Julia Roberts locations – IAMNOTASTALKER

July 31, 2013July 31, 2013

The “Pretty Woman” Opera House

Today’s locale is one that I have been trying to track down for over a year and a half now – ever since discovering that pretty much every other location website out there had gotten it wrong. I am talking about the exterior of the supposed San Francisco opera house featured in the 1990 classic romantic comedy Pretty Woman. Last January, while on a Pretty Woman kick, I dragged the Grim Cheaper out to the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, where filming of the opera scene is said by several websites to have taken place. And while the interior of the museum did, in fact, appear in the movie, I took one look at the exterior and knew without a doubt that it was not the exterior shown in Pretty Woman.

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As you can see below, the Pretty Woman opera house and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, while somewhat similar, are most definitely NOT one and the same. Which begs the question – how does erroneous information like this get published? Yet again, the answer is shoddy research and lazy reporting. Once upon a time, someone made the claim that the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles was used as the exterior of the Pretty Woman opera house and everyone else just jumped on the bandwagon without doing any of their own investigating. I call that “spaghetti-style stalking” – let’s just throw some locations out there and see what sticks – and it is maddening! Anyway, while I knew that the Natural History Museum did not stand in for the exterior of the Pretty Woman opera house, I had no idea what location actually was used and spent the next year and a half trying to figure it out. Then on Monday afternoon, I got a text from my good friend Nat letting me know that she had found the site – in Pittsburgh of all places! (I should mention here that Nat is not AT ALL into stalking, so this truly was a feat!)

I originally got Nat, who is a native San Franciscan, involved in the hunt because I had assumed that the building used in Pretty Woman was located somewhere in the City by the Bay. In a bad twist of fate, while the scene was originally set to be lensed at S.F.’s iconic War Memorial Opera House, a few days before the shoot date, the Loma Prieta earthquake struck, rendering the city, and War Memorial, unfilmable. So director Garry Marshall and his team had to scramble to find a different last-minute location at which to film. They wound up using three different locales to stand in for the opera house. The Natural History of Museum of Los Angeles was used as the interior of the concert hall’s lobby area.

In the scene, Edward Lewis (Richard Gere) and Vivian Ward (Julia Roberts) walk through the main entrance of the Natural History Museum and head to the right.

I am fairly certain that the curved wall panel pictured below was a set piece that was added for the filming, as the actual walls of the museum are not rounded.

As you can see in the screen capture below, the tiled floor pattern also seems to be cut off by that rounded panel, further leading me to believe that it was a set piece.

Edward and Vivian then walk past an usher handing out programs . . .

. . . and up a flight of stairs.

Had the camera panned just slightly farther to the right in the scene, the museum’s famous dinosaurs would have been visible. Winking smile

For the interior of the actual theatre, production designer Albert Brenner constructed a set at The Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, where Pretty Woman was lensed. In Garry Marshall’s DVD commentary featured on the Pretty Woman (15th Anniversary Special Edition) DVD, he states that the set was built against a soundstage wall and that the cast and crew had to climb a ladder to gain access to the balcony area.

While the lobby and theatre areas were easy finds, it was the exterior of the opera house that had me in the dark. Because the building shown in Pretty Woman did bear a striking resemblance to the War Memorial Opera House (which you can see a picture of here), I figured that it was also most likely located somewhere in San Francisco. So after asking fellow stalkers Mike, from MovieShotsLA, Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong blog, and John, from the Silent Locations blog, for their help in tracking the place down, I emailed a screen capture of the building to Nat to see if she recognized it at all. She did not, but kept the picture on hand in case she ever came across it in her daily travels. Then yesterday, Nat’s boyfriend headed out to the San Francisco Natural History Museum, which reminded her of my quest, so she started doing some cyber-stalking and, lo and behold, found the place! As it turns out, the Pretty Woman opera house is actually Carnegie Music Hall (which is a part of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, oddly enough!) at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh. My hat is DEFINITELY off to her being that she did what we “professional” stalkers could not. And had she not found the locale, it would have remained a mystery because never in a million years would I have EVER thought to search for it in Pennsylvania! (Please pardon the rather poor-quality Google Street View image pictured below.)

Nat also informed me that Carnegie Music Hall was used in the 1983 classic Flashdance, where it masqueraded as the prestigious Pittsburgh Dance and Repertory Company that welder Alex Owens (Jennifer Beals) dreamed of attending. The building shows up several times throughout the movie, most notably in the scene in which Alex chickened out of auditioning for the school’s ballet program.

