While out stalking in the San Gabriel Valley three Thursdays ago, on our way to visit Clark Magnet High School where Kris Witherspoon (my girl Shannen Doherty) went to school in the 1986 television series Our House (which I have yet to blog about), Mike, from MovieShotsLA, made a quick (pardon the pun) detour to Quick Stop Liquor, the very same liquor store that appeared in 1985’s Teen Wolf.  Mike had found this location years beforehand, while searching for locales from the 1986 thriller River’s Edge, which was also filmed in the area.  And even though I live fairly close to Tujunga, where the liquor store is located, for whatever reason I had never ventured out to stalk it.  So, since we were just around the corner, Mike insisted we stop by.  (On a side-note – I have been playing around with the colors and sizes of my photographs lately.  Would love to hear what my fellow stalkers think! )

Quick Stop Liquor, which was named Tony’s Liquor in the flick, shows up twice in Teen Wolf.  It first pops up in the scene in which Stiles (Jerry Levine), donning a trucker hat, sunglasses and a shirt that says “Obnoxious: The Movie”, tries to purchase a keg of beer from the store’s curmudgeonly owner (Harvey Vernon) before heading to a house party, the location of which I blogged about here.

The liquor store’s real life interior also appeared in that scene.

Quick Stop Liquor shows up once again a few scenes later when Stiles convinces his best friend/teen werewolf, Scott Howard (Michael J. Fox), to attempt to buy a keg, using a water gun as intimidation, from the same curmudgeonly shop owner.

The shop’s real life interior was also used in that scene, as well.

It is while there that Scott has one of his very first experiences as a werewolf.  After being denied the keg and being chewed out by the shop owner, Scott gets just a wee bit angry, his eyes turn red, his voice deepens quite a few octaves, and he utters the film’s famous line, “GIVE ME.  A KEG.  OF BEER!”

While the exterior of Quick Stop Liquor is now pink (although I am not typically a fan of change, pink is my favorite color, so I have to say, “Yay!”) and the sign and store name have since been altered, the place looks pretty much the same as it did in Teen Wolf, despite the fact that almost three full decades have since passed.   So incredibly cool!

Sadly though, a building has since been constructed in the area directly next to the liquor store, where Stiles and Scott parked their cars in Teen Wolf.

While stalking the place, Mike and I ventured inside to ask the woman working if we could snap some pictures.  And while she was reticent at first, once Mike showed her his Teen Wolf page on MovieShotsLA and she realized that Quick Stop had appeared in a film, she got pretty excited.  I so love it when that happens!  As you can see above, while the interior of the store has changed a bit over the years, it is still pretty recognizable from the movie.

The woman also confirmed for us that the store’s front counter had been shortened in recent years, which is such a shame!  I so would have loved to have seen the place in its original form!

You can watch the Teen Wolf “GIVE ME A KEG OF BEER” scene by clicking above.

On a stalking side-note – fellow stalker Allen Fuqua, of the Movie Mimic website, recently contacted me to ask if I would like to reenact a scene from Fast Times at Ridgemont High with him.  I, of course, readily agreed and this past Sunday afternoon, the two of us, Grim Cheaper in tow, ventured out to Van Nuys High School to attempt a Movie Mimic.  The result is pictured above.  I had an absolute blast movie-mimicking and getting to meet Allen and the photograph he created far exceeded my expectations.  I highly recommend checking out Allen’s fabulous site, in which he travels to places ALL OVER THE WORLD (the guy has been EVERYWHERE, including London where he reenacted stills from my favorite movie of all time, Love Actually) and recreates iconic scenes from iconic movies.  Love it!  And, in an AMAZING twist, this past weekend The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences/The Oscars posted our Fast Times pic on their Facebook page.  PINCH ME!

Big THANK YOU to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for finding this location! 

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 

Stalk It: Quick Stop Liquor, aka the Teen Wolf liquor store, is located at 6670 Foothill Boulevard in Tujunga.

