Monrovia – IAMNOTASTALKER

August 5, 2020August 4, 2020

Jill’s Doctor’s Office from “Picket Fences”

Hindsight being 20/20, I really should have studied architecture in college. Expertise in that area would have served me well, not only in my hunts for various locations, but in writing about them, as well. I can’t tell you how many times a day I scour the internet and/or pester my friend/guest poster extraordinaire Michael, who does have a background in the subject, for help in identifying design terminology. (I remember “crenelated” being a particularly tough find while writing this post.) Needless to say, I’ve still got a lot to learn. Case in point – up until just recently I would have considered the property above to be Victorian in style. But it’s actually American Foursquare, which, per Curbed, is defined by a rectangular base, wide front porch, and lack of exterior and interior ornamentation. The latter characteristic is a “direct response to the heavy woodwork of the Victorian era,” so that shows you what I know! Style misidentification aside, I was thrilled to learn about the residence, which fellow stalker Brad recently identified as the office where Dr. Jill Brock (Kathy Baker) treated the zany townspeople of Rome, Wisconsin on fave show Picket Fences. Known as the Tillapaugh House in real life, it has quite an interesting history!

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Built in 1906 for New York transplant Gilbert Tillapaugh and his wife, Elizabeth, the stately property originally stood a couple blocks northwest of its current location at 129 South Primrose Avenue in Monrovia. It was moved – yes, picked up and moved! – in 1978 to make way for a new apartment complex. In looking at the photos of the home at its initial Primrose Ave. location here and here, namely the large drainage grates in the sidewalk visible on either side of it, as compared to current Street View imagery, I believe the dwelling was formerly situated in the spot where the white box is below.

In 1951, the Tillapaugh House wound up in the hands of the American Red Cross, who utilized it as the headquarters of their Monrovia chapter. It was amidst the group’s long tenure there that the property was relocated to 200 East Lime Avenue. You can check out some photos of it in the process of being set up at its new location here and here.

After more than four decades of occupation, the Red Cross moved out in 1995. Four years later, the Tillapaugh House was acquired by the Monrovia Redevelopment Agency and continued to be used as offices. The historic residence was then, sadly – and almost unbelievably – relegated to storage space when the State of California suspended such agencies in 2012. Without a proper use for it, the city eventually put the property on the market in 2016. At the time, it lacked a shower or bathtub and only featured a single half-bath on the lower level. Talk about a fixer-upper!

Some buyers with foresight snatched the place up and did a complete revamp, transforming it back to its original state as a single-family home. Today, the sightly pad, which is a City of Monrovia Historic Landmark, boasts 3 bedrooms, 3 baths (2 with standalone tubs!), a den, 2,331 square feet of living space, countless original details, a tiled fireplace, hardwood flooring throughout, chair and rail moldings, a 0.18-acre lot, and a detached 1-car garage.

You can check out some interior photos of it here.

The exterior of the Tillapaugh House appeared regularly on Picket Fences.

Despite a major change in color scheme and the addition of some foliage, the property still looks much the same today as it did on television screens in the mid-90s (minus the snow, of course).

Not only was the home utilized in establishing shots of Jill’s office on the series, but some on-location filming took place there as well, in episodes such as “Rights of Passage” . . .

. . . and “Sugar & Spice.”

Only the exterior of the Tillapaugh House was featured on Picket Fences. Beginning with the pilot episode, all interior scenes involving Jill’s quaint and homey office were shot on a studio-built set.

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Brad for finding this location! Smile

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 Tillapaugh House, aka Jill’s office from Picket Fences, is located at 200 East Lime Avenue in Monrovia. The Brock residence from the show is just about a mile away at 211 Highland Place.

July 29, 2020August 3, 2020

The Brock House from “Picket Fences”