The interior of Carnegie Music Hall and Carnegie Museum of Natural History were also utilized in the filming.

In a very ironic twist, I was SHOCKED to discover that the establishing shot shown in Pretty Woman was actually a still from Flashdance! Towards the middle of Flashdance, Alex attended a black-tie dance recital with her mentor, Hanna Long (Lilia Skala), at the Pittsburgh Dance and Repertory Company. The exterior of Carnegie Music Hall was shown several times throughout that scene, with tuxedo-clad men and cocktail gown-clad women milling about on the stairs outside. Garry Marshall simply used a shot from that scene for Pretty Woman.

The first screen capture pictured below is from Flashdance, while the second is from Pretty Woman. As you can see, the gala sign pictured on the bottom left-hand side of both of the images is a perfect match, as are the man and woman standing just to the right of it. Several of the other people in the screen captures match up, as well, including the man standing with his back against the wall of the middle archway and the white-haired woman in the bottom right-hand corner. Too bad I have never seen Flashdance, otherwise this would have been a much easier find!

The interior of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History was also used in The Silence of the Lambs, as the spot where Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) met up with an entomologist.

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Big, HUGE THANK YOU to my good friend Nat for finding this location! Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Carnegie Music Hall, aka the exterior of the opera house from Pretty Woman, can be found at the Carnegie Institute, which is located at 4400 Forbes Avenue in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The area used in the scene is denoted with a pink arrow below. You can visit the Carnegie Institute’s official website here. The interior of the Pretty Woman opera house is the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, which is located at 900 Exposition Boulevard in the Exposition Park area of Los Angeles. You can visit the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles’ official website here.

February 24, 2012February 23, 2012

Barb’s Quickie Grill from “Pretty Woman”

Another Pretty Woman location that I spent countless hours trying to track down recently was the tiny café where Vivian Ward (Julia Roberts) and Edward Lewis (Richard Gere) had dinner towards the end of the classic 1990 flick. And while the name of the establishment – “Barb’s Quickie Grill” – and a street number – “7006” – were clearly visible in the scene, and a quick Google search had provided me with an address – 7006 Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood – this particular locale actually turned out to be quite the difficult find. Thanks to a January 2008 Los Angeles Times article, I knew that the restaurant had closed its doors in 1999, but was shocked to discover, when searching on Google Street View, that the structure that had once housed it was nowhere to be found. The place had seemingly just disappeared right off the sidewalk. So I immediately dragged the GC right on out to Hollywood to do some in-person investigating, but when we got there, the mystery only deepened.

In Pretty Woman, Barb’s Quickie Grill did not appear to be flush with the gray façade seemingly located behind it, so I made the assumption that the eatery was a small structure situated in the space in front of it.

As you can see above, the vertical grooves running down the orange building currently located at 7006 Santa Monica Boulevard clearly match up to those of the gray building visible behind Barb’s Quickie Grill in Pretty Woman. But, as you can also see above, the sidewalk in front of the orange building is nowhere near big enough to have once housed a restaurant, even one as tiny as Barb’s.

Perplexed, I returned home, whereupon I enlisted the help of fellow stalkers Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and Scott, from the FindaDeath website, and for the next few days the three of us put in quite a bit of elbow grease doing research on the former eatery. I even purchased a copy of the book Fantastic Dives, in which the diner had been featured, hoping it would provide some clarity. Sadly, it did not. It was not until Mike found this image on the Scotty Moore website that we realized that the lighting and camera angles of Pretty Woman had created an optical illusion and that Barb’s was not a structure that had been located in front of the orange building, but that it actually was the orange building! Doh! You can check out some fabulous historic pictures of the eatery that were just added to The Bruce Torrence Hollywood Photograph Collection website here, here, and here.