Well over six months ago, my good friend Mikey, from the Mike the Fanboy website, asked if I would like to do some stalking with him of Harwood Court, the Pomona College dormitory which stood in for the fictional Eastland School, attended by Blair Warner (Lisa Whelchel), Dorothy ‘Tootie’ Ramsey (Kim Fields), Natalie Green (Mindy Cohn), and Joanne ‘Jo” Polniaczek (Nancy McKeon), in the 1980’s television series The Facts of Life. My answer, of course, was a resounding “YES!”  Because both of our schedules have been a bit hectic as of late, though, we were not able to make it out there until this past Sunday afternoon.  Needless to say, we were both pretty excited about the whole adventure when it finally came to pass and, a few days before we headed to Claremont, Mikey sent me an email which stated, “Wow, this is just like going scuba diving with Jacques Cousteau, or playing football with Tim Tebow, or getting a pants-dropping lesson from Marky Mark!  Well, maybe not that last one!”  Um, my stalking skills being compared to the scuba skills of Jacques Cousteau?!?!  LOVE IT!

This location was actually found by Robert, of the Movie Locations and More website, way back in the Summer of 2010.  Earlier that year, Robert had read online that the exterior of Eastland School was a building on the Pomona College campus in Claremont, but because Google Street View of that area is not particularly clear, he was unable to track down the exact structure used via the internet.  So when he came to Los Angeles for a stalking visit a few months later, he drove around the 140-acre campus, screen shot in hand, and, amazingly enough, was able to track down the building fairly quickly.  Thank you, Robert!  In reality, Eastland School is the Harwood Court residential hall – a 68,000-square-foot unisex dormitory that was built in 1921 and currently houses 170 students.  The structure, which was originally an all-female dorm, was completely renovated by the Wheeler & Wheeler architectural firm in 1990.  Thankfully though, it still looks much the same as it did onscreen in The Facts of Life.

A few years ago, Mikey had actually purchased one of Molly Ringwald’s costumes from the first season of The Facts of Life, as well as a promotional lunch box from the series that he had signed by none other than Mrs. Edna Garrett (Charlotte Rae) herself, and he brought both items with him on our stalk to add to the fun.  On our way there, he mentioned that he thought I might be able to fit into the track jacket portion of Molly’s former costume and, shockingly, he was right!  I cannot tell you how nervous I was to be wearing such an amazing piece of television history, while drinking a Starbucks, no less, so I only kept it on long enough to snap a couple of pics.

Molly is pictured wearing one of the track jackets above.  So incredibly cool!!

While we were there, a resident happened to walk out of Harwood Court and we stopped her to ask if she would take a photograph of Mikey and me.  She obliged and afterwards I inquired if she was aware that her dorm was, in fact, The Facts of Life school.  Shockingly, she had not actually been aware, and, even more shockingly, she did not seem to be too impressed by the news.  Ah well, I guess not everyone is a stalker. 

Harwood Court showed up as the fictional Peekskill, New York-area Eastland School during the opening credits of The Facts of Life’s entire nine-season run.

You can watch the series’ opening credits by clicking above.  On an interesting side-note – the show’s insanely-catchy theme song was co-composed by Alan Thicke, aka Jason Seaver, the patriarch of the Seaver family on Growing Pains, and real-life father of R&B singer Robin Thicke.

While doing research before heading out to Pomona College with Mikey on Sunday, I discovered that Harwood Court had also appeared in several other productions.  In 1985’s Real Genius, it was featured as the dormitory where Chris Knight (Val Kilmer), Mitch Taylor (Gabriel Jarret), and Jordan (Michelle Meyrink) lived.

And while some of the real-life interior of the building was actually used in the movie . . .

. . . I am fairly certain that the hallway and dorm rooms were sets.

In 1987’s Teen Wolf Too, Harwood Court stood in for the Hamilton College dormitory where Todd Howard (Jason Bateman) lived with his roommate, Stiles (Stuart Franklin).

The back side of the building appeared in the movie’s beyond-words-awful “Do You Love Me” dance sequence.

I believe that the interior scenes were all filmed on a set, though.

In the Season 1 episode of the reality series Top Chef Masters titled “Masters Get Schooled”, the Elimination Challenge, in which professional chefs Michael Schlow, Hubert Keller, Tim Love, and Christopher Lee were required to cook a gourmet meal in a dorm room, was held at Harwood Court.

You can read Mikey’s fab write-up of our The Facts of Life stalk on the Mike the Fanboy website here and you can watch a video Mikey put together of our adventure by clicking above.

Big THANK YOU to Robert, from the Movie Locations and More website, for finding this location and to Mikey, from the Mike the Fanboy website, for inviting me to stalk it with him.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 

Stalk It: Harwood Court residence hall, aka Eastland School from The Facts of Life, is located on the campus of Pomona College at 170 East Bonita Avenue in Claremont.

