TV houses – IAMNOTASTALKER

July 27, 2020July 27, 2020

The “Blossom” House

The Blossom house has been found! I can’t tell you how long I’ve been wanting to write that sentence! Fans of the show are likely looking at the photo above, though, thinking ‘That doesn’t look anything like the Blossom house.’ And they’re right. Sadly, the pad has been remodeled past recognition. So how the heck did I identify it as the home where spunky teen Blossom Russo (Mayim Bialik) lived with her father, Nick (Ted Wass), and brothers, Joey (Joey Lawrence) and Anthony (Michael Stoyanov), on the popular NBC series, which ran from 1991 to 1995? I have fellow stalker Chris (whom you may remember from the posts here, here and here) to thank for that. Somehow, with no address number or background clues to guide him, he was able to pinpoint the property above, located at 3941 Ethel Avenue in Studio City, as the Russo residence with about 99% certainty! I then enlisted my friend Michael (guest-poster extraordinaire) to join the endeavor and we were able to eradicate the remaining 1% doubt. Read on for the story behind our hunt.

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I began my search for the Russo residence a good three years ago. Along the way, I brought some fellow stalkers in on the quest, but none of us were successful. Our failure wasn’t all that surprising considering Blossom aired almost three decades prior and the only clue we really had to go on was the fact that the home was situated on a street with no sidewalk or curb. Then in mid-May, after Chris identified the Victorian from Hangin’ with Mr. Cooper, I asked if he might help in the pursuit and he was all too happy to do so! It was not long after that he wrote back with the 3941 Ethel address! Flabbergasted, I inquired how in the heck he had IDed it so quickly. He explained, “I found the Blossom house just by browsing around Studio City on Street View and making a list of potential streets/houses, with the intention of then looking at them in more depth later on using the historic aerials on Google Earth. I found a lot of roads in Studio City seemed to have no sidewalks, so I always thought it was the most likely place. Eventually, I came to Ethel Avenue and spotted this house, however initially it was more the background, lack of sidewalk and white fence that looked similar rather than the house itself, so I made a note of it and carried on. I then went into the next street, Mary Ellen Avenue, and it was this street that made me convinced I was in the right area as many of the houses had similar features – in particular, 3942 Mary Ellen Avenue, which had the same style fence, same shaped pathway and lantern as the Blossom house. For a while, I was convinced that it was somewhere on this road, but after being unable to match any of the houses, I went back to Ethel Avenue. Immediately after doing so, I noticed the roof of the house next door to 3941 had a similar shape to the one next door to the Blossom house and from that point on, started to notice more and more features that matched.” The neighboring roofline Chris mentioned is denoted with fuchsia arrows below. As you can see, its unique shape, as well as the placement and style of the chimney are direct matches to what appeared on Blossom.

Chris went on to explain, “I then learned that 3941 had been renovated in 1996 and after looking at building permits for the property, I found a sketch of the original house that also matched the shape of the Blossom house.” Chris was kind enough to outline the shape of the original dwelling in red on the drawing, which paints a pretty clear matching picture. As you’ll notice, the placement of the bay window, wings that jut out on either side, and indented front door outlined in the sketch all mirror those of the Russo residence.

He also noted that 3941 boasts a hedgerow and spider plants along the right side of the driveway, both of which were evident in Blossom establishing shots.

I was in awe at Chris’ findings! Talk about some elite-level detective work! Everything I saw gave me a strong feeling that he had correctly identified the right place. But you know me – I like to be 100% certain in my reporting. So I brought in Michael, who uncovered a slew of additional matching details. His email to me included the aerial below. As he noted, “The clincher for me is in looking at the blurry Historic Aerial from 1980 you can make out some important features that all match up with Blossom: uniquely angled front walk, bay window sticking out, two tiny dormers, and left roofline that stops short where it turns into a hipped roof.” It was all compelling evidence, but seeing that angled walkway gave me chills! I knew we most likely had the right spot! But still, we pressed on.

Michael furthered, “Also, on the Blossom cap there are crawlspace vents along the foundation of the house. You can more easily make out one of them on the right corner, and there’s another one slightly visible behind the shrubs centered with the window. The Blossom siding stopped even with the landing of the front entry. The current siding goes one slat lower (overlapping the vents). If you draw a line across them from the front landing, the vents are located in the right spots and at the right level.” Michael even provided the fabulous graphic below to illustrate the point.

As if that wasn’t enough, Michael zeroed in on the front yard, as well. He said, “The yard seems to slope down to the right. In the Blossom cap, taller plantings seem to be covering higher foundation on the right side of the house, compared to the left side. This is also true for the Ethel Ave location.” And he noted, “On the Blossom cap taken from the left of the house, you can see the corner of something boxy to the right of the gable on the right side of the house. I think this might be the brick chimney of the right-side neighbor.” Though that chimney is blocked from view a bit by 3941’s new roofline and portico, it is still partially visible looking much like what appeared onscreen.

Here’s a closer view.

I also spotted a trench running along the street in front of the Russo residence, an element that exists in front of 3941 Ethel, as well.

That 1% doubt still lingered in my mind, though. I know, I know. I can be relentless! But, thankfully, certainty soon hit. A couple of weeks later, a fellow stalker posted some screen captures of the Russo house from a Blossom DVD in a Facebook group. The imagery was much clearer than what was being streamed on Amazon Prime, so I promptly ordered a DVD set for myself and waited not-so-patiently for it to arrive. As soon as it did, I got my clarity! In the commentary featured on the pilot episode, Blossom creator Don Reo announced that the Russo residence was located in Studio City in real life. And in the shot below, the house number is pretty clear (even more so when watching on a TV). It definitely looks like “3941” to me!