The history behind the eatery is almost as heart-warming as the movie in which it once appeared and was actually the main reason I was so darn intent on finding the place. The establishment was originally founded as “Lou’s Quickie Grill” by Lou Shulkin and his wife, Anita, at a storefront on the corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and Highland Avenue in 1954. A young L.A.-transplant from Oklahoma City named Barbara Knox started working, first as a dishwasher, then as a waitress, at the short-order café just a short time later. In 1960, the Grill moved a few blocks west to 7006 Santa Monica Boulevard, directly next door to Radio Recorders (pictured above), the then-largest recording studio in the country. It did not take long for the legendary vocalists working at RR, as well as countless celebrities filming at other nearby studios, to discover Lou’s. Just a few of the luminaries who frequented the 12-stool diner throughout its 54-year history include Drew Barrymore, Denzel Washington, James Garner, Ronald Reagan, The Lennon Sisters, Orson Welles, Martin Sheen, Richard Crenna, Bill Cosby, Herb Albert, Buddy Ebsen, Mel Blanc, Jack Benny, and Lawrence Welk. And while Elvis never actually set foot inside of the establishment, he is said to have ordered deliveries from Lou’s each time he recorded music at RR.

Amazingly enough, when Lou and Anita decided to retire in August of 1987, they handed the Grill over to Barbara AT NO COST, despite the fact that they had been offered “tremendous” money for the place over the years. The Shulkins had come to view Barbara as a daughter and, because their own children had established careers in areas outside of the restaurant business, they could think of no better person to endow their beloved café to. So, in late August, Lou, Anita, and Barbara headed down to the Los Angeles County Hall of Records and Lou signed the restaurant over to his long-time waitress. The following morning he had the metal “Lou’s Quickie Grill” sign taken off of the roof of the building and replaced with a new neon window sign which read “Barb’s Quickie Grill”. According to a January 17th, 1988 Lakeland Ledger article, of the incredible gift, Barbara said, “Lou couldn’t give me a gold watch and a handshake and just walk way, like anybody else would. He’s not that kind of man.” Barbara continued to run the restaurant successfully, with frequent visits from her benefactors, until 1999, when she regrettably had to close the doors due to an ongoing battle with Alzheimer’s. She sadly passed away in 2008, at the age of 74. Sometime after the Grill was closed, the space was taken over by Studio 56, which had replaced Radio Recorders, and was completely remodeled. You can read an August 18th, 1987 Los Angeles Times article about the Grill here and a January 12, 2008 Los Angeles Time article about Barbara’s passing here.

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In Pretty Woman, Barb’s Quickie Grill appeared very briefly during the montage scene in which Edward takes the day off of work to spend time with Vivian.

Barbara Knox was even featured in the background of the scene. So incredibly cool!

Finding this location was definitely a group effort, so a big THANK YOU goes out to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and Scott, from the FindADeath website, for their help. Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Barb’s Quickie Grill, from Pretty Woman, was formerly located at 7006 Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood. The location now houses the offices of a CPA and is virtually unrecognizable from its onscreen appearance.

February 17, 2012February 16, 2012

The Alleyway and The Blue Banana Club from “Pretty Woman”

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago in my post about the Pretty Woman party house, fellow stalker Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and I have recently been on the hunt for a few of the flick’s more elusive locations – the two most important of which being the alleyway where the body of “Skinny Marie” was found and, across the street from it, The Blue Banana Club where Vivian Ward (Julia Roberts) and Kit De Luca (Laura San Giacomo) hung out in the film. And, amazingly enough, Mike was able to track down both locales in a relatively short period of time – as were fellow stalkers E.J., from The Movieland Directory website, and Scott Michaels, from the Findadeath website, whom I also enlisted in the hunt. So, while out doing some stalking in the Hollywood area three weekends ago, I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on over to stalk both spots.

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In one of Pretty Woman’s opening scenes, Vivian is shown walking through an alleyway where the dead body of a fellow prostitute named Skinny Marie has just been pulled out of a garbage dumpster.

While watching the scene, Mike happened to recognize the unique roofline of the historic Miceli’s Restaurant in the background behind a very young Hank Azaria, who played the role of a nameless homicide detective who laments about tourists taking photographs of Skinny Marie’s body in the flick. From there, Mike simply used Google Street View to look for an alley in the area half a block west and on the opposite side of the street from Miceli’s. And voila, it was not long before he found the right spot! Yay!

As it turns out, though, the Pretty Woman alleyway is not actually an alleyway at all, as we had originally thought, but the main lobby of The Outpost Building – a Spanish-Colonial-style structure that was commissioned by a Mr. and Mrs. B.C. Donnelly and designed by architect B.B. Horner in 1927. The historic property, which was fashioned after stores in Madrid, Spain, was originally comprised of apartment units that became home to countless aspiring starlets during the Hollywood heyday, but today is made up solely of offices and retail space.

