Hollywood – Page 2 – IAMNOTASTALKER

November 13, 2019November 13, 2019

City Supper Club from “He’s Just Not That Into You”

Back in February, I wrote a Scene it Before column for L.A. magazine covering a few locales from He’s Just Not That Into You in honor of the romcom’s 20th anniversary. While researching, I was thrilled to come across a mention on production designer Gae Buckley’s website that the supposed Baltimore-area City Supper Club, where Alex (Justin Long) worked in the film, was not a studio-built set as I had long assumed, but an actual restaurant! I, of course, promptly reached out to Gae in the hopes that she could ID the place for me. Though she didn’t get back to me before my article went to print, when she did respond she was a wealth of information, notifying me that a shuttered eatery on the northeast corner of Hollywood and Vine in the heart of Tinseltown had masked as City Supper Club. A quick Google search showed me that the space had since re-opened as 33 Taps Bar & Grill. Despite the new tenant, interior photos posted on Yelp still bore somewhat of a resemblance to what had appeared onscreen! Ecstatic, I ran out to stalk it a couple of months later. I’m pouting in the above photo, though, because, unbeknownst to me, 33 Taps had shuttered in the interim and I arrived at a vacant, boarded-up building.

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33 Taps was situated on the ground floor of The Lofts at Hollywood and Vine, a 12-story, 116,000-square-foot Late Gothic/Art Deco structure designed by Aleck Curlett in 1929. Commissioned by drug store magnate Sam Kress, the property was originally known as the “Bank of Hollywood Building” thanks to the financial institution of the same name which occupied its street level.

In an ironic twist, the site’s namesake shuttered in December 1930, after less than two years in operation! The structure was sold shortly thereafter and subsequently redubbed the “Equitable Building.” The former Bank of Hollywood space then became home to Citizens National Bank and, in later years, the Bernard Luggage Company and American Airlines.

The Equitable Building, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, fell on hard times and was allowed to dilapidate, along with the rest of downtown Hollywood, from the ‘70s through the ‘90s, but was finally rescued by Tom Gilmore in 2000. The developer purchased the property for $5 million and set about rehabbing it to the tune of another $6 million. The restoration process took two years to complete.

Part of that restoration included a build-out of the ground floor to accommodate the new Hollywood and Vine Diner, a dark wood-paneled space reminiscent of the great Tinseltown restaurants of yesteryear. You can see what it looked like here.

The upscale eatery, helmed by Scott Shuttleworth and Richard Heyman, opened in 2002. It had about as much staying power as the Bank of Hollywood, though, initially shuttering in 2004 before being revived a few months later and then ultimately closing for good in 2007, the same year that He’s Just Not That Into You was shot. The restaurant’s furnishings were left intact after the closure, making it an ideal spot for the production to utilize.

The Equitable Building underwent another massive renovation around the same time, during which the upper floors were converted from offices to condos, a project that cost $50 million to complete. The 60-unit property is now known as The Lofts at Hollywood and Vine.

After the shuttering of Hollywood and Vine Diner, that space, too, was significantly remodeled and subsequently debuted as Dillon’s Irish Pub in November 2009. The bar had a short shelf life, as well, closing in April 2013 (though it did move for a time to a different Hollywood Boulevard location) and 33 Taps opened in its place a few months later. The name of the 8,051-square-foot sports bar was derived from the 33 beers it had on tap.

Lasting about six years, 33 Taps closed its doors in June 2019 and its former home is under construction yet again, as you can see in the photos below, which I took through the front windows. Per Eater LA, an Italian eatery named Soprano will be opening there in the near future.

The numerous changeovers (especially the most recent) have taken a toll on the space’s recognizability from He’s Just Not That Into You, unfortunately. When the film was shot, the restaurant’s large U-shaped bar was situated directly across from the front doors . . .

. . . at the base of the grand staircase leading up to the second floor (which you can just see in the background below).

That same area today is pictured below. For whatever reason, when Dillon’s Irish Pub moved in, the bar was relocated to the opposite side of the staircase (as you can see in this photo) and the area where it formerly stood was closed off.

Today, the only remnants of the City Supper Club are those stairs, sadly. Gone is the aforementioned central retro bar;

the dark oak walls (they’re still there, they’ve just been painted over);

. . . and the many rounded partitions.

Oh, how I wish I had visited Hollywood and Vine Diner when it was still in operation – or, at least, had made it to 33 Taps before its recent closure!

As noted on Gae’s website, Alex’s office was not an actual element of Hollywood and Vine Diner, but a set specifically constructed for the shoot at the rear of the bar.

Only the interior of Hollywood and Vine Diner was utilized in He’s Just Not That Into You. The exterior of City Supper Club was faked outside of Duda’s Tavern at 1600 Thames Street in Baltimore.

Thanks to the Seeing Stars website, I learned that Hollywood and Vine Diner, prior to shutting down, appeared in the 2009 thriller Taken as the restaurant where Kim (Maggie Grace) tried to convince her father, Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson), to let her go to Paris.

In the scene, Bryan, Kim and Kim’s mom, Lenore (Famke Janssen), sit in the spot where the eatery’s bar now stands. That space was a dining room when Hollywood and Vine was in operation.

Though the former bar area isn’t shown in Taken, the adjacent staircase is just visible in the top middle of the screen capture below, which should help you get your bearings when looking at the various images.

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: 33 Taps Bar & Grill, aka the former Hollywood and Vine Diner from He’s Just Not That Into You, was located at 6263 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood. The restaurant closed recently and currently sits vacant.

March 11, 2019May 25, 2020

Hummingbird Nest Ranch from “Book Club”

One of my favorite stalking stories involves the Grim Cheaper and Sex and the City: The Movie, which I saw right when it came out in late May 2008. I was gifted Amy Sohn’s book about the film for my birthday just a few days later and while it did a fabulous job of breaking down the locales, one that I desperately wanted to find was only mentioned in passing. Of the Mexican restaurant where Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) dined with the girls during her non-honeymoon, all that was said was that filming took place in Simi Valley. As soon as I read those words, though, I knew what I had to do – call up every Mexican eatery in the area and ask if the flick was shot there, obvs! Now I should mention here that I hate telephone calls. The GC likes to say that I am scared of the phone and he’s not far off. So I enlisted his help with this endeavor. It was a rather humorous undertaking being that none of the people who answered his calls had any earthly idea what he was talking about. Needless to say, after spending hours on the task, we came up empty – but the whole thing sure was good for a few laughs. It was not until Mike, from MovieShotsLA, saw the film that the mystery was finally solved. He recognized the Mexican restaurant, which – spoiler! – isn’t really a restaurant at all, as none other than Hummingbird Nest Ranch, an oft-filmed compound nestled north of the 118 freeway in Santa Susana. The property is, unfortunately, closed to the public, but is available to lease for special events. So, since I was newly engaged at the time, it went to the top of my list of spots to tour as a possible wedding venue. I headed out there soon thereafter, but was struck with bad luck thanks to the reality series Tool Academy which had taken over the property for a weeks-long shoot, thereby severely limiting what I could photograph. Regardless, when I saw the site pop up as the idyllic “Sedona” ranch belonging to Mitchell (Andy Garcia) in Book Club (one of my favorite movies of 2018 – available on DVD here and via streaming here), I knew I had to finally blog about it.

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Hummingbird Nest Ranch was the brainchild of Metro Networks founder David Saperstein who, in 2000, purchased a 123-acre plot of picturesque land in the hills of Simi Valley for his second wife, Suzanne. Though a gorgeous 1920s home known as Sitting Bull sat on the property, David envisioned something grander for Suzanne and commissioned architect Richard Robertson to build a massive 17,000-square-foot Spanish-style estate on the grounds for the couple to live in.