The clearer caps also led Michael to notice the double-hung window situated on the right side of the Blossom house. He said, “There’s a window in that exact spot in your present-day photos. Also behind the trees past the gate on the caps you can sort of make out a straight vertical line. I think that’s a second window—which is also still in that location.”

But what really clinched things for me was the establishing shot below in which I spotted a stacked stone fence post attached to the property to the left of the Russo pad. Google Street View imagery shows that very post next to 3941 (denoted with fuchsia arrows in both pictures below), though it is not visible in any of my photos due to foliage that now stands in front of it. Not only that, but I saw that the edge of the neighboring house in the Blossom cap was covered in the same stacked stone. That is also true of the property next to 3941 (denoted with blue arrows below)! And there’s more! I also noticed a white fence attached to the left side of the Blossom house. 3941 has that same white fence (marked by purple arrows below)! All of this adds up to tell me that 3941 Ethel Avenue is, indeed, the Russo residence from Blossom! Eureka! Thank you, Chris and Michael!

The timing of the 1996 remodel also adds up being that Blossom went off the air in ‘95. Seems like the owners, who purchased the place in 1987, waited until the series ended before altering the house, which makes sense. They likely didn’t want to risk losing out on any possible filming revenue. Per the building permits, the remodel included a “2,130-square-foot addition” that added on a second level, expanded the first story, and included a new “irregular-shaped porte-cochère.” All of that gibes with the differences we see of the house as it appeared on Blossom compared to how it looks now. Post remodel, the dwelling, which was originally built in 1948, boasts 5 bedrooms, 5 baths, and 5,057 square feet. The decades-old renovation, completed so shortly after the show went off the air and long before internet-sleuthing was a thing, explains why the Russo home has not been identified until now.

Only the exterior of 3941 Ethel Avenue appeared on the series. The interior of the Russo pad was just a set built on a soundstage, first at Ren-Mar Studios Hollywood (now Red Studios Hollywood), then Sunset Gower Studios, then Fox Television Center (now Helen Bernstein High School). The production moved around quite a bit during its five-year tenure on the air.

As Michael pointed out, the Russos’ kitchen has a very Golden Girls feel. He said, “After looking through a few episodes trying to find establishing shots, it was funny how obvious it was that they used the same production designer as The Golden Girls. A cheesecake certainly wouldn’t have seemed out of place in that kitchen.” Certainly not, Michael!

The property in its original state was utterly charming – in my “opinionation,” at least! It really is sad, not just for us stalkers but in general, that it has been altered so.

So there you have it, the sad saga of the Blossom house and the long quest to track it down!

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Chris for finding this location and to fellow stalker Michael for helping with the verification process.

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 Russo residence from Blossom is located at 3941 Ethel Avenue in Studio City. It has, sadly, been remodeled beyond recognition. Drew Barrymore’s childhood home is across the street at 4002 Ethel.

July 22, 2020July 22, 2020

The “Gimme a Break!” House

Though I definitely consider myself a child of the ‘80s, somehow I never watched Gimme a Break!, which aired on NBC from 1981 to 1987. So when my friend Owen emailed in April asking if I had any intel on the supposed Glenlawn, California residence where widowed police chief Carl Kanisky (Dolph Sweet) lived with his three daughters, Katie (Kari Michaelsen), Sam (Lara Jill Miller) and Julie (Lauri Hendler), and their housekeeper, Nell Harper (Nell Carter), on the series, I was at a loss. Owen isn’t actually a huge Gimme a Break! fan either, but bored during quarantine, caught an episode on YouTube and quickly zeroed in on the traditional-style pad shown in the opening credits. As he wrote to me, “I’m guessing this is one of the few remaining popular ’80s sitcom houses that has yet to be found.” I was, of course, intrigued. One look at its stately architecture told me the property was likely in Hancock Park. I did some digging in the area, but came up empty. It was not until the end of May that the home was finally identified thanks to fellow stalker Chas, of the It’s Filmed There website. As it turns out, my hunch about Hancock Park was right on the money! The Kanisky residence can be found at 515 South Norton Avenue in Windsor Square, looking pretty much exactly as it did during the Gimme a Break! days almost four decades ago!

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In real life, the 1910 home boasts 4 bedrooms, 3 baths, 3,022 square feet, a fireplace, a 0.16-acre lot, and a detached 2-car garage with what appears to be an in-law unit upstairs.

It really is a handsome property, with plenty of Anywhere, U.S.A. appeal. So it’s no surprise it found its way to the screen.

Said to be at 2938 Wells Drive in the fictional town of Glenlawn, the pad popped up in Gimme a Break!’s Season 1 and 2 opening credits, which you can watch here. Like me, Chas had a feeling the property was most likely located in Hancock Park and its environs. He began his search at Beverly Boulevard and Manhattan Place at the very eastern edge of Windsor Square and, using Street View, worked his way south on Manhattan until he hit Wilshire Boulevard. He then ventured back toward Beverly on North St. Andrews Place and continued on that way in a grid-like fashion, moving west. And there, on the sixth street he searched, was the Kanisky house. Thank you, Chas!

It truly is a feat that so little of the property has been changed considering 39 years have passed since Gimme a Break! first hit the screen, not to mention how prevalent remodels are in L.A.

Only the exterior of 515 South Norton appeared on the series. The interior of the Kanisky house was just a set located on a soundstage at the now-defunct Metromedia Square in Hollywood, where Helen Bernstein High School now stands.