I was recently asked how I come up with new material to write about. My answer? I am a huge consumer of content! All content – movies, television shows, magazines, books, blogs, websites, podcasts, documentaries, etc. etc. etc. I eat them all up! (In fact, I was tipped off to two Haunted Hollywood locations via old newspaper articles while doing research for this very post!) Many times, too, inspiration comes from fellow stalkers. Case in point – a longtime reader named Brad recently messaged to ask if I had ever done any stalking of the David E. Kelley series Picket Fences, which ran on CBS from 1992 to 1996. The quirky family drama/small-town police procedural, largely shot in Monrovia, was one of my favorite shows back in the day, but somehow I hadn’t thought about it in years! I had actually stalked the main house from the series when I first moved to Los Angeles in 2000, years before I had a blog. It was so long ago, though, that I no longer had the address listed in any of my files. Brad was kind enough to provide it to me, along with a few others, which I was thrilled to run out and stalk. I was even more thrilled to discover shortly thereafter that Season 1 is currently available for streaming on Amazon Prime and promptly settled in for a watch. Despite being almost three decades old, Picket Fences really holds up! I’m enjoying it just as much today as I did when I was a teen. And being so familiar with the L.A. area this time around has made revisiting the show even more of a joy! You can expect quite a few PF locations to be popping up here in the coming weeks. And what better spot to kick things off with than the supposed Rome, Wisconsin home where Sherriff Jimmy Brock (Tom Skerritt) lived with his wife, Dr. Jill Brock (Kathy Baker), and their three children, Kimberly (Holly Marie Combs), Matthew (Justin Shenkarow) and Zachary (Adam Wylie), on the whimsical series.

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In real life, the handsome 1924 Colonial sits on a leafy street just north of Old Town Monrovia. The 4-bedroom, 2-bath, 2,844-square-foot property last sold in 1971, which is a lucky break for us stalkers as the lack of changeover has resulted in very few alterations to the exterior. Outside of two large trees which have since been removed from the front yard, the place is a virtual time capsule from the Picket Fences days!

In an atypical move for a television show, no location changes were made by the network once Picket Fences got picked up by CBS. The Brock house remained the same from the pilot through the end of the series, as did the police station, Jill’s office, and the town courthouse – all of which I will be reporting on soon, don’t you worry!

Not only did the property appear regularly in establishing shots of the Brock residence, but some on-location filming took place there as well, including in the Season 1 episode titled “Thanksgiving” (pictured below).

The pad actually seems a bit of an odd choice to portray the main house on the show considering there’s not a picket fence in sight (then or now), as many readers have pointed out. You’d think at the very least the production crew would have temporarily installed one on the various shoot days that took place there.

Though I have not been able to track down any interior photos of the dwelling, I am fairly certain it was never utilized on Picket Fences, not even in the pilot. From the outset, the Brock house appears to have been nothing more than a set built inside of a soundstage, first at Santa Clarita Studios and then Ren-Mar Studios Hollywood (now Red Studios Hollywood).

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Brad for reminding me about this location!

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 Brock residence from Picket Fences is located at 211 Highland Place in Monrovia.

May 20, 2019May 19, 2019

Monrovia High School from “A Cinderella Story”

My taste in movies is about as mature and refined as my palate, which favors chicken strips and ranch dressing above all else. Case in point – I am obsessed with the 2004 tween romance A Cinderella Story. Chad Michael Murray? Hilary Duff on roller skates? A high school love story? A pink ‘50s diner? Yes, yes, yes and yes! I’ve written posts on several of the film’s locations over the years (you can read them here, here and here), but somehow forgot to dedicate one to Monrovia High School, which portrayed North Valley High (home of the Fighting Frogs!) and which I visited way back in 2013. I figure the time to rectify that is now!

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Designed by architect Austin Whittlesey, working under John C. Austin and Frederick M. Ashley, construction on Monrovia High School began in January 1928.

Completed early the following year, the Spanish Colonial Revival-style building, which features Palladian elements, cost $600,000 to erect.

Numerous expansions have taken place in the years since, the most recent from 2009 to 2011.

That project, which totaled a whopping $60 million, included the addition of a 2-story science building, a 30,000-square-foot gym complete with a weight room, and a new football stadium and surrounding track.

Thankfully, all of the additions were designed with the school’s original architecture in mind, ultimately creating a cohesive, striking and picturesque property.

Not only is the school itself beautiful, but the grounds are absolutely bucolic. I was just a wee bit obsessed with the massive tree pictured below.

I mean, just look at it!

Considering its handsome façade, it is no surprise that the place wound up onscreen. In A Cinderella Story, Monrovia High was used extensively. Areas of the school featured include the front exterior;

interior hallways;

the baseball field;

the pool;

the football field (which was, sadly, redone during the 2009 expansion);

and the main quad (it also looks a bit different post-expansion) . . .

. . . where the pep rally took place.

The quad is the spot I was most interested in seeing during my stalk, namely the “Friendship Circle” planter where Sam and Austin regularly sat throughout the movie.

Unfortunately, we stopped by on a Saturday, when Monrovia High was closed, so I wasn’t able to poke around. I was thrilled to see, though, that the quad area is visible through the front gates.

