was bought by an industrialist who planned to demolish it in order to build a factory. Thankfully, the Historical Society stepped in and purchased it in 1966, rescuing it from the wrecking ball. The organization immediately set about renovating the structure with the hopes of turning it into a museum. The project took years and the museum finally opened to the public in 1978. Sadly, it has not had much luck since that point. Phillips Mansion, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, suffered severe damage in both the Upland earthquake of 1990 and the Sierra Madre earthquake of 1991. The Historical Society began to restore the wreckage in 2002 and was even hosting special theatrical productions titled “A Premature Burial” on the premises each Halloween, but then tragedy struck in July 2008 when the property was damaged yet again in the Chino Hills earthquake. The group is still currently working to repair the manse and return to its original glory.

While stalking it, I felt like I was standing in front of the Bates’ house from Psycho. The two properties look so much alike!

Supposedly, two movies, one starring Buster Keaton and the other starring Tom Mix, were shot at a barn located on the Phillips Mansion property in the 1930s. I am unsure of the names of the films, though, and, unfortunately, the barn is no longer standing.

Fellow stalker Darnell let me know that the mansion itself appeared in the 2005 horror movie Mortuary as the home where Liz (Alexandra Adi) lived.

While researching the mansion for this post, I was floored to discover that there is a dilapidated residence located directly behind it. I had not noticed the second property while I was there, which is unfortunate being that not only is it fabulously run-down, but it was also featured prominently in Mortuary. The dwelling is known as the Currier House and it was designed by architect Ferdinand Davis for local politician/philanthropist Alvin Tyler Currier in 1907. The home, which cost $12,000 to construct, was originally located about 15 miles west in the City of Industry. In 2004, after standing vacant for over a decade, the City of Industry gave the house to the Historical Society of Pomona Valley and paid to transport it to the grounds of the Phillips Mansion.

In Mortuary, the Currier House masked as the abandoned Fowler Brothers Mortuary.

I am unsure if the real life interior of the Currier House was used in the filming. Being that the interiors shown in the movie do not appear nearly as run down as the exterior of the home, I am guessing that a set was used for all inside filming. That is just a hunch, though.

Update – my friend Scott Michaels, of the FindaDeath website and Dearly Departed Tours, recently got a chance to visit both the Phillips Mansion and the Currier House and was kind enough to share the photos he took with me to add to this post.

During his tour, Scott got to see the interior of both residences. The inside of the Phillips Mansion is pictured below.

The Currier House could not be more fabulously dilapidated!

I am in love with the photo below! Scott thinks the happy face might have been left over from a filming of some sort, but he isn’t sure. Either way, it’s spectacular! Thank you, Scott, for the great pictures!

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Phillips Mansion is located at 2640 Pomona Boulevard in Pomona. The Currier House is located directly behind it.

October 16, 2015September 29, 2017

Spadra Cemetery

Finding the words “ghost town” used to describe a cemetery is likely to cause my head to start spinning. Which is exactly what happened while I was doing some research on abandoned locales for an upcoming Discover Los Angeles post. I happened to come across an article on the Avoiding Regret blog about a forgotten, dilapidated old graveyard in Pomona named Spadra Cemetery and my eyes practically bugged out of my head. The photographs displayed showed an overgrown, crumbling site marked by toppled, cracked tombstones. I was instantly intrigued. An abandoned cemetery? Count me in! I knew the place would be perfect for my Haunted Hollywood postings, so I ran right out to stalk it shortly thereafter.

[ad]

Prior to reading about the cemetery, I had never heard of Spadra. The now defunct small town came to be thanks to a stagecoach line established in 1859 that ran from San Francisco to Memphis via Los Angeles. Several stations were constructed along the route, one of which was in the area that came to be known as Spadra. In 1864, a wealthy rancher named Louis Phillips purchased a 12,000-acre portion of land that included the station, with the intention of breaking it up and selling it off. One of the first to purchase a parcel was a colorful character named Billy Rubottom, aka “Uncle Billy.” Not only was Rubottom wanted in Arkansas on two separate murder charges, but he had also killed his son-in-law in El Monte.

