Be sure to check out my latest Los Angeles magazine post today – it’s about the Tournament House from Beverly Hills, 90210. My articles typically get published in the early afternoon hours.
Malibu Café at Calamigos Ranch
The Grim Cheaper and I recently headed out to the ‘Bu to grab a bite to eat at the Malibu Café at Calamigos Ranch and walked away with not only a new favorite restaurant, but an addition to my Must-Stalk List. Mike, from MovieShotsLA, had told me about Calamigos Ranch years ago because of its appearance in a couple of Beverly Hills, 90210 episodes. And though it took me a while to stalk the place, it was definitely worth the wait.
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Calamigos Ranch was founded in 1947 by Navy veteran J. Grant Gerson and his wife, Helen, on a 15-acre plot of land nestled at the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains. Gerson originally called the property Calamigos Star C Ranch (“Calamigos” is an Indian word meaning “come as my brother, come as my friend”) and operated a year-round Old West-themed children’s camp there for over three decades.
As more residences started popping up near what was once his rural property, Gerson decided to purchase several plots of adjoining land. Today, Calamigos Ranch, which is still run by the Gerson family, is comprised of a whopping 120 acres and is utilized mainly as a special events venue.
The ranch is an extremely popular wedding location (there were three taking place on the premises the day we were there!). In fact, my favorite actor, Matt Lanter, married one of my favorite bloggers Angela Lanter at Calamigos on June 14th, 2013. You can see pictures of their nuptials here.
As we walked through the ranch’s massive grounds making our way to Malibu Café, I was stunned at how gorgeous the property is and became just a wee bit obsessed with the twinkle-light-draped trees pictured below.
Calamigos Ranch has a very rustic feel to it and I mean that in the best possible way.
Even the designated smoking area is picturesque!
Malibu Café, which sits at the center of the property, is a more recent addition to the ranch.
And while food is served there (excellent food, might I add) and the dining areas are uniquely stunning . . .
. . . to classify the place simply as a restaurant would be doing it a disservice.
Malibu Café is more of a gathering space, with games for both adults and kids . . . .
. . . tucked away spots reserved for quiet reflection . . .
. . . and meandering waterways.
There is even a boat launch onsite that offers pedal boat rentals!
Um, sign me up!
The café’s unexpected décor had me practically foaming at the mouth! It’s exactly the way I would want to decorate my house if I owned one.
Thanks to its natural beauty and ruggedness, Calamigos Ranch has been utilized for filming countless times over the years, far more times than I could ever catalog here, but I’ll do my best. Brandon Walsh (Jason Priestley) and Kelly Taylor (Jennie Garth) attended a Task Force retreat held at Calamigos in the Season 4 episode of Beverly Hills, 90210 titled “Change Partners,”
The room where Brandon and Kelly square-danced can be viewed here.
In the two-part Season 4 finale of Beverly Hills, 90210 titled “Mr. Walsh Goes to Washington,” Calamigos Ranch was the site of CU’s 28th Annual Mardi Gras fair.
I believe that the wedding of Suzanne Steele (Kerrie Keane) and Kevin Weaver (David Hayward), which took place in the episode, was also filmed at Calamigos.
The ranch was the site of Waynestock in 1993’s Wayne’s World 2.
According to the Seeing Stars website, the television series Bunheads films almost exclusively at Calamigos.
One of the ranch’s many cabins was transformed into a spa for the Season 2 episode of Rizzoli & Isles titled “Living Proof.”
The property’s wooded area was also where a young pregnant woman tried to escape an attacker in the episode.
Calamigos was the site of Dr. Miranda Bailey (Chandra Wilson) and Dr. Ben Warren’s (Jason George) wedding in the Season 9 episodes of Grey’s Anatomy titled “Run, Baby, Run” and “Things We Said Today.”
The episodes were filmed in the ranch’s Main Dining Room.
I snapped a few photos of the space’s interior through the front windows.
In the third episode of Season 9 of The Bachelorette, Desiree Hartsock hosted a Western-themed group date at Calamigos Ranch.
The group date took place in the area pictured below, which is located on Pitsch Canyon Road.
Juan Pablo Galavis won the date’s challenge and was rewarded with a private screening of The Lone Ranger in the Calamigos barn.
Juan Pablo returned to the ranch a few months later during his stint as The Bachelor. In the second episode of his season, he treated Claire Crawley to a one-on-one snow date at Calamigos. The property was not at all recognizable in the episode due to the fact that producers set up a winter wonderland in one of the open areas for the date, complete with Christmas trees, snow, a hot tub and a hill for sledding.
I cannot more highly recommend a visit to Malibu Café. The place is one of Los Angeles’ hidden treasures.
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 Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for telling me about this location! 
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: Malibu Café at Calamigos Ranch is located at 327 Latigo Canyon Road in Malibu. You can visit the ranch’s official website here and the café’s official website here. If you plan on dining at the restaurant, reservations are highly recommended as the place is jam-packed pretty much all day, every day.
