West Hollywood apartment buildings

May 15, 2013May 15, 2013

Trudi’s Apartment Building from “L.A. Story”

Last month, when I published my post on the location of the iconic talking freeway sign from L.A. Story, a friend named David, whom I met in an acting class years ago, sent me a Facebook message letting me know that the unique, modern-style apartment building where Trudi (Marilu Henner) lived in the flick was located at 884 Palm Avenue in West Hollywood. David also informed me that the building still looked pretty much exactly the same as it did 22 years ago when filming took place, which, of course, had me salivating. So I ran right out to stalk it shortly after visiting the house belonging to Harris K. Telemacher (Steve Martin) in the 1991 comedy, which I blogged about yesterday.

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Amazingly enough, despite the building’s unique look, I could find virtually no information whatsoever about its history online. The only fact that I was able to glean – thanks to views of the property on the Historic Aerials website – was that it was constructed sometime between the years 1980 and 1987.

When L.A. Story was filmed in 1991, the site was known as the Palm Square Apartments. The 29-unit, upscale building, which is currently named NMS Apartments @ West Hollywood, features a pool, a Jacuzzi, an executive gym, and gourmet kitchens and hardwood flooring in each suite.

The building is most well-known for the unusual artwork located at its entrance.

The piece, which is named “Stairway Sculpture”, was created by artist Paul Betouliere in 1987 as part of the West Hollywood Urban Arts Collection.

NMS Apartments @ West Hollywood popped up twice in L.A. Story – first in the scene in which Harris not-so-patiently waits for Trudi to finish her “abstract busyness”, including putting on “thirty-minute lips”, before heading to a brunch.

The Stair Sculpture was shown prominently in that scene.

NMS Apartments @ West Hollywood next appears in the scene in which Trudi informs Harris about the three-year affair she has been having with his agent, Frank Swan (Kevin Pollak). After breaking up with her over her indiscretions, an elated Harris dances down the front steps of the building.

So I, of course, just had to imitate him while I was there. Winking smile

Thanks to a real estate listing that I found on Zillow, I can confirm that the actual interior of one of the NMS units was used as the interior of Trudi’s apartment in L.A. Story. As you can see below, the setup of the kitchen in the listing matches up to what appeared onscreen.

As does the curving staircase. Even the railing is still the same – albeit a different color, thank God! Winking smile

You can find me on Facebook here and on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And be sure to check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic.

Big THANK YOU to David for telling me about this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Trudi’s apartment building from L.A. Story is located at 884 Palm Avenue in West Hollywood.

April 13, 2012April 12, 2012

The Harper House from “Scream 3”

Last Thursday afternoon, before grabbing lunch at Pinches Tacos from The Hills which I blogged about on Tuesday, Mike, from MovieShotsLA, took me by a famous apartment complex in West Hollywood named the Harper House. Because the Spanish Baroque-style building was featured in Scream 3 (as well as countless other productions), Mike thought that I might be interested in blogging about it during my annual Haunted Hollywood month this upcoming October (and yes, I am already gathering locations for that!). After seeing the place in person, though, I became just a wee bit intrigued by it and started doing research immediately. So I figured that now was as good a time as any to do a post on the historic building.

The Harper House, which was built in 1929, was designed by Leland Bryant, the very same architect who also gave us the art deco-style Sunset Tower Hotel, one of my very favorite places in all of Los Angeles that I blogged about way back in September of 2008. The complex was originally constructed to provide housing for show business and studio professionals and such luminaries as silent film actress Norma Talmadge and silent film actor Gilbert Roland once called the place home. The four-story, 21-unit, L-shaped building, as well as the entire block that it is located on which is known as the North Harper Avenue Historic District, was added to the National Register of Historic Places on June 28, 1996.

Mike had actually just recently scouted the Harper House a few weeks before taking me there and was nice enough to share the above photographs that he snapped of the building’s elevated central courtyard area, which is absolutely idyllic. It is no wonder that so many movies have been filmed on the premises!

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The Harper House pops up twice in Scream 3. It first shows up at the very beginning of the movie as the building where Cotton Weary (Liev Schreiber) and his girlfriend, Christine Hamilton (Gossip Girl’s Kelly Rutherford), are murdered.

I am fairly certain that the real life interior of one of the apartments was also used in that scene. As you can see in these CurbedLA pictures of the inside of an actual Harper House apartment, the fireplace, doors, windows, and stairway railings all match up to what appeared onscreen.

The exterior of the Harper House next pops up in the scene in which Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) watches the news about Cotton’s murder on TV.