A couple of weeks ago, fellow stalker Mikey, from the Mike the Fanboy website, mentioned that he had recently stalked the residence belonging to the Nefler family – Phyllis (aka Shelley Long), Freddy (aka Craig T. Nelson), and their daughter, Hannah (aka Jenny Lewis) – in the 1989 comedy Troop Beverly Hills.  Well, let me tell you, after hearing that I literally just about had a heart attack!  TROOP BEVERLY HILLS? TROOP BEVERLY HILLS!  How in the heck had I forgotten about that movie??  I absolutely loved it as a teenager and remember renting it countless times from the video store around the corner from my house.  Due to some sort of brain lapse, though, I had not thought about or seen the flick in years.  So when Mikey mentioned it, I immediately ran to my local Blockbuster to rent it.  Shockingly though, the sales clerk informed me that the store did not carry the title!  And neither did any of the other Blockbusters within a ten mile radius of my apartment!  (Perhaps this is why the chain has been floundering in recent years!  I mean, hello!  How does a video store not carry a major 80s classic like Troop Beverly Hills????)  I was further shocked to discover that my local Borders Books did not have the movie, either.  (Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy in 2010, Borders in 2011 – a coincidence?  I think not!  )  Thankfully, Troop Beverly Hills was available for purchase on iTunes (oddly enough, they do not offer the flick for rent), so I immediately purchased it and, because iTunes does not allow one to burn a purchased movie onto a DVD, was forced to watch the entire hour and forty minutes on my tiny computer screen.  But I have to say that it was completely and totally worth it!  What a fabulous, FABULOUS flick!  And, immediately after watching it, I, of course, dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out to stalk the Nefler mansion.

The 6 bedroom, 6 bath, 7,694-square-foot, Spanish-style abode, which was originally built in 1916, was featured numerous times throughout Troop Beverly Hills.

And, amazingly enough, the residence still looks almost EXACTLY the same today as it did when the movie was filmed over twenty-two years ago!  SO INCREDIBLY COOL!

The only difference is that there is now a large, three-car garage located on the northern side of the property.

For some reason, while watching the movie, the inside of the Nefler house just did not look real to me.  So, while I could not find any interior photographs of the home online, I am fairly certain that all of the interior scenes were filmed on a set inside of a studio soundstage somewhere in Hollywood and not at the actual residence.

I believe the backyard that was shown in the movie was also a set, as it does not match up to the home’s real-life backyard.

As you can see in the above aerial view,  the mansion’s real-life pool is not the same shape as the one that appeared in the movie and its position in relation to the house also does not match up with what was shown onscreen.  And while it is possible that the backyard was completely remodeled in the two-plus decades since filming took place, I do not find that scenario to be very likely.

According to my buddy E.J. over at The Movieland Directory website, the house has also had several celebrity inhabitants over the years, including movie star Betty Compson, producer Samuel Goldwyn, silent film star Charles Ray, and actor Charles Smith.

Big THANK YOU to Mikey, from the Mike the Fanboy website, for telling me about this location! 

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 

Stalk It: The Troop Beverly Hills house is located at 901 North Camden Drive in Beverly Hills.

Last week I enlisted fellow stalker Chas, from the It’sFilmedThere website, to help me find locations from the 1989 teen comedy She’s Out of Control. Now I should mention here that while I absolutely LOVED LOVED LOVED She’s Out of Control growing up, according to the movie’s IMDB trivia page film critic Gene Siskel detested it so much that he actually considered quitting his job after viewing it! LOL In truth, the flick is one of my very favorite 80s movies of all time, so how Gene could hate it that much is absolutely beyond me!

I mean, how can you go wrong with a movie that features performances by both a very young Dustin Diamond (aka Screech from Saved by the Bell!) . . .

. . . AND Mr. Chandler Bing himself, Matthew Perry?!? Sheesh! I don’t even want to know what choice words Gene would have for that other favorite 80s movie of mine Girls Just Want To Have Fun!

Anyway, Chas being the great guy that he is immediately added the DVD to his Netflix queue (even though it is unequivocally a chick flick) and it arrived in his mailbox just a few days later. He watched the movie shortly after receiving it and, amazingly enough, somehow managed to track down the house belonging to the Simpson Family – Doug (aka Tony Danza), Katie (aka Ami Dolenz), and Bonnie (aka Laura Mooney) – that very same night! The abode was, of course, the location that I was most interested in stalking, so I could not have been more excited when he gave me the news and I ran right out to stalk the place the very next morning. Yay!