Gimme a Break! is not the pad’s only claim to fame!

Thanks to On Location Vacations, I learned that Jack Pearson (Milo Ventimiglia) took Rebecca (Mandy Moore) to an open house there in the Season 3 episode of This Is Us titled “A Philadelphia Story,” which aired in 2018. Only the interior of the property was shown in the episode.

On Location Vacations also tipped me off to the residence’s stint as the home of Marisol (Veronica Osorio) and Richard Onsted (Peter Mark Kendall) on the television series Strange Angel, which aired from 2018 to 2019.

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

Big THANK YOU to Chas, from the It’s Filmed There website, for finding this location and to Owen for initiating the hunt!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Kanisky house from Gimme a Break! is located at 515 South Norton Avenue in Windsor Square.

July 10, 2020July 9, 2020

The “Maude” House

I am a true television aficionado, even when it comes to series that were before my time, like Soap, which began airing just a few months after I was born. Yet when fellow stalker Brad emailed back in August 2017 asking if I knew the whereabouts of the home belonging to Maude Findlay (Bea Arthur) and her husband, Walter (Bill Macy), on Maude, I was at a loss. Sure, I’d heard of the 1970s sitcom, but had never so much as seen even a portion of an episode. Regardless, I accepted the challenge of IDing the place, which Brad informed me was said to be in Tuckahoe, New York, and was only seen in Maude’s opening and closing credits. After some unsuccessful digging, though, I pushed the hunt to the back burner and promptly forgot about it. Flash forward to June 9th of this year. Brad wrote to me once again inquiring if I had ever managed to find the Maude house. Coincidentally, my friend Owen had just embarked upon a massive endeavor to pinpoint all of the key yet-to-be-found locations from popular television shows that aired from the early 1970s through the early 1990s. I emailed him to see if Maude was included on his list. It wasn’t, but he was kind enough to look into the matter for me and, on June 10th, just one day later, wrote back with an address! The Findlay residence from Maude can be found at 1011 Harvard Avenue North in Claremont.

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How did he do it, you ask? I asked the same thing! As it turns out, a curb led him to the location. But first, while viewing the opening credits, Owen spotted an address number of “101” above Maude and Walter’s front door, something I had failed to notice during any of my searches for the place!

As he explained, “Because some of the intro was filmed in NY — and there are 100 blocks there — I started looking in Tuckahoe. I was coming up empty, and I was starting to wonder if a fourth digit was hidden behind the tree branches, so I turned my focus to that very distinctive curb, which I had never seen before.” He’s talking about the unique curb with embedded stonework visible in the screen capture below.

Owen next headed over to Google and performed a slew of different keyword searches. One finally led him to page 111 of the book Claremont (Images of America), which detailed the city’s unique stone curbs typically referred to as “elephant toes.” The curb pictured in the tome indeed resembled the one visible in the Maude credits. Owen furthered, “I pretty much knew right away that I was on the right track. I did a “Maude Claremont” Google search and quickly found this page. The answer presented itself at the very bottom of the replies section, thanks to a Mark Z. Mystery solved. P.S. If you blog about this place — and you should blog about this place — I’d mention those ‘elephant toes’! I think that’s such an elephant-astic description of that curb style.” Your wish is my command, Owen!

I was dismayed to find the place undergoing a renovation when I showed up to stalk it a few weeks later.

At least the fabulous elephant toes were still intact and visible, though!

Despite the extensive scaffolding, certain elements of the house are still recognizable. At the time Maude was filmed, the front porch was screened in, giving it quite a different look, but as you can see, the fluted pillars, rock wall flanking the front steps, and peak-roofed portico all remain the same.

Thankfully, Google Street View provides us with some pre-renovation imagery of the home that shows some additional matching detail.

As Owen noted, “The crumbling portion at the corner of the driveway that is visible in the opening credits is still like that! Love it!”

The residence appears throughout both the opening and closing credits of Maude, which ran on CBS from 1972 through 1978.

The American Foursquare-style property was originally designed in 1905 for land developer and Claremont pioneer C.C. Johnson. It is one of the city’s oldest houses. In real life, it boasts 5 bedrooms, 3 baths, 2,920 square feet, coved ceilings, crown moldings, a tiled wood-burning fireplace, a formal dining room, and 3 lots totaling 0.48 acres. The pad last sold in March 2018 for $1.2 million. A real estate listing from the time even mentions the home’s use on Maude!

Only the exterior of the property appeared on the series. The interior of the Findlay home was just a set, built first at CBS Television City and then at Metromedia Square, the two studios where Maude was lensed.

1011 Harvard Ave, Claremont, CA 91711

As you can see in the MLS images as compared to the screen captures above and below, the set does not resemble the inside of the actual house in the slightest. Maude’s home boasted a much more open floor plan than that of the Claremont residence. You can check out some more interior images of 1011 Harvard here.

1011 Harvard Ave, Claremont, CA 91711

Per the plans submitted to the Claremont Architectural Commission, only the rear of the home is being significantly altered during the renovation. Here’s hoping that when all is said and done the front is left largely intact for stalkers to enjoy for years to come.

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Brad for asking me to find this location and to my friend Owen for tracking it down! Smile

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 Findlay house from Maude is located at 1011 Harvard Avenue North in Claremont.

