The Burr House from “The Twilight Zone”

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After what amounted to a nearly two-year stalking hiatus, Mike, from MovieShotsLA, is finally back!  Let me reverse a bit and explain.  Over the past couple of years, Mike has been busy working in production (yep, he actually toils away on movie sets now!), which hasn’t left much time for tracking down locations.  I was having some trouble with a locale this past week, though, and on a whim decided to see if he could lend a hand.  Mike was game and, lo and behold, the two of us were on the hunt once again, just like old times!  The story of our quest, which is a bit of a long one, is detailed below.

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While doing some research on Say Anything . . . locations back in January, I came across a 1990 Los Angeles Times article which made mention of an old Victorian house in Monrovia that had been featured in an episode of The Twilight Zone.  Perfect for my Haunted Hollywood postings, right?  Though the exact episode was not named, the column stated that parakeets were flown through the residence during the shoot, so I assumed it would not be hard to figure out.  I did a little digging, pinpointed the address of the property, headed right on over to Monrovia to stalk it shortly thereafter, and did not think much more about it until sitting down to write this post.  As it turned out, even armed with such specific information regarding parakeets, identifying the episode proved arduous.  My first course of action was to Google “The Twilight Zone episode” and “parakeets,” which yielded nothing.  Then I literally spent hours scanning through old TTZ episodes and reading recaps, but came up with nada.  Enter Mike.  Literally five minutes after I texted him and told him of my quest in tracking down the “parakeet episode,” he texted me back with an answer.  As he discovered, the episode was Season 1’s “Still Life,” which originally aired on January 3rd, 1986.  I felt like a complete blonde when he told me his search process, which involved inputting the sentence “Which episode of The Twilight Zone filmed in Monrovia, CA?”  The third result to be kicked back was a synopsis of “Still Life” on The New Twilight Zone website.  Actor Robert Morris had provided the site with a behind-the-scenes photograph of the shoot which was posted with the caption, “ . . . the episode was shot in Monrovia, California in this beautiful home.”  D’oh!

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In real life, the dwelling is known as the Burr House and it was originally built in 1893 for Frank W. Burr and his family.  The 18-room Queen Anne-style residence was constructed entirely of redwood at a cost of $2,800.  At the time of its inception, it did not have heating, electricity, or even indoor bathrooms.  Yep, the Burrs had to use an outhouse!  That outhouse is still currently located on the property.  The Burr family owned the site until 1975, which explains how so much of the home’s original detailing remains intact today, 123 years after it was built.

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In 1979, Mary Ann and Ramon Otero purchased the residence and began an extensive renovation and restoration process.  Today, the property boasts 5 bedrooms, 4,700 square feet of living space, several bathrooms (there are 4.5 to be exact), a pool, extensive gardens, a detached garage, and a half-acre plot of land.

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In “Still Life,” the Burr House belongs to photographer Daniel Arnold (Robert Carradine), who, after visiting an estate sale, brings home an antique trunk which he later discovers has a secret compartment containing a camera that was last used during a 1913 National Geographic Society expedition to the Amazon River Basin.

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As Daniel soon learns, during the expedition the camera captured the souls of several Curucai Indian tribesmen whom he inadvertently brings back to life.

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The Burr House was used extensively in the episode.

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The home’s actual interior was also featured throughout.

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You can watch “Still Life” by clicking below.

As was noted in the Los Angeles Times (as well as in this Monrovia Patch article), the Burr House has appeared in countless movies, TV shows, and commercials over the years.  In 1988, it was used as the Boon residence in a scene in Sweet Hearts Dance.  Because most filming of the Boon home took place at a similar looking Victorian dwelling located at 113 Eden Street in Hyde Park, Vermont, I am guessing that the Burr House segment might have been part of a reshoot.

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Mike Donnelly (Chris Farley) voted – and got stuck in the voting booth – outside of the property’s garage in the 1996 comedy Black Sheep.

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You can see the garage in the photos below.