I had fallen in love with the Simpson house the first time I watched She’s Out of Control over two decades ago and I am very happy to report that it is just as cute and charming in person as it appeared to be onscreen.

And while I had originally thought that the real life interior of the residence was used in the movie, that does not actually seem to be the case. I happened to find these interior photographs of the house online and, as you can see in the above screen captures as compared with this interior image as well as this one, the stairwell which appeared onscreen does not match that of the actual house.

The real life kitchen and living room areas also do not seem to match their onscreen counterparts.

While doing some internet research on the property yesterday morning, I was shocked to discover that the very same dwelling also popped up as the residence where Laurie Strode (aka Scout Taylor-Compton) babysat Tommy Doyle (aka Skyler Gisondo) in the 2007 Rob-Zombie-directed remake of the horror film Halloween.

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Chas, from the It’sFilmedThere website, for finding this location! You can check out Chas’ detailed She’s Out of Control filming locations page here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Simpson house from She’s Out of Control is located at 1960 La France Avenue in South Pasadena. Here is a map link to that location.

A little over two weeks ago, fellow stalker Owen went on a mission to try to track down all of the locations used in the 1985 comedy Teen Wolf, which starred his favorite actor Michael J. Fox.  And the locale that he was most interested in finding was the house belonging to Pamela Wells (aka Lorie Griffin), Scott Howard’s (aka MJF’s) love interest in the flick.  Because Scott’s house in the movie was located in South Pasadena – ironically enough, it was the very same residence where the teenaged Lorraine Baines (aka Lea Thompson) lived in the Back to the Future movies – Owen had a feeling that Pamela’s house was most likely also located somewhere in that same vicinity.  So, without so much as even an address number or a street name to guide him, but armed with a pretty great hunch, he started using Google Street View to search through the properties situated near the Howard residence and happened upon Pamela’s house rather quickly.  Amazingly enough, it is located right around the corner and just a scant .2 miles away from the Howard home!  Yay!  So, this past Friday afternoon, I set out to stalk the place, even though it has been YEARS since I have watched Teen Wolf!

Pamela’s house only actually shows up once in Teen Wolf, in the scene in which Scott walks Pamela home after a date at the local bowling alley – a locale which I blogged about back in June of 2009.    It is while walking her home that Pamela breaks Scott’s heart by telling him that she will not go to the school dance with him because she already has a boyfriend.

Amazingly enough, Pamela’s house looks VERY much the same today as it did when the filming of Teen Wolf took place back in 1985.  Aside from a change in paint color and the removal of the front window shutters, the residence is virtually indistinguishable from its onscreen counterpart, which I find so incredibly cool.  Although I do have to admit that I much prefer the way the house looked in 1985 than to how it appears now.

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Owen for finding this location! 

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 

Stalk It: Pamela’s house from Teen Wolf is located at 1980 Oak Street in South Pasadena.  Scott Howard’s house from Teen Wolf, which was also Lorraine Baines’ house in Back to the Future, is located just around the corner at 1727 Bushnell Avenue in South Pasadena.

Last weekend, I dragged the Grim Cheaper out to the city of Glendale to do some stalking of the historic Alex Theatre, where the cast of Glee was recently spotted doing some filming for this year’s “Sectionals” episode which is set to air on December 7th.  After finishing up at the theatre (which I will be blogging about after the episode of Glee premieres), we headed a few blocks up the street to stalk the parking garage where Al Greco (aka a very young David Caruso) worked in the 1988 movie Twins.  And I have to say that in all of my years of stalking, this one was actually a first for me because, while I’ve stalked a parking lot before, never in my life have I actually stalked a garage.  And while it might seem a bit odd to all of my fellow stalkers out there that I would even want to stalk a parking structure in the first place, my reason for doing so was two-fold.  First, the garage was a fairly prominent location in Twins and quite a few segments were filmed there, but more importantly it was where all of my man David Caruso’s scenes were filmed, and because the actor has got to be THE nicest celebrity that I’ve ever met in my entire life, I was dying to stalk the place where he filmed one of his very first movies.  I found this location thanks to fellow stalker Gary, from the Seeing Stars website, who actually tracked the place down for fellow stalker Chas, from ItsFilmedThere, who had been searching for it for quite some time.  So, thank you, Gary!