The enterprising Rubottom built a hotel and bar on his new land in 1866. It was not long before stores, warehouses, a post office and a school sprung up around it. Rubottom dubbed the fledgling community “Spadra,” in honor of his hometown of Spadra, Arkansas. It doesn’t sound like it was a great place to reside. According to a post on The David Allen Blog, a Historical Society of the Pomona Valley booklet describes the town as such: “The village of Spadra was characterized by murder, suicide and mysterious deaths.” Not surprising considering its founder.

The 2.5-acre Spadra Cemetery was established in 1868 on land donated to the town by Louis Phillips.

Spadra continued to thrive and in 1874 the Southern Pacific Railroad extended their line to the town. While that caused a boost in popularity, it was short-lived. The following year, the line was again extended about thirty miles farther east to Colton and Spadra became an all but forgotten stop along the route. As the neighboring town of Pomona began to grow and boom, thanks in large part to the fact that the area had a water supply, the population of Spadra dwindled. The establishment of a mental hospital in the area in 1927 and a landfill in 1957 further drove people away. The town was finally acquired by Pomona in 1964. The last burial at Spadra Cemetery took place in 1971 and four years later the site was deeded to the Historical Society. You can read a more in-depth account of Spadra’s history here.

Today, Spadra Cemetery, which boasts 212 graves (that’s the official number, at least), is almost completely hidden from view and extremely hard to find. Situated underneath State Route 57, the site shares a driveway with a company named Altec Southern California Service Rentals, which bars it from sight. (A Google Street View image of the shared driveway is pictured below.) We actually drove past the entrance twice before stopping to ask a local resident for directions. Upon finally finding it, I was a bit disheartened to discover that no part of the property is visible from the street.

The graveyard itself is located about 500 feet south of a locked gate and can only be reached via an open field to the west of it. And no, the Grim Cheaper and I did not venture over past the gate. The cemetery is on private land and I am not one for trespassing. But man, do I wish I could have seen it because the images I found of it online are haunting. There is good news, though! The Historical Society does sometimes offer tours of the cemetery. One such tour takes place annually on Halloween night. I honestly cannot think of a better place to spend the holiday!

I was thrilled to discover while researching this post that the entrance gate is also a horror movie location! In a case of art imitating life, the gate stands at the entrance to the abandoned funeral home and cemetery that the Doyle family – Jonathan (Dan Byrd), Leslie (Denise Crosby) and Jamie (Stephanie Patton) – purchases in 2005’s The Mortuary.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Spadra Cemetery is located at 2850 Pomona Boulevard in Pomona. As I mentioned, it can be hard to find. The entrance, which shares a driveway with Altec Southern California Service Rentals at 2882 Pomona Boulevard, is situated about 100 feet east of the 57 Freeway. The actual graveyard is located about 500 feet south of the entrance gate, across a set of railroad tracks. Pleased by advised that the cemetery is private property and venturing onto its grounds is trespassing. There are legal ways to see it via the Historical Society of the Pomona Valley. You can contact them regarding tours here.

October 15, 2015September 29, 2017

The Evers’ House from “The Haunted Mansion”

My Los Angeles magazine editor is on vacation this week, so I will not have a post on LAmag.com today. To make up for it, though, I’ve got a Haunted Hollywood locale for you right here! One of my favorite parts about the Halloween season is watching scary movies. (And of course stalking their locations and blogging about them.) It always shocks me how many horror flicks and thrillers there are out there that I have yet to see. One of my more recent screenings was of The Haunted Mansion, the 2003 Disney flick based on Disneyland’s popular ride of the same name. I didn’t have very high hopes for the movie, but it turned out to be really cute – and a perfect watch for this time of year. The best part? Years ago, my buddy Mike, from MovieShotsLA, told me about the location of the home where the Evers family – Jim (Eddie Murphy), Sara (Marsha Thomason), Michael (Marc John Jefferies), and Megan (Aree Davis) – lived in the flick. He had tracked it down via this 2006 Pasadena Weekly article. As it turns out, not only is the pad an extremely popular filming location, but it is located very close to where I used to live. For whatever reason, I had never stalked it, though. So I finally amended that by running right on over there while I was in the area a few weeks back.