The Donna Martin Graduates Protest Site
As big of a Beverly Hills, 90210 fan as I am, it will probably come as a shock to learn that up until recently I had yet to stalk the spot where one of the show’s most iconic moments was filmed – Burbank City Hall, aka the Donna Martin Graduates protest site from the Season 3 episode titled “Something in the Air.” So, since I was in the area recently stalking The Wonder Years houses (you can read those posts here and here), I decided that it was about time that I amended that fact.
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Burbank City Hall, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, was designed by architects William Allen and W. George Lutzi. Construction on the Moderne/Art Deco-style building began in 1941 and lasted until 1943. The final cost of the project was $409,000.
The building’s most impressive feature is its tower, which stands at 77 feet.
The lobby area, which I, unfortunately, did not get to see, boasts twenty different kinds of marble, bass relief sculptures and a grand staircase. The building also houses two large murals painted by Hugo Ballin. In a 1996 Daily News article about the structure, Councilman Ted McConkey is quoted as saying, “Anyone walking into City Hall would recognize that it’s something unique. It’s special because of the period in which it was built, because of the way it’s been maintained and because of all the murals at City Hall. We get an inordinate number of requests to use City Hall from film companies.” Love it! You can check out a fabulous photograph of the lobby here.
In “Something in the Air,” Brandon Walsh (Jason Priestley) stages a Senior Class walk-out during final exams to protest the fact that Donna Martin (Tori Spelling), after showing up drunk to the prom, is not being allowed to graduate with her class. (The Juniors also participate in the walk-out, in order to protest the dress code that the school board has implemented for the upcoming school year.) The protestors – chanting the now legendary line “Donna Martin graduates!” – wind up at the steps of Burbank City Hall, which (I think) is supposed to be masquerading as the West Beverly Hills School District in the episode.
This guy had a little trouble with his “No scapegoats” sign. 
During the rally, Mrs. Teasley (Denise Dowse) warns the students that they are all in danger of being flunked, which only serves to rile them up further. With Brandon leading the charge, they head inside the building and into the school board meeting.
Once inside, Brandon, of course, makes a speech in Donna’s defense. That speech never ceases to crack me up. He says, “Donna Martin is the kind of girl that goes out of her way for people. That’s why all these people here are going out of their way for her.” Like, huh? Did I miss something in all of my avid 90210 watching? When did Donna ever go out of her way for anyone, let alone the entire Junior and Senior class? It all ends well, though, as the board members wind up being moved by Brandon’s speech and vote to allow Donna to graduate. Donna Martin graduates, indeed!
“Something in the Air” was not the first Beverly Hills, 90210 episode to be lensed at Burbank City Hall. Although the exterior of Beverly Hills City Hall was used as an establishing shot . . .
. . . the interior of Burbank City Hall was where Jim Walsh (James Eckhouse) and Brandon attended a meeting about the Highpoint Center project in the Season 2 episode titled “The Pit and the Pendulum.”
Thanks to the Dear Old Hollywood website, I learned that Burbank City Hall stood in for a police station in the 1954 film Pushover.
In the Season 3 episode of The Rockford Files titled “Crack Back,” which aired in 1977, Burbank City Hall masqueraded as the courthouse where Beth Davenport (Gretchen Corbett) defended a professional football player who was on trial for murder.
In 1980’s American Gigolo, Burbank City Hall was where Julian (Richard Gere) was accosted by the press after being arrested. Very little of the building is visible in the scene, though.
The building masqueraded as a courthouse once again in the 1993 made-for-TV movie A Place to Be Loved (aka Shattered Family).
The interior of Burbank City Hall stood in for the U.S. Naval Headquarters at Pearl Harbor in the ending scene of the 1995 movie Crimson Tide.
For the exterior of the U.S. Naval Headquarters, a different building was used – Memorial Hall at Chapman University in the City of Orange.
The IMDB website states that Burbank City Hall was also utilized in the 1961 film The Choppers, the Season 2 episode of Police Woman titled “Generation of Evil,” the Season 2 episode of S.W.A.T. titled “Courthouse,” and the Season 1 episode of Matt Houston titled “The Showgirl Murders,” but, unfortunately, I could not find copies of any of those productions to verify that information.
On a Donna Martin Graduates side-note – Even though we don’t have kids, during the holidays the GC and I participate in a bit of Elf on the Shelf fun by trading off hiding our elf (named Max) every night for each other. This year, Max decided to hold a walk-out – with some nutcrackers, a couple of Santas, and my 90210 dolls – in honor of my favorite television show. While I thought it was genius, the GC did not share in my enthusiasm.
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.
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 
Stalk It: The Donna Martin Graduates protest from the “Something in the Air” episode of Beverly Hills, 90210 was filmed at Burbank City Hall, which is located at 275 East Olive Avenue in Burbank.