In Twins, Vincent Benedict (aka Danny DeVito) frequents the supposed airport parking garage where his buddy Al works in order to steal high end cars which he then subsequently sells on the black market.  Towards the beginning of the movie, Vincent inadvertently makes off with a Cadillac carrying a very valuable stolen fuel injector prototype that he then decides to deliver to an industrialist in Houston who has offered to pay him $5,000,000 for it.  The movie’s storyline takes off from there.

And I am very happy to report that the parking garage looks EXACTLY the same today as it did 22 years ago when Twins was filmed.  I guess if I were to think about it, though, how much could a parking garage really change over the years, even in more than two decades time, but I was still pleasantly surprised and grateful, nonetheless.

The guard shack is the only part of the structure that has been altered since filming took place back in 1988.  At the time of the filming, it was located outside of the garage, but it has since been moved a few feet backwards.

Big THANK YOU to Gary, from Seeing Stars, for finding this location and to fellow stalker Chas from ItsFilmedThere who asked for his help in doing so! 

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 

Stalk It: The parking garage from Twins is located at 127 Burchett Street, off of North Brand Boulevard in between Goode and Arden Avenues, in Glendale.  The area used in the movie is denoted with a pink arrow in the above aerial view.

A few weeks ago, I got an email from fellow stalker Owen who was writing to ask if I owned a copy of the 1983 movie War Games on DVD.  And while I did not own the movie, nor had I ever actually even seen it, my fiancé, thankfully, did.  Owen was inquiring about the DVD because he was currently in the process of trying to track down the house where teenaged computer prodigy David Lightman (aka Matthew Broderick) lived in the flick.  Owen had recently discovered – thanks to the stalking tome The Worldwide Guide to Movie Locations  – that the Lightman residence was located somewhere in the Hancock Park area of Los Angeles.  Even though the movie was supposedly set in Seattle, the vast majority of it was actually shot right here in Southern California.  YAY!  So, that very night I popped in my fiancé’s DVD and settled in to watch War Games for the very first time.  And I have to say that I absolutely LOVED it!  How I missed the movie when it first came out in 1983 – and all of the years since – is absolutely beyond me, especially since I am SUCH a child of the ‘80s.  Being that I was only six years old at the time the movie premiered, though, I guess I was a bit too young to appreciate it.  But I digress. 

Owen had asked me to watch War Games in the hopes that the address number of the Lightman house would be visible at some point during the movie.  And, thankfully, as you can see in the above screen capture, it was!  I spotted the number “333” towards the beginning of the flick in the scene in which Jennifer (aka Ally Sheedy) is shown running up to knock on David’s front door.  So, Owen immediately got to searching all of the 300 blocks in the Hancock Park area and fairly quickly came upon the house.  Ironically enough, there is a notation on Wikipedia’s Larchmont Village page which states that the War Games house is located on the corner of “Lucerne and Second Street”, but that information, like so much of Wikipedia’s filming location information, is actually incorrect.  The Lightman home can actually be found at 333 South Arden Boulevard, a few blocks south of where Lucerne meets Second Street.

As soon as Owen emailed me the address of the War Games house, I grabbed my camera and headed over to Hancock Park to snap some pics.  And I was absolutely shocked at what I found.  As it turns out, even though over 27 years have passed since the movie was filmed, the War Games house still looks pretty much exactly the same as it did onscreen!  Love it, love it, love it!  The owners of the property deserve some very big kudos for resisting the urge to change anything.  Although the home, which was built in 1920, appears to fairly average-sized from the street, it actually boasts a whopping 7 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, and 3,728 square feet of living space. 

Big THANK YOU to Owen for finding this location! 

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 

Stalk It: The War Games house is located at 333 South Arden Boulevard in the Hancock Park area of Los Angeles.

Right around the corner from The King of Queens house, which I blogged about on Friday, are the two main houses used in the 1988 Tom Hanks movie Big.  And when I say “right around the corner”, I literally mean RIGHT around the corner.  The King of Queens  house and the Big  houses are located a scant 88 yards away from each other!   Too cool!  So, of course, since Owen, my fiancé, and I were already in the area stalking the Heffernan house a few weeks ago, we just had to walk around the corner to make a stalking stop at the Bighomes, too.  Owen had found the addresses of the houses belonging to Josh (aka Tom Hanks) and his best friend Billy (aka Jared Rushton) in the 80’s flick thanks to IMDB’s Big filming locations page.  And even though IMDB’s location information isn’t always one hundred percent accurate, thankfully, in this case, it was right on the money!