Sadly, the building was closed when we showed up to stalk it, but I did manage to snap the above photographs through the glass front doors. As you can see, the “alley” still looks exactly the same today as it did in Pretty Woman, despite the fact that over twenty-two years have since passed! Even the shoe shine stand that Vivian walked by is still there! LOVE IT!

Amazingly enough, when I showed Mike the photographs I had taken of the lobby of The Outpost Building, he immediately recognized the place as the “Celebrity Apartments” where Tom Turner (Greg Kinnear) lived in the 1996 comedy Dear God. Both the exterior of the property . . .

. . . and the lobby area were used in the flick. In an interesting twist, Dear God was directed by none other than Garry Marshall, the very same man who also directed Pretty Woman. I guess the guy just has a thing for The Outpost Building!

Thanks to the Lenrek website, I also discovered that in the 1984 cult classic Angel, high school student/prostitute Molly “Angel” Stewart (Donna Wilkes) walked from the rear entrance of The Outpost Building, through the lobby and out the front door while on the search for a serial killer.

Interestingly enough, according to the GPSMyCity website, The Outpost Building also has a connection to novelist Raymond Chandler. In his 1939 mystery The Big Sleep, Chandler describes Geiger’s Rare Books and Deluxe Editions as follows: “A. G. Geiger’s place was a store frontage on the north side of the boulevard near Las Palmas. The entrance door was set far back in the middle and there was a copper trim on the windows, which were backed with Chinese screens, so I couldn’t see into the store. There was a lot of oriental junk in the windows. I don’t know whether it was any good, not being a collector of antiques, except unpaid bills. The entrance door was plate glass, but I couldn’t see much through that either, because the store was very dim. A building entrance adjoined it on one side and on the other was a glittering credit jewelry establishment.” Apparently, numerous Chandler aficionados believe that that description was inspired by none other than The Outpost Building. So incredibly cool!

Once Mike had located The Outpost Building, tracking down The Blue Banana Club was a snap, since in the movie it was shown to be situated directly across the street from the alleyway where Skinny Marie’s body was found.

Shockingly enough, The Blue Banana Club was actually a part of the historic Egyptian Theatre! At the time that the movie was filmed, the property belonged to the United Artists Corporation and it looked considerably different than it does today, but you can see pictures of the place in its Pretty Woman state on The Bruce Torrence Hollywood Photograph Collection website here and here, and on the Gorillas Don’t Blog website here. Ironically enough, a few minutes after Mike had texted me to let me know that The Blue Banana was actually the Egyptian Theatre, I received an email from both E.J. and Scott telling me the exact same thing. Great minds . . .

Today, the storefront that stood in for The Blue Banana houses the newly-opened Maui and Sons Bar & Grill. I am, unfortunately, unsure of what was in that location at the time of the filming, but back in the 1930s through the 1950s it housed the Larry Dine men’s clothing store and, in more recent years, it was the site of a Lickity Split ice cream shop.

In his commentary on the Pretty Woman 15th Anniversary Special Edition DVD, Garry Marshall states that, while set dressers had created a fake exterior for the outside of The Blue Banana Club, the interior scenes were filmed at an actual club located somewhere in Hollywood. Sadly though, as of yet, we have been unable to track down that location.

The interior looks like it might have been some sort of historic building, though, as it features some fairly ornate detailing, as you can see in the above screen capture.

On a side-note – My good friend Katie, from the Matthew Lillard Online website, is hosting a contest today to win two tickets to the Hollywood Rush show, in which the cutie actor will be directing a ten-minute play, taking place this Sunday night at 7 p.m. at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre in L.A. You can enter the contest on Matthew Lillard Online or on twitter at @mattlillardfans.

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalkers Mike, from MovieShotsLA, E.J., from The Movieland Directory, and Scott, from Findadeath, for finding these locations!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Pretty Woman alleyway is actually the lobby of The Outpost Building, which is located at 6715 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood. You can visit the property’s official website here. Maui and Sons Bar & Grill, aka the exterior of The Blue Banana Club from Pretty Woman, is located across the street at 6708 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood. You can visit the restaurant’s official website here.

