Brothers and Sisters filming locations

October 11, 2012September 29, 2017

The Thomas W. Phillips Residence from “The People Under the Stairs”

In his comment on my Milbank Mansion post, fellow stalker David, from The Location Scout blog, also informed me that directly across the street from the Beckett house (which I blogged about yesterday) was another famous movie location – the Thomas W. Phillips residence, which was featured extensively in The People Under the Stairs. And even though I had never seen the 1991 horror flick, since we were right there and since I was gearing up for my annual Haunted Hollywood postings, I figured I might as well stalk the place. And I am so glad that I did, because its façade is seriously sinister. The residence looks like a real life haunted house and it is not hard to see why Wes Craven chose to feature it in The People Under the Stairs.

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The Thomas W. Phillips residence was constructed in 1905 by the architecture team of Sumner B. Hunt & Abraham Wesley Eager. Hunt was also responsible for designing The Ebell of Los Angeles (an oft-filmed at locale that I have yet to blog about) and the Southwest Museum of the American Indian in Mt. Washington. Thomas W. Phillips, who had commissioned the construction of the three-story Craftsman-style abode, was one of the original founding residents of L.A. You can check out a photograph of the dwelling from its early days here. As you can see, not much has changed in the 107 years since it was built. Love it!

In real life, the massive abode, which was deemed a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument in 1991, boasts 8 bedrooms, 4 baths, a whopping 7,707 square feet of living space, and a 0.40-acre plot of land. Besides being a filming location, according to a February 1999 Los Angeles Times article, the residence also belonged to actress Butterfly McQueen (aka Scarlett O’Hara’s maid in Gone with the Wind) at one point in time.

The Thomas W. Phillips residence was used quite extensively in The People Under the Stairs as the home where Man (Everett McGill), Woman (Wendy Robie) and Alice (A.J. Langer) – and, of course, the people under the stairs – lived.

In the movie, the residence was said to be the Robeson Funeral Home, which was established in 1896.

All of the interior house scenes were filmed on a studio lot, though, and not inside of the actual Thomas W. Phillips residence, which you can see some photographs of here. And yes, the dwelling does have a very large – and very spooky – basement in real life, much like its onscreen counterpart.

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Thanks to The Official Halloween Message Board, I learned that the kitchen of the Thomas W. Phillips residence stood in for the Myers’ kitchen in Rob Zombie’s 2007 Halloween re-boot. Unfortunately, I could not find any great photographs of the real life kitchen online, but you can sort of see it here and here.

The Thomas W. Phillips residence also appeared in the background of both the Season 2 episode of Lie to Me titled “Darkness and Light” . . .

. . . and the Season 3 episode of Brothers and Sisters titled “Going Once . . . Going Twice.”

The abode also popped up in 1989’s The Immortalizer and 2000’s The Convent. And while I could not find copies of either of those movies with which to make screen captures for this post, you can see some on The Location Scout blog here. And while IMDB states that the house was also used in the 1998 video Witchcraft, I could not find a copy of the production with which to verify that information.

You can find me on Facebook here and on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And be sure to check out my latest post, about one of the best salads I’ve ever had in my life, on my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic.

Big THANK YOU to David, from The Location Scout blog, for telling me about this location! Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Thomas W. Phillips residence, aka The People Under the Stairs house, is located at 2215 South Harvard Boulevard in the West Adams District of Los Angeles.

December 20, 2010December 20, 2010

Adrianna’s New Rental from “90210”

Back in July of 2009, fellow stalker Jennie wrote to me asking for some help in tracking down a location that appeared in both the 1996 Aaron Spelling television series Kindred: The Embraced and the current reality show Celebrity Fit Club. Because I had never seen either of the shows, though, for this particular stalking venture I had to call in the team – aka Chas, from ItsFilmedThere, Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and fellow stalker Owen – and, magically, Chas came through in record time. He somehow managed to track down a Celebrity Fit Club crew member who told him that the show was primarily filmed at a convent in Los Feliz that belonged to the Los Angeles Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. I immediately added the place to my ever-growing “To Stalk” list, but, for whatever reason, never made it out to actually see it in person. So, you can imagine my surprise when I recognized the property as the mansion Adriana Tate-Duncan (aka Jessica Lowndes) rented on the recently-aired Season 3 episode of 90210 titled “Holiday Madness”. I literally just about fell out of my chair and dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out to stalk the place that very weekend.

