Tom Skerritt – IAMNOTASTALKER

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.

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.

April 15, 2011April 14, 2011

Alverno High School from “Passport to Paris”

As I promised in Tuesday’s post, here is a photograph of me dressed as Buffy the Vampire Slayer for Halloween back in 1992. My mom made the costume for me by hand and she made it absolutely PERFECT, so I was especially excited to tell Kristy Swanson about it when I met her this past Sunday night at the Celebration of Corey Haim’s life. And now, on with the post! Smile

Two weekends ago I dragged the Grim Cheaper out to stalk a location that has long been at the top of my To-Stalk list – Alverno High School in Sierra Madre. The school has appeared in hundreds upon hundreds of productions over the years, but I had been dying to stalk it for one reason and one reason only – it was one of the primary locations featured in the 1999 Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen video Passport to Paris. Being that I was 22 years old when Passport to Paris was released and a full decade older than the flick’s targeted demographic, I can’t really explain why it was that I liked it so much. But the truth is that, as an adult, I absolutely LOVED all of the MK & A videos and would rent them regularly from my local video store. And yes, I know how strange that is. 😉 When in Rome and Winning London are my two favorites out of the twins’ myriad of straight-to-video movies, but Passport to Paris definitely runs a close third. And because the vast majority of the Olsen’s movies were primarily filmed on location in exotic locales around the globe, you can imagine my excitement and surprise when I discovered that the main home used in Passport to Paris was literally right in my own backyard!

Alverno High School was originally built as a private home for physician Walter Jarvis Barlow in 1924. The manse was designed by legendary architect Wallace Neff and was modeled after a Tuscan-style mansion located in Tavainuzze, Italy named Villa Collazi. Barlow dubbed his new residence Villa del Sol d’Oro, which roughly translates to Manor of the Golden Sun. After Barlow passed away in 1942, his widow, Marion Patterson Barlow, sold the property to the Sisters of St. Francis while she promptly moved into the Huntington Hotel (now the Langham Hotel and Spa) in Pasadena, where she spent the remainder of her days. Not too shabby of a place to spend your final years! Anyway, for the next 18 years, Villa del Sol d’Oro was used as a novitiate – a home where nuns live during a probationary period before taking their vows. In 1960 a high school named Alverno Heights Academy was founded on the property. The name was later changed to Alverno High School, as it is known today. Several buildings have since been constructed on the school grounds, but Villa del Sol d’Oro, which is a historical landmark, has thankfully been left untouched. And while classes are not held in the actual Villa, the building is used regularly for special school events.

Because Alverno is a working school, I did not expect to be able to get onto the property and was beyond FLOORED to discover that the side gate was standing open and several people were walking around the grounds. One lady that I spoke with told me that she comes to the school each weekend just to walk around and appreciate the beauty of the place. And it is not very hard to see why. As you can see in the above photographs, Villa del Sol d’Oro is absolutely breathtaking!

And, amazingly enough, there was a photo shoot taking place on the property when we showed up to stalk it, so all of the Villa’s doors were open. And even though the SUPER nice staff member who was on duty at the time thought I was EXTREMELY odd for liking Passport to Paris so much, he allowed me to go inside to take a quick peek around and snap a few pictures, which I could NOT have been more excited about!

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In Passport to Paris, Alverno High School stood in for the American Embassy in Paris, France, where Ambassador Edward (aka Peter White), the grandfather of Melanie “’Mel’ Porter (aka Mary-Kate Olsen) and Allyson ‘Ally’ Porter (aka Ashley Olsen), lived. And while the exterior of the property (pictured above) shown in the flick was a building in Paris . . .

. . . Villa del Sol d’Oro was used for all of the interior scenes.

I am fairly certain that the girls’ bedroom in the movie was also located at Villa del Sol d’Oro, but because I did not get to see the upstairs portion of the property I am not able to verify that.

In 1992’s Poison Ivy, Villa del Sol d’Oro was the high school that Ivy (aka Drew Barrymore) and Sylvie (aka Sara Gilbert) attended.

Alverno High School also appeared at the very beginning of 1996’s Executive Decision as a Chechen Mafia safehouse supposedly located just outside of Trieste, Italy.

In Legally Blonde, Alverno stood in for the Delta Nu sorority house where Elle Woods (aka Reese Witherspoon) and her “sisters” lived.

And while a private home in San Francisco, which I blogged about back in April of 2008, stood in for the exterior of the San Francisco-area Anthony P. Grove High School in 2001’s The Princess Diaries, Alverno’s courtyard was used for all of the courtyard scenes in the movie.

It was the convent where Christina Crawford (aka Diana Scarwid) was sent to live in the 1981 movie Mommie Dearest.