January 24, 2012January 23, 2012

The “Sylvester Stallone” House from “Pretty Woman”

A couple of weeks ago, while trying to figure out in what movie I had spotted L’Orangerie, aka Chez Quis restaurant from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (which, maddeningly, I still have yet to determine, by the way!), I started scanning through the 1990 romantic comedy Pretty Woman and found myself wondering why I had never stalked the house jokingly referred to as being Sylvester Stallone’s in the flick. Fellow stalker Chas, of the It’sFilmedThere website, had tracked down the Hollywood-area residence quite some time ago and, while the address had been on my “To Stalk” list ever since, for whatever reason, I had never made it out there. So I quickly decided to remedy the situation and dragged the Grim Cheaper right on over there just a few days later.

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At the very beginning of Pretty Woman, Edward Lewis (Richard Gere), while lost in Hollywood, spots a hobo on the sidewalk digging through some trash and pulls over to ask him the way to Beverly Hills. The hobo replies, “You’re here! That’s Sylvester Stallone’s house right there!” LOL LOL LOL I swear, I have seen Pretty Woman about one hundred times and that scene never fails to make me laugh!

To find “Sylvester Stallone’s house”, Chas tracked down a helpful crew member who told him the general vicinity in which it was located. From there, he simply scanned aerial views and it was not long until he found the right place. And, amazingly enough, despite the fact that over two decades have since passed, the property still looks almost exactly the same today as it did when Pretty Woman was filmed! The small front door/front porch area was at some point enclosed, but otherwise the place appears to have been untouched by time. So incredibly cool! In real life, the tiny home, which was originally built in 1902, measures 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, and 1,201 square feet.

On a Pretty Woman side-note – While scanning through the flick a couple of weeks back, I was knock-me-over-with-a-feather-shocked to discover that the lobby scenes were not filmed inside of the Regent Beverly Wilshire hotel in Beverly Hills (pictured above) or on a soundstage at Disney Studios, as countless websites and books have suggested over the years.

Amazingly enough, the lobby scenes from Pretty Woman were actually shot at the since-demolished Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.

What tipped me off to this fact was the famous Ambassador lobby fountain, the base of which is visible in the background of almost all of the hotel scenes. You can see a photograph of that fountain here.

Upon closer inspection, I spotted several other elements of the interior of the Ambassador lobby that matched perfectly with what appeared in Pretty Woman, including the curved, check-in desk, which you can see a photograph of here (credit).

and the gold-detailed ceilings and wood-paneled columns, which you can see a photograph of here (credit).

I also realized that the lobby lounge where Vivian Ward (Julia Roberts) waited for Edward was actually the Ambassador’s famed The Palm Bar, which you can see photographs of here, here, and here.

And it has long been known that the ballroom where Vivian (aka Julia Roberts) learned the proper use of flatware and where Edward played the piano was the Ambassador’s Embassy ballroom, which you can see a photograph of here. So it now seems as if the vast majority of Pretty Woman was actually filmed inside of the Ambassador Hotel, which makes the fact that the structure no longer stands even more heartbreaking than it already was. Oh, how I wish I had seen that place in person! Sigh.

Big THANK YOU to Chas, from the It’sFilmedThere website, for finding this location. You can check out Chas’ extensive Pretty Woman filming locations page here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The “Sylvester Stallone” house from Pretty Woman is located at 1735 North Hudson Avenue in Hollywood.

January 11, 2012January 10, 2012

Mercedes’ Apartment Building from “Larry Crowne”

The only Larry Crowne filming location that fellow stalker Mike, from MovieShotsLA, did not track down was the mid-century-style apartment building where East Valley Community College professor Mercedes Tainot (aka Julia Roberts) – that’s “T-A-I-N-O-T, not Tae Bow, not Tai Chi, not Tie Knot” – lived with her philandering husband, Dean Tainot (aka Bryan Cranston). And I just have to say here that I absolutely LOVED the scene in which “professional blog writer” Dean, trying to defend the fact that he does not have an actual job, says to Mercedes, “I had four postings today alone! Blog-caster . . . Sky-scan . . . Parse-it-twelve.com . . . ”, to which she responds, “They are not postings, they’re comments!” Cracks me up every time! Anyway, although Mercedes’ apartment building looks very much like a San-Fernando-Valley-area structure, I had an inkling that it might actually be located in Pasadena and, sure enough, it was! A quick input of the terms “Larry Crowne”, “filming” and “Pasadena” led me to this link on the Before the Trailer website, which stated that the flick had done some shooting at 325 South Orange Grove Boulevard on May 25th of last year. So I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out there to stalk the place this past weekend.