In the 1988 flick Cop, the Harper House was where Lloyd Hopkins (James Woods) investigated a murder at the very beginning of the movie.

The real life interior of one of the apartments was also used in the filming of that scene.

In 1989’s The Big Picture (which is a FABULOUS movie, by the way), the interior and the exterior of the Harper House stood in for the building where up-and-coming film director Nick Chapman (cutie Kevin Bacon – sigh!) moved after breaking up with his longtime girlfriend, Susan Rawlings (Emily Longstreth).

In 1991’s The Last Boy Scout, the Harper House is where murdered stripper Cory (Halle Berry) lived and where Joe Hallenbeck (Bruce Willis) and Jimmy Dix (Damon Wayans) go to investigate her killing.

Oddly enough, though, the interior of Cory’s apartment and her balcony were a different location entirely. As you can see in the above screen shots, the windows of Cory’s bedroom and the railings of her balcony do not match up with the actual building.

In the pilot episode of Murder One, which was titled “Chapter One”, the Harper House was where Jessica Costello (Collette White) was killed. Solving her case became the central storyline of the series’ first season, but the exterior of the building was actually only shown once, in the brief scene in which Ted Hoffman (Daniel Benzali) watched a news story about the murder while at home with his wife, Annie (Patricia Clarkson), and his daughter, Elizabeth (Vanessa Zima).

The real life interior of one of the units also appeared in that episode in the flash back scene in which Richard Cross (Stanley Tucci) recounts how he discovered the body.

And brief glimpses of the Harper House were also shown each week during the Murder One opening credits.

The Harper House was also featured in 1978’s The Big Fix, 1982’s Partners, and as the building where Alice Pieszecki (Leisha Hailey) lived on the Showtime series The L Word, but, unfortunately, I could not find copies of any of those productions with which to make screen captures for this post.

Big THANK YOU to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for telling me about this location, for the photographs of the building’s courtyard and for making the Cop screen captures which appear in this post! Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Harper House, from Scream 3, is located at 1334/1336 North Harper Avenue in West Hollywood. Pink Taco, aka the former site of the Roxbury, is located just up the street at 8225 West Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood. You can visit the official Pink Taco website here. And Pinches Tacos, from the “It’s On Bitch” episode of The Hills, is located just around the corner at 8200 West Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood. You can visit the official Pinches Taco website here.

November 9, 2011October 16, 2011

Charlie’ Apartment Building from “Gossip Girl”

Well, it certainly looks as if it is shaping up to be Gossip Girl week here at IAMNOTASTALKER.com because here I am yet again with yet another location from the fabulous teen drama series – this time the apartment building where con-artist Charlie Rhodes (aka Kaylee DeFer) lived with her chef boyfriend, Max (aka Brian J. Smith), in the Season 5 episode titled “Beauty and the Feast”. This location was once again found by fellow stalker Geoff, from the 90210Locations website who has somehow managed to track down all of the Los-Angeles-area locales featured in the two episodes of the series that were filmed on the West Coast this past August. Thank you, Geoff! So, I, of course, dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out to West Hollywood to stalk the place, shortly before grabbing cocktails at Eveleigh Restaurant a few weeks back.

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The exterior of Charlie’s apartment building is featured three times in the “Beauty and the Feast” episode of Gossip Girl. It first pops up in the scene in which Charlie and Max discuss the difficulties of trying to make it as an actor in Los Angeles.

It next shows up in the scene in which Serena van der Woodsen (aka Blake Lively) waits outside for Charlie in order to confront her about her bounced rental deposit check.

And finally it appears in the scene in which Serena arrives via limo to pick Charlie up to take her to their grandmother’s house in Montecito.

No filming took place inside of any of the actual apartment units, though. The interior of Charlie and Max’s dwelling was, I am fairly certain, just a set that was most likely built on a soundstage at Silvercup Studios in New York where the series is filmed, as was the case with Diana Payne’s bedroom which I talked about in yesterday’s post. You can check out some photographs of what the interior of the real-life apartments actually look like here and here. As you can see, they do not match up at all to what appeared onscreen and do not have nearly the same amount of charm that Charlie and Max’s apartment had.

I really had to laugh when Serena tried to convince Charlie to move out of the apartment building by saying, “But you can’t live here!” LOL While the outside of the place is a bit bland, I actually thought the interior of Charlie’s pad was kind of cute and not nearly the dump that Serena made it out to be. And I absolutely fell in love with her little kitchen alcove, which is pictured above. As my friend Pinky Lovejoy, from the Thinking Pink blog, would say, “It’s adorbs!” But then again, I did not grow up on the Upper East Side, so what do I know? Winking smile

In real life, the exterior of Charlie’s apartment building looks pretty much exactly the same as it did on Gossip Girl. I am totally kicking myself, though, as I SO wished I had leaned against the entryway to pose for a picture as Serena had done in the episode! I do not know WHY I did not think of it at the time. UGH! Ah well, I will just have to drag the GC back there sometime to re-stalk the place.