The gates even afford a small glimpse of the planter!

A Cinderella Story is hardly the only production to feature Monrovia High.

Skip Lewis (Chad Lowe) and Ken (Charlie Sheen) go to school there in the 1984 made-for-television movie Silence of the Heart.

In 1985, Monrovia High played itself in another made-for-TV film, Between the Darkness and the Dawn.

The production, which journalist John J. O’Connor deemed “a candidate for the worst television movie of the year,” gave audiences a glimpse at what the interior of the school looked like at the time.

Rocky Dennis (Eric Stoltz) enrolls in Monrovia High at the end of the 1985 drama Mask.

Monrovia High (along with Walter Reed Middle School from License to Drive) appears as Garden City High in the 1988 horror film 976-EVIL.

Brad Kimble (Will Friedle), Leah Jones (Jennifer Love Hewitt) and Brooke Kingsley (Marley Shelton) attend Monrovia High School in the 1997 comedy Trojan War.

The school (along with several others, including Torrance High) was also used to portray John Hughes High School in 2001’s Not Another Teen 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: Monrovia High School, aka North Valley High from A Cinderella Story, is located at 845 West Colorado Boulevard in Monrovia.

October 10, 2016September 29, 2017

The Burr House from “The Twilight Zone”

After what amounted to a nearly two-year stalking hiatus, Mike, from MovieShotsLA, is finally back! Let me reverse a bit and explain. Over the past couple of years, Mike has been busy working in production (yep, he actually toils away on movie sets now!), which hasn’t left much time for tracking down locations. I was having some trouble with a locale this past week, though, and on a whim decided to see if he could lend a hand. Mike was game and, lo and behold, the two of us were on the hunt once again, just like old times! The story of our quest, which is a bit of a long one, is detailed below.

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While doing some research on Say Anything . . . locations back in January, I came across a 1990 Los Angeles Times article which made mention of an old Victorian house in Monrovia that had been featured in an episode of The Twilight Zone. Perfect for my Haunted Hollywood postings, right? Though the exact episode was not named, the column stated that parakeets were flown through the residence during the shoot, so I assumed it would not be hard to figure out. I did a little digging, pinpointed the address of the property, headed right on over to Monrovia to stalk it shortly thereafter, and did not think much more about it until sitting down to write this post. As it turned out, even armed with such specific information regarding parakeets, identifying the episode proved arduous. My first course of action was to Google “The Twilight Zone episode” and “parakeets,” which yielded nothing. Then I literally spent hours scanning through old TTZ episodes and reading recaps, but came up with nada. Enter Mike. Literally five minutes after I texted him and told him of my quest in tracking down the “parakeet episode,” he texted me back with an answer. As he discovered, the episode was Season 1’s “Still Life,” which originally aired on January 3rd, 1986. I felt like a complete blonde when he told me his search process, which involved inputting the sentence “Which episode of The Twilight Zone filmed in Monrovia, CA?” The third result to be kicked back was a synopsis of “Still Life” on The New Twilight Zone website. Actor Robert Morris had provided the site with a behind-the-scenes photograph of the shoot which was posted with the caption, “ . . . the episode was shot in Monrovia, California in this beautiful home.” D’oh!

In real life, the dwelling is known as the Burr House and it was originally built in 1893 for Frank W. Burr and his family. The 18-room Queen Anne-style residence was constructed entirely of redwood at a cost of $2,800. At the time of its inception, it did not have heating, electricity, or even indoor bathrooms. Yep, the Burrs had to use an outhouse! That outhouse is still currently located on the property. The Burr family owned the site until 1975, which explains how so much of the home’s original detailing remains intact today, 123 years after it was built.

In 1979, Mary Ann and Ramon Otero purchased the residence and began an extensive renovation and restoration process. Today, the property boasts 5 bedrooms, 4,700 square feet of living space, several bathrooms (there are 4.5 to be exact), a pool, extensive gardens, a detached garage, and a half-acre plot of land.

In “Still Life,” the Burr House belongs to photographer Daniel Arnold (Robert Carradine), who, after visiting an estate sale, brings home an antique trunk which he later discovers has a secret compartment containing a camera that was last used during a 1913 National Geographic Society expedition to the Amazon River Basin.

As Daniel soon learns, during the expedition the camera captured the souls of several Curucai Indian tribesmen whom he inadvertently brings back to life.

The Burr House was used extensively in the episode.