I am VERY happy to report that the two Big  houses still look EXACTLY the same today as they did back in 1988 when the movie was filmed!  I was absolutely amazed at the fact that, besides the leaves on the trees out front being a little bit fuller and a little more green due to the time of year, the two homes  look absolutely identical today to how they were portrayed onscreen twenty-one years ago.  YAY!  Other movie house owners should take lessons from these people!! 

The home pictured above belonged to Josh and his family in the movie and was where he lived before he became “Big” and subsequently moved to Manhattan.  Several areas of the house were featured in the flick, including the front exterior;

the garage, where a new door has been installed, but which otherwise looks very much the same as it did in the movie;

and the front door, which I was extremely excited to see still looks EXACTLY the same as it did in Big!  The only difference is that a white screen door which covers the front door was added in the time since filming took place. 

Best friend Billy’s house is located directly next door to Josh’s and I am happy to report that its front door also looks EXACTLY the same as it did in the movie.  I was so tempted to go up and knock. 

In Big, Billy and Josh have a pulley system that runs between their two bedroom windows, which face each other.  The pulley shows up in the scene in which Billy and Josh’s mom talk about Josh’s dissappearance late at night.  In the scene, Josh’s mom uses the pulley to show Billy a set of baseball cards that she had purchased for Josh’s birthday.  She tells Billy he can keep the cards, but he sends them back to her telling her that Josh will be home soon.  UPDATE - Fellow stalker Owen just informed me that Billy and Josh’s pulley is actually only shown in the extended edition DVD of the movie and not in the regular version.

Of course, in real life, that pulley is not there.    Would have been SO cool if it was, though!  If I owned those houses, I would so install one for my fellow stalkers to appreciate.    Otherwise, though, the boys’ windows still look very much the same.

And, of course, I just had to pose for a pic on the street corner where Susan dropped Josh off at the end of the movie.    That street corner also looks very much the same as it did in Big – all that was missing in real life were the piles of fallen autumn leaves which covered the sidewalks in the movie.

  I can’t tell you how exciting it was to finally see the Big houses in person twenty-one years after first watching the movie which made them famous!  I honestly can’t recommend stalking them enough! 

On a side note – In real life, the houses from Bigare located in the borough of Cliffside Park, New Jersey and in the filming of the scene in which the police are called out after Josh first disappears, the words “Cliffside Park” can be seen on the police car that Billy walks by.  So LOVE that they used the real town’s name!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 

Stalk It: Josh’s house from the movie Big  is located at 437 Greenmount Avenue in Cliffside Park, New Jersey.  Billy’s house is located right next door at 435 Greenmount Avenue.  At the end of the movie, Susan drops Josh off at the Southwest corner of Greenmount and Highridge Avenues.  The King of Queens house is located directly around the corner at 519 Longview Avenue.  Unfortunately there is no easy way to get to these locations from Manhattan.  A taxi ride is your quickest, easiest bet, but be prepared as it will cost you $45 each way!  Riding the bus is a much cheaper option, but the travel time is upwards of an hour.

Another day, another Twins  location.    Unbelievably, before writing my post about the Twins house yesterday, I had yet to actually see the movie. For some reason, even though we own a copy of it on DVD, I had never sat down to watch it.  Until yesterday, that is.  But, as often happens to me when watching a movie for the first time, I got more absorbed in the locations and behind-the-scenes information than the actual storyline.  I kept having to pause the movie to run to my computer to look things up.  LOL  One of the locales that I became a bit obsessed with finding yesterday was the mansion belonging to Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito’s father in the movie.  Ironically enough, while doing some cyberstalking of the home, I came across this post on fave website ’80s Movie Rewind and was SHOCKED to see the location of the house listed with a special thanks to none other than my good friend Mike, from MovieShotsLA.  LOL LOL LOL  It’s such a small stalking world, isn’t it??  Granted, I’m sure Mike had told me the address of the Twins  mansion before, but when the two of us get to talking about locations I get so excited that half of what he says doesn’t even register.  I’ll ask him about a movie locale months later and he’ll say “I ALREADY told you where that was!”  LOL   Needless to say, the Twins  mansion address is one of the bits of information that, for whatever reason, my brain didn’t store.

