Bob’s Big Boy Broiler in Downey from “License to Drive”

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Hold onto your hats, my fellow stalkers, ‘cause today’s post is going to be a long one!  Another Bob’s Big Boy location that the Grim Cheaper and I stalked recently was the legendary Bob’s Big Boy Broiler, aka Johnie’s Broiler, located on Firestone Boulevard in Downey.  I had been longing to stalk the historic restaurant ever since 1988 when it stood in for Archie’s Atomic Drive-In in fave movie License to Drive.  Sadly though, shortly after I moved to Southern California ten years ago, the eatery shuttered it doors and was then later partially – and illegally – demolished.  It was not until this past year that the place re-opened and I was finally, finally able to drag the GC out there to see it in person.

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Johnie’s Broiler was first founded in 1958 by former Clock-Broiler-restaurant-chain-partner Harvey Ortner and his wife, Minnie.  In 1950, the couple purchased a poultry farm located at the corner of Firestone Boulevard and Old River School Road in Downtown Downey and hired architect Paul B. Clayton to design a Googie-style coffee shop on the 2-acre site.  According to Clayton’s 2005 obituary in the Los Angeles Times, the architect later called the restaurant “the most important commercial design of his entire career”.  Harvey’s Broiler, as it was then-named, was an immediate success, sometimes attracting over 5,000 patrons in a single weekend.  Much as it was depicted in License to Drive, the spot was a popular high school hang-out where teens would come to grab a bite to eat and show off their cars.  In 1965, the Ortners retired and sold their restaurant to a man with the last name of Johnson.  He changed the eatery’s moniker to Johnie’s Broiler.  Shortly thereafter, a former Harvey’s chef named Christos Smyrniotis purchased the property.  He still owns the restaurant to this day.   And while it continued to be successful, especially as a filming location, for whatever reason Johnie’s closed its doors in February of 2002.  It was then transformed into a used car dealership and the interior was heavily remodeled to suit the needs of its new tenant.

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When the car dealership’s lease expired a few years later, a new tenant named Aras Yanik moved in.  Yanik immediately filed demolition permits with the City of Downey, but those permits were rejected.  Local residents and area preservations were horrified at Yanik’s plans to level the historic site and quickly took action, having the property declared eligible for the California Register of Historical Places, which protected it, in theory at least, from any alterations.  But despite the historical status and the city’s rejection of the demolition permits, at approximately 3 p.m. on the afternoon of Sunday, January 7th, 2007, Yanik illegally began to demolish the restaurant.  Police were called in and Yanik was slapped with three misdemeanor charges and his lease on the property was revoked.  Sadly though, the damage was done.  The beloved coffee shop had been almost entirely destroyed.

You can watch a video which features numerous photographs of the destruction by clicking above.

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In April 2008, Bob’s Big Boy franchise owner Jim Louder signed a lease with Smyrniotis and, along with help from Downey’s Redevelopment Agency and the Downey Historical Society, set about salvaging materials from the wreckage site and rebuilt the eatery in its entirety, using the original Harvey’s blueprints.  The restoration project won the Los Angeles Conservancy’s prestigious President’s Award and the new Bob’s Big Boy Broiler opened to much fanfare on October 19, 2009.

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Johnie’s Broiler has been featured in countless productions over the years, many more so than I could ever dream of chronicling here.  But I will do my best to try.  In License to Drive, Les Anderson (aka Corey Haim) and his buddies, Dean (aka Corey Feldman) and Charles (aka Michael Manasseri), get into a scuffle with some punks while dining at the fictional high school hangout “Archie’s Atomic Drive-In”.

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In 1988’s My Stepmother Is an Alien, Johnie’s is where Celeste Martin (aka Kim Basinger) goes to find breakfast recipes.

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In 1989’s She’s Out of Control, Doug Simpson (aka Tony Danza) takes his daughter Katie (aka Ami Dolenz) and her boyfriend Joey (aka Dana Ashbrook) to Johnie’s for a bite to eat.

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In 1989’s Earth Girls Are Easy, Valerie (aka Geena Davis), Candy (aka Julie Brown) and their new alien friends, Mac (aka Jeff Goldblum), Wiploc (aka Jim Carrey), and Zeebo (aka Damon Wayans), drive by Johnie’s Broiler in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it scene.

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In 1993’s What’s Love Got to Do with It, Johnie’s is where Ike Turner (aka Laurence Fishburne) and Tina Turner (aka Angela Bassett) get into a fist-fight.

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In 1993’s Short Cuts, Johnie’s is the restaurant where Doreen Piggot (aka Lily Tomlin) works.