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

Big THANK YOU to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for his help in tracking down the correct The Twilight Zone episode!

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Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: The Burr house, from the “Still Life” episode of The Twilight Zone, is located at 150 North Myrtle Avenue in Monrovia.

The Mills View House from “Picket Fences”

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Well, my fellow stalkers, it is finally that time of year again, the month I look forward to all year long – October!  With it comes fall leaves, cooler temperatures, and my favorite holiday of them all, Halloween.  And you know what that means – I will once again be devoting the entire month of blog posts to locations having to do with Haunted Hollywood!  First up is the Mills View house, a Monrovia-area property that I learned about way back in March from a journalist named Toni Momberger who interviewed me for an Inland Valley Daily Bulletin newspaper article she was writing about famous movie homes.  Toni told me that she had toured the huge, Victorian-style abode as part of her research for the article and she was shocked to discover that I had never before heard of the place.  As fate would have it, the house had been featured prominently in not one, but two spooky productions over the years, so I figured it would be the perfect start to my Haunted Hollywood theme and I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out to stalk it a few weeks back.

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The 5-bedroom, 2-bath, 3,140-square-foot Mills View house, which was built in 1887 by architects Luther Reed Blair and Uriah Zimmerman, was originally situated on a 5-acre plot of land on what was then the corner of Banana Avenue (now Hillcrest Boulevard) and Melrose Avenue.  The Eastlake-Victorian-style home was commissioned by William N. Monroe, the founder of Monrovia, as a wedding gift for his son, Milton Monroe, and his new bride, Mary Nevada.  Construction on the property began in May of 1887, shortly after Milton and his wife were married, and was completed a mere seven months later.  Sadly, the Monroes divorced a short time after tying the knot and ended up selling their wedding home to Colonel John H. Mills and his wife, Elizabeth Cook Mills, in 1893.  The Mills dubbed their new residence “Mills View” because on a clear day the island of Catalina was supposedly visible from one of the third floor windows.  Unfortunately, Colonel Mills passed away only three months after moving into the home and it went through several ownership changes after Elizabeth subsequently died in 1905.  Mills View, which boasts numerous stained glass windows, a third floor attic, hardwood flooring throughout, and five fireplaces with original tilework, became a Monrovia City Landmark on June 4, 1996.

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According to this Monrovia Patch article, Mills View has appeared in over 20 productions since 1980 alone. Sadly though, I know of only two – both of which, as I mentioned above, fit the thriller genre.  And the property definitely does give off a spooky vibe in person – I think primarily due to its gargantuan size – so it is not very hard to see why location scouts have flocked to it over the years.

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In the Season 1 Halloween-themed episode of fave show Picket Fences titled “Remembering Rosemary”, Mills View was where Rosemary Bauer committed suicide ten years prior by jumping out of a third-floor window, and where Sheriff Jimmy Brock (aka Tom Skerritt) and his deputies Maxine Stewart (aka Lauren Holly) and Kenny Lacos (aka Costas Mandylor) returned to investigate the case after deciding to re-open it a few days before Halloween.

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I am fairly certain that the real life interior of the house, which you can see some photographs of here, was used in the episode.

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Mills View was also the primary location used in the 1986 horror flick House.  In the movie, it was the haunted property that mystery-writer Roger Cobb (aka William Katt) inherited from his Aunt Elizabeth (aka Susan French).  According to the House production notes, for the onsite filming, which lasted two weeks, production designer Gregg Fonseca repainted the exterior of the property and  added Victorian gingerbread detailing, a few spires, a wrought-iron fence, and a sidewalk.  At the rear of the residence, he covered up the home’s real life clapboard siding with a fake brick edifice and added some much-needed landscaping.

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No filming took place inside of the actual home, though.  For all of the interior scenes, a replica of the house, which included two full stories, a living room, a den, a staircase, and three upstairs bedrooms, was built on a soundstage at Ren Mar Studios in Hollywood.

