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

Franklin Hart Mansion Nine to Five (2 of 7)

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.

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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.

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

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Franklin Hart Mansion Nine to Five (5 of 7)

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.)

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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.

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Neither do the living rooms;

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or stairways.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

The Mulholland Drive Boat House

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I am extremely excited to announce (to those who haven’t already heard via Facebook or Twitter) that I was recently invited to contribute a weekly blog post to the CityThink section of Los Angeles magazine online.  (I’m feeling so very Carrie Bradshaw!  Winking smile)  My post, Scene It Before (thank you, fellow stalker Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, for the title!), will chronicle filming locations (duh!) then-and-now and will run each Thursday.  I could NOT be more floored about this new endeavor and hope all of my fellow stalkers will check it out each week.  My first column, which was published this past Thursday, can be read here.  (I actually wanted to make this announcement last Friday, but felt weird mixing in such happy news with a blog about the assassination of JFK.)   And now, on with the post!

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Back in September, my mom texted me to ask if I had ever stalked a huge, white boat-shaped house on Mulholland Drive.  Such a property was being featured on an episode of Million Dollar Listing that she was watching at the time and real estate agent Josh Altman had mentioned that the site was often rented out for movie and TV shoots – so much so that the owner was said to make about $700,000 a year on filming alone!  (In fact, during the episode Altman loses the listing because a movie production company swept in and rented the place for four months – for $320,000!  When Altman learned the unfortunate news, he asked if the flick being filmed was Titanic 2.  LOL)  I had never even heard of such a structure before, but was, of course, immediately intrigued.  Thankfully, I found the pad rather quickly that very same night via a Google search (there aren’t that many houses shaped like ships on Mulholland Drive, I guess).  One look at the images Google kicked back had me absolutely drooling.  The place was easily one of the most architecturally unique residences I’d ever laid eyes on.  So I ran right out to stalk it while the Grim Cheaper and I were in L.A. two weeks ago.

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Before arriving at the property, I had an inkling that it would not be very visible from the street, so I was floored to discover the opposite to be true.

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Mulholland Drive Boat House (8 of 11)

Kinda makes you want to scream out, “I’m the king of the world!”, huh?

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The 5-bedroom, 8-bath, 4-level, 11,000-square-foot residence, which was originally built in 1992, offers glass walls, 300-degree views, 2,500-square-feet of outdoor living space, an office, a pool, 2 spas, a fire pit, a gym, a nightclub/theatre, a wine cellar, 2 kitchens, and parking for 8 cars.  It was last offered for sale for a cool $6,749,000.  You can check out the real estate listing, complete with interior photographs, here.

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Mulholland Drive Boat House (5 of 11)

For such a unique dwelling, the entrance to the property is actually quite non-descript, as you can see in the below Google Street View image.  (Unfortunately, Mulholland Drive is a very busy thoroughfare and there was absolutely nowhere for me to pull over to snap photographs in the vicinity of the, ahem, stern area.)

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I was floored to discover while doing research for this post that the abode has quite a few celebrity connections.  According to MailOnline.com, pop group One Direction stayed there for seven nights this past August during the last week of the North American portion of their Take Me Home tour.  Harry and the gang shelled out $27,000 for the privilege.  Yep, $27,000 for seven nights!  (While the article also states that the boat house is located in a gated community, that information is actually incorrect.  As you can see above, the home is situated right on Mulholland Drive and is quite accessible.)  According to Virtual Globetrotting, model Katie Price and then-husband, singer Peter Andre, leased the residence back in 2008 and Curbed LA states that Prince rented the pad for a time, but, for whatever reason, never actually lived on the premises.

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Mulholland Drive Boat House (7 of 11)

The episode of Million Dollar Listing my mom had watched back in September was Season 6’s “All Aboard,” in which Altman and his assistant, Mikey, hosted a broker’s open house at the boat-shaped residence.