The Infamous Ray Pruit Stairs
Since moving to the desert last January (I cannot believe it has been a year!), I have wanted to revisit Rancho Las Palmas, the sprawling Rancho Mirage resort where Ray Pruit (Jamie Walters) pushed girlfriend Donna Martin (Tori Spelling) down a flight of stairs in the Season 5 episode of Beverly Hills, 90210 titled “P.S. I Love You: Part II.” I originally stalked and blogged about the location back in September 2008, but, because the hotel has 120 sets of identical stairs, at the time I was unsure of which set had appeared in the episode. Thankfully, the resort’s sales manager saw my post and left a comment, informing me of exactly where the scene had been shot. And while it took me over five years to get back out there to re-stalk the place, once I did, I could NOT have been more excited!
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Rancho Las Palmas is massive. The 240-acre resort boasts a 27-hole championship golf course, four eateries, a spa, 50,000-square-feet of event/meeting space, and three pools – one of which is Splashtopia, a two-acre water feature made complete with a 425-foot lazy river, two 100-foot water slides, a man-made sand beach, a Jacuzzi, and a café. Guests also have access to 25 tennis courts at the Palm Springs tennis center located in the Rancho Las Palmas Country Club, which is adjacent to the hotel.
Rancho Las Palmas has quite an interesting history. The property was originally the site of the Desert Air Hotel & Resort, a 320-acre compound that was founded by architect H.L. Gogerty in 1946. The resort consisted of an airstrip for private planes, World War II army barracks that pilots and travelers could rent for the night, and a bar and a pool that were added in 1951. You can see a picture of what the property looked like at that time here. Luminaries like Edgar Bergen, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Robert Taylor flocked to the place and The Bob Cummings Show was even filmed onsite for a time. The resort was sadly shuttered in 1976 and then demolished a year later to make way for a new Marriott hotel. According to the Abandoned & Little-Known Airfields website, one former Desert Air patron had this to say of the new lodging, “I visited the site several years ago – nothing left, except that the main fairway of the golf course seems to be aligned with the old northwest/southeast runway, and there’s a Desert Air Drive in the condos by the hotel. Very ritzy, very posh, but it will never have the understated chill-out class of the old place, with guest cottages made from recycled WW2 barracks huts. I think the difference speaks volumes about the way this country has changed.” I have to admit, it would have been pretty darn cool to vacation in authentic World War II barracks.
At the time that 90210 was filmed, the hotel was known as Marriott’s Rancho Las Palmas. After being taken over by KLM in 2006, the site underwent a massive renovation and the “Marriott” dropped from its name. Today, the property is operated by Omni Hotels & Resorts.
In “P.S. I Love You: Part I” and “P.S. I Love You: Part II,” Rancho Las Palmas was where Steve Sanders (Ian Ziering), Brandon Walsh (Jason Priestley) and the rest of the C.U. gang attended a national KEG/ALPHA convention. Several areas of the resort were shown in the episodes, including the front entrance;
the Azure Adult Pool (where Ray had a fit over Donna’s choice of swimwear);
and, of course, the infamous stairs that Ray pushed Donna down.
The stair scene was shot on the northwest side of Building #5.
In real life, the stairwell leads up to Room 520.
You can watch the stair scene by clicking below. I love when Valerie says, “Ray, go get the hotel doctor! Go!” LOL Hotel doctor??? How about, “Let’s get her to a hospital,” Val!
And you know I just had to do it! 
While re-watching the “P.S. I Love You” episodes (big THANK YOU to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for loaning me his Season 5 DVDs), I was shocked to see that the interior scenes had not been filmed inside Rancho Las Palmas (the Rancho lobby is pictured below), but at another location that I was familiar with – Hyatt Westlake Plaza in Westlake Village, which also appeared as a Coachella Valley-resort in the Season 1 episode of Beverly Hills, 90210 titled “Palm Springs Weekend.” I stalked Hyatt Westlake Plaza in February 2010 (you can read that post here) and recognized it immediately when it popped up in “P.S. I Love You.” I guess the Hyatt was 90210’s go-to Palm Springs hotel stand-in.
The first thing that clued me in to the fact that Hyatt Westlake Plaza had been used in “P.S. I Love You: Part I” and “Part II” was the large fountain that was seen in the center of the lobby in the episodes. That same fountain is pictured below in a 2010 photograph that I took of the Hyatt lobby. While no longer tiled, the shape of the Hyatt fountain is an exact match to the shape of the 90210 fountain.
The general layout of the Hyatt lobby also matches the lobby that appeared on 90210. Sadly, the Hyatt was remodeled sometime after the episodes were filmed, so the décor and flooring look quite a bit different today.
In “P.S. I Love You: Part II,” Brandon is shown walking through the Hyatt lobby, past a side table. That same side table (as well as the lamps on it and the painting behind it) is a direct match to a side table that Brenda Walsh (my girl Shannen Doherty) walked by in “Palm Springs Weekend.” Love it!
The recessed hotel room doors and positioning of the room signage that appeared in the “P.S. I Love You” episodes also match those of Hyatt Westlake Plaza.