Several other structures were also added including 3 riding arenas, 16 guest and staff houses, and a 20,000-square-foot barn. That’s the barn below. Yeah, I know – it’s grander than most homes!

There is also parking for 400 vehicles, numerous swimming pools, a spa, a large pond, a helipad, and a solar-panel farm on the premises.

Saperstein filed for divorce from Suzanne in 2005 and subsequently put the ranch on the market in 2007 for $75 million. When there were no takers, he switched gears and decided to turn the property into a massive 5-star resort complete with 105 rooms, 98 casitas, numerous restaurants and swimming pools, conference facilities, and a convention center.

The city of Simi Valley greenlighted the plan, but once the permits were in place in 2014, Saperstein changed gears yet again and re-listed the site, this time for $49.5 million. It finally sold in December 2015 for $33 million.

Though the purchaser was said to be transforming the place into a wellness hotel, so far those plans have not yet come to fruition.

Because the place sat largely vacant for close to a decade, it became the perfect venue for filming (not to mention a few celebrity weddings including that of Kaley Cuoco and Ryan Sweeting, Nazanin Mandi and Miguel Pimentel, and Morgan Stewart and Brendan Fitzpatrick).

For Book Club, producers chose to use Sitting Bull, Hummingbird Nest Ranch’s original 1920s house, instead of the massive main residence as Mitchell’s charming Arizona pad. Per a 2018 Architectural Digest feature, the property was love at first sight for production designer Rachel O’Toole. Of the home, she says, “It was just so perfect with the archways and the way that the light dapples through the yard and the pool. Standing at the front door you can see all the way through the kitchen into a bathroom, through an arched brick passageway and then outside through leaded glass to a fountain. I said to Bill [director Bill Holderman], ‘We shouldn’t waste our time looking elsewhere because this is it.’”

Diane Keaton, who plays Mitchell’s love interest in the film, also became smitten with the dwelling. When AD asked about her favorite Book Club locale, she responded, “I liked Andy Garcia’s house best. Andy’s house is an old Spanish. I wanted to buy it. That place is gorgeous.”

Of dressing the location for the shoot, O’Toole told AD, “For the color palette, we had burgundies and browns and tans with lots of textures like Persian rugs. We wanted Andy’s character to be grounded and approachable with things he collected from all his travels.”

Not much of the home was altered for the flick. Along with digitally adding the Arizona desert into the background of a scene . . .

. . . production also updated the pad’s 1970s kitchen, though it was only seen in a brief shot from outside the front door towards the end of the movie.

Sitting Bull also portrayed Gregory Sumner’s (William Devane) ranch on the popular nighttime soap Knots Landing, which aired from 1979 to 1993.

Though most of the Mexican resort scenes in Sex and the City: The Movie were shot at this house in Malibu, Hummingbird Nest Ranch masked as the hotel restaurant where a waiter guts Carrie by referring to her as “Mrs. Preston.”

Shortly after Sex and the City: The Movie debuted, the ranch popped up as Destinies, the rehabilitation center where Joan McCallister (Judy Davis) worked during the second season of The Starter Wife.

That same year, the ranch portrayed yet another rehab, this time on the Season 1 episode of 90210 titled “There’s No Place Like Homecoming” as the spot Adrianna Tate-Duncan (Jessica Lowndes) was sent after almost overdosing.

As I mentioned earlier, Hummingbird Nest Ranch was used extensively as the home of the competing couples on Tool Academy, which began airing in 2009.

Also in 2009, Hummingbird Nest Ranch masqueraded as Calistoga Canyon Resort and Spa where the CBI team investigated a murder in the Season 1 episode of The Mentalist titled “Crimson Casanova.”

In the Season 7 episode of NCIS titled “Rule Fifty-One,” which aired in 2010, the Nest portrays the Mexican estate of Paloma Reynosa (Jacqueline Obradors).

The massive main house plays Steve Jobs’ (Ashton Kutcher) tony Silicon Valley mansion in the 2013 biopic Jobs.

On July 27th, 2014, Scheana Marie (one of the most miserable brides ever!) married Michael Shay at Hummingbird Nest Ranch. The event was chronicled in the Season 3 episodes of Vanderpump Rules titled “For Better or Worse” and “Ring on a String” which aired the following year.

In the 2015 Entourage movie, the ranch masks as the Texas home of Larsen McCredle (Billy Bob Thornton) and his son, Travis (Haley Joel Osment).

That same year, Hummingbird Nest showed up in the Season 1 episode of Stitchers titled “The Root of All Evil” as the mansion belonging to Joe Parks (Cameron Daddo) and his wife, Suzanne (Courtney Henggeler).

Also in 2015, the ranch popped up as the home of Dr. Irving Pitlor (Rick Springfield) in the Season 2 episode of True Detective titled “Night Finds You.”

Hummingbird Nest masked as the Palm Springs Hotel where Ace Amberg (Rob Reiner) trysted with Jeanne Crandall (Mira Sorvino) in the Season 1 episode of Hollywood titled “(Screen) Tests,” which hit Netflix in 2020.

The couple stayed in Sitting Bull in the episode.

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 finding this location! Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Hummingbird Nest Ranch, aka Mitchell’s house from Book Club, is located at 2940 Kuehner Drive in Santa Susana. You can visit the venue’s official website here. Please be advised that the ranch is private property and not open to the public.

November 16, 2018November 16, 2018

Loews Hollywood Hotel from Britney Spears’ “Everytime” Music Video

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – I hate change, especially when it comes to filming locations. So I was devastated when the Renaissance Hollywood Hotel, one of my favorite Tinseltown lodgings and frequent film star, was sold a couple of years ago, rebranded as a Loews, and extensively remodeled. Though I have yet to visit the place post-facelift, one look at the property’s website shows that it looks nothing like its former self, which is a shame considering its many onscreen appearances. I stalked and very briefly blogged about the Renaissance back in July 2008 and then re-stalked it again in early 2012, but never wrote a subsequent post. While going through my backlog of photos recently, I came across the 2012 pics and felt a pang of sadness knowing I’d never see the hotel in that state again. So I figured it was high time I shared the images and do a more thorough write-up on the place.

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Loews Hollywood Hotel, as it is now known, originally opened in 1970 as the Holiday Inn-Hollywood. At the time, the 23-story building boasted 462 rooms, a pool, free parking, a penthouse chapel that offered weekly Sunday church services, and a revolving rooftop restaurant/nightclub with two stages named Oscar’s. You can see what it looked like during its early years here.

In 2001, the Holiday Inn underwent a major overhaul in conjunction with the opening of the neighboring Hollywood & Highland Center. Not only was the property completely revamped and rebranded as the Renaissance Hollywood Hotel & Spa, but an entire second tower was constructed bringing the total number of rooms to 637. As part of the rehab, the revolving rooftop restaurant, then known as Windows on Hollywood, was transformed into the massive 3,594-square-foot Panorama Suite. The plush space, which is pictured below – it’s that round disc-like structure situated on the top floor of the building – boasts 270-degree views of the city, a baby grand piano, a wet bar, a Jacuzzi bathtub, a dining area with seating for ten, and one to four bedrooms depending upon the chosen configuration. You can check out some photos of its interior here and here.

The modernized 560,000-square-foot site also featured 1950s-inspired décor, a restaurant, a pool, a spa, a fitness center, an enormous amount of meeting and event space, Metro Line access, and a spacious lobby with a grand stairwell, a lounge and brightly colored furnishings.

In June 2012, the property was purchased by the Loews Hotels & Resorts chain, renovated to the tune of $26 million, and turned into the Loews Hollywood Hotel. Sadly, it now looks completely different than it did during the Renaissance days, though the Panorama Suite appears to have been left untouched.