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Of the property, Altman said, “Some houses, they sell themselves.  This one, not so much.  Not only is it shaped as a ship, but it probably needs about a million dollars worth of upgrades.  It looks like the freaking Love Boat in here!  This thing is straight out of the ‘80s.”  LOL  The place is definitely unique – you gotta give it that.  It is not very hard to see why the pad has been utilized so often as a filming location.

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Thanks to Curbed LA, I learned that in 2002 the top ten finalists from the first season of American Idol were put up in the mansion.  (Once I heard the news, I ran right home and watched our American Idol: The Search for a Superstar DVD, which chronicles the series’ first year.  Man, that season was great!  In my mind, no other season has even come close to comparing.)  Quite a few areas of the house were shown in those episodes, including the front exterior;

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the kitchen;

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several bedrooms;

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the pool;

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the living areas;

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and the carport.

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That same year, the boat house was featured in Eve’s “Gangsta Lovin’” music video.

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You can watch that video by clicking below.

In the Season 3 episode of Californication titled “Slow Happy Boys,” which aired in 2009, the abode was where Sue Collini (Kathleen Turner) lived and threw a rowdy party.

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The interior of the property also appeared in the episode.

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

Big THANK YOU to my mom for telling me about this location!  Smile

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Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: The Mulholland Drive Boat House is located at 15105 Mulholland Drive in Bel-Air.  You can check out a good view of the residence from Woodcliff and Cody Roads, which run just north and east of it.

Henry Kyle’s Former House

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Many, many months back, my mom texted me to ask if I had ever stalked the Bel-Air mansion where Texas tycoon Henry Harrison Kyle was murdered on July 22nd, 1983.  Because the property had also once been the residence of filmdom’s first “It Girl,” Clara Bow, my mom thought it would fit in perfectly with my Haunted Hollywood posts.  That was the first that I had ever heard of the place and, of course, started chomping at the bit to stalk it, so I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out to do just that a short time later.

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According to a June 1996 The New York Times article, legend has it that the 1923 manse was originally built for the then King of Spain.  Sometime during the early 1930s, the pad was purchased by film producer Louis Lewyn and his wife, Marion Mack.  The couple loaned the residence to actress Clara Bow to live in shortly thereafter and the starlet remained there for the next couple of years.

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  For those not familiar with Old Hollywood lore, the Brooklyn-born Bow became a silver screen phenomenon thanks to a starring role in the 1927 silent film It.  The flick was based upon a magazine article penned by British novelist Elinor Glyn, who explained the elusive trait as such, “’It’ is that quality possessed by some which draws all others with its magnetic force.  With ‘It’ you win all men if you are a woman and all women if you are a man.”  From 1927 on, Clara, who starred in over 58 films during her lifetime, would forever be known as “The It Girl.”  The phrase caught on and is still used regularly in Hollywood to this day.  Sadly, Bow’s heavy Brooklyn accent interfered with her career during the advance of “talkies” in the mid 1930s.  The beauty retired from acting in 1935 at the age of 28 and moved to Nevada.  She spent the remainder of her years hidden from the public eye and passed away from a heart attack at the age of 60 on September 27th, 1965.

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Multimillionaire Henry Kyle, who amassed his fortune via extensive real estate, coal mine, bank, and oil-drilling equipment firm holdings, relocated from Dallas to Bel-Air in the Spring of 1983, along with his two sons, 20-year-old Henry Harrison Kyle II, aka “Ricky,” and 19-year-old Scott, in order to begin a new job as the head of Four Star International Inc. television production company.  At the time of his arrival, he purchased Bow’s former Mediterranean-style manse.  He did not live there long.  In the pre-dawn hours of July 22nd, 1983, Ricky woke his father up and informed him that there was a prowler in the house.  Henry grabbed a gun and walked downstairs to the dining room, where Ricky, who also had a gun, subsequently shot him in the back at point-blank range.  Henry returned fire, hitting his son in the arm.  It was too late, though.  When police arrived later that morning, they discovered Henry’s 6’4” nude body sprawled on the dining room floor.  The Texan, who was often described as a real-life J.R. Ewing, was dead at the age of 60.  (Ironically enough, according to a 1983 The Pittsburg Press article, upon moving, Kyle rented out his Texas residence to none other than Larry Hagman, who was in the Lone Star State to film Dallas.  Hagman subsequently vacated the property shortly after Henry was killed.)

