Palos Verdes Estates – IAMNOTASTALKER

They say the ocean is good for the soul. So I was thrilled to head out to Palos Verdes Estates last week on a gorgeous Southern California morning to do some stalking. It is the second season of Dirty John: The Betty Broderick Story that led me out that way. Not only is the supposed La Jolla Shores house Betty (Amanda Peet) moved to post-separation from her philandering husband, Dan (Christian Slater), located in the beach city, but so is Malaga Cove Plaza, where Betty Christmas shopped with her friend Karen Kintner (Missi Pyle) in the episode titled “More to It Than Fun.” I first stalked the Italianate complex years ago after it appeared in a Season 2 episode of The O.C and have been back numerous times since. So I recognized it on sight when it popped up on Dirty John. Strolling through the sprawling marketplace on my recent visit, with striking blue skies overhead, salt from the nearby ocean crisp in the air, and the warm sun beaming down on my face, was indeed good for my soul! There’s a reason Malaga Cove has long been one of my favorite places to spend a breezy afternoon.

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Malaga Cove Plaza saw its beginnings in 1924 with the construction of the Gardner Building. The Spanish Renaissance-style structure, designed by Webber, Staunton and Spaulding, sits at the complex’s western edge and is pictured at the far right of the photos above and below. Palos Verdes’ first commercial building, it initially housed the local post office, as well as a few other businesses. You can see what it looked like in its early days here.

Six additional buildings, each designed by a different architect, were added to the complex in the decades that followed. Malaga Cove Plaza, as it stands today, was completed in 1963. Considering that seven different individuals had a hand in its design, the center is surprisingly cohesive and beautiful.

Declared a historic site by the Rancho de Los Palos Verdes Historical Society in 1981, the marketplace is easily one of Southern California’s most picturesque shopping centers.

Featuring exquisite brickwork,

sweeping archways,

countless adorable decorative elements,

well-placed greenery,

a plethora of tucked-away spots to sit and relax,

a smattering of charming shops and restaurants,

and a gorgeous mountain backdrop,

Malaga Cove Plaza is an idyllic venue to shop, dine and wander.

And at the center of it all is a towering fountain representing Neptune, Roman god of the sea.

The Carrara marble effigy, inspired by the Fountain of Neptune in Bologna’s Piazza del Nettuno, was constructed in the 1700s and initially stood at a villa in Venice, Italy. It was acquired by a Los Angeles gallery in the 1920s and then later by Malaga Cove Plaza developers, who dedicated it on February 16th, 1930. Sadly, Neptune soon became a favorite of vandals who broke, trashed and desecrated the piece to the point that it was removed in 1968. A smaller replica stood sentry in the years that followed, until 1999 when the original sculpture was returned to its post after an extensive $103,000 repair project spearheaded by the Malaga Cove Plaza Beautification Project.

The group gave the complex itself a facelift around the same time, performing much-needed repairs, planting new foliage, and generally upgrading the sexagenarian site.

Today, Malaga Cove Plaza is a gorgeous marketplace bustling with cute shops, restaurants and cafés.

It is there that Betty and Karen do some window shopping on Dirty John: The Betty Broderick Story.

While wandering the plaza in “There’s More to It Than Fun,” Betty informs Karen of how much her marriage with Dan is improving. But throughout the segment, the scenery intermittently shifts to Dan’s office, where he is simultaneously meeting with a divorce lawyer, discussing how to stiff Betty financially. The bit brilliantly showcases the lengths which Dan went to mislead Betty during his affair.

In the scene’s opening, the ladies are shown walking in front of Malaga Cove Ranch Market. They then proceed to make their way east along the plaza.

It’s not hard to see how Malaga Cove Plaza came to be used on the San Diego-set series as it looks very much like the shops in downtown La Jolla.

The complex boasts a couple of other onscreen appearances on its filming resume.

A group of young skateboarders washes their faces in the plaza’s fountain in the 1965 Academy Award-nominated short Skaterdater.

And, as I mentioned above, it also pops up in an episode of The O.C. In Season 2’s “The New Era,” Malaga Cove Plaza portrays the Newport Beach bus stop where Ryan Atwood (Benjamin McKenzie) and Lindsay Gardner (Shannon Lucio) finally admit that they like each other.

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: Malaga Cove Plaza, from the “More to It Than Fun” episode of Dirty John: The Betty Broderick Story, is located at the intersection of Palos Verdes Drive West and Via Chico in Palos Verdes Estates.

Dirty John producers traveled far and wide across Los Angeles to shoot the second season of the true crime anthology series, which chronicles the 1989 double murder of prominent San Diego lawyer Dan Broderick (Christian Slater) and his new wife, Linda Kolkena (Rachel Keller), at the hands of his ex, Betty Broderick (Amanda Peet). The scenes involving Dan and Betty’s longtime family home were shot deep in the Valley in Chatsworth, the restaurant the couple regularly dined at during happier times is in Studio City, and Betty rammed her car into Dan’s post-divorce pad in Toluca Lake. But most of the action takes place at Betty’s supposed La Jolla Shores residence, where she grows more and more unglued following the separation. The sprawling seaside property is perhaps the show’s most prominent locale, popping up in the opening scene of the first episode and going on to appear in pretty much every episode that follows. So I, of course, was hot to track it down. Try as I might, though, I could just not find the place – until I enlisted the help of my friend/fellow stalker Owen, that is, who IDed it in no time!