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Mercedes and Dean’s apartment building showed up numerous times throughout Larry Crowne and, because I just really liked the look of the place, I had been absolutely desperate to stalk it.

And I am very happy to report that it did not disappoint – the complex looks EXACTLY the same in person as it did onscreen! The portion of the building that appeared in Larry Crowne is not actually the structure’s main entrance on Orange Grove Boulevard, but a side entrance located just around the corner on Arbor Street.

Which is the same area where Dean was dropped off by a taxi cab after spending the night in jail.

While we were stalking the place, we happened to speak with some residents of the building who honestly could NOT have been nicer. They not only answered all of my silly little questions about the filming and told me that Tom Hanks had been extremely nice and that the shoot, which took one day to complete, was an incredibly fun experience, but they also pointed me in the exact direction of Mercedes’ apartment. Whoo-hoo!

So I, of course, just had to take a photograph in front of her door. Smile

As you can see above, Mercedes’ apartment looks exactly the same in person as it did onscreen.

As does the neighbor’s apartment, which appeared in the background of the scene in which Larry Crowne (aka Tom Hanks) brought Mercedes home on his scooter.

Only the exterior of the apartment building was used in the filming. According to the Larry Crowne production notes, the interior of Mercedes and Dean’s (what they call) townhouse was just a set that was built inside of a soundstage at what I believe was Universal Studios. I am seriously in love with the Tainot’s kitchen, by the way. Sigh!

And I also so LOVE how the art department matched the interior detailing of the apartment to the real-life iron detailing of the building, as you can see above. Talk about attention to detail!

The actual unit where filming took place, Unit 325, which measures 2 bedrooms, 2 baths, and 1,396 square feet, was for sale recently. As you can see above, the interior looks nothing like the set that was created for the filming. You can check out the place’s real estate listing here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Mercedes’ apartment building from Larry Crowne is located at 325 South Orange Grove Boulevard in Pasadena. The side of the building that is shown in the movie can be found on Arbor Street, just around the corner from the main entrance.

January 6, 2012January 6, 2012

The “Larry Crowne” Apartment Building

Two additional Larry Crowne filming locations that I stalked this past weekend were Talia’s, the vintage clothing store owned by Talia Francesco (aka the adorable Gugu Mbatha-Raw), and the apartment building where Larry Crowne (aka Tom Hanks) lived at the very end of the flick, both of which are housed inside of the same corner edifice in Altadena. I found this locale thanks to fellow stalker Mike, from MovieShotsLA, who, while doing some online research on the movie, came across an old listing on the Cazoodle Apartment website which not only announced that Tom Hanks’ Larry Crowne apartment was then available for rent, but also provided its exact location. Yay! So last Saturday afternoon, while doing some New Year’s Eve stalking, I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out there to stalk the place.

The non-descript two-story building shows up several times in Larry Crowne – first in the scene in which Talia, while driving around on her scooter, notices a “For Rent” sign in a vacant storefront window and stops to take a closer look.

It next appears in the scene in which Larry stops by Talia’s new store to reprimand her for dropping out of East Valley Community College. It is while there that he informs her that her new tattoo does not in fact spell out “courageous spirit” in Japanese as she had intended, but “soy sauce”. LOL

And finally, the building is featured in the ending scene in which Larry invites his former teacher Mercedes Tainot (aka Julia Roberts) to his new apartment for some homemade French toast. (If you’ll notice in the first screenshot pictured above, the apostrophe in the signage for Talia’s store is ostensibly missing. Larry was right – Talia definitely should have stayed in school. Then perhaps she would not have made such an egregious error. Winking smile It looks like I need to submit this one to When Write is Wrong, my good friend Owen’s typos and grammatical errors blog.)

As you can see above, Talia’s store (or should I say Talias store? Winking smile ) was dressed heavily for the filming of Larry Crowne and does not look at all in person as it did onscreen. The building was vacant during the time of the filming (and still is today), so producers were able to do with it what they wanted without having to disturb any operating businesses.

And although we are only given a brief view of the interior of the store through the front windows in the movie, I just had to snap some pics of it, nonetheless.