The hotel has proven a production favorite in all of its incarnations, which should come as no surprise considering its convenient location right in the heart of Hollywood, sheer size, colorful aesthetic, and that unique rooftop suite.

Its most notable appearance (well, in my mind, at least) was as a Las Vegas lodging in Britney Spears’ 2004 “Everytime” music video, which you can watch here. Many areas of the property were featured in the production, including the front driveway . . .

. . . the entrance leading from the parking garage to the back of the lobby (my photo below shows the doors visible behind the paparazzi from a different angle) . . .

. . . the lobby’s rear hallway, where a newspaper stand was set up for the shoot . . .

. . . and the Panorama Suite.

Kenny Crandell (Keith Coogan) and his stoner buddies partied on the hotel’s rooftop back when it was the Holiday Inn at the beginning of the 1991 comedy Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead.

Adam (Brendan Fraser) checks into the Holiday Inn-Hollywood upon leaving his father’s bomb shelter in the 1999 comedy Blast from the Past. The hotel’s exterior . . .

. . . one of its rooms . . .

. . . and the lobby were all utilized in the film.

As you can see, the place looked considerably different during its time as the Holiday Inn than it did as the Renaissance.

Sylvester Clark (Angelo Tiffe) called the Panorama Suite home in the 2004 drama Collateral, though the room’s view was faked for the shoot to make it appear as if it overlooked downtown Los Angeles.

The Renaissance’s lobby masked as the lobby of the supposed Miami-area Lux Atlantic where Lisa Reisert (Rachel McAdams) and Cynthia (Jayma Mays) worked in Red Eye.

The 2005 thriller provides a fabulous glimpse of what the interior of the hotel looked like during the time it operated as the Renaissance.

In the 2008 comedy Yes Man, Carl (Jim Carrey) attends a Yes! Is the New No! conference at the Renaissance. Both the exterior of the hotel . . .

. . . and its enormous 25,000-square-foot Grand Ballroom appear in the film.

The Panorama Suite popped up as the location of a rather grizzly murder in the first episode of American Horror Story: Hotel titled “Checking In,” which aired in 2015. (I blacked out a portion of the top screen capture below as it was a bit NSFW in its original form.)

The lobby also appeared in the episode. By that time, the hotel was operating as Loews and bearing its newly renovated look.

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: Loews Hollywood Hotel, from Britney Spears’ “Everytime” music video, is located at 1755 North Highland Avenue in Hollywood. You can visit the lodging’s official website here.

October 31, 2018October 16, 2019

The Magic Castle

Happy Halloween! I can’t believe the season is already coming to a close! October 31st is always bittersweet for me because, though my favorite holiday, it marks the end of my Haunted Hollywood postings for the year. For my last go round of 2018, I thought I’d blog about one of Los Angeles’ most iconic sites, a place that is pretty much synonymous with both otherworldliness and Tinseltown itself. I am talking about The Magic Castle, a private club for members of the Academy of Magical Arts that is situated inside of a historic mansion said to be occupied by more than a dozen ghosts! I mean, can you think of a better locale for my final HH article?

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Though typically closed to non-members, the Grim Cheaper and I were able to visit The Magic Castle on November 2nd, 2012 (just a couple of days after Halloween – talk about perfect timing!) thanks to my incredibly generous friend/fellow stalker Marie who secured tickets via a charity auction and invited us to tag along with her and her buddy Dana. (Those are our tickets and some brochures we picked up that night. And yes, I, of course, held on to them. Smile ) To say we had a good time would be an absurd understatement. Being there was absolutely . . . well . . . magical! It was hands-down one of my favorite Los Angeles experiences! By the end of the evening, I was ready to plunk down my credit card to pay the initiation fee and yearly dues and become a member!

The spacious Gothic Renaissance-style mansion that today is known as The Magic Castle was originally built in 1908 as a single-family residence for banker Rollin B. Lane and his wife, Katherine. Dubbed “Holly Chateau,” the estate was designed by architects Oliver Perry Dennis and Lyman Farwell as a near replica of an 1897 pad the duo constructed in Redlands named the Kimberly Crest House (which I wrote about for Los Angeles magazine back in 2013.) Both are pictured below. Though the castle has been altered a bit over the years, the two properties are still virtually identical.

At the time of its inception, Holly Chateau boasted 17 rooms, a rooftop garden, a sun parlor, quarter-sawed white oak and mahogany detailing, a library, five baths, a billiards room, multiple fireplaces, French windows, and a finished basement and attic. Rollin passed away in one of the property’s bedrooms on August 23rd, 1940 and Katherine continued to live on the premises until her subsequent death on December 9th, 1945. The dwelling fell upon hard times in the years that followed, was turned into a multi-family home, and then eventually a boardinghouse. When Milt Larsen spotted it in 1961, though in disrepair, he decided it was the perfect spot to open a magic club. As he told L.A. mag in the January 2018 issue, “I loved the idea of turning a haunted house into a magic castle.” A man after my own heart!

Somehow Milt convinced then owner Thomas Glover to turn over the mansion to him and his brother, Bill Larsen Jr., for free via a handshake deal. The two then promptly got to work transforming the place into a whimsically hodgepodge house of prestidigitation, an idea that took shape thanks to their father. Originally an attorney, Bill Larsen Sr. had quit his job later in life in order to take his family on the road, performing magic shows. He hoped to one day open a magicians’ club. Though he passed away before that dream came to fruition, his sons made good on his vision in spades. They acquired décor and furnishings from nearby mansions that were set to be razed and other adornments from a mishmash of area locales. Hollywood High’s former gym floor makes up one of the space’s bars, the original backdrop from The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson provides ambiance for another bar. And yet another of the club’s bars (there are five!) was fashioned from a set used on both The Dean Martin Show and Mickie Finn’s.

The Magic Castle opened its doors on January 2nd, 1963. At the time, there were a scant 150 Academy of Magical Arts members. Today, that number has grown to more than 5,000. Though only a few parts of the massive property were utilized for shows during the early years, the venue is now a sprawling arena counting the aforementioned five bars, an entry parlor, multiple grand dining rooms, a library (which is off-limits to non-members), a music room, a museum, a gift shop, and four stages. There’s even a Houdini Séance Chamber! (Big thank you to Marie for providing the photograph below, as well as several others in this post.)

Sadly, the castle is only open to Academy members and their guests – as well as guests of the neighboring Magic Castle Hotel. There are a few other ways to garner tickets, such as my friend Marie’s charity auction method and those detailed here. If you are lucky enough to secure a reservation, several rules must be followed including adhering to a dress code (a jacket and tie are required for men, cocktail wear for women) and a no-interior-photos policy (excluding the entry parlor), which is why mine consist mainly of exterior shots. You can check out some fabulous images of the inside here, though.

And yes, you do have to say a secret password to gain access to The Magic Castle! Upon walking through the club’s front doors . . .

. . . you find yourself in an intimate parlor, where photos are, fortunately, allowed.

The room’s detailing is absolutely stunning.

After checking in with the hostess . . .

. . . you make your way to a large book-shelved wall . . .

. . . where you tell the golden owl “Open Sesame!”, causing the bookshelves to magically slide apart.

That’s me saying the magic words!

Guests of The Magic Castle are also required to eat dinner on the premises, which is not a bad gig, by any means. For our meal, we sat in a grand parlor reminiscent of Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion, sipping cocktails and noshing on scrumptious fare. After eating, patrons are invited to wander the estate and take in any and all of the many shows performed on the premises each night. And, let me tell you, this is not some rinky dink operation! The acts are top-notch – easily the best magic I’ve ever seen! Along with the formal shows, there are also magicians staging tricks pretty much everywhere you turn – at empty tables in the bars, on couches in the lounges, even the bartenders get in on the act!