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From what was shown onscreen, we knew the dilapidated ranch-style abode was situated on a corner lot across from a bluff overlooking the ocean. Since no discernible street signs or address numbers were visible in the background, Owen simply began scouring the Los Angeles coastline from the north to the south via Google aerial views and, voila, quickly pinpointed Betty’s home at 1400 Paseo Del Mar in Palos Verdes Estates. I ran out to socially-distant stalk it shortly thereafter on a gorgeous Southern California day. Those skies, amirite!

In real life, the 1966 property boasts 3 bedrooms, 4 baths, 3,962 square feet, 2 fireplaces, a massive 0.48-acre lot, a wraparound driveway, a pool, and a large front yard.

Oh, and views for days!

The Dirty John: The Betty Broderick Story production team roughed the place up a bit for the shoot by dotting the front railings with rust stains and covering the roofline with chipped, peeling paint to make it appear to be in the same disrepair as Betty’s actual former La Jolla Shores home. The exterior was also painted a muted blue and the front door swapped out to give the property a more dated look.

In real life, the residence has a much cleaner and more contemporary aesthetic.

The set dressing coupled with the fact that the house was mainly shot from the driveway, a vantage point that is blocked from the street by large hedges, equals a very different-looking house in person. So much so that, when I first pulled up, I wasn’t entirely sure I was in the right place.

One glimpse of the side of the property, though, with the front stairway, large pane windows and ocean visible across the street, and it became instantly recognizable.

Dan put a $140,000 down payment on the house for Betty following their separation in mid-1985. (Though, as stated in Bella Stumbo’s 1993 book, Until the Twelfth of Never, “He would, of course, collect it back in full nearly four years later from her share of the community property in the divorce settlement.”) Per a San Diego Reader article, the place was in “poor repair” at the time. In fact, Betty, sure Dan was going to re-think the separation, considered the property a tear-down and had plans to raze it in order to build a dream house for the two of them. Dan had other ideas, instead buying a Colonial pad in Hillcrest and moving his mistress right in. Eventually Betty began fixing up the La Jolla Shores residence on her own, adding a pool, a Jacuzzi, a pool house, a new kitchen and bathroom, and gorgeous landscaping that she honed herself. By 1988, though, she was in seriously dire financial straits – whether through fault of her own or Dan’s depends on whose account of the divorce proceedings you believe – and could no longer afford the $4,000-a-month payment on the place or the cost of the many repairs it required. (Per the Reader, she spent $11,000 on home improvements in the first 5 months of 1988 alone!) She finally put the pad on the market in September 1989 and began moving into a small 2-bedroom condo at 3133 Morning Way, which cost her $200,000. Though she was splitting her time between the house and condo in November 1989, it was from the La Jolla Shores residence that she departed the morning of the murders.

Betty’s actual La Jolla Shores house, located at 8320 Calle Del Cielo, no longer stands. It was torn down in 2014 to make way for a newer modern manse. Thankfully, if you toggle Google Street View back to 2007 and 2008, imagery of Betty’s residence is still visible. As you can see below, it looks nothing like the pad chosen for Dirty John.

In fact, it is the only location on the series so far that does not closely resemble the site of the actual events. I’m guessing that is due to the tear-down. Either producers did not know what the residence looked like . . .

. . . or they figured that since it was gone audiences would have nothing to compare it to, so they had a clean slate to work with.

Interestingly, Betty’s TV home looks a lot like a neighboring house on Calle Del Cielo – the one at 8333 (pictured in the top image below) – leading me to wonder if the production team drove around Betty’s old neighborhood, saw the residence and its large second-floor balcony, exterior staircase, big pane windows and ranch-style elements, and became inspired to find a similar property for the shoot. That’s a completely unsubstantiated hunch, though.

As mentioned earlier, the Palos Verdes house pops up regularly on Dirty John: The Betty Broderick Story. Besides the front of the residence, Betty is also shown eating with friends on the balcony overlooking the ocean in the episodes titled “No Fault” and “The Twelfth of Never.”

The interior of Betty’s home is just a set, though – one with a very run-down ‘80s feel.

I am sure the interior of the actual Palos Verdes property is much more swanky and updated, though I could find no photographs with which to verify that.

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

Big THANK YOU to my friend Owen for finding this location! Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Betty’s house from Dirty John: The Betty Broderick Story is located at 1400 Paseo Del Mar in Palos Verdes Estates. Betty’s real former home was located at 8320 Calle Del Cielo in La Jolla Shores, but it was torn down and a new dwelling now stands in its place.

Tag: Palos Verdes Estates

Malaga Cove Plaza from “Dirty John: The Betty Broderick Story”

Betty’s La Jolla Shores House from “Dirty John: The Betty Broderick Story”