The Deep End of the Ocean – IAMNOTASTALKER

April 5, 2012April 4, 2012

The Historic Mayfair Hotel from “The Office”

Fellow stalker John Bengtson, from the SIlent Locations blog, sent me an email last week after reading my post on Red Studios Hollywood from The Artist (a location that I had learned about from his website) informing me that he had tracked down some locales from Season 7’s “The Search” episode of The Office that I might be interested in stalking, most notably The Historic Mayfair Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles where Michael Scott (Steve Carell) and Holly Flax (Amy Ryan) shared a rooftop kiss. Ironically enough, my good friend, fellow stalker Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong blog, had also sent me this location on February 4th of last year, the day after the episode had originally aired, along with a list of all of the other places featured in “The Search”. And while I did stalk a few of them – Kung Pao China Bistro and Larry’s Chili Dog – for whatever reason, I never made it out to The Mayfair. So, this past weekend, I decided to change that and dragged the Grim Cheaper right on over there. (I am not sure what happened with the above photograph, but somehow it turned out a bit wonky and neither the GC nor I realized it at the time.)

The Historic Mayfair Hotel was originally designed in 1927 by Alexander E. Curlett and Claud W. Beelman, the same architecture team who gave us the Park Plaza Hotel near MacArthur Park (an extremely popular filming location that I have stalked, but have yet to blog about), the Cooper Arms condominium building in Long Beach, and the Los Angeles Board of Trade Building in Downtown L.A. The 13-story hotel, which at the time was named simply The Mayfair, was commissioned by Texas oil tycoons and was constructed at a cost of $1.5 million – and we’re talking 1920’s dollars! In its heyday, the luxury property hosted such luminaries as Mary Pickford and John Barrymore. Raymond Chandler even wrote and set his 1939 short story “I’ll Be Waiting” at The Mayfair, although he dubbed the place the “Windermere Hotel” in the tale.

The property, which originally boasted 350 rooms, but now has just 304, was the largest hotel west of the Mississippi at one time and featured an immensely popular supper and dance club known as the Rainbow Isle Room, from which George Eckhardts, Jr. and the Rainbow Isle Orchestra would broadcast a live radio show each night. In 2004, after suffering from a long period of neglect, the structure underwent a massive and much-needed $40 million renovation, at which point it was renamed The Historic Mayfair Hotel. You can check out some great photographs of the place during its early days on The Mayfair’s Facebook page here.

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In “The Search” episode of The Office, after being stranded at a supposed Scranton, Pennsylvania-area gas station, Michael Scott goes on a walkabout which ends on the rooftop of The Historic Mayfair Hotel. When Holly finds him there and Michael tells her how much he has missed her, the two finally kiss, ending several years worth of will-they-or-won’t-they-get-together storylines and allowing audiences to finally breath a long-overdue sigh of relief. Not surprisingly, the roof area of The Mayfair is closed to the public, so I was unable to snap any pictures of it.

Mike, from MovieShotsLA, figured out that The Mayfair stood in for the supposed Chicago, Illinois-area The Addison Hotel where Beth Cappadora (Michelle Pfeiffer) attended her 15-year high school reunion in 1999’s The Deep End of the Ocean.

It was from the lobby of The Mayfair that Beth’s 3-year-old son, Ben Cappadora (Michael McElroy), was kidnapped.

As you can see above, despite the renovation, the lobby still looks very much the same today as it did back in 1998 when The Deep End of the Ocean was filmed.

The super-nice front desk clerk that we spoke with while we were there informed us that both the interior and the exterior of the property had also appeared in 1994’s True Lies, as the supposed Washington, D.C.-area Washington Mayfair Hotel where Harry Tasker (Arnold Schwarzenegger), on horseback, chased motor-cycle-riding religious zealot Salim Abu Aziz (Art Malik) through a lobby.

The Mayfair lobby was actually one of three different lobbies used in that particular scene. Harry is first shown chasing Salim across the length of The Mayfair’s lobby.

The two then turn a corner and are magically transported to the now-defunct The Ambassador hotel, the same lobby of which was used as the Regent Beverly Wilshire in 1990’s Pretty Woman.

The duo then heads outside, “across the street” and into The Westin Bonaventure Hotel. In reality, when the Ambassador was still standing, it was located a good two miles away from The Bonaventure. Ah, the magic of Hollywood!