While I enjoyed every single solitary minute I spent at The Magic Castle, I have to say that my favorite part of the club was Invisible Irma, the mansion’s resident piano-playing ghost who regales guests with tunes in the music room, situated off the Grand Salon & Main Bar. As legend has it, Irma was a frequent guest of the Lane family during their tenure at the home and she could often be found tinkling the ivories, much to Rollin’s chagrin. He soon moved the piano to a tower room on the third floor, out of Irma’s reach. She was not pleased with the situation and promised to come back and haunt the house after her death. Upon passing away in 1932, that is exactly what she did. When the Larsen brothers purchased the property, they came across the Lanes’ former piano tucked away in the attic and quickly reinstated it to the music room. Irma’s ghost followed. Though the instrument was eventually replaced by one belonging to MGM star José Iturbi (whose specter sometimes stops by to play with Irma), she can still be heard each night. Guests can even request songs, which Irma’s invisible hands effortlessly play.

Thanks to its intrigue and mysterious allure, celebrities have been drawn to the place since the very beginning, with Orson Welles, Johnny Carson, Cary Grant, Frank Sinatra, Fred Astaire, James Cagney, Tony Curtis, and Steve Allen all spending time there in the early days. In more recent years, Johnny Depp, Katy Perry, Conan O’Brien, Ryan Gosling, Jimmy Kimmel, Sarah Silverman, Nicolas Cage, Lucy Liu, Quentin Tarantino, Ronald Reagan, Drew Barrymore, Hugh Hefner, Debbie Reynolds, and Matt Lanter have all been known to pop in. Countless luminaries have also performed on the premises including Jason Alexander, Pen and Teller, David Blaine, Siegfried and Roy, Steve Martin, and Lance Burton. Neil Patrick Harris was famously the club’s longtime president, aka “Ambassador of Magic,” and during his tenure regularly regaled guests with his illusion skills.

In a rather macabre twist, but one in keeping with my Haunted Hollywood theme, a magician passed away at the club on February 24th, 2017. Shortly before he was about to take the stage to perform that evening, Daryl Easton hung himself in one of the venue’s dressing rooms.

It should come as no surprise that The Magic Castle is also a frequent film star. Way back in 1965, the site was used in exterior shots of the mansion belonging to Oliver Stone (Richard Eastham) in the Season 9 episode of Perry Mason titled “The Case of the Runaway Racer.”

Though IMDB asserts that the property popped up in another Season 8 episode of Perry Mason – “The Case of the Feather Cloak” – as the Hawaiian home of Gustave Heller (David Opatoshu) and Jarvis Logan (John Van Dreelen), that information is incorrect. As you can see below, that pad looks nothing like The Magic Castle.

Anthony Blake (Bill Bixby) lived in an apartment supposedly located at The Magic Castle on the short-lived television series The Magician, which aired from 1973 to 1974.

In the Season 2 episode of Charlie’s Angels titled “Magic Fire,” which aired in 1977, Kris Munroe (Cheryl Ladd), Kelly Garrett (Jaclyn Smith), and John Bosley (David Doyle) head to the venue to investigate an arsonist posing as a magician.

Dr. R. Quincy, M.E. (Jack Klugman) visits The Magic Castle to speak with magician Harry Whitehead (Don Ameche) about the death of his former assistant in the Season 4 episode of Quincy, M.E. titled “The Death Challenge,” which aired in 1979.

Per IMDB, The Magic Castle pops up in 1980’s Little Miss Marker. I scanned through the flick and the only locale I could find that resembled the club is the restaurant where Regret (Bob Newhart) delivers a message from Sorrowful Joe (Walter Matthau) to Blackie (Tony Curtis). Because the quality of the video I watched was so bad, though, there is no way for me to say with any certainty that the segment was actually shot on the premises.

Nickelodeon’s 1988 made-for-television movie Mystery Magical Special took place at The Magic Castle.

As did the 1994 made-for-television movie Count DeClues’ Mystery Castle.

In the 1995 horror film Lord of Illusions, Harry D’Amour (Scott Bakula) heads to the mansion to investigate two murders.

Tiffany (Thandie Newton), Vernon (Stuart Townsend), and Miller (Gabriel Byrne) hide out from Malini (Patrick Bauchau) at The Magic Castle in the 2003 thriller Shade.

In the Season 7 episode of Monk titled “Mr. Monk and the Magician,” which aired in 2009, Adrian Monk (Tony Shalhoub) investigates the death of his neighbor, a wanna-be magician named Kevin Dorfman (Jarrad Paul), at The Magic Castle.

As featured on the Season 3 episode of the reality show Tanked titled “Love Is an Illusion,” which aired in 2012, Neil Patrick Harris commissioned a 240-gallon aquarium modeled after Houdini’s Water Torture Cell for the club.

Sadly, the piece deteriorated fairly quickly and is no longer displayed on the premises.

Contestants were brought to the castle to receive their latest challenge – to design prosthetics for a wizard character – in the Season 6 episode of the reality series Face Off titled “Open Sesame,” which aired in 2014.

In 2016, Gus Cruikshank (Paul Rust) took Mickey Dobbs (Gillian Jacobs) to the mansion for their first official date in the Season 1 episode of Love titled “Magic.”

Aimee Mann’s 2017 music video for her song “Patient Zero” was also shot at The Magic Castle, though very little of the club can actually be seen.

While several sites claim that The Magic Castle portrayed The Cabaret of Magic in the Season 5 episode of Columbo titled “Now You See Him,” that information is incorrect. The Cabaret in the show was inspired by the club, but filming took place elsewhere, as you can see below.

IMDB also states that the mansion masked as the headquarters of The Greatest Detective Society in the Season 8 episode of Castle titled “The G.D.S.”, but that locale is actually the uh-ma-zing Dutch Chocolate Shop in downtown Los Angeles.

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

Big THANK YOU to my friend Marie for inviting us to be her plus-ones at The Magic Castle and for providing several of the photos that appear in this post.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Magic Castle is located at 7001 Franklin Avenue in Hollywood. You can visit the club’s official website here.

October 26, 2018October 16, 2019

The YWCA Hollywood Studio Club from “Dexter”

Aside from Sex and the City’s, I don’t think there’s ever been a television finale that I loved. Dexter’s, in my opinion, was the absolute worst. But I was thoroughly mesmerized by the location chosen to portray Rendall Psychiatric Hospital, the ultra creepy abandoned lair of the Brain Surgeon Killer, Oliver Saxon (Darri Ingolfsson), in the series’ last three episodes. The structure, with its dark, looming presence, dramatic arched windows and iron balconies, was striking onscreen. Thanks to Seeing Stars, I learned that filming had taken place at the historic YWCA Hollywood Studio Club and ran right out to stalk it shortly after the Dexter finale aired in November 2013. While I had every intention of blogging about the site the following October, somehow I never got around to it. So here goes!

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The Hollywood Studio Club was initially founded in 1916 by a small group of aspiring actresses who regularly gathered at the Hollywood Branch Library to rehearse plays. A friendly librarian named Eleanor Jones got the ball rolling on finding the ladies a more suitable venue to perfect their craft, securing a nearby hall with the help of the Young Women’s Christian Association. At the time, most of the club members lived alone in less-than-adequate housing, so in 1919 Eleanor and the YWCA spearheaded a campaign to establish a safe, clean, affordable and chaperoned residence for the girls, as well as other young Hollywood hopefuls from all walks of the entertainment industry, to reside in upon moving to town. The group found what they were looking for in a large columned Colonial-style pad at 6129 Carlos Avenue in the heart of Tinseltown. Though it no longer stands, you can see what it looked like here. Cecil B. DeMille and Mary Pickford helped provide funding and furnishings. With space for only twenty residents, it was not long before the place was bursting at the seams and a larger facility was needed. Numerous show business heavyweights helped raise money for the project, including Harold Lloyd, Gloria Swanson and Jackie Coogan, with the YWCA picking up the rest of the tab. Julia Morgan was commissioned to design the new site and construction was completed in 1926.