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Henry Kyle's house (6 of 9)

Ricky was arrested five weeks later.  Foreshadowing the eerily similar Menendez murders in 1989, Ricky originally said that an intruder had killed the senior Kyle and that he had been shot in the crossfire, but then later copped to the crime saying that his father, who had supposedly been abusing him both physically and emotionally for years, had fired at him and that Ricky had fired back strictly in self defense.  Prosecutors contended that Ricky, who was a frequent drug abuser, killed his father to gain access to his vast inheritance.  The first trial resulted in a hung jury.  In the second trial, Ricky was convicted of involuntary manslaughter (huh?), sentenced to five years in prison, and subsequently served three.  Who says our justice system doesn’t work?

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Kyle’s former manse was last sold in August 2011 for $6.375 million.  According to the real estate listing, the abode boasts 6 bedrooms, 7.5 baths, 8,900 square feet of living space, a chef’s kitchen, a formal dining room, a master suite with two bathrooms, an enclosed sleeping porch, a ballroom, a rooftop deck, a 0.70-acre plot of land, a pool, a sundeck, a motor court, a 3-car garage, and a newly-built detached guest house.  The entire property encompasses a total of 9,450 square feet.  Unfortunately, as you can see below, virtually none of it is visible from the street.

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Henry Kyle's house (4 of 9)

But, as I’ve said before, that’s why God created real estate listings, which is where I got the photographs pictured below.

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As you can see, the interior of the residence is really quite spectacular.  You can check out some more interior pics of the pad here.

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

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Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: Henry Kyle’s former house is located at 110 Stone Canyon Road in Bel-Air.

Johnny Weissmuller’s Former Home

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I would like to start off today’s post by wishing all of my fellow stalkers a very Happy Halloween! And while I could not be more excited to celebrate the day that I pretty much spend all year waiting for, my heart is broken over the devastation to the East Coast (especially New York, one of my favorite cities in the entire world) caused by Hurricane Sandy. My prayers go out to those affected by the storm. Here’s wishing for a speedy and safe recovery process and that those on the East Coast are still able to somewhat enjoy Halloween. And now, on with the post! Knowing how much I love me some historical properties, fellow stalker E.J., from The Movieland Directory website, recently told me about a massive Bel Air estate that had once belonged to Tarzan-actor/five-time Olympic-gold-medalist Johnny Weissmuller. E.J. thought that I might be interested in stalking the place for my Haunted Hollywood posts being that it has been abandoned for almost two and a half decades now. An abandoned mansion with a Hollywood history? Um, sold! So I immediately added the site to my To-Stalk list and dragged the Grim Cheaper right on over there this past weekend.

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According to Wikipedia, the property, which was named a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument on April 6, 1990, is known as the Nicolosi Estate and it was designed in 1931 by Paul Revere Williams, the legendary architect who also designed Perino’s restaurant (which I blogged about here) and the residence that stood in for Wayne Manor on the Batman television series (which I blogged about here). The mansion was named in honor of one of its lesser-known residents, sculptor Joseph Nicolosi, who lived on the premises beginning in the 1950s until his death in 1961. According to property records, the Mediterranean Revival-style pad still belongs to the Nicolosi family, although it has not been lived in for over 24 years. As you can see below, sadly, not much of the place can currently be seen from the street.

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Thankfully though, E.J. was kind enough to share some photographs that he took of the home back in 1988, when the property was much more visible to the public. As you can see, thanks to some fire damage, the place looks like a real life haunted house.

