I spent all day yesterday running errands and taking care of some household stuff so I was, unfortunately, not able to write a new post for today. But I will be back tomorrow with a whole new location! 
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Tom Bergin’s Tavern from “Duplex”
Two weeks ago, while doing research on Molly Malone’s (which I blogged about here), I came across a website for another historic Irish pub also located on South Fairfax Avenue in L.A.’s Fairfax District. The bar is named Tom Bergin’s Old Horseshoe and Thoroughbred Club (or just simply Tom Bergin’s Tavern) and not only was it originally founded over seven decades ago (y’all know how much this stalker absolutely loves herself some historic restaurants), but the place is also a filming location AND a big-time celebrity hangout! So I, of course, immediately added the address to my To-Stalk list and could hardly wait to drag the Grim Cheaper right on over there, which I finally did last Saturday evening. And, amazingly enough, this was one location that he did not mind being dragged to.
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Tom Bergin’s Tavern was first founded on February 12th, 1936 by a 46-year-old lawyer named – you guessed it – Tom Bergin. The bar was originally named the Old Horseshoe Tavern and Thoroughbred Club in honor of a Boston-area watering hole owned by Bergin’s uncle. And while the establishment first stood at 6110 Wilshire Boulevard, when the lease on that location expired in 1949, Bergin built a new eatery, named Tom Bergin’s Horseshoe Tavern, just down the street at 840 South Fairfax Avenue. Employees and customers alike carried the pub’s legendary horseshoe-shaped bar three blocks south to its new home. And amazingly enough, not only is Tom Bergin’s still located in that very same spot on Fairfax – over six decades later! – but that very same horseshoe-shaped bar is still in use to this day!
In 1973, Bergin sold the tavern to T.K. Vodrey and Mike Mandekic. And while Mandekic ended up leaving to pursue other endeavors in 1998, Vodrey stayed on for more than another decade. In 1999, Vodrey changed the pub’s name once again, this time to Tom Bergin’s Tavern, as it is still known to this day. When Vodrey retired in 2011, Warner Ebbink thankfully stepped in, purchased the site and set about restoring it. Ebbink, who owns Little Dom’s (one of my favorite L.A. restaurants, which I blogged about here) is no stranger to historic eateries, having also purchased and restored both the 101 Coffee Shop (another fave that I blogged about here) and Dominick’s (a 1940s-era establishment where Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack used to hang out, which I have sadly yet to stalk). Ebbink immediately set about giving Tom Bergin’s a much-needed 7-month face-lift, of which he said in a May 2012 The Hollywood Reporter article, “It’s more restoration than renovation, keeping with what was true of Bergin’s. We just replaced and repaired what needed to be replaced and repaired, then distressed them so people won’t even know.” Um, LOVE IT!
Ebbink truly is a man after my own heart. In an April 2012 Los Angeles Times article about Tom Bergin’s, he is quoted as saying, “L.A. doesn’t respect its history. Back when this was built, you could build places with themes. The architecture alone was worth saving, and it has this super-rich history. We knew it was a special place.”
And I am very happy to report that Tom Bergin’s Tavern did indeed look old and weathered, but I mean that in the best way possible. The place just oozes history and walking through its front door is like stepping back in time.
Tom Bergin’s even serves champagne in old-school, Marilyn Monroe-style coupes! Love it, love it, love it!
The pub’s now legendary tradition of honoring regular customers by displaying a green shamrock with their name on the ceiling was started in 1950 by longtime manager Jake Ohlsen. It was not long before the bar’s entire ceiling was covered in the shamrocks and today there are over 7,000 on display.
During the renovation, each shamrock was removed, cleaned and then re-hung. Love it!
Tom Bergin’s Tavern has countless ties to Hollywood. Just a few of the celebrities who have been spotted there over the years include Kiefer Sutherland, Tommy Lasorda, Julia Roberts, Ronald Reagan, Cary Grant, George Wendt, John Ratzenberger, Lee Majors, Glenn Ford, Bing Crosby, Pat O’Brien (the actor, not the The Insider host), and, my personal favorite, Luke Perry. Cary Grant’s favorite booth is pictured below and his shamrock is currently in the process of being framed to hang nearby.
Longtime regular Kiefer Sutherland’s shamrock is pictured below. When the two were a couple, Julia Roberts’ shamrock hung right next to Kiefer’s, but he had it removed shortly following their break-up.