The picturesque three-story Mediterranean Revival-style property featured housing for 88 women, as well as an auditorium, a kitchen that offered two daily meals (Laugh-In’s Jo Anne Worley, a one-time resident, claims the coffee cake served on Sundays was the best she’d ever had), a rehearsal hall, a dining room, a loggia, a library, a gym, a spacious living room, beamed ceilings, multiple fireplaces, 24-hour phone service, and a grassy central courtyard. By all accounts it was an idyllic place to live. As character actress Virginia Sale, who moved into the club in 1927, recounted to the Los Angeles Times in 1975, “It was the most beautiful place I had ever seen. And it was like a real home. You knew that the minute you walked in.” Often referred to as a “sorority,” the YWCA Hollywood Studio Club also offered onsite drama, singing, dancing, design, exercise, and writing classes and regularly hosted special events, such as dances, plays and fashion shows. You can see some photos of the place from its early days here.

Countless luminaries called the place home over the years including Donna Reed, Kim Novak, Rita Moreno, author Ayn Rand, Barbara Eden, Sharon Tate, clothing designer Georgia Bullock, Maureen O’Sullivan, ZaSu Pitts, Ann B. Davis, Sally Struthers, and Miss Marilyn Monroe, who in June 1948 moved into Room 307 with actress Clarice Evans. Monroe later occupied Room 334, which was a single. You can see a picture of a check the starlet wrote with the Studio Club listed as her address here. It was during her residency that she posed for those infamous nude photographs. According to Wikipedia, the September 1996 issue of Saturday Night magazine quoted Marilyn as once saying “Funny how shocked people in Hollywood were when they learned I’d posed in the nude. At one time I’d always said no when photographers asked me. But you’ll do it when you get hungry enough. It was at a time when I didn’t seem to have much future. I had no job and no money for the rent. I was living in the Hollywood Studio Club for Girls. I told them I’d get the rent somehow. So I phoned up Tom Kelley, and he took these two color shots—one sitting up, the other lying down . . . I earned the fifty dollars that I needed.” The rest, as they say, is history.

Not all residents found fame and fortune, though. As Virginia Sale also told the Los Angeles Times in 1975, “One woman, older than the rest of us, was murdered in front of the club by a boyfriend. He was an ex-serviceman or something like that. And he then killed himself.” I tried to find some further verification of the story, but came up empty, so I am not sure if it is true or not. Either way, it only adds to the place’s intrigue. In all, more than 10,000 girls called the YWCA Hollywood Studio Club home before it shut its doors in 1975, after falling victim to both hard financial times and a change in the fire code that would have required a whopping $60,000 worth of upgrades. The fire improvements were eventually made following the shuttering and the site subsequently operated as a YWCA Job Corps training center for a time. Today, the building, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is a Historic-Cultural Monument, is utilized as a Workforce/Youth Development center/Digital Learning Academy – and a filming location. You can check out some current photos of its interior here.

The YWCA Hollywood Studio Club first appeared as Rendall Psychiatric Hospital in the Season 8 episode of Dexter titled “Goodbye Miami,” in the scene in which the deranged Saxon shows his mother, Dr. Evelyn Vogel (Charlotte Rampling), where he kills all of his victims and removes portions of their brains. Shudder! The abandoned former mental asylum is said to be located at 1215 West Clarendon Avenue in Allapattah, Florida on the series, but its actual address is 1215 Lodi Place in Hollywood.

The building popped up in the next two episodes of Dexter, as well, titled, respectively, “Monkey in a Box” . . .

. . . and “Remember the Monsters?” It is in the latter, which served as the show’s horrific finale, that Debra Morgan (Jennifer Carpenter) is shot, setting off a series of seriously depressing events.

The interior of the YWCA Hollywood Studio Club was also utilized on Dexter.

But I am fairly certain that Saxon’s kill room, supposedly located inside Rendall Psychiatric Hospital, was nothing more than a studio-built set.

Dexter is hardly the only production to have been lensed on the premises. Thanks to fellow stalker Paul I learned that the club masked as Smith’s Grove Sanitarium in a dream sequence in the 1981 horror film Halloween II.

In the Season 2 episode of Visiting . . . with Huell Howser titled “Hollywood Ladies,” which aired in 1994, Huell tours the Hollywood Studio Club with four women who lived there during the 1940s and have remained friends ever since.

I highly recommend giving the episode a watch (which you can do here). Not only do the woman share fascinating and heartwarming tales of their time at the club and the lifelong friendships it cultivated, but viewers are given great glimpses of the property, including its central courtyard . . .

. . . and dining room and auditorium.

In the Season 1 episode of Agent Carter titled “The Iron Ceiling,” which aired in 2015, the YWCA Hollywood Studio Club portrayed the Red Room Academy, supposedly located in Russia.

The site, playing itself, is where Marla Mabrey (Lily Collins) and the rest of Howard Hughes’ (Warren Beatty) contract starlets take singing and dancing lessons in 2016’s Rules Don’t Apply (which I only scanned through to make the screen captures below, but is now on my list to watch as it looks absolutely darling – and stars Megan Hilty, whom I adore!). Both the exterior . . .

. . . and interior of the club are featured in the movie.

The kitchen also appears briefly as the kitchen of the Desert Inn in Las Vegas, where Hughes has 350 gallons of Baskin-Robbins banana nut ice cream delivered after learning the flavor is being discontinued.

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

Big THANK YOU to the Seeing Stars website for finding this location! Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The YWCA Hollywood Studio Club, aka Rendall Psychiatric Hospital from Dexter, is located at 1215 Lodi Place in Hollywood.

May 30, 2018May 29, 2018

Lux Nightclub from “Lucifer”

The recent network television cancellations left me reeling. Four – yes, four – of my favorite shows – Lucifer, Scorpion, Timeless and Brooklyn Nine-Nine – were given the ax. Though the latter was promptly rescued, I am still waiting for the #savescorpion, #savelucifer and #savetimeless cries to be heard. If not, the Grim Cheaper and I will have practically nothing to watch next season! Thank God Vanderpump Rules is still on the air, otherwise I’d be completely confounded! To cheer myself up, I recently did some stalking of the three spots that mask as Lux nightclub on Lucifer and, in the hopes of possibly persuading some of my readers to become viewers (hint, hint), thought it was the perfect time to blog about them.

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Though I gave a brief synopsis of Lucifer in my January post about the SmokeHouse restaurant, I figured it best to recap it once again here. The Fox series (or should I say “former Fox series”?) centers around Lucifer Morningstar (played to delightfully wicked perfection by Tom Ellis), aka the devil (yes, the actual devil) who has decided to leave Hell in order to lead a hedonistic existence in – where else? – Los Angeles. Through a random turn of events, he winds up joining the LAPD as a consultant and, using his unique gifts and otherworldly talents, helps detectives catch the city’s bad guys – all while running his successful night club, Lux, which he lives above in a decadent penthouse. Lux first appeared in Lucifer’s pilot and went on to become the show’s most prominent locale. In the inaugural episode, as well as several subsequent episodes, the El Capitan Theatre and Office Building in Hollywood masqueraded as the exterior of the opulent lounge.

The six-story Spanish Baroque-style structure was designed by the Morgan, Walls & Clements architecture firm in 1926 and in real life is comprised of the El Capitan Theatre and Disney Studio Store/Ghirardelli Soda Fountain and Chocolate Shop on the bottom floor and office space on the upper floors.

