December 2013 – Page 2 – IAMNOTASTALKER

December 9, 2013December 6, 2013

The Former KCET Studios from “L.A. Story”

While perusing through my extensive backlog of stalking photographs recently, I realized that there were a few L.A. Story locales that I had yet to blog about, one of which was the former site of KCET Studios in Los Feliz, where Harris K. Telemacher (Steve Martin) worked in the 1991 comedy. I had actually stalked the spot way back in May, but, for whatever reason, never got around to writing about it. So here goes.

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The 4.5-acre lot located at 4401 Sunset Boulevard in Los Feliz has been the site of a moviemaking facility just shy of one hundred years. The first studio to be established there was Lubin Manufacturing Company in 1912, which was founded by film producer Siegmund Lubin to create educational videos. After he sold the location in 1913, it changed hands numerous times and then was eventually purchased by an actor named Charles Ray in 1920. Ray built several red brick structures on the premises, most of which still stand to this day. He also constructed a cutting-edge soundstage with a glass-enclosed stage, glass roof, removable sides, a water tank, and extensive electrical equipment. Amazingly, that soundstage, known as Studio A, is still currently in use. When Charles Ray Productions went bankrupt in 1923, the locale again went through a succession of different owners including Monogram Pictures, Allied Artists, and ColorVision. In 1971, KCET purchased the facility for $800,000. The company remained there for the next 40 years.

The studio, which was named a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument in 1978, was acquired by the Church of Scientology to be used as one of their “production of religious and social betterment audiovisual properties” in April 2011.

In L.A. Story, KCET Studios stood in for the KYOY 14 news facilities. The exterior of the structure was shown in one of the movie’s opening scenes, in which Harris arrived at work to give his daily wacky weather report. In the scene, he drove through the studio’s east entrance, which is located near 1441 North Hoover Street.

I am fairly certain that the area where Harris parked his car in the scene is on the studio’s north side, near the intersection of Sunset Drive and North Commonwealth Avenue. I could not match the exact angle of the screen capture below being that the spot where Harris parked is located on the studio grounds, but I believe the street visible behind him is North Commonwealth Avenue.

And that the satellite pictured below is the one he parked next to.

The interior of one of the studio’s soundstages was also used as the KYOY 14 news set in the film.

Thanks to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, I learned that the exterior of the former KCET Studios was also featured as the City Emergency Hospital where Dr. Miles J. Bennell (Kevin McCarthy) was evaluated in the 1956 horror flick Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

I believe that the area used as the hospital entrance is the gate located near 4368 Sunset Drive, just east of where Harris parked his car in L.A. Story.

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The former KCET Studios, from L.A. Story, is located at 4401 Sunset Boulevard in Los Feliz. The entrance that Harris drove through in the flick can be found near 1441 North Hoover Street, in between Fountain Avenue and Sunset Drive. The area where he parked is located just south of the intersection of Sunset Drive and North Commonwealth Avenue. The City Emergency Hospital gate from Invasion of the Body Snatchers can be found near 4368 Sunset Drive, slightly east of where Harris parked his car in L.A. Story.

December 6, 2013December 15, 2013

Marilyn Monroe’s Childhood Home

One location that had been on my To-Stalk list for what seemed like ages was the Hawthorne-area home where my girl Miss Marilyn Monroe spent the first eight-and-a-half years of her life. Fellow stalker Lavonna had texted me the address years ago, but because I so rarely find myself in that neck of the woods, I was never able to make it out there. Until a couple of weeks ago, that is, when I realized that the residence was not too far from a hotel near LAX where the Grim Cheaper and I happened to be staying. So I dragged him right on over to stalk it (and to a Four Christmases locale that I will be writing about in late December).