Legend has it that producers Glen and Les Charles got the inspiration for their long-running hit television series Cheers while at Tom Bergin’s and that the character of “Coach” was based on Bergin’s longtime head bartender Chris Doyle.
In 2003’s Duplex, Tom Bergin’s Tavern stood in for the supposed Brooklyn-area bar where Alex Rose (Ben Stiller) holed up during a rainy day in order to finish writing his book, and where his wife, Nancy Kendricks (Drew Barrymore), later met him for a drink. In the movie, both the exterior . . .
. . . and the interior were used.
In the Season 2 episode of Top Chef Masters titled “Pub Food”, contestants were challenged to create an upscale version of a traditional pub dish at Tom Bergin’s. In the episode, both the exterior . . .
. . . and the interior of Tom’s were used.
A photo shoot for House of Pain’s eponymous first album was also held at Tom Bergin’s in 1992 (pictured below). And while episodes of 24 and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia were also supposedly lensed at the bar, I was unable to verify that or figure out which episodes specifically.
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.
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 
Stalk It: Tom Bergin’s Tavern is located at 840 South Fairfax Avenue in the Fairfax District of Los Angeles. You can visit the restaurant’s official website here.
The McGinley Residence – Where Robert F. Kennedy Is Said to Have Spent His Last Night
Another Lafayette Square-area home that was mentioned in the “Affairs of Estate” article that I blogged about yesterday was the property located at 1821 South Victoria Avenue, where, according to author Ann Herold, Robert F. Kennedy spent the last night of his life. And while that assertion would be extremely hard to prove (and some sites speculate that the senator’s last night was spent either at the Sportsmen’s Lodge in Studio City or the Malibu home of director John Frankenheimer), because the Victoria Avenue residence belonged to RFK’s godfather’s son at the time, it is an entirely likely possibility. So after stopping by the incorrectly identified Leave It to Beaver house this past Saturday afternoon, I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on over to stalk the place.
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The residence that originally stood at 1821 South Victoria Avenue was constructed in the Prairie School-style by Emmett G. Martin in 1924. In 1939, McGinley Oil Company-heir Charles E. McGinley commissioned Paul R. Williams – the legendary architect who also designed the now-defunct Perino’s restaurant (which I blogged about here) and the Just Married mansion (which I blogged about here) – to remodel and enlarge the dwelling. What ended up happening, though, according to the Paul R. Williams Project website, was a complete refab after which only the original home’s foundation remained. McGinley also purchased two neighboring plots of land during that time, essentially tripling the size of his lot. Williams’ remodel, which became known as the McGinley residence, transformed the house into a Classical Regency Revival-style manse and enlarged the property to 6 bedrooms, 4 baths, and 5,952 square feet. At the time, the place looked quite a bit different than it does today. While the façade remains exactly the same shape as it did during the 1939 re-construction, it appears as though the abode was originally painted white, as you can see here. I prefer the unpainted red brick, myself, as it reminds me of the Home Alone house – one of my favorite movie houses of all time.
As I mentioned above, Charles McGinley’s father, oil tycoon Walter T. McGinley, was Robert F. Kennedy’s godfather. And although Walter passed away in 1932, more than thirty years before RFK was assassinated, it is entirely plausible that Kennedy and his family spent some time with Charles while in the area that week – including the night of June 3rd, 1968, Kennedy’s last full night alive. Late the next evening, June 4th, it was announced that the senator had won the California Primary and he gave a short speech in the Embassy Room of the Ambassador Hotel just after midnight on June 5th. Following the speech, Kennedy and his entourage exited through the Ambassador’s kitchen area, where he was shot four times by Sirhan Sirhan. RFK was first taken to Central Receiving Hospital and then Good Samaritan Hospital where he passed away at 1:44 a.m. on June 6th, almost 26 hours after he had been shot. You can check out a more detailed chronology of his assassination on the fabulous FindADeath website here.
Ironically enough, while we were stalking the McGinley residence, the owners’ son-in-law happened to come outside and we got to chatting. When I mentioned the recent Los Angeles Magazine article and his in-laws’ home’s connection to Robert F. Kennedy, the gentleman was absolutely bowled over with excitement and ran right inside to let them know the news. I so love it when homeowners are not only nice about me taking photographs of their property, but are also excited about to learn new things about their residence’s history. 
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.
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: The McGinley residence, where Robert F. Kennedy is reported to have spent his last night, is located at 1821 South Victoria Avenue in the Lafayette Square neighborhood of Los Angeles.