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From what I’ve been able to gather online, it appears that the property no longer belongs to the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, but is now owned by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and is known as the Cardinal Timothy Manning House of Prayer for Priests. (Although there is a Facebook page which claims that the property is now the International Institute of Theological and Tribunal Studies and is owned by the Graduate Theological Foundation of Indiana, so I’m not really sure what the story is.) Regardless of who currently owns it, though, the structure was originally built in 1928 as a private home for Los Angeles broadcasting/automobile tycoon Earl C. Anthony, a man who not only brought major league baseball to Southern California for the first time, but who was also part of the team that invented gas stations and the car radio. The Anthony House, as it later came to be known, was designed by architect Bernard Maybeck, the same man who gave us the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. Anthony had commissioned his previous abode to be built by the legendary Greene & Greene architecture firm, but once Anthony, who owned several Packard automobile dealerships at the time, caught wind of the fact that one of the Greene brothers had purchased a car made by a competing brand, he refused to work with the architects on any subsequent projects and hired Maybeck to build his Los Feliz home. LOL! Maybeck incorporated Italian Villa, French Chateau, Spanish Mediterranean, and Tudor elements into the design of the mansion and it wound up costing a whopping $500,000 to construct. At the time it was the most expensive house in Hollywood. After Anthony’s widow passed away in the early 1950s, the mansion was purchased by Sir Daniel J. Donohue and his wife, who, in 1971, bequeathed the entire property to the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, who continued to own it until earlier this year.

Sadly, the 8.5-acre property is closed to the public and not much of it is visible from the street, but, as I’ve said many times before, that’s why God created aerial views! And you can see some fabulous close-up pictures of the former convent on the I.I.T.T.S. Facebook page here.

In the “Holiday Madness” episode of 90210, the former convent was used as Adrianna’s new, massively huge, $20,000-per-month rental.

Both the interior and the exterior of the property were used extensively in the episode . . .

. . . especially during Adrianna’s Christmas party scenes.

As I mentioned above, the property is also used extensively each season on the hit reality television show Celebrity Fit Club.

The Anthony House was also the site of the wine festival in the Season 4 episode of Brothers and Sisters titled “The Wine Festival”.

The property has also appeared in episodes of The A-Team, Dirty Sexy Money, Knight Rider, Dynasty, Airwolf, Falcon Crest, The Greatest American Hero, and Hart to Hart.

Big THANK YOU to Chas, from ItsFilmedThere, for finding this location! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Adrianna’s new house from 90210, aka the former Los Angeles Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary convent, is located at 3431 Waverly Drive in Los Feliz.

September 9, 2008March 20, 2009

The Brothers and Sisters House

Got a challenge last week from Britney who wanted me to do some stalking of the house used in the ABC series Brothers and Sisters. I’d actually gotten this challenge once before, but since I had never really watched the show, I hadn’t put much effort into stalking it. But then I saw the house on Tony’s Los Angeles Filming Locations Flickr page and he directed me to this link on The Movieland Directory, which listed the address of the Walker Family home from the series. So, for Britney’s sake, I ran right out to stalk it. 🙂

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The Walker home is located in a gorgeous neighborhood in the eastern section of Pasadena. It’s funny because from the bits and pieces I had seen of Brothers and Sisters over the years, I had a feeling the house was located in Pasadena. It just looks like a very Pasadena style home. In person, the Walker house is very beautiful and absolutely humongous! It almost has a New Orleansean feel to it, as well. It wasn’t very recognizable in person though, as from what I can tell, it seems that producers usually shoot only one section of the house, not the whole thing. But once I went back and watched some clips of B&S on YouTube, I could definitely see that it was the right house. I highly recommend stalking the place, even if you are not a fan of the show, as it is just beautiful. I need to keep my eyes peeled, too, because I am sure B&S is not the only production the home has been used for.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It:The Brothers and Sisters house is located at 1640 Lombardy Road in Pasadena. According to the Movieland Directory, the former Ritz Carlton (now the Langham Hotel) at 1401 S. Oak Knoll Ave. in Pasadena, was also featured in Brothers and Sisters, but I am not sure which episode was filmed there.