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.
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 
Stalk It: The “P.S. I Love You” episodes of Beverly Hills, 90210 were filmed at Rancho Las Palmas, which is located at 41000 Bob Hope Drive in Rancho Mirage. You can visit the resort’s official website here. Ray Pruit’s infamous stairs can be found on the south side of the property, just off Avenue Las Palmas, in Building #5, which is denoted with a pink arrow below. The stairs are on the north side of the building and lead up to Room 520. The pool that appeared in the episode is the Azure Adult Pool, which is located just outside of the hotel’s main lobby and is denoted with a blue arrow below. The interior scenes from the “P.S. I Love You” episodes were shot at the Hyatt Westlake Plaza, which is located at 880 South Westlake Boulevard in Thousand Oaks. You can visit the hotel’s official website here.
The Former Site of the Roxbury
In honor of my girl Shannen Doherty’s new reality series, Shannen Says, which premieres next Tuesday (can’t wait!), I thought I would blog today about one of the actress’ famed hangouts from her Beverly Hills, 90210 days – the Roxbury in West Hollywood. Back when I was a teenager and knee-deep in my 90210 obsession (ah, who am I kidding, I am still knee-deep in it!), I clamored for any and all magazines featuring the show’s stars. I would practically drool while reading of their various comings and goings, especially Shannen’s, and as her name became more and more synonymous with the Roxbury, the legendary Sunset Strip club became seared into my memory. I, sadly, never had the opportunity to stalk the place, though, as it closed its doors in 1997, long before I moved to Los Angeles. But back in 2002, after an acting class, one of my friends invited me to grab some drinks at a hot spot named Miyagi’s. Not being a nightclub kinda girl myself, I turned down the offer, to which my friend said, “Are you sure? Miyagi’s used to be the Roxbury, where your girl Shannen Doherty hung out.” Well, believe you me, once I heard those words, I was in! In true Hollywood fashion, not even Miyagi’s stood the test of time, though, and, as you can see above, today the location houses a newly-opened Pink Taco. But I figured since the site was hallowed ground for any 90210 fan, it was definitely blog-worthy.
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The building that stands at the corner of Roxbury Road and West Sunset Boulevard has long been the darling of the Sunset Strip. The spot’s first incarnation was a celebrity supper club named The Players, or The Players Club, that was founded in 1940 by Academy Award-winning screenwriter Preston Sturges. During its Players days, such luminaries as Humphrey Bogart, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker, Barbara Stanwyck, Joel McCrea, Rudy Vallee, William Faulkner, George S. Kaufman, Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles and Howard Hughes all hung out there. Despite its popularity, the club started to falter by the early 1950s, though, most likely due to the fact that Preston often closed the three-story, 12,000-square-foot venue, which included a barber shop, a hydraulic stage, a burger stand, and three different restaurants, in order to host private parties for his famous friends. In 1953, his creditors sold the place to new owners who opened a Japanese restaurant named Imperial Gardens on the site. That eatery also proved to be quite popular with the Hollywood set and catered to such stars as John Savage, James Woods, John Travolta, and Olivia Newton-John.
In 1989, after an amazing 36-year run, Imperial Gardens closed and partners Brad Johnson and Elie Samaha purchased the establishment and transformed it into the Roxbury. Virtually overnight, the club became the place to see and be seen in Hollywood. The stars of 90210 flocked there like moths to a flame and were spotted partying on the premises virtually every night. Oh, what I wouldn’t have given to have been 21 and living in Hollywood at that time. 
Besides Tori Spelling, Brian Austin Green, Shannen Doherty and Mark Wahlberg (pictured at the club in a November 1992 People Magazine article), other celebrities that spent time at the Roxbury during its almost decade-long reign on the Sunset Strip include Cher, John Travolta, Madonna, Tom Cruise, Prince, Sylvester Stallone, River Phoenix, Christina Applegate, Eddie Murphy, and, of all people, Geraldo Rivera. The club was so popular that it even inspired the movie A Night at the Roxbury, although no actual filming took place on site. And Eric Huerta, the Roxbury’s longtime bouncer, became so well-known himself that a Los Angeles Times article was written about him in November of 1993. As usually happens with hotspots in Los Angeles, though, the Roxbury’s star began to fade and eventually closed in 1997. Shortly thereafter, Miyagi’s, a Japanese-inspired club/restaurant, opened in its place. I do not remember much of what Miyagi’s was like from my one visit there back in 2002, aside from the fact that the place was huge, the food was good, and, as I danced, all I could think about was that Shannen Doherty herself had one danced in the very same spot. I was practically pinching myself all night.
