National Lampoon’s Vacation filming locations

December 17, 2013December 17, 2013

The Guesthouse Hotel from “National Lampoon’s Vacation”

Once fellow stalker Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, tracked down the Town House Motel from National Lampoon’s Vacation (which I blogged about here) a couple of weeks back, he set about trying to find the hexagon-shaped pool where Clark W. Griswold (Chevy Chase) went skinny dipping with The Girl in the Ferrari (Christie Brinkley) in the 1983 flick. After, as he said, “putting in more Google search permutations and combinations than I can count,” he came across the locale right in the heart of Norwalk, of all places. As you can imagine, I was absolutely chomping at the bit to stalk it as soon as he gave me the address (I was thisclose to driving from Palm Springs to Norwalk for the day), but did not manage to make it out there until last week when the Grim Cheaper and I were in L.A. for a brief visit.

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While sleuthing – and only after looking at a lot of results pages – Owen was led to this Panoramio photograph of a phone booth in Norwalk, on which a commenter named Joe Gattuso happened to mention that he was fairly certain a nearby hotel named the Guesthouse International was used in the filming of National Lampoon’s Vacation. So Owen did a Google search for images of the Guesthouse pool and, sure enough, it was the spot where Clark had skinny dipped. Woot woot!

The Griswold clan – Clark and his wife Ellen (Beverly D’Angelo), son Rusty (Anthony Michael Hall) and daughter Audrey (Dana Barron) – check into the Guesthouse International, which is said to be located about ten hours outside of Los Angeles, towards the end of National Lampoon’s Vacation. While there, Clark and Ellen get into a fight and Clark winds up heading to the hotel bar alone, where he encounters The Girl in the Ferrari. Sadly, the Guesthouse’s lounge area has been completely remodeled in recent years, according to the super nice hotel employee that I spoke with, and no longer looks anything at all like it did in Vacation. Boo! (It was closed at the time that I was stalking the hotel, so I was not able to get any photographs of it in its current state.)

After a few drinks, Clark and The Girl in the Ferrari decide to go skinny dipping in the hotel’s pool (“This is crazy! This is crazy! This is crazy!”) and end up waking up all of the guests, including Clark’s family, while doing so.

I am fairly certain that the area where the scene took place is right about where the Jacuzzi (which was not there when the movie was filmed) is today.

At the time of the filming, the hotel was known as the Saddleback Inn. You can see a photograph of it from that era here. Amazingly enough, despite a name change (that resulted from what I am guessing was a change of ownership), the place still looks pretty much exactly the same today as it did in 1982 when Vacation was filmed. Seriously, how cool is that? Over three decades later and the place is still completely recognizable! LOVE IT!

I am fairly certain that one of the hotel’s actual rooms was also used in the filming, but because the hotel interiors have since been updated, it is impossible to tell. You can see some photographs of what the rooms currently look like here.

Today, the Guesthouse International Hotel boasts 230 rooms, 8 acres, 6 buildings, 2 pools, 1 Jacuzzi – and a partridge in a pear tree. Winking smile According to the Desert USA website, President Ronald Reagan even stayed there at one point in time.

I was absolutely floored to see the pride that the Guesthouse takes in its cinematic history. Signs stating that Vacation was filmed on the premises are posted throughout the lobby and by the pool. I so wish more hotels would do this sort of thing!

The super nice employee that I spoke with also informed me that the lobby area was used in the filming of the Lifetime movie Drew Peterson: Untouchable. Unfortunately though, I could not find a copy of the production with which to make screen captures for this post.

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

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, for finding this location! Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Guesthouse International Hotel, where Clark skinny dipped in National Lampoon’s Vacation, is located at 12500 Firestone Boulevard in Norwalk. You can visit the hotel’s official website here. There are two pools located on the premises – the one that appeared in Vacation is the larger of the two, located on the eastern side of the property, closest to the lobby.

