Be sure to check out today’s Los Angeles magazine post – about the Playboy Mansion’s many appearances onscreen and the 89th birthday of its famous owner. My articles typically get published in the late morning/early afternoon hours.
Madame Chocolat from “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills”
Another location that I dragged the Grim Cheaper out to see while stalking in the Beverly Hills area two weekends ago was Madame Chocolat, the chocolate shop that was featured in the Season 1 episode of the reality series The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills titled “Chocolate Louboutins”. Sadly though, because we were there on a Sunday, the place was closed and we did not get to venture inside, nor did we get to sample any of the delicious-looking chocolate.
We did spend quite a bit of time admiring the beautifully sculpted candies that were featured in the shop’s front window, though – all of which I later learned are actually fake to prevent melting, but are modeled after real designs that can be purchased inside. Then yesterday, I randomly found myself parked directly in front of the store while doing some shopping in Beverly Hills, so I decided to pop in and purchase some candy for the GC. (I am diabetic and therefore could not buy any for myself.) And, amazingly enough, Hasty Torres, the shop’s owner who appeared in The Real Housewives episode, was working the front counter! Hasty could NOT have been nicer and spent quite a bit of time speaking with me about the filming of the show and even helped me pick out some sweets that the GC would like. I so badly wanted to ask her to take a photograph with me, but I hesitated as I thought she might think I was a bit weird. Looking back, I really regret it as she was so incredibly sweet.
As it turns out, Hasty’s foray into the chocolate world reads like a Hollywood script. While working for a finance company in Century City a little over a decade ago, she became obsessed with a Food Network television show named Chocolate with Jacques Torres, in which renowned pastry chef/chocolatier Jacques Torres created various works of art out of the sweet delicacy. Hasty was so obsessed, in fact, that she wound up quitting her job and enrolling in Pasadena’s famed Le Cordon Bleu cooking school with the hope of one day opening up a chocolate shop of her very own. Upon graduating a year and a half later, she got a job working for Jacques himself at one of his many chocolate stores in New York and the two ended up falling in love. Hasty’s dream was finally realized in November of 2006 when the chocolatier founded her very own shop on North Canon Drive in the heart of Beverly Hills. And just a year later, Hasty and Jacques were married at the legendary Bel Air Hotel. Such an incredible story!
When I came home with the above-pictured bag yesterday, the GC was extremely excited as he is a total chocolate fiend . . . until he saw the receipt, that is, which I had accidentally left in the bag.
I ended up purchasing four (tiny) chocolate bon bons and one chocolate-dipped Oreo cookie and my total bill was $13! But hey, it’s Beverly Hills – prices like that pretty much go with the territory. Well, the GC took one look at that receipt and said, “Can you return them?” LOL Return chocolate??? Really???? Do you see what I have to put up with here? 
Anyway, despite his chagrin over the cost, by 8 p.m. last night he had devoured all four of the bon bons and the cookie, as well! And while he said that he much preferred the Rocky Mountain chocolate that I had purchased him this past Christmas, I am fairly certain that had more to do with Madame Chocolat’s pricing than it did the quality of their chocolate.
His favorite item was the Café bon bon – an espresso-infused dark chocolate ganache that is shaped like a coffee cup. So cute!
In the “Chocolate Louboutins” episode of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, housewife/restaurateur Lisa Vanderpump-Todd (whom I absolutely LOVE) visits Madame Chocolat to pick up a pair of chocolate Christian Louboutin high heels, which were made out of a whopping three pounds of white Belgian chocolate, that she has special ordered.
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The chocolate shoes, of course, also boast the signature Louboutin red soles. Love it! 
During her visit, Lisa also orders a custom-made, $1,000, three-foot tall chocolate Easter bunny which she then brings to Easter brunch at fellow housewife Kyle Richard’s house in Palm Springs.
Madame Chocolat also appeared in the Season 5 episode of The Girls Next Door titled “Hot Chocolate” in which Hugh Hefner’s three then-girlfriends, Holly Madison, Bridget Marquardt, and Kendra Wilkinson, visit the chocolatier to have some of their, ahem, body parts recreated out of chocolate as a birthday gift for Hef.
The shop is also something of a celebrity hot spot with such stars as Wolfgang Puck, Nobu Matsuhisa, Rachel Ray, Mario Batali, Ricky Martin, JC Chasez, Robin Thicke, Ludacris, Lamar Odom, P. Diddy, Eva Longoria Parker, Kris Jenner, and Shannon Elizabeth all stopping by to satisfy their sweet tooth.