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Gladys Mortensen was single, living in Hollywood and working as a film cutter at Consolidated Film Industries when she became pregnant with Marilyn in 1925. In December of that year, shortly before she was to give birth, she headed to Hawthorne in the hopes that she could move in with her mother, Della, for a brief time before and after the delivery. Della had other plans, though – she was about to sail to Borneo to make amends with her estranged husband, Charles Grainger, who was working in the oil fields there. Arrangements were instead made for Gladys to stay across the street at the home of Wayne and Ida Bolender, a deeply religious couple who served as foster parents to several children.

The Bolenders had moved into the 3-bedroom, 1-bath, 1,376-square-foot clapboard residence pictured below in 1919. At the time, the home, which was built in 1913, boasted 4 four acres of land (it now sits on a 0.20-acre parcel), where the family raised chickens and goats and grew vegetables. The property’s original address was 459 East Rhode Island Street, but during the re-districting of the area in the ‘30s and ‘40s it was changed to 4201 West 134th Street. You can see a photograph of the house from the time that the Bolenders owned it here. It is absolutely REMARKABLE how little of it has changed over the past ninety-plus years! You can also check out a picture of a newborn Marilyn in front of the dwelling here, in which a “459” address placard is visible in the background. So incredibly cool!

Gladys gave birth on June 1st, 1926 in the charity ward of Los Angeles General Hospital. She named her new daughter Norma Jeane Mortensen. After twelve days, the two returned to the Bolender’s. Gladys spent about three weeks at the Hawthorne house with Marilyn before heading back to Hollywood and her job at Consolidated in July. She left her baby behind, paying Wayne and Ida $5 a week to care for her. Contrary to what has been reported, Gladys did not abandon Marilyn entirely, but came to visit her on a weekly basis, often spending the night.

When Gladys’ son from her first marriage, Jackie, from whom she was estranged, died at the age of 14 in August 1933, she became compelled to regain custody of Norma Jeane. She took on a second job and by October 1934, had saved enough money to purchase a six-thousand-dollar house (at 6812 Arbol Drive in Hollywood – sadly, it’s no longer standing). That same month, eight-year-old Marilyn left the Bolenders and moved in with her mother. She didn’t stay long, though. Gladys had a nervous breakdown in late December and was committed to an asylum, at which point Norma Jeane was sent to live with one of her mother’s good friends, Grace McKee. She didn’t stay there long, though, either. By 1935, Gladys could no longer afford to care for Marilyn and sent her to the Los Angeles Orphan’s Home (now Hollygrove Home for Children, which I blogged about here). The girl who would become the world’s most famous blonde spent the remaining years of her childhood being bounced around from foster parents to family members. Then, at the tender age of 16, she married her first husband, James Dougherty, and moved into a guest house in Sherman Oaks, which also, unfortunately, no longer stands. You can read my blog post on that location here.

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Los Angeles magazine online. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Lavonna for telling me about this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Marilyn Monroe’s childhood home is located at 4201 West 134th Street in Hawthorne.

December 5, 2013December 4, 2013

Clifford Lambert’s Former House

A couple of months ago, my favorite desert radio personalities “Bulldog” Bill Feingold and Kevin Holmes interviewed Tyson Wrensch, co-author of Until Someone Gets Hurt. The book, which chronicles the disappearance and murder of 74-year-old Palm Springs retiree Clifford Lambert at the hands of five San Francisco-based grifters (27-year-old playboy Daniel Garcia, 26-year-old Nepalese expat Kaushal Niroula, 26-year-old bartender Miguel Bustamante, 69-year-old attorney David Replogle, and 30-year-old former Marine Craig McCarthy), sounded absolutely intriguing and I ordered it immediately. Sadly, it turned out to be a bit of a disappointing and rather difficult-to-follow read. The story did fascinate – and sicken – me, though, and as soon as I finished reading it, I ran right out to stalk Lambert’s former house. And while I do realize that this article would fit in best with my Haunted Hollywood postings, I wanted to write it while the details were still fresh in my mind. So here goes.