[ad]

In real life, the Colonial-Revival-style residence, which was originally built in 1925 and sits on a 0.26-acre plot of land, boasts 4 bedrooms, 3.5 baths, and 3,234 square feet.

As you can see below, the dwelling is extremely picturesque. For some odd reason, though, the exterior rarely makes it onto the silver screen.

Such was the case with The Haunted Mansion – only the interior of the property was used in the filming. The exterior of the Evers’ house was never shown, not even in an establishing shot, which I found a bit weird. You can check out some photographs of the inside of the home here and here.

According to the Pasadena Weekly article, to accommodate the filming, the home’s then owners had to move out for two and a half weeks (the longest they had ever been displaced for a shoot), which is surprising being that the residence was only shown in a couple of brief scenes.

The haunted mansion that appeared in the movie, which was referred to as the Gracey Estate, was unfortunately just a façade that was built at Sable Ranch in Santa Clarita. Only the lower part of the manse was constructed for the shoot – the top portion was added via CGI in post-production – and was subsequently torn down after filming wrapped. You can check out some photographs of the façade here and here. What I wouldn’t give to have been able to have seen it in person! (Side note – I was floored to discover while researching this post that the Haunted Mansion ride at Disneyland was modeled after a real home, the Shipley-Lydecker House in Baltimore, Maryland. Sadly, it no longer stands, but you can see an image of what it used to look like here. It is the spitting image of the Disneyland mansion. SO incredibly cool!)

I actually think the mansion looks quite fake in the faraway shots that appeared in the movie.

But the close-up views of it are amazing! Personally, I think they should have forgone the CGI and utilized the façade as it was.

The interior of the Gracey Estate was an elaborate set constructed at Barwick Studios where The Haunted Mansion was lensed. You can read a fabulous blog post written by a few lucky souls who were able to visit the set on the DoomBuggies website here.

According to DoomBuggies, the couch that appeared in the library scene was also used in the 1954 movie 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

And, according to internet lore, after filming wrapped a chair from the mansion’s dining room set was placed inside the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland. It is said to be the chair that Jack Sparrow is sitting in at the very end of the attraction. Upon closer inspection, though, I do not believe that to be correct.

You can check out a picture of the Pirates chair here. While the two chairs are strikingly similar, there are some differences. Most notably, the movie chairs have an elevated carving of some sort located at the top, while the Pirates chair does not. Internet lore further states that one of the same chairs is also pictured in a portrait of a bride in the attic area of the Haunted Mansion ride. You can see an image of it here.

The Evers’ house was also where Michael Feller (Ken Howard) and Sydelle Feller (Candice Azzara) lived in the 2005 dramedy In Her Shoes. That movie was one of the few instances in which the exterior of the dwelling was shown.

The interior of the home made an appearance in the film, as well.

In the 2009 drama State of Play, the residence belonged to Anne Collins (Robin Wright).

And while 2007’s Spiderman 3 also did some filming on the premises, those scenes wound up on the cutting room floor.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Big THANK YOU to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for telling me about this location! Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Evers’ house from The Haunted Mansion is located at 1480 North Michigan Avenue in Pasadena.