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: Madame Chocolat from The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills is located at 212 North Canon Drive in Beverly Hills. You can visit the store’s official website here. Madame Chocolat is open Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. The store is closed on Sundays.
Tom Kelley’s Photography Studio – The Site of Marilyn Monroe’s Nude Pictorial
A few weeks ago, while out doing some Oscar stalking with Mike, from MovieShotsLA, the two of us visited a convenience store on Hollywood Boulevard which just so happened to be selling the latest edition of fave star map “Movie Star Homes and Notorious Crime Scenes”. So, I, of course, just had to buy myself a copy (actually, truth be told, Mike purchased it for me – Thank you, Mike!) and was absolutely floored to discover that one of the many new addresses included in the map was that of Tom Kelley’s former photography studio, the very place where a then-unknown wanna-be actress named Norma Jeane Baker posed for her now-infamous series of nude calendar photographs on May 27, 1949. Just twenty-two years old at the time, the blonde ingenue, who would just a short time later come to be known as one of the most famous movie stars in the entire world, posed sans clothing while laying on top of a drape made of red velvet. When later asked about what she was wearing during the controversial photo shoot, Marilyn said, “It’s not true that I had nothing on. I had the radio on.” Love it! Well, once I had the address of the studio, Mike and I headed right over there to stalk the place. Yay!
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Tom Kelley’s former photography studio is currently inhabited by Pictures in a Row, a production company which touts the famous history of their office space right on their website – SO LOVE IT! The studio is unfortunately gated, but, as luck would have it – and I always seem to have the most AMAZING luck when I am out with Mike – one of the Pictures in a Row employees just happened to be standing outside of the gate when we pulled up. So we, of course, got to talking to him and I told him about my blog and my love of Miss Monroe and asked if I could snap a few photographs. Well, not only did he tell me to snap away, but he then asked – are you sitting down for this? – if I wanted to COME INSIDE THE STUDIO TO SEE WHERE THE FAMOUS PHOTOGRAPHS HAD BEEN TAKEN! Well, let me tell you, I just about FAINTED right there on the spot! Did I want to come inside???? Did I want to come inside????? OF COURSE I DID! So, after regaining my composure, he led me past the front gates and INTO TOM KELLEY’S FORMER STUDIO. As you can probably imagine, I was just about DYING the entire time. The interior of the studio is pictured above and while the employee told me that the space has undergone quite a few changes in the sixty some-odd years since Marilyn was photographed there . . .
. . . the ceiling has been left largely untouched. So, what is pictured above is pretty much the exact view Marilyn had as she looked upwards while Tom Kelley photographed her from a ten foot ladder. So darn cool! I really can’t tell you how incredible it was to be able to actually set foot inside of such a historically significant building onto what I very much consider to be hallowed ground.
Because Marilyn’s calendar photographs became so incredibly famous, the legends surrounding them abound. There are even differing reports as to why the struggling starlet posed in the first place, but according to her official statement she was behind on a rent payment and simply needed the $50 paycheck. Apparently, after the two hour session ended, the photographs of Marilyn sat in one of Tom Kelley’s filing cabinets for over a year until Western Lithograph contacted him to see if he had any nudes he’d be willing to sell. Kelley ended up selling the company two of his Marilyn photographs for a mere $200 fee and it was those two prints, which were entitled “Golden Dreams” and “A New Wrinkle”, that wound up in the calendar. The calendars were then sold and hung up in men’s garages all over the U.S., but it wasn’t until March of 1952 that a newspaper journalist named Aline Mosby identified the now-wildly-famous Marilyn as the calendar’s model. What followed was a virtual media firestorm, making Monroe more popular than she already was. But the story doesn’t end there. In 1953, a young entrepreneur named Hugh Hefner purchased one of Kelley’s prints and featured it as the centerfold in the very first issue of his new men’s magazine which he dubbed Playboy. That first issue sold a staggering 54,000 copies and turned the magazine and its creator into household names. The rest, as they say, is history. Marilyn was so significant in building Heff’s empire, in fact, that he wound up purchasing the crypt directly next to hers at Pierce Brothers Westwood Memorial Park Cemetery so that he could lay in eternal rest with the woman who launched his career. The area of the studio where Marilyn posed is denoted with the pink arrow in the above photograph.
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂
Stalk It: Tom Kelley’s former photography studio, where Marilyn posed for her now infamous nude calendar pictures, is located at 736 Seward Street in Hollywood.