Anyway, as soon as I had the address yesterday, I ran right out to stalk the house.  And I am very happy to report that – over TWO DECADES later - the Twins  mansion looks pretty much EXACTLY the same today as it did when the movie was filmed!  I mean, even the paint color is still the same!  LOVE IT!  In fact, the only differences I noticed were some very minor changes in foliage.   Movie location owners really need to take lessons from the people that live in this house!  LOL 

The Twins  mansion shows up very briefly in the scene when Arnold is out looking for infomation about his mother who passed away in childbirth.  He winds up at this home and ends up meeting his father for the very first time.  A scene takes place in the front yard of the house and then, later, in the father’s study.  And, from how it looked in the movie, I believe a real room inside the house was used as the study. 

The Twins  mansion, which in real life is known as the A.L. Garford House, was built in 1916 by the prominent Pasadena architectural firm of Marston & Van Pelt.  Sylvanus Marston built over 1,000 residences in the Pasadena area throughout his twenty-two year career, including America’s first ever bungalow motor court apartment complex, and has even been called “Pasadena’s Quintessential Architect”.   Marston built homes and buildings in an eclectic array of styles ranging from English Tudor to Imperial Chinese.  The Garford House was actually one of the first Pasadena area homes to be built in the elaborate Churrigueresque, or Spanish Baroque, style, and, according to this article, was the first ever Spanish style home to have a painted stucco exterior.   It truly is a very beautiful and absolutely ginormous home!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 

Stalk It:  Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito’s father’s house from Twins, aka the A.L. Garford House,  is located at  1126 Hillcrest Avenue, on the Northeast corner of Hillcrest Avenue and South Oak Knoll Avenue, in Pasadena.

Got a call from fellow stalker Chas last week, who told me that he had finally received his Girls Just Want To Have Fun  Netflix rental in the mail.  Chas was calling me up to ask if I wanted any other locations from the movie found - besides SJP’s ubiquitous apartment building, of course.  I believe my exact answer to his question was “Um, yeah, ALL OF THEM!”  LOL  So, this past week Chas set about locating every single GJWTHF  filming location.  And I am happy to report that he came through – big time!  One location that I was absolutely DYING to stalk was the small house belonging to siblings Jeff  and Maggie Malene (aka Lee Montgomery and Shannen Doherty) in the movie.  I did not have high hopes for this location, though, as I was convinced that it had been torn down in the twenty-four years since GJWTHF  had been filmed.  Thankfully, Chas proved that theory wrong, though, when he located the house just outside of South Pasadena on Friday.  YAY!

So, I, of course, immediately ran right out to stalk it!    And I am EXTREMELY happy to report that aside from the paint color and a new porch railing, the GJWTHF  house looks EXACTLY the same today as it did in 1985 when the movie was filmed!     I was absolutely STUNNED that all these years later the house would still be so recognizable.  So cool!  I do have to say, though, that Jeff Malene’s house is actually a lot bigger in person than I imagined it would be.  For some reason, onscreen it appeared to be much smaller than it actually is.  Standing there on Friday, looking at this small, relatively nondescript home, I couldn’t help but think to myself ’How in the HECK did Chas find this location amidst the millions of other homes in L.A.?’  It’s incredible – just incredible!

Amazingly enough, even Jeff’s neighbor’s house still looks very much the same today as how it appeared in the movie.  As you can see in the above screen capture and photograph, although the two downstairs windows have changed a bit, the upstairs window still looks exactly the same. 

Jeff’s house shows up several times throughout Girls Just Want To Have Fun, most notably the front yard area where Jeff practices doing flips to impress SJP.

The garage area where Jonathan Silverman and Lee Montgomery play basketball in the beginning of the movie also looks exactly the same, but unfortunately, thanks to a fence standing in my way, I couldn’t get a good picture of it. 

I highly recommend stalking the GJWTHF  house to all fans of the ’80s flick!  I can’t tell you how cool it was to be seeing that house in person all these years later!

As always, a big THANK YOU to Chas for finding this location!!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 

Stalk It: Jeff Malene’s house from Girls Just Want To Have Fun  is located at 6511 Pollard Street in Los Angeles, just off of Avenue 64.