October 13, 2015September 29, 2017

Mary Miles Minter’s Former Mansions

The death of William Desmond Taylor remains one of Hollywood’s most notorious unsolved mysteries, over 90 years after its occurrence. On the evening of February 1st, 1922, the 50-year-old director was shot and killed in his Westlake apartment complex. Though there were suspects aplenty, no one was ever indicted in the murder and the case was officially closed without resolution (for the second time) on February 23rd, 1938, never to be re-opened. Common belief, though, has long since held that the guilty party was Charlotte Shelby, the mother of 19-year-old starlet Mary Miles Minter, with whom Desmond was said to be having an illicit May-December affair. I became fascinated with the case after reading Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood and stalked the site of Taylor’s former bungalow as part of my 2014 Haunted Hollywood postings. So this year I thought it only fitting to venture out to visit two mansions that once belonged to Mary and Charlotte, the addresses of which I found thanks to my buddy E.J. Fleming’s new book, Hollywood Death and Scandal Sites: Seventeen Driving Tours with Directions and the Full Story.

[ad]

The life of Mary Miles Minter was a strange one. The actress was born Juliet Reilly on April 25th, 1902 in Shreveport, Louisiana. Her mother, then known as Lilla Pearl Reilly, soon tired of what she deemed a lowly existence in the Bayou and moved Juliet and her sister, as well as her widowed mother, Julia Miles, to New York, hoping to catch a taste of the good life. Lilla changed her name to Mrs. Charlotte Shelby and quickly became the stage mom to end all stage moms, pushing her daughters into the limelight. Charlotte was the OG momager. Before there was a Dina Lohan, before there was a Kris Kardashian, there was a Charlotte Shelby. It wasn’t long before Juliet caught the eye of theatre producer Charles Frohman, who hired the nine-year-old to act in rather sexy stage productions. When Juliet’s age was questioned by child labor advocates, Shelby’s response was to acquire the birth certificate of a 16-year-old dead relative named Mary Minter and pass it along as her daughter’s. The scheme worked and from that point on the youngster was known as Mary Miles Minter. Shortly thereafter, Charlotte relocated the family to Los Angeles and Mary quickly secured a $1.3-million contract with film magnate Adolph Zukor, going on to act in 54 silent films.

After finding success, Charlotte, using Mary’s money, leased the family a mansion in Hancock Park that had once belonged to silent screen star Mary Pickford. Today, the estate, which still stands at 56 Fremont Place, is a popular filming location, appearing in everything from Taken (screen capture below) to CSI: Miami to Beverly Hills, 90210. During the time the family was living there, Mary landed a role in the 1919 movie Anne of Green Gables. William Desmond Taylor, who was then 47, was the director. For 17-year-old Minter, it was love at first sight. Though rumors of an affair between the two are still persistent to this day, Tinseltown author William J. Mann asserts that Taylor kept her at arms length. Either way, Mary was smitten and wanted nothing more than to marry Desmond, retire from the film industry and have his children. Charlotte would have none of it, though. Mary was her meal ticket and she did not want the gravy train to end.

In late 1920, when the lease on the Hancock Park mansion was up, the family headed to the East Coast for a brief vacation. Upon returning, Charlotte, using Mary’s money once again, purchased a 20,000-square-foot, 3-story, 40-room mansion that they named Casa de Margarita (or Casa de Marguerite, depending on which website you are reading). They lived at the property for a short time before beginning a renovation project in the fall of 1921, at which point they relocated to a house at 2039 Hobart Boulevard in Los Feliz, where they remained until the spring of 1922. It was while they were living on Hobart that Taylor was murdered in his bungalow. Mary’s career came to an almost screeching halt.

Charlotte was immediately painted as a prime suspect. Shelby had vocally opposed her daughter’s adoration of Taylor for years, had done everything she could to keep the two apart, and had even once threatened him publicly, saying “If I ever catch you hanging around Mary again, I will blow your goddamned brains out.” A grand jury was convened at one point, and while they chose not to indict her, the murder plagued both Charlotte and Mary for the rest of their lives.