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Johnny Weissmuller House (6 of 12)

The Nicolosi Estate was commissioned by Johnny Weissmuller, who portrayed the legendary character Tarzan in twelve of the series’ films. The actor was also a lifelong competitive swimmer and the house reflects his passion. While the 8,700-square-foot, 4-bedroom, 5-bath abode looks to have been pretty spectacular during its heyday, it is the GINORMOUS 300-foot-long serpentine swimming pool (which is visible from the road) that circles around the dwelling, complete with rock bridges and grotto-style hot tubs, that had me drooling. What I would not give to have seen that pool in its glory days!

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The pool also featured a cascading 150-foot electric waterfall made out of rocks, which you can see a portion of in the photograph below.

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There seems to be quite a bit of confusion, as well as a slew of rumors, surrounding the history of the Nicolosi Estate. In fact, some people doubt that the house ever even belonged to Weissmuller. In The Ultimate Hollywood Tour Book, author William A. Gordon states, “Weissmuller’s only biographer was unable to substantiate this claim, and Jeff Hyland, a prominent Beverly Hills realtor and author of The Estates of Beverly Hills, told me he believes tour guides concocted the story because ‘it sounded good.’” According to the official Paul Revere Williams website, though, the house was indeed built for the Tarzan actor. And judging by that spectacular pool, I would say that the place definitely had to have been commissioned by a professional swimmer.

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The rumors don’t stop there, though. In the book Miss O’Dell: My Hard Days and Long Nights with The Beatles, The Stones, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, and the Women They Loved, author/groupie Chris O’Dell says of the house, “The grounds were equally extravagant, with a swimming pool the size of a football field, another pool made to look like a river and big enough for a rowboat, tennis courts, four pink stucco guest houses, and stately old trees with overarching branches and dense foliage. Newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst had bought the house for his mistress, actress Marion Davies; Howard Hughes had been a guest there in the grand old days of Hollywood, and John and Jackie Kennedy had honeymooned there in 1953. At least that’s what I was told, and I believed it.” And while the William Randolph Hearst/Marion Davies story is, most likely, true, I do not believe that JFK and Jackie ever spent any time on the premises.

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Not that the place didn’t have its fair share of celebrity inhabitants. In 1972, actress Mackenzie Phillips lived there for a short time with her father, The Mamas & the Papas’ John Phillips, and step-mom, actress Genevieve Waite. In her 2009 book High on Arrival, Mackenzie says, “Dad gave me my own wing of the mansion. It was that kind of place – a pink Italian palace that was designed by Paul Williams for Johnny Weissmuller, the Olympic swimmer and on-screen Tarzan. We also heard it had been rented or owned by William Randolph Hearst for his long-term paramour, Marion Davis. Whatever the case, the house was clearly built as a place for rich people to play. First Mick and Bianca Jagger had rented it at my dad’s recommendation, and when they left, Dad and Genevieve moved in from the Chateau Marmont. Dad liked to live large, to show everyone what a big star he was. The ceilings were twenty feet tall. The moldings had hand-painted fleur-de-lis. There was a mirrored hall and countless antiques. The vast ballroom was surrounded by Moroccan murals of guys on horses and temples with pointed tops. There was a stage, mirrors, a ballet bar, and a supply of wax to restore the floor to an optimal surface for dancing.”

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Of the pool, Mackenzie states, “Outside, there was a swimming pool that Johnny Weissmuller must have had built so he could do his laps. To say the pool was long is an understatement. It was 301 feet long, but skinny, and winding like a snake through exotic landscaping and funhouse weirdness. An arched bridge crossed over the pool and led to a stone tunnel with Gothic windows. Near the tunnel was a wall of hand-painted stucco cabanas. All the structures, including the bottom of the bridge over the pool (the part you saw when you swam under it) were decorated with hand-painted murals. It looked like the hybrid child of an Italian church and a Hawaiian lagoon. At the end of the pool closest to the road was a massive waterfall. What made the enormous, serpentine swimming pool most extraordinary was that it was kept empty. Who could maintain a pool that size? Dry and collecting dead leaves, it wound a deep, smooth path through the gardens with the mysterious aura of ancient ruins – the indestructible relic of other people’s lives. It may have been empty and eerie, but we put the pool to good use. It would have made an excellent skateboard park, but we didn’t have skateboards, so we rode Big Wheels down the length of it at four in the morning, racing back and forth in the deep darkness of the long, sunken pit.” So incredibly odd!