The Incorrectly Identified “Leave It to Beaver” House
Last week, the latest issue of Los Angeles Magazine arrived in my mailbox and I, of course, tore the thing right open and devoured it in one sitting, as I do pretty much every month. Particularly fascinating was a feature titled “Affairs of Estate” about three unique communities in L.A., one of which – Lafayette Square – piqued my interest. In a sidebar, author Ann Herold listed four of the neighborhood’s most famous houses, most notably “the dormered two-story at 1727 Buckingham” which, she stated, was “home base for the Cleavers in the Leave It to Beaver pilot”. Well, believe you me, I was extremely excited upon learning this news and not only added the address to my To-Stalk list, but dragged the Grim Cheaper right on over there this past weekend. As I discovered after I returned home, though, the article’s information was actually incorrect and, from what I can tell, the Lafayette Square property has no connection whatsoever to the iconic 1957 television series.
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Lafayette Square, which, prior to the “Affairs of Estate” article, I had been unaware of, is comprised of 236 stately homes situated on ten small blocks and was originally developed by banker George L. Crenshaw in 1913. The community was named in honor of the Marquis de Lafayette, the famed military officer who served under George Washington during the Revolutionary War. Several of Los Angeles’ most-prominent citizens have lived in the upscale neighborhood, where the average home measures 3,600 square feet, including industrialist Norton Simon, boxer Joe Lewis and ill-fated actor Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle. And while, as you can see below, portions of the place do indeed resemble a studio backlot, the area was not actually the site of the filming of the pilot episode of Leave It to Beaver.
Leave It to Beaver actually had two pilots. The first, titled “It’s a Small World”, aired on April 23rd, 1957 as a segment of the anthology show Heinz Studio 57, but was never shown as a part of the actual Leave It to Beaver series. “It’s a Small World” was aired once again in October 2007 during TV Land’s 50th anniversary celebration of LITB and was also released in 2005 on the Leave It to Beaver: The Complete First Season DVD set. The house featured as the Cleaver residence in that pilot is pictured below and, as you can see, it bears no resemblance to the property located at 1727 Buckingham Road, which is also pictured below. After doing a little digging online, I discovered (thanks to the RetroWeb website) that the LITB pilot house was actually a façade located on the Republic Studios (now CBS Studio Center) backlot. (You can see an aerial photograph of the façade if you scroll down to the “Flashback to the Cleavers’ Original ‘Neighborhood’” section of the RetroWeb post.)
No establishing shot of the Cleaver residence was shown in Leave It to Beaver’s actual pilot, which aired on October 4th, 1957 and was titled “Beaver Gets ‘Spelled’”. Interestingly enough, though, that episode was not intended to be the pilot, but was filmed as the third in the series. The intended pilot, titled “Captain Jack”, was held up by the censor’s office due to the fact that there was a scene featuring a toilet tank. How taboo! 
“Captain Jack” did eventually pass the censor’s office and wound up airing as the second episode of Season 1 on October 11th, 1957. In it (and all subsequent Season 1 and 2 episodes), the house below, which was said to be located at 485 Maple Drive in the fictional city of Mayfield, served as the Cleaver residence. According to The Studio Tour website (which provides a fabulous history of the Cleaver home), this property was also just a façade that was once located on the Republic Studios backlot. As you can see, though, it, too, bears no resemblance to the Buckingham Road house.
In between Seasons 2 and 3, filming of Leave It to Beaver moved from Republic Studios to Universal Studios and the Cleaver family, in turn, moved into a new house – the house pictured below, which was (and still is) a façade located on the Universal Studios backlot. On the series, the new residence was purported to be located at 211 Pine Street in Mayfield. And while some have speculated that the façade (which was originally constructed for the filming of the 1955 Humphrey Bogart thriller The Desperate Hours) was modeled after the real life Buckingham Road house, being that the resemblance between the two is rather fleeting, I doubt that to be the case. How the Lafayette Square home came to be connected to Leave It to Beaver is anyone’s guess, but the rumors apparently date all the way back to 1991. And in case anyone is wondering if the Buckingham Road home might possibly have been used in the subsequent Still the Beaver made-for-television movie, The New Leave It to Beaver TV series or the 1997 Leave It to Beaver movie, according to The Studio Tour website, all three productions used facades at Universal Studios.
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.