June 8, 2020June 7, 2020

Alicia Kent’s House from “Bosch”

I’m just gonna say it – Bosch is straight-up real estate porn! There isn’t one residence that has been featured on the long-running Amazon police procedural that I wouldn’t want to live in! The striking cantilevered cliffside abode belonging to Harry (Titus Welliver), Chief Irving’s (Lance Reddick) charming Spanish dwelling, and, in the latest season, the sleek mid-century modern home of (spoiler!) victim-turned-suspect Alicia Kent (Lynn Collins). They are all perfection! One look at the latter’s massive wooden double front doors, tiered front steps, and cement siding, and I was smitten! So I set out to find it.

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A “2647” address number was visible on the curb in front of the house in the Season 6 premiere, titled “The Overlook.”

And thanks to a view of the backyard shown in episode 4, “Part of the Deal,” I knew the pad was situated in the Hollywood Hills just below the Hollywood Sign. So I started searching 2600 blocks in that area and quickly came across Alicia’s home at 2641 Lake Hollywood Drive. As it turns out, the last digit of the address was changed from a “1 “to a “7” for the Bosch shoot. Nice try, producers, but you have to wake up pretty early in the morning to fool me!

In real life, the striking property boasts 5 bedrooms, 4 baths, 2,997 square feet of living space, an entrance atrium, floor-to-ceiling glass sliders, a media room, a fireplace, a maid’s room with a bath, a 0.43-acre lot, a large pool, a spa, and sweeping views of the Lake Hollywood Reservoir, Palos Verdes and downtown L.A. You can check out some MLS photos of the interior from when it last sold in 2010 here.

Per building permits, both the interior and exterior of the 1965 pad were extensively remodeled in 2012.

The property’s original façade is pictured in the top Google Street View image below.

Though dated, the place was pretty spectacular even then!

But today it is downright stunning!

Harry initially visits the house in “The Overlook” while performing an emergency welfare check on Alicia, the wife of a medical physicist whose murdered body has just been discovered.

The pad goes on to appear in several additional episodes of Season 6.

Bosch captured the home and all of its mid-century glory beautifully.

The place’s actual interior is also utilized on the show. As you can see in the images below as compared to the 2010 MLS photos, the inside looks quite a bit different today than it did when the property last sold.

The incredible backyard is featured on Bosch, as well, and is, in my opinion, the showpiece of the entire house.

On a stalking side-note – My friend Shaun recently started a filming locations/pop culture landmarks/historical sites blog named All About Los Angeles. I’ve long been a fan of his Instagram account and his photogenic way of showcasing the city’s many highlights. Thanks to his unique interests, he has even managed to introduce me to countless new-to-me spots, which is saying a lot considering I’ve been at this crazy hobby a long time. You can check out his new site here!

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: Alicia Kent’s house from Bosch is located at 2641 Lake Hollywood Drive in the Hollywood Hills.

November 20, 2019May 2, 2020

Bradley’s Mom’s House from “The Morning Show”

The Morning Show really threw me for a loop, location-wise (as I mentioned in this recent post). Set in NYC, I got through the entire first episode of the new Apple TV+ series thinking it was shot in the Big Apple, as well. I did have a couple moments of hesitation in that belief while watching, one when an overhead shot of the dining room of downtown L.A.’s famous Cicada restaurant was shown and the other when Bradley Jackson (Reese Witherspoon) pulled up to the home belonging to her mother, Sandy (Brett Butler). The foliage, setback, and architecture of the latter had a definite San Gabriel Valley feel to it. In fact, it looked ripped right off a leafy Pasadena-area street! I even turned to the Grim Cheaper and said, “Huh, they must have Craftsman-style houses like that in the suburbs of NYC, too!” D’oh! As soon as I realized while watching episode 2 that The Morning Show was actually lensed in L.A., my first order of business was to find Sandy’s house. Thankfully, it turned out to be a fairly easy endeavor despite some trickery by the production team.

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In the series’ premiere episode, titled “In the Dark Night of the Soul It’s Always 3:30 in the Morning,” Bradley heads to her mother’s supposed West Virginia home to confront her brother about his early release from rehab. A fake address number of 1624 was added to the residence’s mailbox for the scene and, while it thwarted my identification attempts for a bit, ultimately I prevailed. You have to get up pretty early in the morning to fool me! Winking smile

Due to the home’s seeming ruralness, I figured it was most likely located just north of Pasadena in the unincorporated community of Altadena and began my search there. Thanks to its unique orientation – it sits perpendicular to the road with its side facing the street, which is apparent when Bradley parks in the scene – I pinpointed it rather quickly via aerial views as 2874 Santa Anita Avenue, about a mile northwest of the Walsh house from Beverly Hills, 90210.

In real life, the handsome 2-story Craftsman, built in 1915, boasts 5 bedrooms, 3 baths, 1,673 square feet, and a detached garage.

Not to mention one grand front porch!

It is on the front porch that Hannah Shoenfeld (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) convinces Bradley to go to New York to be interviewed by Alex Levy (Jennifer Aniston) in the episode.

Set back from the road, the home sits on a large corner 0.41-acre lot.

Though the front of the property is visible from the street, not much else of it is thanks to the massive amount of foliage surrounding it.

I am 99.9% certain that the inside of the pad also appeared in “In the Dark Night of the Soul It’s Always 3:30 in the Morning,” but, unfortunately, I could not find any interior photos with which to verify that.

It is also from the house that Hal (Joe Tippett) calls Bradley to inquire about her new morning show gig in episode 3, titled “Chaos is the New Cocaine.”

And it is from there that Sandy is interviewed during Bradley’s hosting debut in episode 4 “That Woman.”

The residence is actually no stranger to the small screen.

Thanks to IMDB, I learned that it also portrayed the Harvest, Alabama-area dwelling where David Rossi (Joe Mantegna) and his team investigated a double murder and kidnapping in the Season 4 episode of Criminal Minds titled “Bloodline,” which aired in 2009.