The home’s actual interior was also featured throughout.

You can watch “Still Life” by clicking below.

As was noted in the Los Angeles Times (as well as in this Monrovia Patch article), the Burr House has appeared in countless movies, TV shows, and commercials over the years. In 1988, it was used as the Boon residence in a scene in Sweet Hearts Dance. Because most filming of the Boon home took place at a similar looking Victorian dwelling located at 113 Eden Street in Hyde Park, Vermont, I am guessing that the Burr House segment might have been part of a reshoot.

Mike Donnelly (Chris Farley) voted – and got stuck in the voting booth – outside of the property’s garage in the 1996 comedy Black Sheep.

You can see the garage in the photos below.

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 his help in tracking down the correct The Twilight Zone episode!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Burr house, from the “Still Life” episode of The Twilight Zone, is located at 150 North Myrtle Avenue in Monrovia.

October 20, 2014September 29, 2017

Santa Fe Depot from “The Trouble with Angels”

It is no secret that I love abandoned places, especially during this time of year. (What I wouldn’t give to be able to see this in person!) Recently I stalked Monrovia’s former Santa Fe Railroad Depot and it had my heart going pitter-patter. The now defunct train station is also a filming location and, while it appeared in a comedy and not a horror movie, due to its current dilapidated state I figured it would fit in perfectly with my Haunted Hollywood postings.

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The Santa Fe Railroad Depot was originally constructed in 1925 for the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway.

The Spanish colonial revival-style structure replaced a wooden station constructed on the site in 1886 that serviced the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Railroad. Fun fact – the initial depot also serviced a mule-drawn railway car that shuttled passengers to and from Monrovia’s business district.

Santa Fe Depot fell victim to the decline of railway use in the second half of the 20th century and wound up being shuttered in 1972. The property was left vacant and allowed to dilapidate over the four decades that followed.

In coordination with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Gold Line Foothill Extension, there are plans currently in the works to turn the depot and the land surrounding it into the Monrovia Station Square Transit Village – a 25-acre mixed-use center that would feature retail stores, restaurants, offices and housing. The project is set to be completed by the end of 2015, although I am not sure how feasible that date is considering the current state of the property.

The Santa Fe Railroad Depot was featured twice as the St. Francisville Train Station in the 1966 comedy The Trouble with Angels. While a portion of the movie was shot on location in Pennsylvania (the stunningly gorgeous St. Mary’s Villa for Children and Families in Ambler masked as St. Francis Academy), the vast majority of the flick was lensed in L.A. Interestingly, two different locales were used as the St. Francisville Station. As the St. Francis school bus arrives at the depot to pick up Mary Clancy (Hayley Mills) and the girls in the film’s opening scene, a shot of the Merion, Pennsylvania depot was shown. A matching Google Street View image of that spot is pictured below.

When the girls are actually shown getting off the train, though, the location switches to the Santa Fe Depot in Monrovia.

Santa Fe Depot was also used in The Trouble with Angel’s ending sequence in which the girls leave St. Francis Academy. You can see a great shot of the side of the station that appeared in The Trouble with Angels here and you can read a fascinating blog post about the making of the movie here.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Santa Fe Depot, from The Trouble with Angels, is located at 101 West Duarte Road in Monrovia.

December 23, 2011December 22, 2011

The Brass Monkey Bar from “Bad Santa”

Another Christmas-themed location that I stalked recently was the Brass Elephant bar – the Monrovia-area watering hole that stood in for the similarly-named “Brass Monkey” bar where Sue (aka Lauren Graham) worked in my least-favorite holiday movie of all time, 2003’s Bad Santa. Fellow stalker Chas, from the It’sFilmedThere website, had tracked down the establishment a while back and once I learned that it was located inside of the Aztec Hotel, an extremely unique structure that had intrigued me ever since I first moved to the San Gabriel Valley over eleven years ago, I decided that I just had to stalk the place. And this past Tuesday morning, I finally did just that.

The Aztec Hotel was originally built in 1925, on what was then the historic Route 66, by Robert Stacy-Judd, the English-born architect who also designed the Masonic Temple in North Hollywood, the First Baptist Church in Ventura, and the incredible Atwater Bungalows in Echo Park. The hotel was Stacy-Judd’s first commercial design job in the United States and he credited his inspiration for the project to John L. Stephen’s 1841 tome Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan. Although technically Mayan in design, the architect named the property the “Aztec Hotel” because, as he is quoted as saying in the 1993 book Robert Stacy-Judd: Maya Architecture and the Creation of a New Style, “When the hotel project was first announced, the word Maya was unknown to the layman. The subject of Maya culture was only of archaeological importance, and, at that, concerned but a few exponents. As the word Aztec was fairly well-known, I baptized the hotel with that name, although all the decorative motifs are Maya.”