Thanks to the Richard Dean Anderson Website, I learned that The Historic Mayfair Hotel was also used in the 1986 Season 1 episode of MacGyver titled “The Assassin”.

I am fairly certain that only the exterior of the property appeared in the episode, though, and that all of the interior hotel scenes were filmed on a set. And while IMDB states that The Mayfair was also featured in 2009’s Don’t Look Up, I scanned through the flick yesterday while doing research for this post and did not see it pop up anywhere.

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalkers John Bengtson, from the SIlent Locations blog, and Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong blog, for telling me about this location and to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for informing me of its appearance in The Deep End of the Ocean! Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Historic Mayfair Hotel, from “The Search” episode of The Office, is located at 1256 West 7th Street in Downtown Los Angeles. You can visit the hotel’s official website here.

August 29, 2011August 28, 2011

Vitello’s Italian Restaurant from “The Deep End of the Ocean”

A couple of weeks ago, after doing some stalking in Beverly Hills, the Grim Cheaper and I decided to head over to the Valley to grab dinner at one of our very favorite eateries in all of Los Angeles – Vitello’s Italian Restaurant in Studio City. And even though I have blogged about the place twice before – first in June of 2008 and then again later that November – due to the fact that it is set to undergo an extensive – and when I say extensive, I mean extensive – renovation and remodel in the near future, I figured that it was most definitely worthy of a re-post.

Vitello’s was originally opened by Sal Vitello, a native New York baker, in 1964. Ironically enough, at the time the place was not an Italian restaurant, but a modest subway sandwich shop which featured fresh, homemade bread. In 1977, Sal sold his little eatery to brothers Joe and Steve Restivo, Sicilian natives who migrated to Los Angeles via Chicago. The brothers added down-home, hearty Italian-style staples to the Vitello’s menu, quickly turning the restaurant into a Los Angeles institution.

Thanks to its proximity to the many area movie studios, along with its fabulous fare, it was not long before Hollywood took notice of Vitello’s. As you can see above, the restaurant’s main entrance is literally covered with autographed headshots. Just a few of the stars who have been spotted dining at Vitello’s over the years include Frank Sinatra, Sally Kellerman, Ana Ortiz, Tony Danza, Jason Alexander (the one from Seinfeld, not Britney Spears’ ex-husband Winking smile ), Life Goes On’s Chris Burke, Candice Bergen, Melissa Joan Hart, Frankie Muniz, Michael Landon, Joanna Kerns, Dom DeLuise, Rick Fox, Scott Baio, Tom Smothers, and Wilford Brimley.

The restaurant’s most famous celebrity guest, though, has to be actor Robert Blake, who used to be a regular patron of the eatery, dining there at least three times a week. On the evening of May 4, 2001, Blake notoriously grabbed dinner there with his then-wife, Bonnie Lee Bakley, in a booth that, according to the above photograph, was located in the bar area.

The actual bar area is pictured above. Shortly after the couple finished their meal, Bonnie was shot and killed just around the corner from the restaurant. And while Blake claimed that at the time of the shooting he had been walking back to the restaurant to retrieve a gun he had inexplicably left behind in his booth, he was arrested and charged with Bakley’s murder on April 18, 2002. He was then acquitted of those charges in March of 2005, but a few months later was found liable for Bakley’s wrongful death in a civil court. Unlike was the case with Brentwood’s Mezzaluna Restaurant, where Nicole Brown Simpson ate her last meal and which closed shortly thereafter, Vitello’s association with the crime only seemed to further the eatery’s fame and made the place even more of a Valley hot spot.

In 2005, Joe and Steve Restivo, seeking retirement, sold Vitello’s to Matt Epstein, a Sherman Oaks real estate agent who had been a regular patron of the restaurant since childhood. And while Epstein kept the menu and décor largely the same for quite some time, earlier this year he brought in a new chef, Tonino Cardia, and completely revamped the menu. And I am very sad to report that it is not nearly as good as it used to be. Gone are the vast majority of the hearty Vitello’s staples that the GC and I had come to know and love and the few items that the new menu did retain have been completed made over. The chicken marsala – which used to be my favorite entree – is a lackluster version of its former self and Vitello’s famous garlic bread now tastes much like the kind that can be purchased in the frozen food aisle of your local supermarket. Such an incredible shame!