Only a small portion of the building was ever shown on Lucifer, with a doorway situated down an adjacent alley on the eastern side of the property masking as Lux’s main entrance. (I did not get a great shot of that door while I was stalking the place, so please pardon the Street View image below.)

To help give the site a club-like appearance in establishing shots, signage reading “Lux,” a succession of velvet ropes, and a long line of patrons were positioned outside.

Starting with the series’ third episode, titled “The Would-Be Prince of Darkness,” West Hollywood’s Sunset Tower Hotel was used in wide-angle establishing shots of both Lux and Lucifer’s penthouse. From that point on, imagery of the Sunset Tower was intermingled with imagery of the El Capitan on the show, though the former was utilized far more often than the latter.

I have written about the Leland A. Bryant-designed Sunset Tower numerous times. The Art Deco masterpiece even made My L.A. Must-Stalk List and My Guide to L.A. Hotels. The 1931 lodging is one of the prettiest spots in all of Southern California. Considering its striking architecture, it is no surprise that producers chose to feature it as the home of Hell’s most famous former denizen on the series.

The exterior of the Sunset Tower was altered quite a bit with CGI for the show. As you can see in the establishing shot as compared to the aerial view below, a floor was added to structure just below the penthouse level. The penthouse was also covered over with a wide roofline and another floor and large spire were added to the top of the building.

While the Sunset Tower does boast a penthouse suite (you can take a peek at it here), it was not utilized on Lucifer. The devil’s sleek penthouse is actually just a soundstage-built set.

Though I recognized both the El Capitan Theatre and the Sunset Tower Hotel upon seeing them on Lucifer, the interior of Lux was not familiar to me at all and because the space was so grand, so opulent and so massive, I assumed it was the stuff of a set designer’s imagination and not a real place. So I was shocked when I came across a forum on the Previously TV website in which a commenter named vampdetective mentioned that an actual Hollywood nightclub named The Emerson Theatre portrayed Lux in Lucifer’s pilot (images from that episode are pictured below) and that a set based upon it was constructed for all subsequent filming.

The set re-creation, which was built on a 2/3 scale by production designer Stephen Geaghan, is pictured below.

Though Hollywood clubbing is not at all my thing, I think I would have enjoyed spending time at The Emerson Theatre. Sadly, the site, which opened in January 2103, was shuttered in April 2015 and remains closed today, so I only got to stalk the outside of it.

The brainchild of interior designer Mark Zeff and SBE hospitality company, The Emerson Theatre was built to resemble a 1920s burlesque club and featured a sunken dance floor, large banquette style booths, a grand double staircase, strung Edison lights, two bars, a photo booth, and a patio area. More than just a nightclub, The Emerson Theatre also hosted live performances, hence the name. During its scant two years in operation, such stars as Paris Hilton, Vin Diesel, Trey Songz, Ashley Benson, Vanessa Hudgens, Wiz Khalifa, Khloe Kardashian, Lamar Odom, Ashley Tisdale, James Franco, Chris Brown, and Dallas Austin were all spotted hanging out there.

You can check out some photos of The Emerson Theatre from the time it was still open here and here. Man, what I wouldn’t give to see the inside of that place!

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: Lux Nightclub from Lucifer is a mashup of three different Los Angeles locales. The Sunset Tower Hotel, which is located at 8358 Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood, is used as the exterior of the club. The entrance to Lux is the east side of the El Capitan Theatre and Office Building located at 6834 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood. And the interior is based upon the now-closed The Emerson Theatre, formerly located just down the street at 7080 Hollywood Boulevard.

May 9, 2018May 7, 2018

Voletta Wallace’s House from “Unsolved: The Murders of Tupac & the Notorious B.I.G.”

I have never been a fan of rap. My musical tastes tend to run far more tepid (read: Michael Bublé, Michael Jackson, Britney Spears, and ‘80s pop). The Grim Cheaper likes to joke that my iPod song list hasn’t been updated since I first got the device back in 2001. Regardless, when I heard about Unsolved: The Murders of Tupac & the Notorious B.I.G., the recent USA series that chronicles the respective 1996 and 1997 killings of rappers Tupac Shakur (Marcc Rose) and Christopher ‘Biggie’ Wallace (Wavyy Jonez), I was completely enticed. Granted, anything having to do with true crime is pretty much guaranteed to pique my interest, but when I learned that the show was shot in Los Angeles and starred Josh Duhamel, I was all in! Thankfully, it did not disappoint. The GC and I were hooked from episode 1. Presented via a sequence of ever-switching timelines, Unsolved is both thoroughly dynamic and a marvel of historical accuracy. I knew little of either murder case prior to watching, but fell down a rabbit hole of research after each episode aired and was thrilled at the level of precision and veracity displayed. I was also thrilled to recognize the supposed Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania home where Biggie’s mom, Voletta Wallace (Aisha Hinds), lived as the very same dwelling featured in the infamous opening sequence of the 1955 classic Rebel Without a Cause, which I had stalked back in 2012, but never blogged about.

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The residence only appears once on Unsolved in a particularly heart-wrenching scene at the end of the final episode in which Detective Greg Kading (Duhamel) visits Voletta at her home in the Keystone State to explain in person why police are no longer looking into her son’s case.

As soon as Kading walked into Voletta’s yellow-hued kitchen, I immediately recognized it as the kitchen from the Rebel Without a Cause house. As fate would have it, the pad recently hit the market as a fully-furnished rental and I had come across the listing, which mentioned its 1955 cameo, a few weeks prior and, of course, perused photos of the interior. For whatever reason, the images of the kitchen stuck with me. (What can I say, ingraining film locations into my memory is my super power.) More particularly, the home’s huge hood situated above the center island stuck with me, as did the woven bamboo shades hanging in the window. (The GC was on a kick to purchase very similar window coverings for our new house, but I found them a bit too tiki-inspired for my taste and finally convinced him to go with more neutral-colored blinds. Thanks to our many back-and-forth debates on the subject, shades are definitely something I take notice of lately.) Certain Voletta’s kitchen was the very same one I had seen in the MLS photos, I quickly pulled up the Rebel Without a Cause pad’s listing and was floored to see that they were, indeed, a match – right down to the wall clock, bar stools, and mounted television set!

The exterior of Voletta’s residence has proved harder to track down. I did discover that the imagery shown of it is actually stock footage from Shutterstock of “a slow aerial approach and flyover of a Pennsylvania farm house in the Autumn.” The home is apparently very popular in the stock footage world as I found a second reel featuring it, this one titled “A high angle flyover of a typical snow-covered farmhouse in rural Pennsylvania in the winter.”

In real life, the Rebel Without a Cause dwelling, which was originally built in 1912, features 4 bedrooms, 4 baths, 4,398 square feet, a formal dining room, a sun room, a large veranda, multiple decks, a pool, a barbeque area, a detached gym with a steam shower, and a 0.24-acre lot.

According to my buddy E.J., from The Movieland Directory website, Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle called the place home for a time in the 1920s.

Though the Southern Colonial-style residence is often counted among Los Angeles’ most iconic film locations due to its appearance in Rebel Without a Cause, not much of it can actually be seen in the movie. The lower portion of the pad is just barely visible in the beginning scene in which Jim Stark (James Dean) lays down in the street while playing with a toy monkey shortly before being arrested for “plain drunkenness.”

The property has a couple of other cameos under its belt, as well. In the 1959 sci-fi film Teenagers from Outer Space, it portrays the home of Alice Woodward (Sonia Torgeson).

I am 99.9% certain that the scenes taking place in and around Alice’s pool were shot at a different location altogether.

Not only do building permits show that no pool existed at the property until 1993, as you can see in the screen captures as compared to the MLS photos above and below, the pool that was eventually built is much smaller than the one that appeared in Teenagers from Outer Space. It is also situated in a different position with regards to the residence than what was shown onscreen.

