Huell Howser – IAMNOTASTALKER

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.

July 23, 2018July 26, 2018

The Trails Café from “The Catch”

Today’s locale required a ridiculous amount of stalking – of myself. A few months back, while scanning through a television show making screen captures for a post, I spotted what I thought was the side of The Trails Café, one of my favorite L.A. eateries. A quick look at Google Street View’s imagery of the restaurant confirmed my hunch. Distracted by the piece I was writing, I failed to jot down the information, though, and promptly forgot about it. Flash forward to last weekend when the Grim Cheaper and I found ourselves hungry during a stalking trip to Griffith Park. I suggested we pop by The Trails and, while enjoying our scrumptious egg salad sandwich, was reminded of the place’s onscreen appearance. The only trouble was I could not for the life of me recall what show I had seen it in. Figuring it would come to me eventually, I snapped photos of The Trails and added it to my To-Blog List. Days later, though, I was still at a loss. The only remedy I could think of was a deep dive through my browser history. That dive turned out to be far deeper than I had envisioned. With the GC as my guide, I pulled up my search history, inputted “Trails Café” and quickly discerned that I made the discovery of the restaurant’s cameo on January 9th. As I backtracked through all of the other queries I performed on that date, I felt like I was entering A Beautiful Mind territory. I don’t normally consider myself as having ADD tendencies, but my online habits are evidence to the contrary. At no time that day did I have less than ten windows open – often on multiple browsers. Using the disjointed information to pinpoint what show The Trails had appeared in proved extremely time consuming (and a bit unnerving), but I eventually hit pay dirt – the eatery was featured in the pilot episode of The Catch, which I had discovered while making screen captures for my post on Emerson College Los Angeles. Phew!

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The Trails Café was founded by Grammy-winning music producer Mickey Petralia and television executive Frank Lentz in June 2005. The venture might seem an unusual one for two people with backgrounds so widely removed from the culinary world, but as Petralia told L.A. Weekly in a 2010 interview, “When I first started putting this place together, I code-named it ‘Operation Exit Strategy.’ The record industry had started to change, and I was pretty certain it was never going to get back to where it was. It’s hard to sustain a house and two kids on music alone now.”

Situated just steps from the idyllic Ferndell Nature Center, another one of my favorite L.A. spots, the structure that now houses The Trails was originally a city-owned concession stand that served mediocre burgers. By the time that Petralia and Lentz got their hands on the place, it had long been sitting vacant and boarded up and had grown run-down.

The duo spent about nine months cleaning up the property and transforming it into a charmingly rustic eatery, all of which was done during off time from their day jobs.

While the menu was originally helmed by musician Aaron Sperske, at some point pastry chef Jenny Park came on board as a co-owner and the mastermind behind The Trails’ delectable offerings including pastries, sandwiches and salads, all of which are made from scratch each day on the premises.

The tiny café (it measures less than 400 square feet!) quickly became an area staple, with hungry patrons flocking there like bees to honey. Most days you’ll find the colorful picnic tables packed and throngs of people waiting at the order window.

It is not hard to see why The Trails is so beloved. Not only is the fare amazing, but the setting is absolutely idyllic. Sitting there, you half expect woodland fairies to come flying by, sprinkling pixie dust in their wake.

The restaurant is also something of a celebrity hot spot. Such stars as Amanda Seyfried, Flea, Minka Kelly, Jessalyn Gilsig, Jayma Mays, Drew Barrymore, Alia Shawkat, and Paul Adelstein have all popped by for a bite to eat. Mandy Moore even did a photo shoot at The Trails for How You Glow.

Considering its celebrity clientele and gorgeous aesthetic, it is no surprise that the eatery wound up onscreen.

In the pilot episode of The Catch, private investigator Alice Vaughan (Mireille Enos) discovers that her fiancé, Christopher Hall (Peter Krause), is a fraud who has made off with her entire life savings. Her team decides to try to ensnare him, but, as her employee Danny Yoon (Jay Hayden) laments, “This guy was good – like really good. His entire web presence is gone. No archived search items, no photos. I don’t even know how to start investigating.” Alice assures him that she has photographs of Christopher, but when she heads to her computer to bring them up she realizes that his face is obscured or turned away from the camera in every single one. Two of the pictures she scans through in the scene were taken at The Trails Café. The restaurant’s appearance is fleeting at best in the segment, which is perhaps why I had such a hard time recalling it.

Alice and Christopher are sitting on the café’s southern side in the images, in the area pictured below.

The Trails Café was also featured in the Season 14 episode of Visiting . . . with Huell Howser titled “Ferndell,” which aired in 2006.

In the episode, which you can watch here, we are given a glimpse of what the eatery looked like when Petralia and Lentz first took it over in 2004. The industrial shack is quite a stark contrast to the whimsical café that exists now.

Thanks to fellow stalker Justin, I learned that The Trails also appears as The Tummy Pleaser concession stand in the Season 1 episode of Salute Your Shorts titled “Cheeseburgers in Paradise,” which aired in 1991.

Quite an extensive scene was shot there affording us a fabulous look at the property in its original state.

I cannot say enough good things about The Trails Café. There’s a reason I included the place in My Guide to L.A. – Coffee post. It is definitely one of the best spots in the city to grab a latte and enjoy a shaded respite.

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 Trails Café, from the pilot episode of The Catch, is located at 2333 Fern Dell Drive in Griffith Park. The entrance to Ferndell Nature Center, my favorite L.A. walking trail, can be found just south of the restaurant at the intersection of Fern Dell and Black Oak Drives.