There are also plans in the works to gut the interior of the restaurant and give it a completely new look. Even the famous Vitello’s wall mural will be coming down, as will the vintage leather booths. The new design will apparently feature French doors in the entryway and a huge olive tree in the middle of the dining room. And while it all sounds lovely, I am of the mantra that “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it”. Vitello’s has been a veritable Los Angeles institution for decades, always packed to the gills whenever we have dined there. It is widely noted that 59% of new restaurants close within three years of their opening, so for an eatery that has remained successful for over thirty-four years, you have to wonder why the owners would change a thing! It is such a shame! And while the super-nice manager came over to speak with us after we had expressed our disappointment with the new fare and even offered to comp our meal (which we turned down – we were not looking for a free meal, but just wanted to voice our opinion that the former cuisine was one hundred times better than the current), I am sad to say that I do not think we will ever be dining at Vitello’s again – the food was that bad!

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Besides being a celebrity hangout, our super-nice waitress also informed us that Vitello’s has been used as a filming location! Ironically enough, it stood in for two different locations in the 1999 movie The Deep End of the Ocean. The interior very briefly appeared as the supposed Madison, Wisconsin-area Italian restaurant where Pat Cappadora (aka Treat Williams) worked towards the beginning of the flick.

And the exterior later popped us as Cappadora’s, the supposed Chicago-area restaurant that Pat founded with his father, Angelo (aka Tony Musante), in the middle of the movie.

And while the interior was (I think) just a set, with its orange-toned walls, painted murals, and brickwork, it very closely resembles the real life interior of Vitello’s. Our waitress also informed us that the restaurant will be featured in an upcoming episode of Whitney, the yet-to-be released television series which stars Chelsea-Lately-regular Whitney Cummings.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Vitello’s Restaurant, from The Deep End of the Ocean, is located at 4349 Tujunga Avenue in Studio City. You can visit Vitello’s official website here.

June 22, 2010June 21, 2010

Casey’s Irish Pub

One location that I have been wanting to stalk for what seems like ages now is Casey’s Irish Pub (aka Casey’s Bar & Grill), a historic Downtown Los Angeles watering hole that has appeared in COUNTLESS movie and television productions throughout its more than thirty year history. I first found out about the bar over six months ago while doing some online research on locales featured in the first X-Files movie and the place has been high up on my “To Stalk” list ever since. But until this past weekend, I had yet to make it there. My delay in visiting the bar was not for lack of trying, though, believe me. For some reason, every time my fiancé and I found ourselves in the area, Casey’s Irish Pub was, unfortunately, closed. I’ve lost track of the amount of thwarted Casey’s stalking attempts that were actually made, but, trust me, the number is higher than you can count on one hand. Thankfully though, this past Saturday night, fate finally intervened and my fiancé and I found ourselves just a few blocks away from Casey’s during a time when the bar was actually open! YAY! And, even though I was in a fairly bad mood at the time – unfortunately, there is still some health drama going on with my dad and I also recently found out that one of my closest friends is ill, so it’s not exactly a happy time for me – we decided to stop in anyway. And I am SO glad that we did, because my spirits were lifted almost immediately upon walking through Casey’s beveled-glass doors.

The two-story building where Casey’s now resides was first constructed in 1916 and originally housed a general store on its street level and a Turkish bath on its basement-level. In 1924, the general store and bathhouse were closed and an upscale restaurant named B&M Cafeteria was opened in their place. The former general store space was transformed into B&M’s main dining room and the former Turkish bath location became the kitchen area. In the years following, the restaurant went through numerous changes of ownership and several different restaurant incarnations, until 1969, when it took on the name of Casey’s Irish Pub. Casey’s owners had the two-level property completely revamped, most notably moving the entire structure thirty feet back from the street in order to make room for an enclosed basement-level patio. After changing hands – but not its moniker – a few more times, in 2007 Casey’s was acquired by the nightlife development company 213 – the very same company that was also responsible for restoring the popular Cole’s Restaurant a few years back. (Once again I must apologize for the ultra-blurry photographs that appear in this post. I STILL cannot figure out how to use my new camera and I am growing seriously annoyed! UGH!)