Big THANK YOU to Geoff, from the 90210Locations website, for finding this location! Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Charlie’s apartment building, from the “Beauty and the Feast” episode of Gossip Girl, is located at 1009-1015 North Croft Avenue in West Hollywood.

October 24, 2011September 29, 2017

Villa Primavera – The “In a Lonely Place” Apartment Building

While doing research on the Double Indemnity house, which I blogged about a couple of weeks ago, I came across some information about Villa Primavera – a courtyard-style apartment building that was featured in the 1950 film noir classic In a Lonely Place. I immediately became intrigued with the West-Hollywood-area building due to an anecdote that was listed on the movie’s IMDB trivia page. Apparently, In a Lonely Place director Nicholas Ray had lived at Villa Primavera upon first moving to Southern California in the 1940s and was so enamored with the place that he decided to build a replica of the entire complex, courtyard and all, on a soundstage at Columbia Studios (now Sunset-Gower Studios) in Hollywood to be used as Humphrey Bogart’s bachelor pad in the flick. At some point during the shoot, Nicholas walked in on his wife, Gloria Grahame, who also starred in the movie, in bed with his 13-year-old son from a previous marriage. Nicholas immediately moved out of the home he shared with Gloria and into the Villa Primavera apartment set, where he ended up living – in what was essentially an exact replica of his former apartment – until filming wrapped. Because the building was so inextricably linked with both In a Lonely Place and the behind-the-scenes turmoil that marked the shoot, I was absolutely dying to see the place in person and dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out to do just that a few days later.

Villa Primavera was constructed by legendary husband and wife architecture team Arthur and Nina Zwebell in 1923 and was the couple’s very first Spanish-Revival-style building. The charming complex features red-tile roofs, white adobe walls, and a central courtyard with a large tiled fountain, an outdoor fireplace, lush foliage, and wandering brick pathways. The individual apartment units boast corner fireplaces, exposed wood ceilings, and tile floors. The Zwebells loved the design so much that they eventually moved into the Hacienda-like property for a time and legend has it that James Dean and Katharine Hepburn also once called the place home. Sadly though, as you can see above, the ten-unit complex is gated and not much of it can be viewed from the street.

I did manage to catch a brief glimpse of the interior courtyard and central fountain through the front gate, though, and they both looked absolutely beautiful.

Amazingly enough, when the GC and I first arrived at Villa Primavera, this little guy ran up to greet us.

And I just about died when I realized that he was a polydactyl cat, aka a “Hemingway cat”, aka a cat with more than five toes on one or more of its paws! I had watched a television special on the unusual felines a little over ten years ago and have been absolutely obsessed with them ever since. I cannot tell you how incredibly fitting it was that we ran into a so-called “Hemingway cat” while visiting an apartment building with such a storied Old Hollywood history! Love it!

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In In a Lonely Place, Villa Primavera stood in for the supposed-Beverly-Hills-area “Beverly Patio” apartments where frustrated Hollywood screenwriter Dixon Steele (aka Humphrey Bogart) and his beautiful new neighbor, Laurel Gray (aka Gloria Grahame), lived.

The location was such an integral part of the murder mystery – which was fabulous by the way – that it led Roger Ebert to write in an August 13th, 2009 review, “The courtyard of the Hollywood building occupied by Humphrey Bogart in In a Lonely Place is one of the most evocative spaces I’ve seen in a movie. Small apartments are lined up around a Spanish-style courtyard with a fountain. Each flat is occupied by a single person. If you look across from your window, you can see into the life of your neighbor.” It is thanks to that interior view of neighboring units that Laurel is able to provide an alibi for Dixon after he is accused of murdering a young woman whom he had been seen with the night before. And while the courtyard area that is pictured above;

and the interior of both Dixon and Laurel’s individual apartments were recreations built at Columbia Studios, some actual filming did take place on location at Villa Primavera.

In the beginning of In a Lonely Place, Dixon returns home from the Beverly Hills police station after being questioned about the murdered woman and walks across the lawn of the real life apartment building. As you can see, a fake sign reading “Beverly Patio Apartments” was installed for that scene.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Villa Primavera, the In a Lonely Place apartment building, is located at 1300-1308 North Harper Avenue in West Hollywood.