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The convoluted story of Lambert’s disappearance began in April 2008 when the former art dealer, who had just recently broken up with his much-younger partner of 14 years, met Daniel Garcia online. The two began a digital flirtation and it was not long before Cliff flew his new friend out to Palm Springs for the weekend. While there, Daniel pilfered some of Lambert’s credit cards and bank statements and, in a rather brazen maneuver, used one of those credit cards to upgrade his seat to First Class on his flight home to San Francisco. Cliff caught wind of it immediately and severed all ties to the con man. Or so he thought. A couple of weeks later, Garcia showed up on Lambert’s doorstep, flowers in hand, to apologize. The atonement was a ruse, though, because during the visit, Daniel stole several of Cliff’s paintings, jewelry, and silver pieces.

A few months later, Garcia, his good friend Kaushal Niroula, who was a seasoned con artist, and Niroula’s boyfriend, David Replogle, began making plans to kidnap Cliff, whereupon they would force him to sign over his estate. (Lambert’s flashy lifestyle and expensive toys had led Daniel to believe he was a multi-millionaire. He wasn’t. While well off, Cliff did not have anything close to the amount of money that Garcia suspected.) In early December 2008, Niroula, posing as a New York estate lawyer named Samuel Orin, called Lambert and told him that he was poised to receive a large inheritance. The two made arrangements to discuss the matter in person and Niroula headed out to the desert. He was accompanied by his good friend Miguel Bustamante and Bustamante’s roommate, Craig McCarthy, both of whom were being paid to execute the kidnapping. At some point during their stay, and for reasons not made entirely clear in the book, plans changed, though, and Kaushal decided that Lambert would have to be killed.

On December 4th, Kaushal and Cliff met for the first time at Dink’s Restaurant to “discuss the inheritance.” While the two were dining, McCarthy and Bustamante snuck into Lambert’s garage and hid. For whatever reason, though, when Cliff arrived home, they chickened out and fled. The following night, Kaushal and Lambert met once again, this time at Lambert’s house to “finalize paperwork.” At one point, Niroula excused himself and went to let Miguel and Craig into the home through a side door. The two then killed Cliff by stabbing him to death with kitchen knives while Kaushal watched. After cleaning up the mess, they put him into the back of his own Mercedes and drove to a remote area where they buried him in a shallow grave. His body has never been found.

Shortly thereafter, Replogle forged documents that gave one of Niroula’s acquaintances, a 67-year-old Palm Springs art dealer named Russell Manning, power of attorney over Clifford’s estate. (It is likely that Manning did not know about the murder. Replogle had told him that Lambert was in jail for raping Niroula and infecting him with HIV and was signing over his estate as reparation.) Once the group had their hands on Lambert’s bank accounts, they began to blow through his money. In less than a month, Niroula and Garcia spent over $215,000. They also attempted to put his house on the market. Thankfully, the real estate agent they contacted about the sale had an instinct that something was fishy and did some online digging. When he learned that Lambert had been reported missing, he called the police. Around that same time, Bustamante showed up at Cliff’s house with a moving van and five day laborers and began to clear the place out. One of the neighbors saw the group, immediately contacted the authorities and Bustamante was arrested. While in custody, he folded and confessed the whole sordid tale. Warrants were soon issued for his five accomplices and all were arrested shortly thereafter.

While McCarthy pled guilty to voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced to 25 years in prison and Manning pled guilty to fraud and was sentenced to 5 years, Replogle, Garcia, Bustamante, and Niroula all stood trial. They were each eventually found guilty and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Lambert’s former 4,301-square-foot house, which was originally built in 1954, was put on the market as a probate sale in May 2011 for $879,000. From what I can glean from property records, it sold fairly quickly for $737,000. It was then put on the market again the following year and sold in June 2012 for $1,030,000. According to the 2011 real estate listing, the Mid-century abode boasts four bedrooms, five baths, a 0.34-acre corner plot of land, a pool, a formal dining room, a large living room with an architectural fireplace and wood-beamed peaked ceilings, an office, a wet bar/ice cream bar, a guest wing, a large master bedroom with a double-sided fireplace, and, as you can see below, soaring views of the San Jacinto Mountains. You can check out some current interior photographs of the residence here, as well as some pictures from the time that Cliff owned it here.