Miyagi’s closed its doors sometime in 2008 and was purchased by Harry Morton, owner of the Pink Taco restaurant chain and son of Hard Rock Café founder Peter Morton. The young restaurateur immediately set about gutting the interior of the place and wound up discovering some traces of the historic Players Club in the process – including the entrance to a former underground (now sealed) tunnel that once connected the hotspot to the Chateau Marmont and was used by celebrities who wanted to escape prying eyes. And while Pink Taco did not officially open until yesterday, a private birthday bash was held there on March 23rd in honor of Jared Eng, the blogger behind the JustJared website. Some of the stars who attended that soiree include Fergie, Rumer Willis, Kellan Lutz, Lance Bass, Natasha Bedingfield, Seth MacFarlane, Avril Lavigne, and a few of this generation’s 90210-ers including Shenae Grimes, Jessica Stroup, and my love Matt Lanter (sigh!).
Thankfully, the exterior of the Sunset Boulevard hotspot hasn’t changed much over the years and despite the fact that it is now painted a bright pink (and yes, that is a whole lotta pink!), it still looks much the same as it did in the 1940s. You can see what The Players used to look like here, Imperial Gardens here, the Roxbury here, and Miyagi’s here. And you can check out some interior pictures of the new Pink Taco on fave website EaterLA here.
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 
Stalk It: Pink Taco, aka the former site of the Roxbury, is located at 8225 West Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood. You can visit the restaurant chain’s official website here.
The “Mommie Dearest” House
Before I get started, I would like to wish all of my fellow stalkers a VERY happy Halloween! And while I will, of course, be posting pics of me and the Grim Cheaper in costume, because I always write my blogs at least one day ahead of time, I will not be able to do so until later this week. It is for that reason that I will be extending my Haunted Hollywood postings through Wednesday, which is a good thing as I am having an absolute blast writing them! But for now, on with today’s post! Another older movie that I watched in preparation for my Haunted Hollywood theme was 1981’s Mommie Dearest, the alleged true story of the abuse of Christina Crawford at the hands of her mother, screen legend Joan Crawford. While watching the flick, I immediately recognized the house where Joan and Christina lived, as not only had it appeared in the pilot episode of Beverly Hills, 90210, but several tour books had also long ago incorrectly identified it as the Fresh Prince of Bel Air mansion. I had stalked and blogged about the Bel-Air-area property way back in April of 2008, but it was not until later that same year that I discovered that the actual Fresh Prince house was located in Brentwood (at 251 North Bristol Avenue – just a block and a half away from Christina Crawford’s actual childhood home, ironically enough). Anyway, because my 2008 write-up on the house was incredibly brief, I decided that it was most definitely worthy of a re-post. So here goes!
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In Mommie Dearest, the huge Colonial-style house pictured above is where Joan Crawford (aka Faye Dunaway) teaches her adopted daughter Christina (aka a phenomenal Mara Hobel) the perils of using wire hangers. And while the movie and Faye’s performance have largely been described as “camp”, I did not find them to be so at all. I thoroughly enjoyed the movie and all of the performances and became so fascinated by the story that I ran right out to my local library to check out the book on which it was based.
In real life, the Mommie Dearest house, which was originally built in 1942, boasts 5 bedrooms, 6 baths, 6,077 square feet, and a 1.5-acre corner plot of land. And, amazingly enough, as you can see above, it still looks almost exactly the same today as it did in 1981 when the movie was filmed! Only the front of the property appeared onscreen, though.
For all of the backyard scenes, producers chose to film at a different colonial-style mansion located in Beverly Hills. Remarkably, the backyard where filming took place looks almost identical to Joan Crawford’s real life backyard, which you can see a photograph of here.
I found the backyard location thanks to an old real estate listing which mentioned the property’s appearance in Mommie Dearest, so I, of course, just had to run right out to stalk it, as well!
And, as you can see in the above photographs from the listing, the backyard still looks EXACTLY the same today as it did onscreen in Mommie Dearest Even the backyard furniture is still the same! LOVE IT! LOVE IT! LOVE IT!
I am fairly certain that the interior scenes were all filmed on a soundstage and not at either of the actual homes.
As I mentioned above, the Mommie Dearest house was also used in the pilot episode of Beverly Hills, 90210 as the home of Marianne Moore (aka Leslie Bega), where the Walsh twins, Brandon (aka Jason Priestley) and Brenda (aka my girl Shannen Doherty), attended their very first Beverly Hills party.
The home’s hot tub area also appeared later on in the episode in the scene in which Marianne invited Brandon over for a date.
You can see that hot tub in the above aerial view.
And, oddly enough, a very brief establishing shot of the residence was used in another episode of Beverly Hills, 90210 – the Season 7 episode titled “All That Jazz”, in which it was used as the New Orleans hotel where David Silver (aka Brian Austin Green) took Donna Martin (aka Tori Spelling) for the night.
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 
Stalk It: The Mommie Dearest house is located at 417 Amapola Lane in Bel Air. The home used for all of the movie’s backyard scenes is located at 355 South Mapleton Drive in Beverly Hills.