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 
Stalk It: The incorrectly identified Leave It To Beaver house is located at 1727 Buckingham Road in the Lafayette Square section of Los Angeles.
The LAPD/FBI Headquarters from “The Fast and the Furious”
One location that I am asked about constantly is the mid-century modern-style, circular-shaped home that served as the LAPD/FBI undercover headquarters in the 2001 flick The Fast and the Furious. And while fellow stalker Gary, of the Seeing Stars website, had briefly written about the Beverly Hills property a couple of years ago after learning that it had, sadly, been torn down (despite the best efforts of the Los Angeles Conservancy Modern Committee), since I get asked about it frequently and since it was such an incredibly unique residence, I figured the place was most-definitely worthy of a blog post.
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In The Fast and the Furious, the circular home, which was said to have been confiscated by the LAPD, popped up quite frequently. The areas shown include the central courtyard and pool;
the front entrance . . .
. . . and the interior. As you can see, the place was pretty darn spectacular and extraordinary. My mind is absolutely boggled over the fact that someone would want to tear it down!
The same house was also featured in 2000’s Hanging Up as the residence where Lou Mozell (Walter Matthau) lived. In the movie, the property is referred to as being on Angelo Drive, which was its actual former location. Quite a lot of the house appeared in the flick, including the front exterior;
the interior;
and the pool and courtyard, which were shown in both a dilapidated . . .
. . . and normal state.
I absolutely love Meg Ryan’s hair cut in Hanging Up, by the way. So adorable! I might just have to get mine cut that way, too! But I digress.
In The Fast and the Furious, Sgt. Tanner (Ted Levine) says of the circular abode, “You know, Eddie Fisher built this house for Elizabeth Taylor in the ‘50s.” That anecdote is actually untrue, though. According to the Estately website, in real life, the home, which was designed by architect David Fowler for his mother, was built in 1963 and boasted 4 bedrooms, 6 baths, 5,444 square feet, and over six acres of land with unparalleled 180-degree views of the city. After the residence was sold in 2000 for $2.8 million, the entire thing was bulldozed to the ground in order to make room for a new – and absolutely gargantuan – mansion (which you can see below in an aerial view that I got from a 2012 Wall Street Journal video).
According to fave website Curbed LA, the new mansion, which belongs to Anthony Pritzker (heir to the Hyatt hotel fortune), boasts 53,000 total square feet (although the main house measures “only” 49,300 square feet), a two-level basement, a media library, a “hairdressing area” (whatever that is), a gym complete with changing rooms, an arts and crafts room, his-and-her offices, a floating pool, a game room, a two-lane bowling alley, an entertainment foyer with a bar, a detached guest house, and a rec room. The residence is, according to Property Shark, the second-largest house in all of Los Angeles. The only residence bigger? The Manor – aka the former Mapleton Drive home of Aaron and Candy Spelling.
Sadly though, as you can see below, other than the exterior gates, no part of the property is visible from the road.
I was able to track down the below historic aerial images of the house, though, on the Historic Aerials website. As you can see, the home was originally built in the shape of a perfect circle. So incredibly cool!
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.
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 
Stalk It: The house that was used as the LAPD/FBI headquarters in The Fast and the Furious was formerly located at 1261 Angelo Drive in Beverly Hills. A very different residence stands on that site today.
Molly Malone’s from “Patriot Games”
Way back in mid-June, while trying to track down the Irish pub that masquerades as Scully’s bar on fave show Parks and Recreation (a location that I still have, maddeningly, yet to find, by the way), I came across a website for a Fairfax District-area watering hole named Molly Malone’s. The website mentioned that the historic establishment had been featured in several movies over the years, including Patriot Games, Leaving Las Vegas and Life Without Dick. And even though I am not particularly a fan of any of the three flicks, I just about died of excitement upon reading the news and immediately added the place to my To-Stalk list. Why, oh why, do more bars and restaurants not post similar such information on their websites? It would make my job so much easier! 
And while I was not able to drag the Grim Cheaper out to stalk Molly’s until two Saturdays ago, I have to say that the place was most-definitely well worth the wait.