The dwelling also pops up as the Kappa Omega Psi fraternity house where Michael Ryan (C. Thomas Howell) and his friends crash a party in the 1985 comedy Secret Admirer.

The interior of the home also appeared in the movie.

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: Voletta Wallace’s house from Unsolved: The Murders of Tupac & the Notorious B.I.G. is located at 7529 Franklin Avenue in Hollywood Hills West.

April 18, 2018April 17, 2018

The Three Clubs from “Swingers”

Besides a great coffee shop, there’s pretty much nothing I love more than an unpretentious bar/restaurant that boasts a retro vibe (as evidenced here, here, here, here, here, and here). Add in a filming location element and I am completely smitten! One that had been on my To-Stalk List for what seemed like eons was The Three Clubs in Hollywood, an onscreen maven most famous for its appearance in the 1996 indie hit Swingers. For whatever reason, though, I kept failing to make it over there – until August 2016, that is, when a good friend who worked on the premises hooked me up with a private tour of the place. I was immediately taken with the bar’s ‘50s aura. Walking inside feels like stepping into a Mad Men episode! Somehow, I never got around to blogging about it, though, which I did not realize until going through my Lightroom library the other day. So I figured it was high time I do so.

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The Three Clubs is a longtime stalwart in the Hollywood bar scene. Established by nightclub impresarios Marc Smith and Matthew Webb on December 27th, 1991 in a former strip mall dive bar near the corner of Santa Monica and Vine, the watering hole has been going strong for more than two and a half decades!

The interior, designed by Marc himself, is largely influenced by Sin City, the Golden Age of Hollywood, and Ol’ Blue Eyes. As Smith told LAist in a 2017 article, “We liked Vegas, we were very into Frank Sinatra. I have to thank the Rat Pack crew for being very pivotal in that world. I had a ’66 T-bird, a ’66 Triumph. We just wanted old things. It was kind of old Hollywood.” With décor elements including tucked-away leather banquettes, wooden wainscoting, and a rock-encrusted doorway, the retro aesthetic is undeniable. The Three Clubs is comprised of two very distinct rooms – the main area, dubbed “the Lounge” (pictured below), is an intimate, low-lit space featuring a large mahogany and leather bar, a black sparkly ceiling, and what the watering hole’s official website calls “casino-style carpeting.”

The Back Bar (pictured below) is a more open space with a small wooden bar, a central stage, raised seating areas, and a disco ball.

Even the cocktail menu was retro-inspired, long before drinking vespers, old fashioneds, and Manhattans was considered cool. As Smith was quoted telling LAist, “I remember talking to a magazine writer about [serving martinis at my lounge] and she was like, ‘What do you mean? That sounds really boring, like [a place] my parents went to. Are you sure?'” The novel concept took, though, and crowds were soon flocking to the place.

The Three Clubs became a celebrity draw from the get-go, as well. Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn were regulars during its early days – which is how the taproom wound up being featured in Swingers – and are still known to pop in today. Renee Zellweger worked for a time as a bar-back there. And Quentin Tarantino, Matthew McConaughey, Tom Cruise, Emily Osment, Steven Spielberg, Jay Leno, and Billy Idol have also all been spotted on the premises.

The Three Clubs actually pops up twice, portraying two different spots, in Swingers. Toward the beginning of the movie, the Back Bar masks as the Bamboo Lounge, the tiki-themed watering hole said to be located inside the Stardust Resort and Casino where Mike (Favreau) and Trent (Vaughn) meet up with Lisa (Katherine Kendall) and Christy (Deena Martin) after a night of gambling in Las Vegas. The space looks quite a bit different in the scene than it does in real life thanks to a large amount of Hawaiian-themed set dressing that was brought in for the shoot.

Later in the film, the Lounge appears as the bustling interior of The Room, where Mike, Rob (Ron Livingston), and Charles (Alex Désert) assemble before heading to a party in the hills.

Swingers is hardly the only production to have utilized The Three Clubs over the years.

In the Season 2 finale of Mad Men titled “Meditations in an Emergency,” which aired in 2008, a newly pregnant Betty Draper (January Jones) heads to The Three Clubs after doing some shopping and winds up having a tryst with a stranger in the bar’s back office.

Andy (Josh Cooke) pops into The Three Clubs where he meets singer Vanessa (Odette Annable) at the beginning of the 2010 comedy Group Sex.

Val (Al Pacino) and Doc (Christopher Walken) grab drinks at The Three Clubs in 2012’s Stand Up Guys.

In the Season 6 episode of Castle titled “For Better or Worse,” which aired in 2014, The Three Clubs portrays two spots. The Lounge first pops up as Tildy’s Tavern where Kate Beckett (Stana Katic) goes looking for her college love, Rogan O’Leary (Eddie McClintock), and gets him to sign divorce papers.

The Back Bar later plays the Roadhouse strip club where Kate and Richard Castle (Nathan Fillion) track down a stripper named Sapphire (Sarah Karges). Both spaces were dressed heavily for the shoot and are therefore not very recognizable from their appearances in the episode.

Frankie Valli (John Lloyd Young) and Tommy DeVito (Vincent Piazza) are interviewed by Lorraine (Erica Piccininni) at The Three Clubs in the 2014 biopic Jersey Boys.

The bar also supposedly pops up in Parks and Recreation, How to Get Away with Murder, Angie Tribeca, FlashForward, and Private Practice, but I am unsure of which episodes in particular. If anyone happens to know, please fill me in.

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 Three Clubs, from Swingers, is located at 1123 Vine Street in Hollywood. You can visit the bar’s official website here. The watering hole is open from 5 p.m. to 2 a.m. daily.

January 12, 2018January 11, 2018

Emerson College Los Angeles from “Scandal”

Despite the fact that I live in Palm Springs, I tend to think of myself as having my finger on the pulse of L.A. But when penning A Film Lover’s Guide to Tomorrow’s Movie Location Stars for Los Angeles magazine in 2015, I overlooked two key spots, which I hope speaks more to the vast landscape of the city than it does to my lack of awareness. Though I noted Wilshire Grand Center, Hollenbeck Community Police Station, 8500, Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust, and the revamped Grand Central Air Terminal as the then newly-constructed sites I thought location managers would soon be flocking to, I somehow failed to include The Broad, a contemporary art museum in DTLA with a highly unusual perforated exterior, and Emerson College Los Angeles, an arts and communication school in Hollywood with a campus the Times deemed “a futuristic complex of aluminum and glass.” I actually did not become aware of the latter until watching the Season 5 episode of Scandal titled “Pencils Down” in March 2016, a full two years after its completion.

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In “Pencils Down,” Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) clandestinely meets up with Alex Vargas (Danny Pino) outside of the supposed Washington, D.C.-area venue where Mellie Grant (Bellamy Young) and Susan Ross (Artemis Pebdani) are participating in their first presidential debate. One look at the staggering wall of geometric panels pictured in the background of the scene and the dramatic vistas shown in wide shots and I was transfixed. I promptly paused my DVR and began trying to figure out where filming had taken place. Because Scandal shoots in L.A., I knew the locale had to be somewhere within the thirty-mile-zone, though I was certain I had never come across it in any of my stalking travels. So I did a Google search for “new modern building” and “Los Angeles” and pored through the countless images that were kicked back until finally landing upon one of Emerson College that matched what I had seen onscreen. Pulling up additional photos of the campus only served to make me more obsessed with the place. Though I immediately added the school to my To-Stalk list, it was not until this past December that I finally made it out there. Thankfully, Emerson, or ELA as it is also called, was worth the wait.