At the time of William’s murder, Hollywood was in a precarious position thanks to the Fatty Arbuckle scandal, which had hit the industry hard financially. Studios did not want their stars to have connections to any sort of salacious behavior as it proved detrimental to the success of their movies. The Famous Players-Lasky Corporation decided that Mary had to go. When she was informed that her contract would not be renewed, she was just shy of her 21st birthday. The unemployed actress had just moved out of Casa de Margarita and into a Hollywood Hills bungalow. The move had caused an estrangement between the star and her mother and, unfortunately for Mary, it was Charlotte who held the purse strings. Without a studio contract, she no longer had a way to pay the bills.

By the summer of 1923, Mary was in dire straits. She was broke, had lost the love of her life, her career had disappeared, she had developed a heroin problem and gained a large amount of weight. To stir up publicity (which would hopefully lead to a job), she created a fake story claiming an attempt had been made on her life and that the killer’s intentions had been to forever silent her on what she knew about Taylor’s death. Neither the police nor the tabloids bought her story, though. The starlet then moved to New York for a time, hoping to carve out a career on the stage, but it never took shape. She eventually began legal proceedings against Charlotte in order to regain the money she made as a young star. For reasons that are not entirely clear, but that I am guessing have to do with the lawsuit, Shelby was forced to sell Casa Margarita at auction in December 1932.

Mother and daughter eventually reconciled. Ever the shrewd businesswoman, Charlotte had invested Mary’s money rather wisely and the two moved in together, first to an estate in Beverly Hills and then, in the 1950s, to a spacious, 6-bedroom, 9-bathroom (!!!), 5,501-square-foot home known as the Bishop Conaty House in Santa Monica. The pad, which sits on 0.46 acres, was originally constructed in 1907 for the Reverend Bishop Thomas Conaty of Los Angeles and San Diego. Charlotte and Mary would live there for the rest of their days.

Mary’s later years were not happy ones. The former starlet started turning into a recluse. Shortly after Charlotte passed away in 1957, Minter married a real estate developer named Brandon O’Hildebrandt. When he passed away in 1965, she grew even more reclusive. Last year I attended a Q&A about Tinseltown and photographer Michael Childers happened to be in attendance. He spoke of meeting Minter at her home in her final years and described her existence as a very “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? situation.“ Apparently, the then obese actress surrounded herself with photographs from her younger years and continued to wear the hairstyle and clothing from her movie star days. On one particularly bad night in 1981, a robber broke into Mary’s residence, tied her up and stole $300,000 worth of items. It was later discovered that her caretaker was behind the theft.

On August 4th, 1984, Mary Miles Minter passed away silently at the home, her film legacy largely forgotten, but her entwinement with one of Hollywood’s most infamous unsolved murders still very much intact.

Casa de Margarita served many incarnations after it was sold by Charlotte in 1932. For a time the property was utilized by a seminary, then it became a home for unwed mothers, and then a shelter for children. Today, it is a family service center named Children’s Institute, Inc. According to this article, the dwelling still boasts much of its original décor, including large fireplaces, a grand staircase, built-in bookcases, a central courtyard with a fountain, and hardwood flooring. It is also supposedly haunted. You can see some interior photos of it here.

A big THANK YOU to my friend E.J., of The Movieland Directory website, for providing these addresses. For those who are as into Haunted Hollywood locales as I am, I highly recommend his book Hollywood Death and Scandal Sites: Seventeen Driving Tours with Directions and the Full Story (the second edition was just released via McFarland). The tome is chock full of macabre spots (I swear, one year virtually all of my Haunted Hollywood locations came from the first edition), all of which are well-researched and well-documented. As I have mentioned many times before, E.J. is one of the very few fellow stalkers whose information I trust. He is a rare breed in this field in that his data is accurate, his locales unique (read: not regurgitated from all of the other websites out there), and his story-telling bar none!

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Casa de Margarita, aka Mary Miles Minter’s former mansion, is located at 701 South New Hampshire Avenue in Koreatown. The home where Mary spent her final years can be found at 144 Adelaide Drive in Santa Monica.