And while the Aztec Hotel enjoyed immense success and was one of the most exclusive lodgings in the area for a brief period, it fell upon hard times due to both the Great Depression and the realignment of Route 66 and was forced to shutter its doors in 1935, less than a decade after opening. It was sold, by auction, shortly thereafter for $50,000. The new owners renovated the place and it once again became a popular retreat thanks to the proximity of the newly-opened Santa Anita Park race track. Such luminaries as Bing Crosby, Mickey Rooney, Clark Gable, and my girl Marilyn Monroe were all reportedly counted as guests at one time or another. Sadly though, the property fell, once again, into disrepair in the years following and served as everything from a drug den to a brothel. The 44-room, two-story hotel, which was named a National Historic Landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, was just recently purchased by new owners who have set about restoring the historic site to its former glory. Amazingly, numerous elements of Stacy-Judd’s original design remain in place to this day, including the tile floor in the lobby, ceiling light fixtures, stained glass windows, several murals, and a fireplace.

Sadly, the Brass Elephant bar, which is located just off of the Aztec Hotel’s lobby, was closed when I showed up to stalk it, but I did manage to snap the above pictures through an open window.

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In Bad Santa, the Brass Elephant stood in for the Brass Monkey – the supposed-Phoenix, Arizona-area mall bar where disgruntled Santa Willie (aka Billy Bob Thornton) first met bartender Sue. It popped up in two scenes in the movie – first in the scene in which Willie successfully hits on Sue before getting into a fist-fight with a fellow patron.

And later in the scene in which Gin (aka Bernie Mac) tries to blackmail Willie and his partner-in-crime, Marcus (aka Tony Cox). As you can see in the screen captures above, the Brass Elephant was dressed heavily for the filming, with special booths brought in, walls retouched, and bright lighting installed, and is virtually unrecognizable from its appearance onscreen.

Because the Brass Monkey was supposed to be located adjacent to a mall in Bad Santa, the real life exterior of the Aztec Hotel did not appear in the flick. A fake exterior for the bar was instead created at the Del Amo Fashion Center in Torrance, where the vast majority of the movie was lensed.

The Aztec Hotel was also featured extensively in the 2009 movie Spooner, as the place where Rose Conlin (aka the adorable Nora Zehetner), the object of Herman Spooner’s (aka the even more adorable Matthew Lillard’s) affection, stays for a few days after her car breaks down.

Quite a bit of the hotel appeared in the movie, including the front entrance;

the lobby;

several hallways;

the Aztec Barber Shop, which is an actual place;

one of (what I believe is) the hotel’s real life rooms;

and the Brass Elephant bar. And while I only scanned through Spooner in order to make screen captures for this post, I have to say that it looks like an incredibly cute movie that I definitely need to watch in its entirety in the very near future.

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Chas, of the It’sFilmedThere website, for finding this location. Smile You can check out Chas’ extensive Bad Santa filming locations page here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Brass Elephant, aka the Brass Monkey from Bad Santa, is located at 311 West Foothill Boulevard, inside of the Aztec Hotel, in Monrovia. You can visit the hotel’s official website here and you can visit the bar’s official Facebook page here.

October 3, 2011September 29, 2017

The Mills View House from “Picket Fences”

Well, my fellow stalkers, it is finally that time of year again, the month I look forward to all year long – October! With it comes fall leaves, cooler temperatures, and my favorite holiday of them all, Halloween. And you know what that means – I will once again be devoting the entire month of blog posts to locations having to do with Haunted Hollywood! First up is the Mills View house, a Monrovia-area property that I learned about way back in March from a journalist named Toni Momberger who interviewed me for an Inland Valley Daily Bulletin newspaper article she was writing about famous movie homes. Toni told me that she had toured the huge, Victorian-style abode as part of her research for the article and she was shocked to discover that I had never before heard of the place. As fate would have it, the house had been featured prominently in not one, but two spooky productions over the years, so I figured it would be the perfect start to my Haunted Hollywood theme and I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out to stalk it a few weeks back.