June 25, 2009June 25, 2009

The National Lampoon’s Vacation House

And speaking of National Lampoon’s Vacation, last week fellow stalker Owen made it his mission to locate the Griswold home from the 1983 comedy flick. Amazingly enough, he ended up finding the house pretty much right away! For this particular movie location expenditure, Owen decided to “stalk outside the box”, so to speak, and started looking through Vacation’s IMDB message boards to see if they provided any clues as to the home’s locale. He ran across a thread entitled “Griswold House 2008″ where, lo and behold, someone had actually posted recent pics of the home. Owen ended up contacting the owner of those photos who told him that one evening, while stuck in traffic after attending a concert in Los Feliz, he happened to gaze to his left where he saw, and immediately recognized, the Griswold Family home. How this guy recognized the house from a movie filmed way back in 1983 while not actively looking for it, is beyond me. My hat is definitely off to him!!!! 🙂

So, Owen did a little bit of digging and ended up finding the house, exactly where the man told him it would be – in the Los Feliz section of Los Angeles. In reality, the home is a long way off from Chicago, Illinois, where the Grisworlds supposedly lived in Vacation. 🙂 I am happy to report that the house looks EXACTLY the same today as it did back in 1983 when the movie was filmed there. Hallelujah! 🙂 It is absolutely AMAZING to me that in twenty-six years virtually nothing about the house has been changed.

Well, except for one thing. For some incredibly odd reason, the owners did make one major addition to the Griswold home. Since the filming, a large fence which surrounds the perimeter of the property and blocks the view of the house from the street, has been added. I wonder if the fence was installed to ward of potential stalkers, like myself. 😉 Either way, even with the addition of the fence, the home is still largely recognizable from the film.

Even the street out in front of the house, where we see Clark pull up in the Wagon Queen Family Truckster, seems to be exactly the same as it appeared in Vacation.

Big THANK YOU to Owen for finding this location! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The National Lampoon’s Vacation house is located at 2310 North Vermont Avenue in the Los Feliz area of Los Angeles.

June 24, 2009June 24, 2009

Santa Anita Park

This weekend, I dragged my fiance out to Santa Anita Park, aka the Santa Anita race track, in Arcadia for some major stalking. Our original plan was to catch a movie at the theatre located next door to the track, but a funny thing happened on the way to the show. 🙂 While driving to the movies, I got an email from fellow stalker Owen who told me that Santa Anita Park stood in for the entrance to Walley World in fave 80s movie National Lampoon’s Vacation. Needless to say, I was absolutely SHOCKED! All this time I’ve lived in L.A. and had no idea that Walley World was literally right in my own backyard. So, I made my poor fiance detour the car and, with Owen’s directions in hand, the two of us headed over towards the racetrack. 🙂

Santa Anita Park first opened its doors on Christmas Day of 1934 and has the distinction of being known as Southern California’s oldest race track. Elias Jackson, aka “Lucky”, Baldwin had originally built a horse racing track on what is now the Arcadia County Golf Course in 1907. Sadly, though, just two years after its opening, the government passed the Walker-Otis bill, which outlawed gambling and forced Lucky to close up shop. Twenty-five years later, after California had legalized parimutuel betting, a company named the Los Angeles Turf Club opened up a race track just a few blocks from the former track’s site. The Los Angeles Turf Club was owned by movie producer Hal Roach and a doctor named Charles H. Strub. Roach and Strub commissioned their new track to be built in the Art Deco style by architect Gordon B. Kaufman, who is most well-known for designing both the Hoover Dam and the L.A. Times Building. The original exterior of the race track building still stands at Santa Anita Park to this day. Santa Anita has hosted a number of memorable competitions over the years, including the equestrian events of the 1984 Olympic Games and Seabiscuit’s big win – and final race – which took place on February 9, 1940. Because of the involvement of movieman Hal Roach, the race track has long been associated with the silver screen. Celebs like Bing Crosby, Louis B. Mayer, Alex Trebek, Errol Flynn, and Spencer Tracy all owned horses that raced at Santa Anita at one time or another. And, of course, the track has also shown up in several Hollywood productions.

I have actually been dying to stalk the race track ever since it appeared in my favorite episode of the television series Las Vegas. In the Season Three episode, entitled “Everything Old Is You Again”, Danny McCoy (played by – sigh – Josh Duhamel) has a flashback of sorts in which he fantasizes about what it would be like to run a 60’s era hotel and casino named the Jubliee. In the episode, the entire cast dons 60’s regalia, uses terms like ” Poindexter” and “It’s a gas”, and dances to the Twist. Everyone, that is, except for poor Danny, who doesn’t quite have the moves to the latest dance craze down yet. He spends pretty much the entire episode begging people to teach him how to do the Twist. I’m telling you, it is SUCH a cute episode! And, it just so happens that the Club House at Santa Anita Park stood in for the Jubliee Hotel and Casino in the episode. My fiance immediately recognized it when we first saw the show a few years back. So, I really could not have been more excited to stalk the place this weekend!! In a lucky twist of fate, while we were snapping some photos out front, an INCREDIBLY nice valet came up and started talking to us. I told him that the Vegas episode that had filmed at the Park was my very favorite and he asked if my fiance and I wanted a tour of the areas used in the episode. IF we wanted a tour???? IF we wanted a tour???? LOL OF COURSE we wanted a tour! 🙂

Both the interior and the exterior of the Club House were used as the Jubilee Hotel and Casino in the “Everything Old Is You Again” episode.