October 12, 2015September 29, 2017

Gramma-Jess’ House from “Poltergeist II: The Other Side”

I have never seen Poltergeist, which, considering my love of the ‘80s and all things spooky, is rather shocking. I tried to remedy the situation this past weekend, but the Grim Cheaper was having none of it, unfortunately. I did recently stalk a location from the sequel, Poltergeist II: The Other Side, though. I had come across a post on the Then & Now Movie Locations blog about the residence used as Gramma-Jess’ (Geraldine Fitzgerald) house in the flick and became quite intrigued. Not only is the dwelling gorgeous, but it is located in Altadena, in close proximity to my old home. So I ran right out to see it in person.

[ad]

Their house having imploded in Poltergeist, the Freeling family – Steve (Craig T. Nelson), Diane (JoBeth Williams), Robbie (Oliver Robins), and Carol Anne (Heather O’Rourke) – moves in with Diane’s mom, Gramma-Jess (Geraldine Fitzgerald), in Poltergeist II: The Other Side. Virtually all of the movie takes place at the large Craftsman-style residence, which is said to be located in Phoenix, Arizona.

Amazingly, the house looks very much the same today as it did onscreen in 1986.

Love the images below!

And LOVE that the driveway is exactly the same as it appeared onscreen!

A few areas of the home were used in the filming, including the front exterior . . .

. . . the backyard . . .

. . .and the front porch.

Interiors were filmed on a soundstage at MGM Studios in Culver City (which is now Sony Pictures Studios). According to the Poltergeist II production notes, “Preceded by months of intensive preparatory work, the production fully occupied two of the largest soundstages at MGM’s famed Culver City studio lot. On Stage 30, [production designer Ted] Haworth and his crew constructed a full-scale house, duplicating in exacting detail the real-life house selected to represent Gramma Jess’ home in the film –– inside and out.”

Because it is obvious that most of the exteriors were shot at the actual home in Altadena, I am guessing that the replica exteriors mentioned in the notes were only used for more close-up, tight shots of the outside of the residence, such as in the scene below. UPDATE – I recently spoke to David, who runs the amazing Poltergeist Fan Website, and it turns out that my hunch was correct. David informed me that the residence’s backyard and garage were re-created on a soundstage for use in a few night scenes, including the scene in which the Freelings ran out the back door of the house, through the backyard and into the garage, where they found Carol Anne hiding in the station wagon.

In real life, Gramma-Jess’ house, which was built in 1913, boasts three bedrooms, two baths, 2,766 square feet of living space, and a 0.53-acre plot of land. The property was last sold in 1973 for $18,500, which cracks me up being that Zillow now estimates its worth at around $1.5 million.

The home is absolutely gorgeous in person and I am quite surprised that it is not listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

While researching this post, I was floored to discover that the Poltergeist franchise is laced with behind-the-scenes mystery and intrigue. According the the television special Real Fear: The Truth Behind the Movies, the original 1982 film is said to be loosely based on supposed real life events that took place at a one-story ranch-style house belonging to the Hermann family in the Long Island suburb of Seaford. In early 1958, the Hermanns began experiencing many odd occurrences at the home. James and Lucille and their two children witnessed random objects flying across the room and furniture toppling over for no apparent reason. The disturbances only lasted about five weeks and the family attributed them to an Indian burial ground located nearby. You can read a more in-depth article about the Hermann hauntings here, though there is some contention about their connection to Poltergeist. There is also quite a bit of contention over who actually directed the first installment. While Tobe Hooper is listed on the credits, many believe that Steven Spielberg was actually at the helm. Mystery also shrouds the re-shot ending of the third movie, which no one involved in the production seems to want to discuss. And, of course, there is the so-called “Poltergeist curse,” which I talked about in my post about the house from the original film. For those who want to delve deeper into the intrigue surrounding the movies, I highly recommend checking out the Poltergeist Fan Website.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Big THANK YOU to the Then & Now Movie Locations blog for finding this location! Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Gramma- Jess’ house from Poltergeist II: The Other Side is located 1589 Homewood Drive in Altadena.