The 5-bedroom, 2-bath, 3,140-square-foot Mills View house, which was built in 1887 by architects Luther Reed Blair and Uriah Zimmerman, was originally situated on a 5-acre plot of land on what was then the corner of Banana Avenue (now Hillcrest Boulevard) and Melrose Avenue. The Eastlake-Victorian-style home was commissioned by William N. Monroe, the founder of Monrovia, as a wedding gift for his son, Milton Monroe, and his new bride, Mary Nevada. Construction on the property began in May of 1887, shortly after Milton and his wife were married, and was completed a mere seven months later. Sadly, the Monroes divorced a short time after tying the knot and ended up selling their wedding home to Colonel John H. Mills and his wife, Elizabeth Cook Mills, in 1893. The Mills dubbed their new residence “Mills View” because on a clear day the island of Catalina was supposedly visible from one of the third floor windows. Unfortunately, Colonel Mills passed away only three months after moving into the home and it went through several ownership changes after Elizabeth subsequently died in 1905. Mills View, which boasts numerous stained glass windows, a third floor attic, hardwood flooring throughout, and five fireplaces with original tilework, became a Monrovia City Landmark on June 4, 1996.

According to this Monrovia Patch article, Mills View has appeared in over 20 productions since 1980 alone. Sadly though, I know of only two – both of which, as I mentioned above, fit the thriller genre. And the property definitely does give off a spooky vibe in person – I think primarily due to its gargantuan size – so it is not very hard to see why location scouts have flocked to it over the years.

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In the Season 1 Halloween-themed episode of fave show Picket Fences titled “Remembering Rosemary”, Mills View was where Rosemary Bauer committed suicide ten years prior by jumping out of a third-floor window, and where Sheriff Jimmy Brock (aka Tom Skerritt) and his deputies Maxine Stewart (aka Lauren Holly) and Kenny Lacos (aka Costas Mandylor) returned to investigate the case after deciding to re-open it a few days before Halloween.

I am fairly certain that the real life interior of the house, which you can see some photographs of here, was used in the episode.

Mills View was also the primary location used in the 1986 horror flick House. In the movie, it was the haunted property that mystery-writer Roger Cobb (aka William Katt) inherited from his Aunt Elizabeth (aka Susan French). According to the House production notes, for the onsite filming, which lasted two weeks, production designer Gregg Fonseca repainted the exterior of the property and added Victorian gingerbread detailing, a few spires, a wrought-iron fence, and a sidewalk. At the rear of the residence, he covered up the home’s real life clapboard siding with a fake brick edifice and added some much-needed landscaping.

No filming took place inside of the actual home, though. For all of the interior scenes, a replica of the house, which included two full stories, a living room, a den, a staircase, and three upstairs bedrooms, was built on a soundstage at Ren Mar Studios in Hollywood.

And I am fairly certain that the pool shown in the movie was either a fake built on the property solely for the filming or that a second location was used, as Mills View does not currently appear to have a pool.

Two very lucky British House fans were given a personalized tour of Mills View last year and wrote a great blog post about it which you can check out here.

On a Halloween side note – I was finally able to dig up a photograph of me dressed up as Agent Dana Scully for Halloween one year during college, which I had mentioned in the blog post I wrote about meeting David Duchovny back in June. The only picture I could find, though, was not a very good one as my eyes are closed in it. Ah well. That is my good friend Alex, who was dressed up a Parrothead, posing with me.

While going through boxes at my parents’ new house looking for the Dana Scully picture, I also stumbled upon my Fox Mulder doll, which I could NOT have been more excited about! I am so going to have to stalk DD again and get him to sign the doll for me. How incredibly cool would that be??

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Mills View, from the movie House and the “Remembering Rosemary” episode of Picket Fences, is located at 329 Melrose Avenue in Monrovia.

September 6, 2011September 5, 2011

Grandma Bunny’s House from “You Again”

As I mentioned in last Friday’s post, the hunt for Aunt Mitsy’s (aka Kathy Bates’) house from Rumor Has It actually began when fellow stalker Geoff, from the 90210Locations website, asked for some help in tracking down the abode where Grandma Bunny (aka Betty White) lived in the 2010 flick You Again. I immediately got fellow stalkers Chas, from the It’sFilmedThere website, and Owen on the case, but even with their master stalking skills, for whatever reason, this particular location mystery took us quite a bit of time to solve. The one major clue that we had to go on was that the house appeared to be situated on some sort of slanted lot and was not perfectly parallel to the street. And while several crew members had informed Chas that the dwelling was located in Altadena, he had remembered seeing some slanted-type houses in the Monrovia area while he was searching for the Georgia Rule abode way back in March of this year, so he decided to begin his hunt there. Thank god that guy has a good memory! Winking smile

As you can see in the above screen capture, an address number of “240” was also visible in the background of flick, so Chas got started searching all of the 200 blocks on every “slanted” street he could find in the Monrovia area and, amazingly enough, it was not long before he spotted the right house! So I, of course, ran right out to stalk the place just a few days later.