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: Sandy Jackson’s house from The Morning Show is located at 2874 Santa Anita Avenue in Altadena.

November 18, 2019November 17, 2019

“The Unicorn” House

The Fall 2019 television season is chock full of fabulous new series! The Grim Cheaper says the deluge brings him right back to the Must-See TV days of the ‘90s. A few of our favorites include The Morning Show (as mentioned here), All Rise, Bluff City Law, Prodigal Son, and The Unicorn. The latter, based on a true story, centers around widower Wade Felton (Walton Goggins) and his attempts to move on with life a year after his wife’s death via a little help from his friends. While it doesn’t sound like it’d be a great premise for a comedy, I find myself laughing throughout each episode. And bonus – though set in Raleigh, North Carolina, it’s shot in Los Angeles! So I, of course, set out to find the home where Wade lives with his two young daughters, Grace (Ruby Jay) and Natalie (Makenzie Moss), on the show. (Pardon the selfie above – I stalked the house while by myself on a quick visit to L.A. last week.)

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I had seen the trailer for The Unicorn months before the series’ debut in September and immediately recognized the residence that appeared in it as the Partridge House, located at Warner Bros. Ranch in Burbank. The picturesque Colonial, a practical set situated on the backlot’s Blondie Street, has appeared in countless productions over the years, as I detailed in this 2016 post for Mike the Fanboy. So named thanks to its regular appearance as the Partridge residence on The Partridge Family, it also portrayed the Thatcher home on Life Goes On and the Kravitz pad on Bewitched and is currently where MeeMaw (Annie Potts) lives on Young Sheldon.

By the time the pilot of The Unicorn aired, though, a different property had been selected to portray the home of the Felton family. When I first laid eyes on the Craftsman-style pad, I was convinced it was located in Pasadena, but searching around Crown City and its environs yielded nothing that matched.

Episode 2, titled “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do,” thankfully provided additional clarity via an address number of “138” visible on the house next door to the Felton’s. That number gibed more with the Hancock Park area than Pasadena, so I started searching there and found the Felton home within minutes at 132 Wilton Drive in Windsor Square.

The exterior of the handsome home appears regularly in establishing shots of the Felton residence, as well as in some on location filming of outdoor scenes.

Only the exterior of the property is featured on The Unicorn. The interior of the Felton pad – described by Wade’s friend Delia (Michaela Watkins) as being “like the Disney Channel version of Grey Gardens” in the first episode – is just a set that exists inside of a soundstage at Paramount Studios where the series is lensed. It looks nothing like the actual inside of 132 Wilton Drive, which you can check out some photos of here. Interiors for the pilot episode (pictured below), though, were shot at the Partridge House at Warner Ranch, which, as I mentioned above, is a practical set meaning that both the inside and outside of it can be utilized for filming.

I’ve been fortunate enough to tour the Partridge House a few times, which is where the photos above and below come from. Unfortunately, my angles are just slightly off from what was shown in The Unicorn’s pilot.

The inside of the Partridge House is basically just an empty shell that productions can come in and change or outfit as needed. As you can see below, the kitchen area does not even have cabinets when not being used for a shoot.

Again, my angle is a bit off, but pictured below is the kitchen nook that served as the Felton’s dining area in the pilot. You can just see the Partridge House’s living room fireplace through the opening in the wall in my photo.

A full view of the living room is below. The kitchen stands just behind the “built-in bookcases,” which were removed for The Unicorn pilot in order to make the space more open.

Though I did not snap a photo of the living room area looking out toward the staircase, I did capture the stairs themselves during my visits to the Partridge House.

The Partridge House also boasts a functional backyard and The Unicorn producers made use of it in the pilot.

The alcove where Wade keeps his freezer – a focal point of the episode – is an actual element of the house, situated between the rear door and the detached garage, as you can see below.

When The Unicorn got picked up, filming moved to Paramount Studios, where the Felton residence interior set was then built from scratch. It looks virtually nothing like the interior from the pilot, though Wade’s freezer alcove was a holdover. You can just see it outside of the door to the left of the stairs in the lower screen capture below.

While I initially assumed that the show made use of 132 Wilton Drive’s backyard for all episodes beyond the pilot, that turns out to be incorrect. The Feltons’ backyard is actually part of the Paramount set, situated inside of a soundstage on the lot.

In real life, the Wilton Drive house, which was built in 1917, boasts 4 bedrooms, 2 baths, 2,200 square feet of living space, and a 0.13-acre lot.

The property last sold in 2011 and looked quite different at the time, with a rounded Colonial-inspired portico attached to its façade, as you can see below. In recent years, the new owners widened the steps leading down to the sidewalk, swapped out the lower-level windows and front door, and removed the portico, adding a large porch in its place. The result is a home that is much more Craftsman in style.

Not to mention much more photogenic! As such, it is no surprise that it wound up onscreen as the residence of the Felton family.

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 Felton home from The Unicorn is located at 132 Wilton Drive in Windsor Square.

March 27, 2019April 2, 2019

The “Young Sheldon” House

I don’t think I’ve ever hated a television character more than Samantha Ruland on Scandal (though Beverly Hills, 90210’s Kelly Taylor ranks a close second). Played by Zoe Perry, Samantha represented pure evil – there was literally not a single redeeming thing about her. It got to the point that even hearing her voice had a Pavlov’s-dog-like effect on me, making me want to throw my television out a window each time she spoke. So when I learned that Perry had been cast as Mary Cooper, mother to Sheldon Cooper (Iain Armitage), on Young Sheldon, I did not have high hopes for liking the CBS series, which premiered in September 2017. I still gave it a shot, though, and was pleasantly surprised. While not as good as its parent show, The Big Bang Theory, it is still enjoyable and, amazingly, I have even come to like Zoe! So I was thrilled when fellow stalker Julie posted a comment on my site recently supplying the address of the supposed Medford, Texas home of the Cooper family on the series (spoiler – it’s actually in Valley Village) with the request that I stalk it. Your wish is my command, Julie!

