Be sure to check out today’s Los Angeles magazine post – about Lynn Bracken’s house from L.A. Confidential. My articles typically get published in the late morning/early afternoon hours.
Boardner’s of Hollywood from “Beverly Hills, 90210”
Another destination included on the Grim Cheaper’s Valentine’s Day scavenger hunt was Boardner’s of Hollywood, a historic bar which was recommended to me by fellow stalker John who lives in the Bay Area. John had emailed me quite a few months back to let me know that the legendary watering hole had been featured in countless productions over the years, including my fave show Beverly Hills, 90210, and that it was a very cool place to hang out. So, because the GC loves anyplace with a history, I decided to add the bar to his hunt and we headed out there to grab a cocktail this past Saturday evening.
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The space which now houses Boardner’s was first opened in the 1930’s by legendary singer Gene Austin in a Moorish-style, L-shaped building designed by architect Norman Alpaugh and was known at the time as the “My Blue Heaven” night club. After Austin sold the watering hole, it went through several different incarnations, including a restaurant named Padres and a gay bar named Cherokee House, until January of 1944 when a young man named Steve Boardner purchased the place and renamed it Boardner’s. Boardner’s became an immediate success with the Hollywood crowd and such luminaries as Errol Flynn, W.C. Fields, Walter E. Scott (aka “Death Valley Scotty”), Elizabeth Short (aka “The Black Dahlia”), Robert Mitchum, Mickey Cohen, Jack Dragna, Andy Griffith, Donald Sutherland, Ed Wood, Jimmy Stewart, George Burns, Mickey Mantle, and Joe DiMaggio all hung out there. Steve remained the proprietor of Boardner’s for just over three decades, until 1980, when he retired to Palm Springs and sold his beloved bar to a man named Dave Hadley. Sadly, the place was completely remodeled with an Art Deco-theme in March of 2006 and, despite being known as “one of the oldest bars in Hollywood”, does not look anything like it did back in the heyday of Tinseltown.
Don’t get me wrong – Boardner’s is still a VERY cool place to hang out and the food is absolutely FABULOUS (especially the crab cakes!), but it would be an even cooler place to hang out if it had retained its historic interior. As I have mentioned a few times before on this blog, I am not big on change, especially when said change involves altering a filming location in some way! Sigh! Boardner’s has remained popular with the Hollywood set despite the remodel, though, and just a few of the celebs who have been spotted there in more recent years include Drew Barrymore, Holly Madison, Hugh Hefner, Bridget Marquardt, Kendra Wilkinson, Nicole Kidman, Slash, Axl Rose, Courtney Love, Scott Wolfe, Piper Perabo, Rose McGowan, Fran Dresher, Jason Patric, Tommy Lee, John Lennon, Ben Affleck, Paul Bettany, Jake Gyllenhaal, Vince Vaughn, Keifer Sutherland, Heath Ledger, Bela Lugosi Jr., Jared Leto, Tim McGraw, Lee Majors, Miley Cyrus, and Pete Wentz.
The back of the bar boasts a super-cute little hearth area, complete with a plush couch, a coffee table, and board games. So adorable!
And, each Saturday night, Boardner’s Moroccan-tiled back patio area . . .
. . . and its private events space, which is named the Casablanca Room, are transformed into an extremely popular gothic-themed nightclub known as Bar Sinister. The Casablanca Room has also become a popular wrap party venue over the years.
While stalking Boardner’s, I asked the bartender if she happened to know which episode of Beverly Hills, 90210 had been filmed on the premises, but, unfortunately, because she did not work there at the time, she was not sure. And because I only watched the first four seasons of the series, before the characters were of drinking age, I was absolutely stumped on this one. So, I called on Geoff, from the 90210locations website, who pretty much immediately figured out that Boardner’s had been used in the Season 9 episode of the series titled “That’s the Guy”, as the spot where Dylan McKay (aka Luke Perry) sought out information about the man who raped Kelly Taylor (aka Jennie Garth).
The establishing shot of the bar which appeared in that episode was filmed at another location altogether, though, and looks nothing like the actual exterior of Boardner’s.
Boardner’s also popped up in 1994’s Ed Wood, as the spot where fledgling film director Ed Wood (aka Johnny Depp) grabbed a drink just before meeting Bela Lugosi (aka Martin Landau) for the first time. Interestingly enough, the real Ed Wood had been a regular at Boardner’s throughout most of his lifetime, which is most likely how the bar ended up being chosen as a filming location for the flick.
Boardner’s was also the spot where Dudley Smith (aka James Cromwell) met up with Bud White (aka Russell Crowe) in order to return his badge and his gun towards the beginning of 1997’s L.A. Confidential.
The exterior of Boardner’s was also used very briefly as the exterior of a cowboy-themed gay bar that Mick Dundee (aka Paul Hogan) and Jacko (aka Alec Wilson) attempt to visit in 2001’s Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles.
In the 2003 movie Hollywood Homicide, Boardner’s was the regular hangout of Sergeant Joe Gavilan (aka Harrison Ford) and Detective K.C. Calden (aka Josh Harnett). Boardner’s has also appeared in the movie Up Close & Personal and in episodes of the television series Alias, Numb3rs, and Cold Case. Supposedly, Boardner’s was also featured in 1995’s Leaving Las Vegas and in 1997’s Wag the Dog, but I scanned through both of those movies earlier today while writing this post and did not spot the bar in either one.
Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker John for recommending this location to me and to Geoff, from the 90210locations website, for figuring out which episode of Beverly Hills, 90210 it appeared in! 
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: Boardner’s of Hollywood, from Beverly Hills, 90210, is located at 1652 North Cherokee Avenue in Hollywood. You can visit the bar’s official website here.
The L.A. Confidential Liquor Store
Got an email a few weeks back from fellow stalker Tracey who gave me the address of a film location that Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and I had been trying to find for months – the liquor store from the 1997 movie L.A. Confidential! Mike and I had known from doing some online research that the liquor store featured in the movie was not actually real. Instead, producers had built a fake liquor store inside of a real storefront somewhere in the L.A. area. According to this film locations book, that storefront was located somewhere on Larchmont Avenue, but as so often happens with location books, that information was not correct. Mike and I had actually driven up and down Larchmont Avenue several times one day looking for the storefront without any luck. We even stopped in and spoke with the editor of the Larchmont Chronicle to see if she knew where the filming of the liquor shop scenes had taken place. LOL It wasn’t long before we figured out that the L.A. Confidential liquor store was not actually located on Larchmont Avenue and for a while the two of us put the liquor store quest on the back burner.
So you can imagine how excited I was to receive an email from one of my readers named Tracey, who, after several years of being on the prowl for the elusive liquor store, had finally located it! Turns out she had taken a surface street to work one morning hoping to avoid freeway traffic and, lo and behold, drove right past the liquor store and recognized it immediately! Yay! It’s amazing how often that actually happens. You spend hours upon hours seaching high and low for a location, only to randomly drive by it one day. In this city, you’ve just gotta keep your eyes open! 🙂 In real life the L.A. Confidential liquor store is a furniture repair store named Ramon’s Cane Shop. And it looks like it has been around forever. (In the above photo I am actually standing in front of the wrong storefront. I’m such a blond! Although in real life both storefronts are occupied by Ramon’s Cane Shop, in L.A. Confidential only the middle storefront was used.)
The liquor store shows up twice in L.A. Confidential. It is first featured in the scene when Bud White, while picking up some liquor for a Christmas party, first lays eyes on Veronica Lake lookalike Lynn Bracken.
After leaving the liquor store, Bud spots Pierce Patchett’s car with what appears to be a very beat up Susan Lefferts inside. A brief fight ensues before Lynn Bracken walks outside and explains that all is not as it seems. In the scene, Pierce’s car was parked in the driveway of a parking lot located just to the left of Ramon’s Cane Shop.
The liquor store pops up once again a bit later on in the movie, when Bud White stops by to try to dig up some information on Lynn Bracken.
I must say it was VERY cool to be stalking the L.A. Confidential liquor store, especially since – aside from the fact that it’s not really a liquor store – it looks pretty much exactly the same as it did onscreen. Sadly, though, the shop was closed when we were stalking it, and since the windows were completely covered, I didn’t get to peek inside. Looks like I’ll have to take another stalking trip out there!! Big, big THANK YOU to Tracey for tipping me off to this location. 🙂
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂
Stalk It: The L.A. Confidential liquor store, aka Ramon’s Cane Shop, is located at 1279 South Cochran Avenue in Los Angeles. The area where Pierce Patchett’s car was parked when Bud White confronts him is located just to the left of the cane shop.
Lynn Bracken’s House
Thanks to E.J. over at The Movieland Directory, I was able to do a bit more LA Confidential stalking this weekend. As I mentioned in a previous post, LA Confidential is one of my mom’s favorite movies of all time. She has always been in love with the houses and bungalows used in the movie and has requested several times that I stalk them for her. In fact, when my family first moved to LA she told our real estate agent that she wanted an “LA Confidential house” and that’s pretty much exactly the type of house we moved into. 🙂
So when E.J. gave me the address to Kim Basinger’s character’s house from the movie, I of course had to run right out and stalk it. Lynn Bracken’s house shows up several times in the film, especially the front door and front porch area, and from what I can tell from watching the movie, it appears that both the interior and the exterior of the home were used for filming. The house is a very cute little 1950’s style Spanish bungalow and it’s pretty easy to see why producers chose to use it in the movie as it looks like it came straight out of the 1950’s.
I must admit that when we first arrived at the house, I didn’t immediately recognize it. The way the movie was filmed was somewhat deceiving and the layout of the house appears much different in person than I’d remembered it looking onscreen. In the movie, Russell Crowe spends many hours in his car staked out in front of Lynn’s home watching her greet and say goodbye to her many “houseguests”. But in real life the front door is located on the side of the home and is not immediately visible from the street which made me not entirely sure I was stalking the correct house. But when I got home and popped in my LA Confidential DVD it was easy to see that the two houses matched perfectly! 🙂 Thanks, EJ!
I highly recommend stalking Lynn’s house if you are at all a fan of LA Confidential or 1950’s California architecture.
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂
Stalk It: Lynn Bracken’s house is located at 501 Wilcox Avenue, right where Wilcox meets Rossmore, in Los Angeles. It is just around the corner from the American Idol and SYTYCD apartment which is located at 445 N. Rossmore.