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Grandma Bunny’s Victorian-style abode is actually only featured once in You Again and very briefly at that. It pops up in the scene in which Marni (aka Kristen Bell), her brother Will (aka James Wolk) and his new fiance/Marni’s high school nemesis Joanna (aka Odette Annable) arrive to pick up Grandma Bunny for a wedding dance rehearsal. It is there that, while helping Bunny put in her false teeth, Marni accidentally gets denture adhesive all over her hands and then winds up getting her hands stuck in her hair, causing Grandma Bunny to chop a large chunk of it off. (It pretty much goes without saying that You Again was not that great of a movie. Winking smile )

I am very happy to report that Grandma Bunny’s house, which was originally built in 1887 (the same year that Monrovia was incorporated) and is one of the city’s oldest surviving Victorians, is just as adorable in person as it appeared to be onscreen. At the time of its construction, there were only 164 homes in Monrovia and a scant 2,000 residents. According to the city’s Historic Preservation Group’s website, the Colonial Revival-style front porch is not original, but was added to the property in the early 1900’s. In real life, the charming little abode boasts 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, and measures 1,482 square feet, although its façade makes it appear to be much larger. Ironically enough, in a bit of foreshadowing the home’s actual owner described the dwelling as “everyone’s idealized version of grandma’s house” in a Los Angeles Times article that was published in January 1989. I guess the You Again filmmakers felt the exact same way when they scouted the property. Smile

Big THANK YOU to Chas, from the It’sFilmedThere website, for finding this location. And you can check out Geoff’s, from the 90210Locations website, extensive You Again filming locations page here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Grandma Bunny’s house from You Again is located at 240 West Hillcrest Boulevard in Monrovia.

April 18, 2011April 17, 2011

The Upton Sinclair House

Last weekend while doing some research on the net, the Grim Cheaper discovered that a home in Monrovia where legendary author/screenwriter/movie producer/politician Upton Sinclair had once lived was currently for sale. So, while I was in the area visiting my parents this past Friday afternoon, I just had to go stalk it. For those who never had the pleasure of a required reading list in high school, Upton Sinclair was the Pulitzer-Prize-winning author of over 90 titles, the most famous of which was 1906’s best-seller The Jungle, a fictional, but truthful account of America’s meat packing industry during the turn of the century. I read the tome during the summer before my junior year of high school and even though it was easily one of the worst books I have ever read – like in my entire life! – I will always have a very special place in my heart for it as the day I started reading it a HUGE, white Himalayan cat appeared out of nowhere on the doorstep of my then-home. Thinking he had run away from a nearby house, my mom and I put signs all around our neighborhood announcing that we had found a lost cat. When no one claimed him after a week my parents said we could keep him and I could NOT have been more excited. In that weeklong interim, though, we kept him in one of our downstairs bedrooms, secluded from the rest of the house, as we had another cat and were afraid the two would not get along. I literally spent every waking moment of those seven days in that downstairs room, all the while reading The Jungle. I read that entire book with him by my side and even though Norman, as we came to name him, passed away six years ago, every time I see The Jungle on my bookshelf I think of him and our first week together. So when the GC told me that Upton Sinclair’s house was located just up the street from my parent’s new apartment, I could not have been more excited and just had to go stalk it.

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And I am so glad that I did! The Spanish-Colonial-Revival-style property, which boasts 3 bedrooms, 1.5 bathrooms, and 2,380 square feet of living space, was originally built in 1923. The home was designed by Frederick H. Wallis, the Los Angeles-area architect who, along with his partner Samuel Tilden Norton, constructed the Los Angeles Theatre, the William Fox Building, and the Los Angeles Financial Center. Upton Sinclair lived in the residence from 1942 to 1966 and, in the writing studio that he had converted from a garage, penned his Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel Dragon’s Teeth, as well as numerous other tomes. That studio has since been transformed into a guest house, but according to this San Gabriel Valley Tribune article, the special fireproof vault that he had built to house his many manuscripts is still intact. The residence is a Monrovia Historic Landmark, a National Historic Landmark, and is on the National Registry of Historic Places. It is currently for sale for a cool $1,195,000.