Casey’s Irish Pub is absolutely HUGE (over 10,000 square feet!) and features a gorgeous mahogany bar, hand-pressed tin ceilings, a live-music stage, a dart room, a billiards room, and several private event areas, including the “Captain’s Quarters” (pictured above). Not only is the bar’s ambiance fabulous and unique, but the food is also INCREDIBLE, despite what the reviews on Yelp state. As I’ve mentioned numerous times in the past, I am an INCREDIBLY picky eater, especially when it comes to chicken, and I have to say that Casey’s serves up some of the best food in L.A. My fiancé and I especially loved their famous pub fries – which are an absolute must-have while dining at Casey’s – and their Cobb salad. The staff there could also NOT have been nicer and one of the bartenders even went so far as to take me on a little mini-tour of the place, which is how I got the above-pictured photographs of the Captain’s Quarters. 🙂 Love it!

The thing I was most excited about, though, was the fact that Casey’s not only serves champagne – and good champagne, at that – but they serve it in old-school champagne glasses, ala the kind Marilyn Monroe was always pictured drinking out of. So darn cool! I honestly can’t recommend stalking Casey’s enough!!!! I can pretty much guarantee its a place that stalkers and non-stalkers alike will appreciate!

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Walking through the doors of Casey’s Irish Pub is truly like stepping back in time and it is not very hard to see why filmmakers have returned there again and again over the years to capture the place’s unique ambiance on film. And, thanks to the bar’s definite New York vibe, it is most often portrayed as being in a city other than Los Angeles. In 2002’s Mr. Deeds, Casey’s stands in for the New York bar where Babe Bennett (aka Winona Ryder) went to drown her sorrows after being rejected by Longfellow Deeds (aka Adam Sandler).

In the first X-Files movie, Casey’s appeared as the Washington, D.C. bar where cutie Fox Mulder (aka David Duchovny) met Dr. Alvin Kurtzweil (aka Martin Landau) for the first time.

Ironically enough, though, for the scenes which supposedly took place outside of the bar, producers filmed at a different location entirely, yet they chose to use the actual Casey’s name on the exterior signage. Casey’s real-life exterior is pictured above and, as you can see, it is located below street-level and looks nothing like the exterior shown in The X-Files.

In 2006’s 16 Blocks, Casey’s stood in for the New York bar where Detective Jack Mosby (aka Bruce Willis) celebrated his birthday.

In Charlie Wilson’s War, Casey’s was featured as the Washington, D.C. watering hole where Congressman Charlie Wilson (aka Tom Hanks) took his lady friend Joanne Herring (aka Julia Roberts) for a drink before leaving on a trip to the Middle East.

In Good Night and Good Luck, Casey’s pops up as the New York bar where Edward R. Murrow (aka David Strathairn), Fred Friendly (aka George Clooney), and their co-workers wait to read the reviews of their just-aired See It Now television special about Senator Joseph McCarthy. Ironically enough, according to the movie’s DVD commentary, Casey’s was one of only two non-studio locations used in the filming of Good Night and Good Luck – the other being the Masonic Temple in Pasadena.

In 1998’s Fallen, Casey’s stands in for the Philadelphia bar where John Hobbes (aka Denzel Washington) met up with his cop friends Lou (aka James Gandolfini) and Jonesy (aka John Goodman) after the execution of a notorious serial killer.

In The Deep End of the Ocean, Casey’s stood in for the Chicago, Illinois restaurant where Detective Candy Bliss (aka Whoopi Goldberg) took Beth Cappadora (aka Michelle Pfeiffer) for a bite to eat a few weeks after Sam, Beth’s kidnapped son, was returned to her. Both the interior and the exterior of Casey’s were used in the flick.

Casey’s has also been featured in numerous episodes of the television series Mad Men, including the Season 1 episode titled “The Hobo Code”, where it stood in for P.J. Clarke’s, the famed, real life 125-year old watering hole located in Manhattan.

Casey’s also popped up in the Season 2 episode of Mad Men titled “For Those Who Think Young”, as the spot where Don Draper (aka Jon Hamm) is shown eating a steak and eggs breakfast after learning from his doctor that he is not in the greatest of health. The bar was also apparently featured in an episode of CSI, although I am not sure of which particular episode.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Casey’s Irish Pub is located at 613 South Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles. The restaurant is open from 11:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. each Monday through Wednesday, from 11:30 a.m. to 2 a.m. each Thursday through Saturday, and from 3 p.m. to 11 a.m. each Sunday. You can visit the official Casey’s website here.