April 20, 2018April 19, 2018

Moorten Botanical Garden

If you follow any lifestyle, fashion or beauty blogger, chances are you’ve seen some variation of the photo above. For those who don’t keep up with influencers, the image is of the cactarium – aka cacti terrarium – at Moorten Botanical Garden in Palm Springs. The structure has been documented on social media so frequently as of late that The Telegraph recently dubbed it “the most Instagrammed greenhouse in the world.” I first learned about the garden in December 2015 while reading this article about the desert in Sunset magazine. In the days that followed, I spotted pictures of the place pop up in the IG feeds of no less than three bloggers I follow. Moorten it seemed was everywhere! Considering I had called the Coachella Valley home for three years by that point, I thought it was a bit sacrilegious that I had never seen the idyll in person myself. So I promptly dragged the Grim Cheaper right on over there a few weeks later – and was thrilled to learn upon doing so that the site is a filming location!

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Moorten Botanical Garden was established by railroad-worker-turned-actor Chester Moorten, who was best known for appearing in the Keystone Cops silent films. Upon being diagnosed with Tuberculosis in the ‘30s, Chester left Los Angeles and headed east to Palm Springs with the hope that the desert air would provide him some relief. A longtime green thumb, Moorten started cultivating and selling cacti and other desert foliage at a downtown Palm Springs shop/nursery that he opened in 1938 and quickly earned himself the nickname “Cactus Slim.” Everyone from area locals to the actor’s celebrity friends were customers.

In 1940, Moorten married botanist Patricia Haliday. Together the couple expanded Chester’s business to include landscape design and were soon hired by such luminaries as Walt Disney, Red Skelton, Jimmy Van Heusen, Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby and Lily Pons to create backyards at their desert homes. Walt even tapped the duo to curate the foliage for Frontierland at his soon-to-be-built Disneyland Resort.

The couple also expanded their nursery into a cactus museum of sorts, using it as a showcase for their growing landscape business.

Cultivated from plants gathered during the couple’s many world travels, the site soon evolved into an area attraction.

In its early days, such luminaries as Dwight Eisenhower, Mamie Eisenhower, and Ginger Rogers were all known to pop in.

In 1955, Chester and Patricia moved the garden to its current home, a 1.5-acre plot of land at 1701 South Palm Canyon Drive complete with a sprawling Mediterranean-style estate that became their residence.

Dubbed “Cactus Castle,” the 1929 dwelling was originally commissioned by nature photographer Stephen Willard and his wife, Beatrice, who lived on the premises until 1947.

When Slim passed away in 1980, Patricia continued to live at the estate, but handed over the daily operation of the garden to the couple’s son, Clark, who shared his parents’ deep love of horticulture.

Clark then moved into Cactus Castle with his family upon Patricia’s passing in 2010. He continues to run the garden to this day, carrying on his parents’ legacy with gusto.

Currently, Moorten Botanical Garden, which is also known as Desertland, is comprised of 3,000 different varieties of plants organized into 9 geographical regions including California, Texas, Arizona, Baja California, Colorado, the Mojave Desert, the Sonoran Desert, South Africa, and South America.

Woven landscapes greet visitors at every turn . . .

. . . as do unique relics like the loveseat created from a cedar burl pictured below . . .

. . . and vegetative curiosities such as the extraordinary S-shaped tree situated just outside of Cactus Castle’s front door, which was moved to the garden from Palm Canyon after being struck by lightning.

The bolt caused the tree to burn and collapse to the side, but it survived and continued to grow in a curved position.

The Moortens propped it up on rocks after re-locating it and subsequently created a waterfall underneath (which was not turned on the day we were there).

Moorten Botanical Garden also boasts an array of crystals, rocks, fossils, antique mining tools, a gift shop/nursery, and a menagerie of desert animals.

Its biggest draw, though, is the cactarium. An invention of Chester’s, the shutter-worthy structure was erected one day when Patricia happened to be out of town.

As Clark explained to The Telegraph, “Originally the cactarium had a wooden frame, and it was covered with double thickness window screen for shade. My father wanted a more greenhouse-type of structure, so he bent all the pipes while mother was away for a week in around 1976 or 1977.” Patricia was reportedly not at all happy with the result. Little did she know the rounded shed would become one of the desert’s biggest draws some forty years later. Though not much to look at from the outside . . .

. . . the cactarium’s interior is pretty spectacular.

Filled with rare specimens of plants . . .

. . . the structure is literally dripping with greenery.

Looking around Moorten Botanical Garden, it is not hard to see why so many are enchanted with the place and how Instagram has served to make it even more popular.

The site is just that picturesque.

True to form, I ran into a popular blogger, iPhone camera in hand and photographer husband trailing closely behind, while I was there.

Moorten Botanical Garden is not just an Instagram star, though. The site has also popped up a couple of times onscreen.

Back in 1995, the garden was featured in the 18th episode of the 6th season of Rescue 911 in the segment titled “Chance Encounter,” which covers the true tale of two young hikers both named Jennifer who were rescued after falling off a cliff in Palm Springs in 1994. At the end of the bit, the real life Jennifers stroll through Moorten with their rescuers. You can watch the segment here.

In the Season 13 episode of Visiting . . . with Huell Howser titled “Moorten Botanical Garden,” which aired in 2005, the convivial host visits the site and conducts an extensive interview with Clark. You can watch the full episode here.

Moorten also makes an appearance in the 2017 horror film Valentine DayZ in a scene that is featured in the trailer, which is where the stills below came from. I couldn’t actually find the flick available to stream anywhere, which the GC said is incredibly telling. Winking smile

If you happen to find yourself in the desert, I highly recommend a visit to Moorten Botanical Garden.

The site can easily be traversed in about an hour and admittance is only $5.

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: Moorten Botanical Garden is located at 1701 South Palm Canyon Drive in The Mesa neighborhood of Palm Springs. You can visit the garden’s official website here.