When I first watched Larry Crowne, I had assumed that the little courtyard area outside of Larry’s apartment had been a set due to the fact that it was so incredibly idyllic and picturesque. But I am very happy to report that the courtyard is, in fact, real!

Sadly though, as you can see above, the stairwell that leads to the second floor, where Larry’s courtyard is located, is gated and not accessible to the public. Boo! If only I had known about this place back when it was available for rent, I totally would have scheduled a viewing! Winking smile

You can catch a minor glimpse of the courtyard if you venture across the street, though. According to the Cazoodle Apartment listing that Mike found, the 530-square-foot, 1-bedroom, 1-bath unit where Larry supposedly lived at the end of Larry Crowne was being offered for lease back in August of last year at a rate of $895 per month. And no, that was not a typo – the asking price was $895 per month for 530 square feet! Welcome to California. LOL

Pictured above are the photographs from that real estate listing and, as you can see, Larry’s apartment is pretty darn adorable.

In the movie, Larry’s address is noted as being 4225 Harbor #7.

And, as you can see above, producers even went so far as to change the address number plaque for the filming, so had the real estate listing not touted the apartment’s Larry Crowne connection, this would have been a very tough find! Nice work, Mike!

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On a Larry Crowne side-note – Back in June of last year, fave website AltadenaBlog posted a fabulous story about the filming, which you can read here. Apparently, during a break from the shoot, Tom Hanks wandered a few blocks up Lake Avenue to do some shopping at Webster’s Fine Stationers and not only posed for a picture with the owners, but also told them that he loved family-owned stationary stores. So incredibly cool! Especially since the GC and I had our own little run-in with Tom Hanks a few years back and let’s just say that he was less than friendly. Ah, let’s call a spade a spade here – the guy was a complete and total jerk and for a long while after that the GC refused to see any of his movies! But after reading the Webster’s Fine Stationers story on AltadenaBlog and after hearing how nice Tom was to Jose, the owner of Frank’s Restaurant where Larry Crowne filming also took place, it would seem that the actor has since changed his ways. One can hope, at least!

Big THANK YOU to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for finding this location! Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Larry Crowne apartment building is located at 906 Boston Street in Altadena. Thalia’s store from the movie is located at 2104 North Lake Avenue in Altadena.

January 4, 2012February 2, 2012

Frank’s Coffee Shop and Restaurant from “Larry Crowne”

A few days before Christmas, while I was wallowing in a horrible head cold, the Grim Cheaper and I sat down to watch the 2011 flick Larry Crowne. Neither of us had very high hopes for the movie as it had received such horrible reviews, but I am very happy to report that we both ended up loving it. So much so that we watched it again a few days later when my parents came to town to celebrate Christmas with us. The whimsical storyline centers around Larry Crowne (aka Tom Hanks), a middle-aged former Navy chef who is forced to rethink his life after being fired from his job at the local U-Mart Store. He decides to enroll in a nearby community college where he not only makes friends with a group of wildly eccentric and endearing characters, but also finds his life finally start to take shape. If you have yet to see Larry Crowne, I highly recommend ignoring the critics and renting it! Anyway, one of the main locations featured in the flick was Frank’s Coffee Shop and Restaurant – a Burbank-area eatery that I had passed by countless times during my ten-plus years of living in Los Angeles, but had, for whatever reason, never dined at. So I immediately added the place to my “To-Stalk” list and dragged the GC right on out there as soon as we returned home from visiting my grandmother in Reno this past weekend.

As we pulled up to Frank’s Coffee Shop and Restaurant, I spotted an article about Larry Crowne posted on the café’s front door and knew right away that I was going to LOVE the place.

And I am very happy to report that I did! Frank’s Coffee Shop and Restaurant, which is also sometimes called Frank’s Steak House, first opened its doors in 1957 and not much has changed since. Walking into the diner is like stepping back in time about fifty years – and I mean that in the best way possible.

The interior of Frank’s, with its dark vinyl booths, popcorn ceiling, and Formica countertops, is straight out of the 1950s and it is not at all hard to see why countless location managers have flocked there over the years. The place also serves up some FABULOUS food at very reasonable prices, which pleased the GC to no end. I opted for a mushroom cheeseburger with French fries and a side of ranch dressing and it was all simply amazing – especially the steak fries, which were extremely thick and seasoned in a way that was reminiscent of the fries served at fave restaurant chain Red Robin. The GC ordered the homemade split pea soup and it was also out of this world.