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Molly Malone’s, which is located at 575 South Fairfax Avenue, was originally founded sometime (I believe) during the 1960s. In 1970, the place was taken over by a Dublin-born homemaker named Angela Hanlon, who had come to Los Angeles via Baltimore with her entertainer husband. Finding herself homesick for her native land, Hanlon one day ventured in Molly’s and quickly became a regular. And although there are several differing reports as to how Hanlon came to own the watering hole, the story I like best, which was chronicled in a 1997 Los Angeles Times article, is that, on one very fateful day, Hanlon loaned Molly’s then-owner money and when he skipped town shortly thereafter, the place wound up in her hands. Molly Malone’s has been owned and operated by the Hanlon family ever since.
The space at 575 South Fairfax housed bars long before Molly Malone’s was ever founded, though. According to a 1995 Los Angeles Times article by Hillary Johnson, legend has it that the 575 Club, one of the many watering holes to precede Molly’s, was actually one of the first to be given an alcohol license after Prohibition.
Molly Malone’s dark walls are covered with over seventy original paintings – almost all of them renderings of the bar’s regular customers – created by legendary oil painter Neil Boyle, who was a loyal patron of the drinkery for decades until he passed away in 2006. Lorraine Devon Wilke writes in a 2011 Huffington Post article, “For an artist whose pieces command phenomenal fees, who was always in demand for murals and commissioned work, and whose work hangs in galleries and museums around the country, the prestige of showcasing such valuable art was undeniable to Molly’s. Some patrons came in simply to view Neil’s paintings. It was a draw. Literally.”
In the 1995 LA Times article that I mentioned above, author Hillary Johnson states, “A sign on the wall says, ‘Dublin, 40 km.’ Some would say it’s closer.” And I would have to agree with that sentiment. As soon as we walked through Molly Malone’s dark wooden front door, we were welcomed like old friends. And when I asked the bartender on duty about the various movies filmed on the premises, he came out from behind his post, grabbed me by the hand and proceeded to take me on a tour of the place. And he even introduced me to Molly’s former longtime manager, who just happened to be on site that day, to see if he could answer any more of my questions! Talk about hospitality! Love it!
Besides being a filming location, Molly Malone’s has also long been popular with the Hollywood set. According to the former manager that I spoke with, Lenny Kravitz, Daniel Day-Lewis, Liam Neeson, Mickey Rourke, and Ralph Fiennes have all been spotted there. The place is also a live music venue and boasts a large back room, complete with a stage, where many young musicians have gotten their start.
The band Flogging Molly not only cut their teeth at the bar, but named themselves in honor of it. Of the name, front-man Dave King said, “We used to play there every Monday night and we felt like we were flogging it to death, so we called the band Flogging Molly.” Love it!
In 1992’s Patriot Games, Molly Malone’s was the Irish pub where Jack Ryan (Harrison Ford) threatened to destroy Paddy O’Neil (Richard Harris) after O’Neil refused to tell him the whereabouts of Sean Miller (Sean Bean) and Kevin O’Donnell (Patrick Bergin).
While numerous websites state that either Boardner’s of Hollywood (which I blogged about here) or Cock ‘N Bull British Pub in Santa Monica was the bar featured in the opening scene of 1995’s Leaving Las Vegas, that information is actually incorrect. The bar in question was actually Molly Malone’s and it popped up twice in the flick, first in the scene in which Ben Sanderson (Nicolas Cage) rather aggressively purchases a random woman named Terri (Valeria Golino) a drink before inviting her home with him.
It next appeared in the scene in which the “L.A. Bartender” (Graham Beckel) urged Ben to stop drinking once and for all.
Molly Malone’s also popped up twice in 2002’s Life Without Dick. It first appeared in the scene in which hitman Daniel Gallagher (Harry Connick Jr.) asked his friend Rex (David Cross) to get rid of a gun. Both the exterior . . .
. . . and the interior were used in that scene.
Molly’s next popped up in the scene in which Daniel finally admitted to his new girlfriend, Colleen Gibson (my girl Sarah Jessica Parker), that he was a hitman.
The exterior of Molly’s also appeared in that scene, as well.
You can find me on Facebook here and on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And be sure to check out my latest post – about a nightmare experience at the DMV – on my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic.
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 
Stalk It: Molly Malone’s, from Patriot Games, is located at 575 South Fairfax Avenue in the Fairfax District of Los Angeles. The bar is a 21-and-over establishment, so, if you are going to stalk it, you will have to leave the kiddies at home. You can visit Molly Malone’s official website here.
Happy Labor Day!
I will be taking today off in honor of Labor Day (not Memorial Day as I originally posted – I always get those two holidays confused :)), but will be back tomorrow with a whole new location.
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 