Construction on the 107,000-square-foot, 10-story, $110-million structure began in 2012 and grew out of a need for a more permanent place for the Boston-based Emerson to house and teach students in its semester-abroad program – abroad in this case being Hollywood.

The program, originally established in the 1980s, allows for participants to not only spend a semester studying in the show business capital of the world, but to also participate in invaluable internships at places like MTV, Comedy Central, and E! Entertainment. With no West Coast home base to call its own, students were originally taught in leased space in Universal City and put up in furnished units at the Oakwood at Toluca Hills by Avalon complex in Burbank. That all changed when Emerson’s Hollywood campus was completed in early 2014.

The striking complex, situated on the site of a former Sunset Boulevard parking lot measuring a scant 0.80 acres, essentially consists of one large box-shaped building with an open center. Two residential towers housing 217 dorm rooms, as well as a few faculty apartments, make up the framework of the structure.

Common areas, which include classrooms, editing labs, two black box theatres, a screening room, a conference room, rehearsal space, and lecture halls, are situated in between the two towers.

To say the site, which is the brainchild of Pritzker Prize-winning architect Thom Mayne of the Morphosis architecture firm, is dramatic would be an understatement.

As ELA’s founding director (and the executive producer of Friends!) Kevin Bright said of the structure, “I don’t care whether you walk around it or drive by it or you see it from a distance; the thing about this building is it demands your attention.”

I’ve honestly never seen anything quite like it.

Considering the building’s completely unique and dramatic aesthetic, it is no surprise that location scouts came a-calling pretty much immediately.

As this ArchDaily article puts it, “Looking to the local context, the center finds a provocative precedent in the interiority of Hollywood film studios, where outwardly regular facades house flexible, fantastical spaces within. With rigging for screens, media connections, sound, and lighting incorporated into the framework, the upper platform serves as a flexible armature for outdoor performances, transforming the undulating scrim into a dynamic visual backdrop. The entire building becomes a stage set for student films, screenings, and industry events, with the Hollywood sign, the city of Los Angeles, and the Pacific Ocean in the distance providing added scenery.” The place truly is a location manager’s dream.

Besides appearing in the scene in which Olivia and Alex exchange damaging information on rival presidential candidates in “Pencils Down” . . .

. . . one of Emerson’s residential hallways served as the spot where Susan breaks up with her cheating boyfriend David Rosen (Joshua Malina).

At the beginning of the Season 1 episode of Extant titled “More in Heaven and Earth,” which aired in 2014, ELA portrays the upscale The Villas condominium building where Molly Woods (Halle Berry) attempts to question Derek Pearce (Rocco Vienhage) about the Aruna mission.

Molly returns to The Villas in a later scene only to discover that Derek has died, the victim of an apparent suicide.

Julie Gelineau (Grace Gummer) and Odim James (Charlie Bewley) also dine on the premises in “More in Heaven and Earth.” In the episode, the two share a meal at Emerson Kitchen, a restaurant that was formerly located on the college’s ground floor. Today that space houses Homeward Ground.

On The Catch, a now defunct series that aired on ABC from 2016 to 2017, ELA appeared regularly as the exterior of the Anderson/Vaughan Investigations office.

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: Emerson College Los Angeles, from the “Pencils Down” episode of Scandal, is located at 5960 Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. You can visit the school’s official website here.

January 8, 2018January 8, 2018

Rise N Grind from “Veep”

I have never been one for New Year’s resolutions. That being said, in 2018 I am hoping to regularly exercise, be kinder (to myself and others), drink more water and less champagne, and cut down on my daily latte regimen. The last one is going to be much easier said than done. No matter what, though, I will definitely not be cutting down on my stalking of coffee shops – that I can promise. One café that I recently visited was Hollywood’s Rise N Grind, which I became enamored with after it made a brief appearance in an episode of Veep.

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In Season 6’s “Georgia,” Catherine Meyer (Sarah Sutherland) and girlfriend Marjorie Palmiotti (Clea DuVall) meet with Dan Egan (Reid Scott) at a supposed New York coffee shop to ask if he would be willing to be their sperm donor. The encounter is extremely quick, as Dan readily agrees to the proposition – literally no questions asked.

Though I’ve always been prone to coffee shop adoration, the café that appeared in the episode intrigued me even more so than usual. I was immediately taken with the space’s modern décor. A black and white color schematic? A marquee “coffee” sign? Painted brickwork? Touches of wood throughout? Yes, yes, yes, and yes! The place couldn’t be any more “me” if it tried! So I, of course, set out on a mission to track it down.

While watching, I noticed what looked to be a menu board constructed out of skateboards in the background of the scene. So I did a Google search for “Los Angeles,” “coffee shop,” and “skateboards.” The second result kicked back was a listing for Rise N Grind located at 6501 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood. One glimpse at the photographs of the place posted online told me it was the right spot. I ran out to stalk it just a short time later.

Opened in July 2014 by nightclub impresario Robert Vinokur, Rise N Grind is fairly new to the Hollywood coffee scene.

Situated inside of a corner building in the heart of Tinseltown, the site is easily one of the most artfully-decorated cafes I’ve ever visited.

Prior to opening, Vinokur completely and painstakingly re-designed the 7,000-square-foot, 2-story, 1994 building, which previously housed a designer suit outlet.

As writer Kim Sudhalter chronicled in a post for the Only in Hollywood blog while the space was being renovated, “Last month I drove up Wilcox and saw a crew of painters working on the building gracing the northwest corner of Wilcox and Hollywood, near my old office. As I got closer, I noticed they were carefully painting the face of each brick white, leaving the brick-colored mortar intact in between. I drove by several times in the next week and they were still at it . . . hand-painting bricks one by one. The final effect was so elegant I knew something special was happening.” Something special indeed! The white brick motif was carried out inside the café, as well, to stunning effect.

The result is a thoroughly modern venue that manages to be industrial, but wholly welcoming at the same time.

“Welcoming” is one of the key characteristics Vinokur hoped to embody in his design – a space where patrons could feel comfortable hanging out for hours on end. To that end, the café provides free WiFi, power outlets for customer use, a copious amount of seating, a large menu offering sandwiches, pastries, juices, and salads, and java specialties provided by Stumptown Coffee Roasters.

As described on LinkedIn, the site is a “laptop haven for all creative minds.”

Regarding the name, Rise N Grind, as Vinokur explained to the Los Angeles Times, is a play on both a motivated get-out-of-bed attitude and the city’s longstanding skateboard culture, which is paid homage to via the menu board I spotted in the background of Veep – a massive display of more than 150 decks displaying the store’s moniker and its many food and drink offerings.

While stalking the place, I, of course, had to partake of a latte and it was fabulous. Rise N Grind will definitely be a frequent stop whenever I find myself in Hollywood. Whoops – there I go, already abandoning that less-lattes-in-2018 plan!

Only the interior of Rise N Grind appeared on Veep. The exterior shots shown were of Orwashers, “New York’s Original Artisan Bakery,” at 440 Amsterdam Avenue on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. With its corner location and black and white façade, Orwashers does bear quite a resemblance to Rise N Grind, as you can see below.

Back in 2003, when the Rise N Grind site housed a clothing store named Roma, it appeared in the background of S.W.A.T., in the scene in which Alex Montel (Oliver Martinez) is captured by Jim Street (Colin Farrell) shortly after escaping from a police bus.

As you can see in the screen captures as compared to the photographs above and below, the building looked completely different – and much less attractive – at the time. The white brick edifice really suits it!

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Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Rise N Grind, from the “Georgia” episode of Veep, is located at 6501 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood. You can visit the café’s official website here. Exterior footage from the episode was shot at Orwashers, located at 440 Amsterdam Avenue on New York’s Upper West Side. You can visit the bakery’s official website here.