The main entrance to the Club House also served as the main entrance to the Jubilee.

According to the valet, hundreds of casino gaming tables and slot machines were brought in to turn the main room of the Club into the casino’s main floor.

Other areas of the Club where filming took place include the bar where Sam (aka Vanessa Marcil) “worked”, which is, in reality, a cafeteria counter;

the main lobby area;

the Club’s cafe, where Mary worked in the episode . . .

which is also the same area where Mary taught Danny to do the Twist :);

the steps located just outside of the cafe doors, where Danny asks Mary out on a date;

and the Jubliee’s “pool” area. Because Santa Anita Park doesn’t actually have a pool, the Jubilee’s “pool” was in actuality just the Club’s back porch area. Producers simply added some chaise lounges, a handful of bikini-clad women, some wet cement, splashing sounds, a bit of movie magic, and voila – they had themselves a hotel swimming pool! 🙂

At the end of the episode, Danny finds himself in the lobby of the present day Montecito Hotel and Casino, where Chubby Checker just happens to be on hand to entertain the guests . . .

. . . and to lead everyone, including Danny, in a rousing rendition of the Twist. See, I told you it was a cute episode! 🙂

The racetrack was also featured in the Season Two Valentine’s Day episode of Beverly Hills, 90210 entitled “And Baby Makes Five”. In the episode, Andrea finds some luck at the track by betting on horses with names such as Lovesick, Unrequited, and Grand Amour. Notice a theme here? 😉

And, as mentioned in my introduction, the Park was also used in National Lampoon’s Vacation. In the movie, an un-used portion of the track’s parking lot stood in for Walley World’s main entrance. According to IMDB, a painted backdrop was installed behind the above pictured overpass to give the illusion of roller coasters in the foreground. Love how you can still see the yellow divider lines in the road that were used in the filming!!

The racetrack’s GINORMOUS parking lot area stood in for Walley World’s parking lot, where Clark and his family race each other- with “Chariots of Fire” playing in the background – to the theme park’s entrance. Again, a huge painted backdrop was used in this scene to create the illusion of roller coasters.

Walley World’s main entrance – where Clark, upon hearing the news that the park is temporarily closed, punches Walley Moose in the nose – is actually Santa Anita’s South Entrance. The entrance was dressed up quite a bit for the filming, so in person it looks much different than how it appeared onscreen in Vacation. Also adding to the difference in appearance is the fact that the movie was filmed in 1983, long before Santa Anita’s main tower, which you can see in the above photograph, was built. An interesting sidenote – it’s fairly common knowledge among locationites that Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia was used for the filming of the scenes inside of Walley World. So why, you ask, was Magic Mountain’s real entrance not used in the movie? Well, apparently, the original ending of Vacation involved Clark W. Griswold and family leaving the “temporarily closed for repairs” Walley World and heading over to Roy Walley’s house, gun in hand, to demand that he entertain them. When that ending didn’t fare well with test audiences, the finale we all know and love was shot on location at Magic Mountain. Rather than waste money re-shooting the parking lot scenes, producers just used the scenes that had already been filmed at Santa Anita Park. And the rest, as they say, is history!

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Santa Anita Park has also been featured in Seabiscuit, A Day at the Races, The Dark Horse, and the television series Jockeys, Grey’s Anatomy, and The Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Santa Anita Park is located at 285 West Huntington Drive in Arcadia. Las Vegas was filmed at the Park’s Club House. The entrance to Walley World was really the South Entrance of Santa Anita Park.

The overpass that the Griswold’s drive under when entering the Walley World parking lot is a bit tricky to find. It is located directly off of Huntington Drive, near 659 West Huntington Drive. The overpass leads to Westfield -Santa Anita Shopping Center and runs over one of the un-used areas of the racetrack’s parking lot. You can see its exact location in the above map.