Palace Costume – The Halloween Costume Shop from “Beverly Hills, 90210”
One location that I have been wanting to stalk for close to two decades now is the costume shop that was featured in the Season 2 episode of fave show Beverly Hills, 90210 titled “Halloween”. Not only was that episode one of my most beloved of the entire series, but, as has been made blatantly apparent by now, Halloween is my absolute favorite holiday and I was positively DYING to wander through the very same clothing racks that the 90210 gang had wandered through. So when fellow stalker Geoff, from the 90210Locations website, tracked the place down a while back, I just about died of excitement and immediately added it to my Haunted-Hollywood-To-Stalk list. Being that the store’s actual name – Palace Costume Company – had been visibly displayed in the episode, I am highly embarrassed that I was not able to find the place myself. I mean honestly, what kind of a stalker am I? 
Anyway, I finally dragged the Grim Cheaper out to the store two weekends ago and, as you can imagine, I could NOT have been more excited!
Palace Costume, which was originally a vintage clothing retailer, was founded in the 1960s by a woman named Melody Barnett in a storefront on Melrose Avenue in West Hollywood. The shop was the very first vintage clothing store to be located on Melrose, a street that is now rife with thrift emporiums and vintage boutiques. In 1970, Palace Costume moved to a 2,000-square-foot space on Fairfax Avenue and began exclusively renting out authentic vintage clothing to film and production crews. According to this October 1998 Los Angeles Business Journal article, Barnett has become so successful in the entertainment industry that she has had to add about 1,000 square feet of space to her store every single year due to her rapidly growing collection. Today, her 36,000-square-foot emporium houses over half a million different pieces, making it one of the largest vintage clothing collections in the entire country. Melody’s costumes have appeared in thousands upon thousands of productions, including Titanic, Chinatown, A Beautiful Mind, Blow, Frida, Pleasantville, Boogie Nights, Evita, Forrest Gump, What’s Love Got to Do with It, and all three Austin Powers movies. In 1998, Barnett had a wooden and stucco façade constructed around her store for security reasons, so the place looks quite a bit different today than it did onscreen on 90210.
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In the “Halloween” episode of Beverly Hills, 90210, Brenda Walsh (aka my girl Shannen Doherty), Kelly Taylor (aka Jennie Garth), Dylan McKay (aka Luke Perry), and the rest of the 90210 gang head out to what they call “Hollywood Costume” to pick out some costumes for a Halloween party they are attending that night. As I mentioned above, the name “Palace Costume Co.” is blatantly visible on the storefront in the scene. Yes, I am a blonde!
It is while there that Brenda and Dylan find their amazeballs Bonnie and Clyde costumes. It has ALWAYS been my dream to dress up as Brenda and Dylan dressed up as Bonnie and Clyde for Halloween, but somehow I do not think the GC would go for that. Although this year we are dressing up 90210-style, but I am saving that information for a future post!
Sadly, Palace Costume is not open to the public, but is only open to industry professionals. Words cannot express how heartbroken I was when we arrived and saw the “not open to the public” sign on the front door. I was literally almost in tears (OK, not really, but I was pretty bummed) as I had so badly wanted to peruse through the countless racks of period clothing like Brenda and Donna had done on 90210. And I had also wanted to verify if the episode had actually been filmed inside of the store or at a different location.
Because I hate making phone calls (I know, I know – I am weird!), I enlisted the help of Mike, from MovieShotsLA (who is doing his own Halloween locations theme this month), to call Palace Costume and ask Melody if any 90210 filming had been done inside of the store. She confirmed that indeed it had. And if you look at the above screen capture from the episode and compare it to the photograph of the inside of Palace Costume, which I got off of the company’s website, you can see that the light fixtures and ceiling do, in fact, match. Oh, what I wouldn’t give to go inside of that place! I am a member of SAG, doesn’t that count for anything??
Big THANK YOU to Geoff, from the 90210Locations website, for finding this location!
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 
Stalk It: Palace Costume, from the “Halloween” episode of Beverly Hills, 90210, is located at 835 North Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles. You can visit the store’s official website here. Palace Costume is sadly not open to the public, but is only open to members of the entertainment industry.
InvenTORI – Tori Spelling’s New Store
This past Friday afternoon, I just about died upon opening up the latest issue of US Magazine and reading in “The Records” section that, on Valentine’s Day, Beverly Hills, 90210-star Tori Spelling and her husband, Dean McDermott, had held the grand opening for their new antique store, InvenTORI (love it!), on Ventura Boulevard in Sherman Oaks. How in the world had I not known about this previously???? Ironically enough, fellow stalker Lavonna sent me a text just a few minutes after I had finished reading the US blurb in which she told me that I absolutely HAD to stalk Tori’s new shop. So, much to the Grim Cheaper’s chagrin, I added the place to my To-Stalk list and dragged him right on out there this past Monday afternoon. I was extremely sad to discover upon arriving, though, that the store was, in fact, closed. Because no hours were posted, I am not sure if the boutique, which also sells products for children and pets, is shuttered each and every Monday or if it was closed due to the Presidents’ Day holiday. Whatever the reason, though, I was not able to purchase anything while I was there which was a complete and total bummer!