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In real life, the Cooper house, which was built in 1949, boasts 2 bedrooms, 1.5 baths, 1,335 square feet of living space, and a 0.18-acre plot of land. It was sold early last year for a whopping $827,000, though surprisingly there was no mention of its current onscreen role in any of the listing information I came across online.

The new owners appear to be doing some remodeling, but hopefully they are only making changes to the interior and not the exterior. You can check out what the inside of the residence looked like in the 2018 listing photos here.

The ranch-style property is used regularly on Young Sheldon in both establishing shots . . .

. . . and for occasional on location filming.

The pad looks much the same onscreen as it does in person aside from a few minor changes including the removal of the stop sign out front and the red paint on the curb (I believe the latter is taken away digitally), and the addition of the family’s tire swing.

Though Julie surmised that the inside of the home had been utilized in the Young Sheldon pilot, upon close inspection it appears that the Cooper house interior has been a set from the get-go. As you can see in the screen capture from the inaugural episode as compared to the MLS photo below, though similar, the two interiors are not one and the same. Page 30 of Assistant Art Director Andrew Sloane’s online portfolio also notes that the inside of the Cooper residence was built for the pilot. As regular readers of my site know, sets for television shows are typically not constructed until a series is picked up by a network, which is why the vast majority of pilots are filmed on location inside of actual residences. In this case, though, Young Sheldon was a spin-off of the highly popular The Big Bang Theory and therefore came with a built-in audience, so CBS ordered a run of episodes before the pilot had even been shot. As such, the show’s sets were assembled from the outset.

Though the general layout and look of the Cooper house is the same as the Valley Village pad, there are many differences.

The set, which exists on Stage 6 at Warner Bros. Studio in Burbank, is much more dated than the actual house, which makes sense being that Young Sheldon takes place in the late 80s/early 90s.

It does certainly echo the real life home, though.

Even the bathroom (visible in the background of the screen capture below) largely resembles that of the house.

You can check out a video tour of the set given by Raegan Revord, who plays Sheldon’s twin sister, Missy, here.

The picturesque Colonial home belonging to Meemaw (Annie Potts) on the series, said to be located across the street from the Cooper residence, can actually be found about four miles away.

It is none other than the Partridge House on Blondie Street at Warner Bros. Ranch (albeit with a small front porch added). You can read a bit about the property’s history and its other onscreen appearances in this 2016 post I wrote for the Mike the Fanboy website.

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

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Julie for telling me about this location and asking me to stalk it!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Cooper family home from Young Sheldon is located at 5501 Morella Avenue in Valley Village.

December 12, 2018June 14, 2019

“The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” Christmas House

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas – well, as much as it can in SoCal – which means it’s time to start posting holiday locales! I’m kicking off the season with the pad that portrayed the Banks family residence in the Season 1 Yuletide-themed episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air titled “Deck the Halls.” Now you’re probably thinking, ‘But you’ve blogged about the Fresh Prince house already, years ago.’ And you’d be correct. Way back in 2008, I did write about the massive Colonial manse that regularly appeared as the home of Will (Will Smith), Carlton (Alfonso Ribeiro), Uncle Philip (James Avery), Aunt Viv (Janet Hubert), Hilary (Karyn Parsons), and Ashley (Tatyana Ali) on the popular series. (Spoiler! It’s actually in Brentwood, not Bel-Air!) But . . .

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. . . as a fellow stalker named Ashley informed me in August 2013, for whatever reason a different home was utilized as the family’s pad in the “Deck the Halls” episode. Thinking it would make for a great Christmas post, I set out to find the place, which turned into quite a long and tedious affair. I started by scouring the Colonial section of every online location database, then spent hours poring over Google Aerial Views looking for any large properties with a rounded portico – all to no avail. I once even thought I saw the house pop up in the Instagram story of a friend who was attending a holiday soiree at a Colonial-style dwelling. I quickly figured out the name of the party’s hosts and searched property records to find their address, only to discover upon getting a better look at the residence via Street View that it was not, in fact, the right place. Oh, the (admittedly crazy) lengths I go to to bring filming location information to the masses! It was not until this past February (almost five years after my search began!) that an unexpected source came to my rescue.

That month, upon the (very emphatic) recommendation of Miss Pinky Lovejoy, of the Thinking Pink blog, the Grim Cheaper and I started watching Barely Famous, VH1’s fake reality series about the lives of sisters Erin and Sara Foster, daughters of music producer David Foster (who just so happens to be the man largely credited with discovering Michael Bublé – but I digress). While viewing the pilot episode, I just about screamed as an establishing shot of Erin and Sara’s home came into view. In an instant, I knew it was the pad from “Deck the Halls.” Thank you, Pinky!

Barely Famous not only provided much more expansive views of the residence, but an address placard was also visible in several episodes. Though I couldn’t quite make out the number displayed, it was apparent that said number was five digits, which meant the property was located somewhere in the Valley. Up until that point, I had only been searching the Hollywood/Hancock Park areas and their environs, near Hollywood Center Studios (now Sunset Las Palmas Studios) where The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air’s first season was lensed, as sitcom location managers typically don’t veer far from the lot when choosing locales. Oops!