According to a sign posted on the dwelling, the place is named Villa dei Leoni (which is the Italian translation of “House of Lions”). I am unsure if Lambert gave the pad its nickname or if it was done by a previous or subsequent owner.

I am also unsure if the gold L’s posted on the home’s front and side gate stand for Lambert or Leoni.

While I typically love true crime stories, this one was so completely twisted and perverse that it was almost repulsing. Reading about such morally-devoid people was quite tough for me to stomach. For those who are interested in additional information on the case (and it’s not pretty, let me tell you), you can check out a more in-depth write-up here and you can watch Part I of a KMIR 6 news special by clicking below.

Part II of that same special is below.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Clifford Lambert’s former house is located at 317 Camino Norte in the Old Las Palmas area of Palm Springs. Liberace’s third desert residence, which I blogged about here, is located just around the corner at 1441 North Kaweah Road.

December 3, 2013December 2, 2013

Mr. Hart’s Mansion from “Nine to Five”

One of my favorite movies growing up was the 1980 comedy Nine to Five. I would watch it on an almost daily basis (no joke!) and practically had the thing memorized. I can still belt out the theme song to this day, in fact. (I am guessing the majority of my fellow stalkers can, too.) A couple of weeks ago, while rummaging through our DVD collection, I happened to come across the flick and realized I had not seen it in years, so I immediately popped it in. I was a little afraid that it would not live up to my memories of it, so I was floored to find myself laughing throughout. The movie definitely stands the test of time. That garage-door-opener/hang-glider contraption was pure genius! Anyway, immediately after watching, I, of course, headed straight to my computer to do some location sleuthing and was floored to discover that the mansion belonging to Franklin M. Hart Jr. (Dabney Coleman) in the flick had already been identified and that, according to the photos I found, still looked pretty much exactly the same as it did in Nine to Five. So I ran right out to stalk it while I was in L.A. a couple of weeks ago.

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In Nine to Five, Doralee Rhodes (Dolly Parton), Violet Newstead (Lily Tomlin) and Judy Bernly (Jane Fonda) hold their “sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot” of a boss, Mr. Hart, hostage (by forcing him into a hang gliding harness strapped to a customized garage door opener) for three weeks at his stately Tudor mansion while they try to find proof that he has been embezzling money.

As you can see below, today the house has quite a bit of foliage blocking its visibility from the street and the western portion of it seems to have been remodeled a bit since Nine to Five was filmed. Otherwise though, little else of the dwelling has been altered in the ensuing years.

In real life, the 1932 mansion boasts seven bedrooms, ten baths (!!!), 9,738 square feet of living space, and a 1.76-acre lot.

I was unable to determine if the estate’s actual interior appeared in Nine to Five, as I, unfortunately, could not find any interior photographs of the place online. In 1984, the abode was featured extensively in the pilot episode of Murder, She Wrote, which was titled “The Murder of Sherlock Holmes.” (Pictured below.) The interior shown in the episode looks completely different than the interior of the house from Nine to Five, though, so either the property was remodeled in between productions or a set was built for the filming of the movie. (It is highly unlikely that a set was built for Murder, She Wrote as the mansion only appeared in one single episode.)

Pictured below is the kitchen that appeared in Nine to Five, as compared to the kitchen that appeared in Murder, She Wrote. As you can see, they do not even remotely resemble each other.

Neither do the living rooms;

or stairways.

Further confusing the matter is that in Murder, She Wrote, a different location altogether was shown in establishing shots of the exterior of the mansion at night. And while I at first thought that interior filming might possibly have taken place at that second mansion, that does not appear to have been the case.

In “The Murder of Sherlock Holmes,” there is a shot of a character walking out of the interior of the residence onto the front porch, in which the exterior steps, arched façade and paneled front door are visible. Those elements match the exterior of the Nine to Five mansion (which you will be able to see more clearly later on in this post). I’ll leave it up to my fellow stalkers to be the judge on this one, but my best guess is that the interior of Mr. Hart’s mansion was just a set.