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Thankfully though, I was able to snap a few pictures of the shop through InvenTORI’s front windows and, as you can see in the above photographs, while the store is extremely cute, the place seems to be rather sparsely stocked. The GC and I were joking that for a place named “InvenTORI”, it certainly didn’t have a lot of it! 
I was actually quite surprised that Tori chose Sherman Oaks as the site of her new commercial venture, as I would have figured she would be more inclined to open a boutique in Beverly Hills or on the uber-trendy Third Street in West L.A., but as she said in an interview with the ShermanOaksPatch website, “We love this neighborhood – it’s hip and happening. We love the Valley – we’re family people, and we want everybody to come into the store.” A few other celebrities besides the McDermotts own boutiques in the same area, including Lisa Rinna and Harry Hamlin who own Belle Grey, which is located just a few storefronts east of InvenTORI, and Claudia Wells, who played Jennifer Parker in the first Back to the Future movie, who owns the upscale Armani Wells men’s clothing store, which is located just about two miles east of Tori’s new shop.
Tori has apparently been an antiques collector for much of her life and, as she recently told People Magazine, “I realized I no longer had enough space to keep up with all of my finds so that’s how I came up with the store concept of InvenTORI. I can now share my collection with others.” According to the ShermanOaksPatch, Tori will apparently be working at the store from time to time, because she is too much of a “control freak” to let anyone else take the helm. So you know what that means!!! I am so going to have to go back to re-stalk the place! 
You can see photographs of InvenTORI’s grand opening, during which champagne and cookies were served (love it!), on the Imnotobsessed blog here.
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: InvenTORI, Tori Spelling’s new antique/children’s/pet shop, is located at 13826 Ventura Boulevard in Sherman Oaks. You can visit the store’s official Facebook page here. Located just a block east, at 13812 Ventura Boulevard, is Belle Grey, the boutique owned by Lisa Rinna and Harry Hamlin. And just a little under two miles east, at 12404 Ventura Boulevard in Studio City, is Armani Wells, the men’s clothing store owned by actress Claudia Wells, who played Jennifer Parker in the first Back to the Future movie.
Donna Martin’s House from the B.Y.O.B. Episode of “Beverly Hills, 90210”
One location that I have been wanting to stalk for just about as long as I can remember now is the mansion where Donna Martin (aka Tori Spelling) lived in the Season 1 episode of fave show Beverly Hills, 90210 titled “B.Y.O.B”. For whatever reason, though, I could just NOT seem to track the place down. Over the past few months I had managed to contact a few of the crew members who had worked on the episode and even a few of the actors who had appeared in it, all of whom told me that they did not recognize the screen capture of the house that I had sent them and that the property where filming took place was located somewhere in the Valley. One of the crew members also told me that he was 99.9% certain that the establishing shot of the mansion which appeared in the episode had been a stock photograph and that no actual filming had taken place there. This news pained me to hear as, because stock photographs are most often purchased from stock location libraries, it meant that the chances of tracking the place down were slim to none. So, imagine my surprise last Friday when I received a tweet from Geoff, from the 90210locations website, informing me that he had somehow managed to find the mansion! Let me tell you, I just about died of excitement and dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out to stalk the place the very next day! Thank you, Geoff!!
Sadly, while I am VERY happy to report that the mansion still looks almost EXACTLY the same today as it did when it appeared on Beverly Hills, 90210 over two decades ago, the property is gated and is not very visible from the street. 
The house, which was originally built in 1926, is definitely beautiful, though, and absolutely GINORMOUS! In real life, it boasts 5 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, and 8,260 square feet of living space.
As fate would have it, when Mike, from MovieShotsLA, went to stalk the home later that very same day, the gate happened to be open and he was able to take the above photograph which matches the screen capture from the “B.Y.O.B.” episode perfectly! So incredibly cool!
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The mansion pictured above was actually only used as Donna’s residence in the “B.Y.O.B.” episode of Beverly Hills, 90210. In later episodes, two different properties stood in for her home – one located at 18515 Wells Drive in Encino, which I blogged about back in November of 2008, and another located at 1060 Brooklawn Drive in Bel Air, which in real life is owned by Barron Hilton, Paris’ grandfather, and which was also used as the Colby mansion on the television series The Colbys. In the “B.Y.O.B” episode, Donna throws a massive party at the mansion while her parents are out of town, during which Steve Sanders (aka Ian Ziering) spikes Brandon Walsh’s (aka Jason Priestley’s) drink – aka his “mucho ‘mahvelous’ mango margarita”.
As I mentioned above though, all of the actual filming of “B.Y.O.B.” took place at a different residence (pictured above), which, according to all of the crew members and actors that I spoke with, is located somewhere in the Valley, most likely Encino.
While I was scanning through the “B.Y.O.B” episode to make screen captures for today’s post, I noticed something a bit coincidental. In the scene in which Brenda Walsh (aka my girl Shannen Doherty) spots her brother Brandon standing in Donna’s backyard, a green awning-type structure is visible in the background.