Knowing the place was actually in the San Fernando Valley gave me a whole new lease on the hunt! Armed with the information, I headed over to Google Maps and found the Banks’ Christmas house/Barely Famous residence fairly quickly at 10436 Kling Street in Toluca Lake.

The 2-story, 17-room American Colonial Revival-style estate is definitely fit for a king – or the Banks family, as the case may be – with 5 bedrooms, 4 baths, 3,898 square feet of living space, a master suite with a massive walk-in closet, multiple fireplaces and built-in bookcases, a 0.42-acre yard, a pool, a spa, a putting green (!), a detached 3-car garage, and a gazebo. You can see some interior photos of the pad, which was originally built in 1941, here.

In the “Deck the Halls” episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, which aired in 1990, Will laments the fact that Aunt Viv and Uncle Phil are less than traditional when it comes to decorating for Christmas. So Viv gives him free reign to adorn their mansion – and soon comes to regret that decision. The Toluca Lake pad was shown a few times in establishing shots of the Banks’ home in the episode.

The property does bear a strong resemblance to the Brentwood estate typically used on the show, as you can see below, but not so much so that eagle-eyed viewers wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.

All of the interiors from the “Deck the Halls” episode were, of course, shot on a studio set.

The property was only utilized for establishing shots on Barely Famous, as well.

All interiors were filmed elsewhere – I believe at an actual house and not on a set, though I am unsure of exactly where.

The pad is also where Juanita Solis (Madison De La Garza) attends a princess-themed birthday party in the Season 5 episode of Desperate Housewives titled “You’re Gonna Love Tomorrow,” which aired in 2008.

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

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Ashley for asking me to track down this locale and to Pinky Lovejoy, from the Thinking Pink blog, for providing the key that finally helped me find it.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Banks mansion from the “Deck the Halls” episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, aka Sara and Erin’s house from Barely Famous, is located at 10436 Kling Street in Toluca Lake. The estate regularly used as the Banks home on Fresh Prince can be found at 251 North Bristol Avenue in Brentwood.

August 17, 2018August 16, 2018

Hope and Michael’s House from “thirtysomething”

I think Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick are two of the greatest television producers ever to walk the face of the earth. Oddly though, while I am obsessed with both My So-Called Life and Relativity (as evidenced here and here), I was never a fan of thirtysomething, one of their earliest forays into the small screen. The 1987 series’ failure to resonate was likely due to its focus on parenting – the subject matter was just a little too adult being that I was ten when the show debuted. I did stalk the large Craftsman home belonging to Hope Murdoch Steadman (Mel Harris) and her husband, Michael (Ken Olin), on it upon first moving to Southern California almost twenty years ago, though. I never got around to blogging about the place, but while recently listening to My So-Called Podcast (a My So-Called Life re-cap show hosted by the creators of fave podcast True Crime Obsessed), I started thinking about the property and figured not only was it high time I dedicate a post to it, but to also give the series it starred on another chance.

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Open up any Pinterest board of famous houses and the Steadman residence will inevitably be pictured. The pad is also documented in pretty much every single Hollywood tour book ever written, is talked about regularly in the comments sections of filming location blogs (especially over at Hooked on Houses), and will definitely go down in the annals of history as one of the best-loved TV homes. Oddly though, the exterior of the dwelling was rarely featured on thirtysomething. I scanned through dozens upon dozens of episodes to make screen captures for this post and only came across a few instances of it being shown. I guess Herskovitz and Zwick weren’t big fans of establishing shots in their early days.

Said to be at 1700 Bryn Mawr Avenue in Philadelphia on the series, the home can actually be found at 1710 Bushnell Avenue in South Pasadena.

As chronicled in a 1997 People magazine article titled “That’s My House!”, homeowners Dennis and Donna Potts were first approached about the use of their residence on the series via a location scout who knocked on their door in the summer of 1987. The couple wound up being paid $1,500 for each day of filming that occurred on the premises during the show’s four-year run. I would consider that a heck of lot of money today, but back in the late ‘80s? Dang! According to People, production designer Brandy Alexander keyed in on the property because of its age, saying “We wanted an older house so we could have the characters do renovations.”

The home was utilized solely for exterior sequences on thirtysomething. The interior of the Steadman residence was nothing more than a set (a roofless one, at that) built inside of a soundstage at CBS Studio Center (then called CBS/MTM Studios) in Studio City. Per a 1996 New York Times article, the set was based upon the real life interior of two different Pasadena-area Craftsmen – one of which, I came to discover, is definitely the Bushnell house. As you can see in this image of the property’s built-in buffet, it matches what was shown onscreen perfectly.

The dining room is also a pretty direct match, as you can see in this photo as compared to the screen capture below. You can check out some additional images of the actual inside of the Bushnell house here.

Interestingly, audiences considered the set a bit too upper-crust for the middle-class Steadmans, which proved to be an ongoing source of consternation for thirtysomething producers. As author Elisabeth Bumiller states in the New York Times article from 1996, “Even though the creators let the set deteriorate, making the house look dirtier and more lived in, few people bought it.” Herskovitz extrapolates, “No matter what we did, people thought it was a rich, expensive house.” Considering the property’s wood detailing and plethora of built-ins and the fact that Zillow currently pegs its value at $2.23 million, I’m going to have to side with the fans on this one.

In real life, the 1902 pad boasts 4 bedrooms, 2 baths, 2,760 square feet, a fireplace, stained glass windows, original detailing, a detached garage, a covered patio, 0.17 acres of land, and a garden.