October 9, 2015September 29, 2017

Groman Eden Mortuary from “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead”

Never in a million years did I think that the 1991 comedy Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead, one of my all-time favorite movies, would provide me with a Haunted Hollywood posting, but it did! In July 2014, a reader named Frank Vollhardt wrote a comment on my post about the DTMTBD house alerting me to the location of the mortuary featured in the flick. Because the morgue scene was rather brief, until reading his comment, I had completely forgotten about it. So thank you, Frank! I immediately added the place, Groman Eden Mortuary in Mission Hills, to my To-Stalk list, but somehow did not make it out there until just recently.

[ad]

Groman Eden Mortuary, or Eden Memorial Park as it is also known, was originally established in 1954. The 67-acre site is one of the largest Jewish cemeteries in the U.S.

Though the setting is quite beautiful (as far as cemeteries go), Groman Eden has reportedly been the site of some very dark deeds.

Quite a few famous souls are buried or entombed at Eden Memorial Park, including comedian Lenny Bruce, The Three Stooges’ Phil Arnold, Laverne & Shirley’s Phil Foster, Howard Caine and Jon Cedar from Hogan’s Heroes, The Knack’s Bruce Gary, and musician Fred Katz.

Legendary funnyman Groucho Marx has been entombed there since his death in 1977 – well, sort of. In a rather chilling (and absolutely bizarre) turn of events, the comedian’s ashes were stolen from the cemetery on May 12th, 1982 and then found later that same night about twelve miles away on the steps of the administration building of Mount Sinai Memorial Park in the Hollywood Hills. The ashes were quickly returned to Eden Memorial, where they remain today, but the culprit was never found. According to lore, scrape marks from the screw driver used to remove the ashes are still visible on the exterior of Groucho’s niche, which you can see a photograph of here. While there are noticeable marks in the lower portion of the placard bearing his name, whether they are actually from the 1982 robbery is anyone’s guess.

The columbarium where Groucho is entombed, which is pictured below, is located in the southern portion of the cemetery. You can find more precise information on where to find his niche here.

When Sue Ellen Crandell (Christina Applegate), Kenny Crandell (Keith Coogan), and their siblings discover that their babysitter, Mrs. Sturak (Eda Reiss Merin), has passed away in Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead, they decide to place her in a chest and drop her off at a local mortuary with a note saying, “Nice old lady inside. Died of natural causes.” As you can see below, Groman Eden Mortuary’s real name was shown in the scene.

Aside from the entrance changing from a double to a single door, the building featured in the scene looks pretty much exactly the same today as it did when Don’t Tell Mom was shot over 24 years ago.

The gate shown in the movie is not the cemetery’s main gate on Rinaldi Street, but the side gate located on Sepulveda Boulevard, which is pictured below.

I failed to snap a photo of the gate taken from the same angle that appeared in Don’t Tell Mom, but you can see a matching Google Street View image below.

While I would have guessed that Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead’s closing scene, in which the mortuary workers (played by Robert F. Newmyer and Brian Reilly, both of whom served as producers on the movie and both of whom have, sadly, since passed away) pay their respects to the “Nice Old Lady,” also took place at Eden Memorial Park, I have it on good authority that that is not the case. According to Keith Coogan, who just so happens to be married to my friend Pinky Lovejoy, of the Thinking Pink blog, that segment was shot at a park on Temescal Canyon Road, in between Sunset Boulevard and the Pacific Coast Highway, in Pacific Palisades. I have not tried to pinpoint the exact spot where the scene was lensed yet, but will do so in the near future.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Frank Vollhardt for telling me about this location! Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Groman Eden Mortuary, from Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead, is located at 11500 Sepulveda Boulevard in Mission Hills. The gate and building used in the filming are denoted with orange arrows in the aerial view pictured below.