Of the home, Sinclair once said that it had the “perfect peace to write in . . . a garden path to walk up and down while I planned the next paragraph”. And I have to say that he was right – the property is truly idyllic. While I was there, all that could be heard were the sounds of birds chirping and a soft breeze rustling the trees. There was also an owl hooting away somewhere on the property – I kid you not. Oh, what I wouldn’t give to live in this home and have my own garden path to stroll along while contemplating the next paragraph for my blog each day! Something tells me that the GC would never go for the $1.2 million price tag, though. I’m guessing he would make me give up my Starbucks addiction if we were to buy this place. Winking smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Upton Sinclair house is located at 464 North Myrtle Avenue in Monrovia. You can visit the home’s real estate listing here.

March 24, 2011March 23, 2011

Watching “The Mentalist” Being Filmed – A Second Time!

This past Tuesday morning I was interviewed about my website for an article on filming locations that will be published sometime in early April in a few local, San Gabriel Valley-area newspapers. While we were talking, the reporter happened to mention that she had just spoken with the City of Monrovia’s Film Liaison who had told her that fave show The Mentalist would be filming that very day on Myrtle Avenue in Downtown Monrovia. So, I immediately headed right on over there to do a bit of Simon Baker stalking. As I have mentioned a few times before on this blog, I do not particularly enjoy stalking alone, so I begged my mom, who lives just up the street from where filming was taking place, to come to the set with me and, thankfully, she agreed. When we arrived, we discovered that producers had built a fake, but very detailed jewelry store set inside of what is, in actuality, a large kitchen appliance store named Kitchen & Bath Expo, Inc.

I cannot tell you how fascinating it was to see the fake store, which was named Nesbitt & Company Jewelers, in person. A false rear wall had been built in front of the large appliances that are normally on display in the front windows of the Kitchen & Bath Expo and fake jewelry cases along with fake jewels had been placed in the main area of the store and the effect was incredibly realistic. So realistic, in fact, that one of the people we spoke with who had stopped to watch the filming with us mentioned that she had walked by the storefront the previous morning and thought to herself, ‘Just what the area needs – another jewelry store!’ It was not until she saw the filming trucks the following day that she realized the entire thing was just a set.

Pictured above is what Kitchen & Bath Expo, Inc. looks like in real life.

As you can see, set decorators simply covered over the kitchen displays with fake walls. My mom asked one of the crew members why producers had not simply found a real jewelry store to film at, since there are more than a few of them in the area, but he told us that they needed a jewelry store situated next to an alley. When they couldn’t find one that met their needs, they simply decided to create their own. Ah, the magic of Hollywood!

The scene we watched being filmed involved Patrick Jane (aka Simon Baker) and Teresa Lisbon (aka Robin Tunney) pulling up next to the jewelry store in Lisbon’s car and then walking through the alleyway together. The camera was set up directly across the street from the store.

Traffic on Myrtle was shut down only intermittently during the filming and, with the crime scene tape strung across the alley, the flashing lights on the many police cars parked at the scene, and the camera not being readily visible, it must have looked to those driving by as if an actual crime had just taken place.

Simon Baker and Robin Tunney walked out just a few short minutes after we arrived on the set and Simon immediately smiled and waved at the fans standing across the street (there were only about five of us) and then the two of them walked over to the car they were set to be driving in the scene. I was really hoping that Simon would walk over to take pictures with the fans, since there were so few of us, but he never did. Sad smile

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The driving scene was completed in only one take and then Robin and Simon headed into the alleyway to do some more filming. Unfortunately, we could not get very close to the alley so we left shortly after that.

On the way back to my parents’ apartment, I noticed that every single store and restaurant on Myrtle Avenue had a sign offering discounts to the film crew taped to their front windows, which I thought was just about the coolest thing ever! Talk about being a film-friendly city! Love it!

Some filming also took place at Monrovia’s Vertia Salon, which is located right around the corner from the Kitchen & Bath Expo, Inc., but unfortunately I arrived after that scene had already been completed.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Kitchen & Bath Expo, Inc., aka the fake jewelry store set from The Mentalist, is located at 415 South Myrtle Avenue in Monrovia. The alleyway where filming took place is located just south of the Expo. Verita Salon is located at 111 East Lime Avenue in Monrovia.