The same property also appeared in the 1990 comedy Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael as the residence of Denton (Jeff Daniels) and Barbara Webb (Joan McMurtrey).

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: Hope and Michael Steadman’s house from thirtysomething is located at 1710 Bushnell Avenue in South Pasadena. Elliot (Timothy Busfield) and Nancy Weston’s (Patricia Wettig) pad from the series is one street over at 1700 Fletcher Avenue. Countless other famous homes are located on Bushnell. The Hopper residence from Ghost Dad is at 1621 Bushnell. Joan’s dwelling from the movie is next door at 1615. The Lambda Epsilon Omega fraternity house from Old School is at 1803 Bushnell. The property located at 1727 Bushnell played both Scott Howard’s (Michael J. Fox) house in Teen Wolf and Lorraine Baines’ (Lea Thompson) 1955 home in Back to the Future. George McFly’s (Crispin Glover) 1955 residence from Back to the Future can be found at 1711 Bushnell, while Biff Tannen’s (Thomas F. Wilson) from Back to the Future Part II is at 1809.

December 4, 2017December 4, 2017

“The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet” House

My knowledge of the Golden Age of Television doesn’t extend much beyond I Love Lucy, which I watched regularly with my grandma as a child. I am so out of the loop when it comes to entertainment of that era, in fact, that up until recently coming across a blurb in my friend E.J.’s book Hollywood Death and Scandal Sites, I did not realize that The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet was based upon the exploits of the real life Nelson family – patriarch Ozzie, his wife, Harriet, and their two sons, David and Ricky – all of whom played semi-fictionalized versions of themselves on the ABC series, which aired from 1952 through 1966. (The show has the distinction of being the longest-running live action comedy in TV history, though It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia will tie that record when its fourteenth season finishes airing in 2019.) Not only that, but, as I also learned from E.J.’s book, the family’s actual Hollywood Hills West home was used in establishing shots of the clan’s residence in each week’s opening credits! I had never before heard of such a case of art imitating life via a location like that and was immediately intrigued. So I added the dwelling to my To-Stalk List and headed on over to see it in person shortly thereafter.

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Ozzie and Harriet purchased their picturesque 1916 Cape Cod Colonial-style pad, designed by Frank T. Kegley and H. Scott Gerity, in November 1941, shortly after relocating from New Jersey to California upon landing stints on Red Skelton’s radio show The Raleigh Cigarette Program. The couple parlayed that gig into another radio show, this one based upon their lives, titled The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, which premiered on October 8th, 1944. While the duo played themselves on the weekly series, child actors were hired to perform as their two young sons. It was not until the show’s fifth season in 1949 that David and Ricky began portraying themselves. The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet proved immensely popular with radio audiences and in February 1952, a 75-minute feature based upon it titled Here Come the Nelsons was produced to serve as a sort of test pilot for a television show. The movie was a hit and the family’s TV series began airing in October of that same year. The rest, as they say, is history.

In a rather unprecedented move, Ozzie and Harriet decided to utilize their own home in the opening credits of the series’ early seasons, which you can take a look at here. Miraculously, despite the passage of more than six decades, the pad still looks very much the same today as it did when the show originally debuted.

Sadly though, a large fence was built around the exterior of the property at some point which largely blocks it from view.

During my research for this post, I came across quite a few media reports (including this 2007 Los Angeles Times article) stating that a replica of the exterior of the Nelsons’ home was built by ABC for the series and that no filming of the real life residence ever actually took place. I am 99.9% certain, though, that the Hollywood Hills West house did, indeed, appear in the early seasons’ credits and that the re-creation was built at some point after the initial seasons aired and was utilized for both the various openings from the series’ later years (one of those openings is pictured below) . . .

. . . as well as in episodes which required the outside of the family’s house to be shown, such as Season 8’s “The Nelsons Decide to Move” (pictured below).

The interior of the Nelsons’ home on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet was, of course, just a studio-built set, but, from everything I’ve read, it was very closely modeled after the actual inside of the Hollywood Hills West house.

Though the television series turned the entire family into icons, the Nelsons remained living in their rather approachable digs until 1975 when Ozzie passed away. Harriet did hold on to the property through 1981, but resided mainly at a modest weekend home in Laguna Beach the couple had owned for years. (That pad has since been torn down, unfortunately.)

The residence’s Tinseltown connections doesn’t end there, though. The property also served as the home of another famous small-screen family – that of Ari Gold (Jeremy Piven) and his clan during the first few seasons of Entourage.

The real life interior of the dwelling was also utilized on the popular HBO series. (That interior has since been drastically remodeled, but more on that in a bit. You can see what it looked like pre-remodel here and here.)

Amazingly, the pad has yet another small-screen connection! In 2013, it was put on the market (for a cool $3,295,000) and the listing agent was none other than The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills’ Mauricio Umansky. The property, which boasts 5 bedrooms (all of them en-suite), 6 baths, 5,283 square feet of living space, a 0.49-acre lot, a pool complete with a pool house, a 3-car garage, a whopping 3 fireplaces, a media room, a chef’s kitchen, and a master suite with his and her walk-in closets, was purchased by a development company that same year for $3,025,000. The group completely renovated the place with interior designer Kishani Perera (you can see photos of what it looks like currently here and here) and sold it in October 2014 for $5,250,000 to Law & Order: SVU’s Christopher Meloni. He still owns it today. Talk about a house with a Hollywood pedigree!

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 Nelson family home (both in real life and from The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet) is located at 1822 Camino Palmero Street in Hollywood Hills West.