In 1995’s A Walk in the Clouds, the interior of Villa del Sol d’Oro stood in for the interior of the Las Nubes vineyard home where the family of Victoria Aragon (aka Aitana Sanchez-Gijon) lived.

The Villa was used as the Los Angeles Visitor Security Headquarters in the 1984 television mini-series V: The Final Battle.

Although they changed the property’s exterior gate for that production quite a bit. LOL I just about died laughing when I scanned through V and saw the above-pictured pseudo-space-age electronic gate. Could it be any more ‘80s?

The Villa’s actual gate is pictured above.

The Villa was also the site of Axl Rose and Stephanie Seymour’s wedding reception in the Gun ‘N Roses “November Rain” music video . . .

November Rain–Villa del Sol d’Oro

. . . which you can watch by clicking above.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Alverno High School, from Passport to Paris, is located at 200 North Michillinda Avenue in Sierra Madre. We entered the school via its Wilson Street gate. Please remember that Alverno High School is an active learning institution and you should not trespass or visit the grounds during school hours. You can visit Alverno’s official website here.

October 8, 2010October 7, 2010

The “Poison Ivy” Mansion

Back in early August, Drew Barrymore aficionado Ashley, from the Drewseum website, challenged me to find the large pink mansion belonging to the Cooper family – Sylvie (aka Sara Gilbert), Darryl (aka Tom Skerritt), and Georgie (aka Cheryl Ladd) – in the 1992 thriller Poison Ivy. But because I was just a few weeks away from my upcoming wedding at the time, I didn’t get a chance to do any research on it. Thankfully though, fellow stalker Terri stepped in and managed to track down the location for us! Terri had discovered a message board thread on the IMDB Poison Ivy page on which a commenter had stated that the Cooper mansion was located in a “section of Los Feliz called the Oaks”. She then used Google Street View and managed to track down the massively large residence, which amazingly enough looks very much the same today as it did back in 1992 when the movie was filmed! Thank you, Terri!

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In real life, the 13,000-square foot, 5 bedroom, 9 bathroom home, which sits on over a half acre of land, was first built in 1926 and, according to my buddy E.J. over at The MovielandDirectory, belonged to Geena Davis in the early 90s, although that is a claim that the Thelma & Louise actress denies. The Geena Davis rumor was actually featured in a small blurb in the September 1997 issue of Los Angeles Magazine, which states that the extensive property was purchased for $1.3 million in 1992 by the “Sav-On Trust” (believed to be created by Geena) and that an extensive remodel of the residence was subsequently begun. After the roof, windows, and doors had been removed from the estate, though, the remodel was abruptly stopped and the property left in ruins. At one point, squatters even moved into the residence, which is located in a very affluent neighborhood. Sav-On Trust sold the decrepit property to a new owner in 1995 for $1,050,000, with the trust actually carrying the majority of the loan. When the new buyer defaulted on his payments, the home went into foreclosure, with Geena still denying that she had anything to do with the property. Why she didn’t want to be associated with the home, I don’t know, but she doesn’t have much of a leg to stand on being that the trustee of the Sav-On Trust is none other than Greg Kress – Geena Davis’ business manager. Hmmmm. Anyway, the remodel on the property was finally completed in the late 1990s and the mansion is absolutely beautiful today. The home, which you can see some fabulous interior photographs of here, currently boasts a 1,000-bottle wine cellar, a private gym, a game room, an infinity pool, a movie theatre, TWO elevators, a cigar room, a grotto, a spa, a library, and striking views of Los Angeles. Talk about living the high life!

The Cooper mansion figured quite prominently in Poison Ivy and both the interior and the exterior of the property appeared in the flick.

The mansion’s garage area . . .

. . . and main balcony were also used repeatedly in the movie, although both look quite a bit different now. An addition to the house has since been added on to the garage area and a turret has been added next to the balcony.

The exterior stairwell that was formerly located next to the garage has also since been removed.

And the stairs that led to the front of the property in the movie have now been replaced by a sloping driveway. Even with all of those changes, though, the home still looks almost exactly the same today as it did in Poison Ivy. And I so love that it is still almost the same color pink!

Randomly enough, just a few days after stalking it, I spotted this very same location while watching the pilot episode of the new series Law & Order: Los Angeles. The residence showed up in the very beginning of the episode, which was titled “Hollywood”, as the burgled home of teenaged actor Colin Blakely (aka Travis Van Winkle) . Being that I had just stalked the place a few days beforehand, I literally just about fell over when I saw it.

Especially when I noticed the home’s real life address plaque pass by in the background of one of the scenes. So darn cool!

The real life interior of the estate was also used in the episode.

Big THANK YOU to Ashley, from the Drewseum website, for challenging me to find this location and to Terri for actually tracking it down! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Poison Ivy mansion is located at 2208 West Live Oak Drive in Los Feliz.