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Well, as it just so happens, there is a very similar looking – and very similarly situated – green awning-type structure in the backyard of the home located at 18515 Wells Drive in Encino, the very same dwelling which stood in for the Martin residence during the later years of the show. The brick patio flooring of the Wells Drive home also matches that of the home from “B.Y.O.B”. Wouldn’t it be ironic if the property used as Donna’s house in the “B.Y.O.B.” episode from Season 1 was the very same property which ended up being used as her home nine years later during Seasons 9 and 10? Without more close-up images of the backyard, it is impossible to tell either way, but nevertheless I found the whole thing very interesting!
Big THANK YOU to Geoff, from 90210Locations, for finding this location and to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for snapping the incredible photograph of it which appears in this post! 
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: Donna Martin’s house from the first season of Beverly Hills, 90210 is located at 2405 Glendower Avenue in Los Feliz.
The Gas Station from the “Palm Springs Weekend” Episode of “Beverly Hills, 90210”
One location that I have wanted to stalk for what seems like forever now is the gas station where Brenda Walsh (aka Shannen Doherty), Kelly Taylor (aka Jennie Garth), Donna Martin (aka Tori Spelling), Steve Sanders (aka Ian Ziering) and David Silver (aka Brian Austin Green) fueled up their cars in the Season 1 episode of fave show Beverly Hills, 90210 titled “Palm Springs Weekend” (aka “A Fling in Palm Springs”). Because “Palm Springs Weekend” was one of my all-time favorite episodes of the entire series, and was also coincidentally the very first episode of the show that I ever saw, it holds an extremely special place in my heart and I was absolutely dying to stalk all of the locations featured in it. And while I had found most of the other “Palm Springs Weekend” filming sites a while back, for whatever reason, try as I might, I just couldn’t seem to track that gas station down. So, I recently enlisted the help of fellow stalker Chas, from ItsFilmedThere, who contacted one of the show’s former crewmembers, who happened to remember that the gas station was located on Thousand Oaks Boulevard just a few blocks west of Hampshire Road in Thousand Oaks. As soon as Chas gave me that detailed information, I immediately dragged the Grim Cheaper out to the Valley to look for the place. Amazingly enough, though, even with the crew member’s detailed directions, I just could not seem to find it. So, after returning home I emailed fellow stalker Owen and asked if he might be able to lend a hand. Magically, Owen found the gas station almost immediately! As it turns out, the GC and I had relegated our search to too small of an area and had only stalked the short stretch of Thousand Oaks Boulevard located immediately to the west of Hampshire Road. Had we ventured just one more block west, though, we would have found the station right there on the corner of Thousand Oaks Boulevard and Live Oak Street. UGH! So, this past weekend, while on our way to Santa Barbara, I made the GC take a little detour off the 101 so that I could finally, finally stalk the “Palm Springs Weekend” gas station!
In the “Palm Springs Weekend” episode, which originally aired almost twenty years ago on February 21, 1991, Brenda and the gang stop by the gas station while on their way to Palm Springs, where they are all spending President’s Day weekend. Quite a lengthy scene takes place at the station, at one point during which Steve informs David that if he wants to hang out with him and pick up girls he needs to “at least attempt to be cool”, to which David says, “Oh, OK, so you think I should, like, hold off and give ‘em, like, a Johnny Depp-type attitude thing?” That line absolutely amazes me every time I hear it being that it still holds true to this day, almost two full decades later, as Johnny Depp is still considered the epitome of cool in Hollywood! Talk about a star having staying power!
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Today, the 90210 gas station, which at the time of the filming was operated by Shell Gas Company, is now an auto repair shop named Steve’s Automotive. I had the pleasure of speaking with Steve, the super-nice owner, while I was stalking the place and he was pretty excited to learn that his shop had once appeared on the iconic series. He also informed me that it had been used a few times in car commercials in more recent years.
Amazingly enough, even though the property has since changed ownership and is no longer a gas station, it still looks much the same today as it did nineteen years ago when filming took place. I was most excited to see that the bathroom area, where David met Tuesday (aka Shana Furlow), was still there and that it still looks EXACTLY the same as it did in the episode! So incredibly cool!!!!
And, of course, I just had to take a picture in the spot where Kelly had parked her car in the episode. 🙂
Big THANK YOU to both Chas from It’sFilmedThere and fellow stalker Owen for finding this location! 🙂
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂
Stalk It: Steve’s Automotive, aka the gas station from the “Palm Springs Weekend” episode of Beverly Hills, 90210, is located at 2658 East Thousand Oaks Boulevard in Thousand Oaks. The bathroom where David met Tuesday, which is denoted with the pink arrow in the above aerial view, can be found just to the left of and around the corner from the front of the auto shop. The area where Kelly was parked is located under the carport, directly in front of the entrance to the office portion of Steve’s Automotive and is denoted with a blue “X” in the above aerial image.