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And I am fairly certain that the pool shown in the movie was either a fake built on the property solely for the filming or that a second location was used, as Mills View does not currently appear to have a pool.

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Two very lucky British House fans were given a personalized tour of Mills View last year and wrote a great blog post about it which you can check out here.

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On a Halloween side note – I was finally able to dig up a photograph of me dressed up as Agent Dana Scully for Halloween one year during college, which I had mentioned in the blog post I wrote about meeting David Duchovny back in June.  The only picture I could find, though, was not a very good one as my eyes are closed in it.  Ah well.  That is my good friend Alex, who was dressed up a Parrothead, posing with me.

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While going through boxes at my parents’ new house looking for the Dana Scully picture, I also stumbled upon my Fox Mulder doll, which I could NOT have been more excited about!  I am so going to have to stalk DD again and get him to sign the doll for me.  How incredibly cool would that be??

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: Mills View, from the movie House and the “Remembering Rosemary” episode of Picket Fences, is located at 329 Melrose Avenue in Monrovia.

Grandma Bunny’s House from “You Again”

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As I mentioned in last Friday’s post, the hunt for Aunt Mitsy’s (aka Kathy Bates’) house from Rumor Has It actually began when fellow stalker Geoff, from the 90210Locations website, asked for some help in tracking down the abode where Grandma Bunny (aka Betty White) lived in the 2010 flick You Again.  I immediately got fellow stalkers Chas, from the It’sFilmedThere website, and Owen on the case, but even with their master stalking skills, for whatever reason, this particular location mystery took us quite a bit of time to solve.  The one major clue that we had to go on was that the house appeared to be situated on some sort of slanted lot and was not perfectly parallel to the street.  And while several crew members had informed Chas that the dwelling was located in Altadena, he had remembered seeing some slanted-type houses in the Monrovia area while he was searching for the Georgia Rule abode way back in March of this year, so he decided to begin his hunt there.  Thank god that guy has a good memory!  Winking smile

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As you can see in the above screen capture, an address number of “240” was also visible in the background of flick, so Chas got started searching all of the 200 blocks on every “slanted” street he could find in the Monrovia area and, amazingly enough, it was not long before he spotted the right house!  So I, of course, ran right out to stalk the place just a few days later.

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Grandma Bunny’s Victorian-style abode is actually only featured once in You Again and very briefly at that.  It pops up in the scene in which Marni (aka Kristen Bell), her brother Will (aka James Wolk) and his new fiance/Marni’s high school nemesis Joanna (aka Odette Annable) arrive to pick up Grandma Bunny for a wedding dance rehearsal.  It is there that, while helping Bunny put in her false teeth, Marni accidentally gets denture adhesive all over her hands and then winds up getting her hands stuck in her hair, causing Grandma Bunny to chop a large chunk of it off. (It pretty much goes without saying that You Again was not that great of a movie. Winking smile)

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I am very happy to report that Grandma Bunny’s house, which was originally built in 1887 (the same year that Monrovia was incorporated) and is one of the city’s oldest surviving Victorians, is just as adorable in person as it appeared to be onscreen.  At the time of its construction, there were only 164 homes in Monrovia and a scant 2,000 residents.  According to the city’s Historic Preservation Group’s website, the Colonial Revival-style front porch is not original, but was added to the property in the early 1900’s.  In real life, the charming little abode boasts 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, and measures 1,482 square feet, although its façade makes it appear to be much larger.  Ironically enough, in a bit of foreshadowing the home’s actual owner described the dwelling as “everyone’s idealized version of grandma’s house” in a Los Angeles Times article that was published in January 1989.  I guess the You Again filmmakers felt the exact same way when they scouted the property.  Smile

Big THANK YOU to Chas, from the It’sFilmedThere website, for finding this location.  And you can check out Geoff’s, from the 90210Locations website, extensive You Again filming locations page here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: Grandma Bunny’s house from You Again is located at 240 West Hillcrest Boulevard in Monrovia.