The exterior of the mansion also appeared very briefly in set-up shots of Bel-Air in the Season 1 episode of Dragnet titled “The Big Jade,” which aired in 1967.

The Nine to Five mansion was also where Jim Rockford (James Garner) and Warren Weeks (a very young Ron Rifkin) hid from the police by crashing a wedding in the Season 3 episode of The Rockford Files titled “The Trouble with Warren,” which aired in 1976.

As you can see below in a screen capture from Murder, She Wrote as compared to a screen capture from The Rockford Files, the front door, brick steps and arched overhang that appear in both episodes match each other perfectly.

A small portion of the interior of the mansion also appeared briefly in “The Trouble with Warren.”

And while the residence was also reportedly used in the 1981 television miniseries Jacqueline Susann’s Valley of the Dolls, I could not find a copy of that production with which to verify that information.

On a sad side note – I was heartbroken to learn that Paul Walker passed away in a car accident on Saturday afternoon. I had the pleasure of meeting Paul last December and he was easily one of the nicest celebrities I have ever encountered. You can read about his legendary kindness in this fabulous CNN article. And you can read about my experience meeting Paul on the Mike the Fanboy website here. Such a tragic loss.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Mr. Hart’s mansion from Nine to Five is located at 10431 Bellagio Road in Bel-Air.

December 2, 2013December 2, 2013

The Town House Motel from “Vacation”

As I mentioned in last Wednesday’s post, fellow stalker Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, recently got on a kick of tracking down missing locations from his all-time favorite comedy, the 1983 classic National Lampoon’s Vacation. One of the locales he managed to find was the Town House Motel in Glendale, where Clark W. Griswold (Chevy Chase) and his family – wife Ellen (Beverly D’Angelo), son Rusty (Anthony Michael Hall) and daughter Audrey (Beverly Hills, 90210’s Dana Barron) – spent the first night of their road trip from Chicago to Los Angeles. [I also did some digging and pinpointed the gas station where Clark tried to fill the new Wagon Queen Family Truckster (it’s the Little America Hotel at 2515 East Butler Avenue in Flagstaff, Arizona) and the rest stop where he danced with a sandwich (it’s the Shaw Creek Rest Area near 25090 Highway 160, just east of El Dorado Lane, in South Fork, Colorado).] And while Owen informed me that the Town House Motel was, sadly, no longer standing, I figured since I was already in the area stalking the car dealership from the film, I might as well drop by.

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Towards the beginning of Vacation, Clark and the gang spend the night at a roadside lodging somewhere outside of St. Louis, Missouri. They wind up at the motel unexpectedly, after Clark, who has fallen asleep at the wheel, pulls in there accidentally. In the scene, the Griswold’s Wagon Queen Family Truckster (newly-adorned with graffiti that spells out “Honky Lips” LOL) goes careening down West Campus Street, heading south. It then veers across East Colorado Street and straight into the parking lot of the Town House Motel, losing a few pieces of luggage in the process.

While watching the scene, Owen had spotted an address number of “1510” above the property’s front entrance. From there, he did a Google search for “1510,” “motel” and “Los Angeles,” and one of the first results to pop up was an eBay sale for a 1950s matchbook from the Town House Motel located at 1510 East Colorado Street in Glendale. As he quickly discovered via a Street View search of that address, though, the structure had been bulldozed and a new, much larger hotel was now standing in its place. Sadness! You can check out what the Town House used to look like here and here.

The new property is named the Glendale Lodge and, as you can see below, it looks nothing at all like the former Town House.

I am fairly certain that one of the Town House’s real life rooms was also used in the filming, although the vibrating bed was most likely a prop. Winking smile

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, for finding this location! Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Glendale Lodge, aka the former site of the Town House Motel from Vacation, is located at 1510 East Colorado Street in Glendale.