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The Phillips family was evicted from the Nicolosi Estate after only a few short months due to non-payment of rent. Apparently, when Mackenzie was on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 2009, a video clip of the house was shown, but I, unfortunately, could not find a copy of the episode anywhere with which to make screen captures for this post.

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Sadly, the massive abode was completely gutted by a fire sometime in the late ‘80s and, for whatever reason, has been left to rot, abandoned, ever since. You can see some of the fire damage in E.J.’s photographs below. According to Yahoo Answers poster Cortney K., another rumor about the house states that the then owner of the property set fire to it, while his family was inside, one Christmas Eve night before fleeing the scene. Who knows if that story is true or not, but Cortney said she did once spot old Christmas lights and bows on the premises. Oh, if only those walls could talk! Whatever the truth behind the mystery of the abode may be, there is no discounting the fact that it is a fabulous place to stalk and I was absolutely in awe while there.

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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 E.J., from The Movieland Directory website, for telling me about this location and for providing the fabulous pictures for this post!

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Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Johnny Weissmuller’s former house is located at 414 St. Pierre Road in Bel Air. Alfred Hitchcock’s first Los Angeles home (which I blogged about here) is located just around the corner at 609 St. Cloud Road.

The “Pretty Woman” Party House

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Over the past few weeks, fellow stalker Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and I have been on an extensive hunt for several unfound locations from the 1990 classic romantic comedy Pretty Woman. And the locale that I was most interested in tracking down, you ask?  Why, the huge, modern-style abode where Edward Lewis (Richard Gere) attended a party in the film’s opening scene, of course.  You all know how this stalker absolutely loves herself some movies houses!  Anyway, after doing some extensive digging online, purchasing the Pretty Woman 15th Anniversary Special Edition DVD, watching each and every one of the special features included in it, and still coming up completely empty-handed, Mike decided that we had to change our course.

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Mike had noticed a smattering of tall buildings in the background of the Pretty Woman party scene and, although the view of them was not entirely clear, he had a hunch that they were located in Century City.

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So using an aerial map of West Los Angeles, he drew an angled line based on those views from Century City outward and it led him straight to the hills of Bel Air.  He then zoomed in on the spot where the line had pointed and immediately noticed a huge white mansion that was very reminiscent of the Pretty Woman party house.  And, sure enough, upon closer inspection, he found that it was, indeed, the right place!  Wahoo!  So I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out there to stalk the place this past weekend.

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The opening scene of Pretty Woman centered around a party held at a large house high up in the hills above Hollywood, thrown in honor of Edward’s arrival in Los Angeles.  I believe that the residence was supposed to belong to Edward’s lawyer, Philip Stuckey (Jason Alexander), in the flick, but that was never actually specified.

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Sadly, not very much of the property is visible from the street, but, as you can see above, the bush where the valet stand was placed, the double windows located above the garage, the brick driveway, and the bent tree on the side of the driveway, all still look exactly the same as they did onscreen way back in 1990.  So incredibly cool!  In real life, the Pretty Woman party house, which was originally built in 1988 and sits on an almost 3/4-acre plot of land, measures 5 bedrooms, 8 baths, and a whopping 10,650 square feet of living space.

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As you can see in the above aerial views, both the home and its surrounding property are absolutely ginormous!

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According to director Garry Marshall’s commentary on the Pretty Woman 15th Anniversary Special Edition DVD (which I highly recommend, by the way – the special features are fabulous!), the real life interior of the home was also used in the filming.  Man, what I wouldn’t give to see the inside of that place!

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Amazingly, when Mike went to stalk the house a few days after I had, the gate just happened to be open and he was able to snap a few pictures of the front of it!  WHOO-HOO!

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: The party house from the opening scene of Pretty Woman is located at 650 Sarbonne Road in Bel Air.