I was absolutely floored when I spotted a photograph of Tom Hanks posing with Jose, Frank’s owner, on display on the wall next to the kitchen. As fate would have it, Jose happened to come over to chat with us while we were dining and, let me tell you, the guy could NOT have been nicer! He sat with us for a good twenty minutes and filled us in on the Larry Crowne shoot, which took six days to complete. Jose informed us that the cast and crew were some of the nicest that he has ever encountered – and he has encountered quite a few. He also told us about the restaurant’s vast filming history and showed us countless photographs that he had stored on his cell phone of the various filmings that have taken place on the premises and the numerous celebrities that have posed with him. As you can imagine, I was pretty much drooling the entire time.

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In Larry Crowne, Frank’s Coffee Shop and Restaurant is featured repeatedly as the eatery where Larry and his scooter-riding friends hang out.

Later on in the movie, Larry gets a job working as a line cook in the restaurant’s kitchen.

That kitchen is pictured above.

Jose, who has been a chef for over forty years, actually acted as Tom Hanks’ cooking consultant during the filming of Larry Crowne and at one point had to step in to do some chopping for the actor. The hands you see above, which are supposedly Larry’s in the movie, are actually Jose’s. So incredibly cool!

In the Season 5 episode of Beverly Hills, 90210 titled “Squash It”, the exterior of Frank’s stood in for the Reno, Nevada-area diner where Valerie Malone (aka Tiffani Thiessen) convinced Ray Pruit (aka Jamie Walters) to return to Beverly Hills.

As you can see above, though, a different restaurant was used for the interior filming.

Jose informed us that Frank’s Coffee Shop had been featured in no less than 5 episodes of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, one of which is the upcoming “Willows in the Wind”, which just so happens to be Marg Helgenber’s final episode. Unfortunately, Jose was unsure of the titles of the other four episodes filmed on the premises, but I was able to do some digging and tracked down two of them. Then, after publishing this post, a CSI message board led me to the other two. Win! Frank’s first appeared in the Season 6 episode titled “Rashomama” as the supposed Las Vegas, Nevada-area coffee shop where the car belonging to Nick Stokes (aka George Eads), as well as all of the crime scene evidence inside of it, was stolen.

And in the Season 7 episode titled “Law of Gravity”, Frank’s stood in for the restaurant where Michael Keppler (aka Liev Schreiber) ran into Frank McCarty (aka Len Cariou).

In the Season 9 episode titled “Mascara” (CSI’s 200th episode), Frank’s is where Dr. Raymond Langston (aka Laurence Fishburne) met up a few times with his former thesis student Sylvia Mallick (aka Aimee Deshayes).

And in the Season 11 episode titled “The List”, Catherine Willows (aka Marg Helgenberger) met up with Detective Vartann (aka Alex Carter) to discuss the case she was working on.

In the Season 2 episode of Parks and Recreation titled “Ron and Tammy”, Frank’s stood in for the supposed Pawnee, Indiana-area restaurant where Ron Swanson (aka Nick Offerman) took his ex-wife, Tammy Swanson (aka Megan Mullally), out for lunch.

Jose also let us know that Frank’s was featured in the 2003 flop Gigli, but I scanned through the movie yesterday while doing research for this post and did not see it anywhere. I did, however, spot it briefly in the flick’s trailer, so the scene that was filmed at Frank’s appears to have been left on the cutting room floor.

That scene can be viewed at the 2:18 mark when Larry Gigli (aka Ben Affleck) tells Ricki (aka Jennifer Lopez), “I got a confession. I think we’re good together.”

Fellow stalker Jason also let me know that Frank’s Restaurant was featured in Chris Daughty’s “No Surprise” music video.

Chris Daughty–“No Surprise” Video Filmed at Frank’s Coffee Shop & Restaurant in Burbank

You can watch that video by clicking above.

Jose also told us that Frank’s Coffee Shop and Restaurant was featured in the A&E Network mini-series Stephen King’s Bag of Bones, but I scanned through it yesterday and did not spot the restaurant anywhere. He also told us that Criminal Minds had filmed on the premises recently, but I scanned through all of the Season 7 episodes that have aired so far and did not see it, so I am guessing that it will pop up in an upcoming episode in the very near future.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Frank’s Coffee Shop and Restaurant, from Larry Crowne, is located at 916 West Olive Avenue in Burbank.