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Johnie’s shows up twice in the 1994 comedy Reality Bites.  It first appears as the spot where Lelaina Pierce (aka Winona Ryder) runs into Troy Dyer (aka Ethan Hawke) after her disastrous job interview during which she is unable to define the word “irony”.

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It later pops up in my very favorite scene in the entire movie as the restaurant where Lelaina and Vickie Miner (aka Janeane Garogalo) discuss the television series Melrose Place.

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In 1995’s Heat, Johnie’s Broiler is where Neil McCauley (aka Robert De Niro) tries to kill one of his crew members, Waingro (aka Kevin Gage).

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In 1997’s The Game, a destitute Nicholas Van Orton (aka Michael Douglas) stumbles into Johnie’s to ask patrons for a ride to San Francisco.

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In 1998’s Can’t Hardly Wait, Johnie’s is where Preston Meyers (aka Ethan Embry) meets The Angel (aka Jenna Elfman) while trying to call Barry Manilow on a payphone.

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In the Season 7 episode of The X-Files titled “Orison”, which aired in 1999, Johnie’s stood in for a supposed-bus stop/coffee shop in Harrisburg, Illinois where Fox Mulder (aka David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (aka Gillian Anderson) search for a murder suspect.

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In the 1999 movie Jawbreaker, Johnie’s is where Courtney (aka Rose McGowan), Julie (aka Rebecca Gayheart), and Marcie (aka a pre-Dexter Julie Benz) discover that they have accidentally killed their friend.

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In my favorite scene from 2000’s Bounce, the diner was where Abby Janello (aka Gwyneth Paltrow) removed toilet paper off of the shoe of an unknowing woman.

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Supposedly the restaurant also appeared in Mission: Impossible II, but I scanned through the movie earlier today and did not see it anywhere.  It did however appear in Limp Bizkit’s 2000 video for the song “Take A Look Around”, which was featured on the Mission: Impossible II soundtrack.

You can watch that video by clicking above.

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Johnie’s was also used in the 2000 music video for the Bob Dylan song “Things Have Changed”.

You can watch that video by clicking above.

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Johnie’s was also used extensively in the music video for the 2001 Staind song “For You”.

You can watch that video by clicking above.

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It also popped up in the 2001 Kurupt “It’s Over” music video.

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A cartoon rendering of the restaurant was even made for that video . . .

. . . which you can watch by clicking above.

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The diner was featured in the 2001 music video for Madonna’s “What It Feels Like For a Girl”.

Which you can watch by clicking above.

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It was also used in Knoc-turn’al’s “The Knoc” music video in 2002.

You can watch that video by clicking above.

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In the ultra-creepy 2002 movie One Hour Photo, Johnie’s is the coffee shop where Seymour Parrish (aka Robin Williams) ate a late-night dinner after getting off work at the local photo lab.

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Most recently, Bob’s Big Boy Broiler appeared in the Season 4 episode of Mad Men titled “Tomorrowland”, in the scene in which Sally Draper (aka Kiernan Shipka) spills a milkshake and her father, Don Draper (aka Jon Hamm), is shocked to discover that his girlfriend, Megan Calvet (aka Jessica Pare), is not upset by it.

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That scene was shot in a booth located in Johnie’s side room, which was the same room that appeared in the Melrose Place scene in Reality Bites.

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There is quite a bit of erroneous information out there about Johnie’s Broiler’s filming history.  For instance, the 2003 flick Matchstick Men was not filmed at Johnie’s, but at KJ’s Diner & Restaurant near LAX; 1998’s American History X was not filmed at Johnie’s in Downey, but at the Johnie’s Coffee Shop Restaurant located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile District of L.A.; 1980’s Midnight Madness was also shot at Johnie’s Wilshire, not at the Broiler; as was the Sean Kingston video for the song “Beautiful Girls”.

Until next time, Happy Stalking and Happy Voting – don’t forget to vote for me to be the face of About Me!  Today is the VERY LAST day to vote, so please get those votes in!   Smile

Stalk It: Bob’s Big Boy Broiler, aka Johnie’s Broiler, aka Archie’s Atomic Drive-In from License to Drive, is located at 7447 Firestone Boulevard in Downey.  You can visit the restaurant’s official website here.

Christmas Tree Lane

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Last December, I blogged about a house in Altadena known as the Balian Mansion, or, as I like to call it, the real Clark W. Griswold house (pictured above).  And even though the mansion has appeared only briefly onscreen – in the movie Obsessed and in an early episode of Beverly Hills, 90210 – the house is somewhat of an institution in these parts due mainly to something that happens there each December.  During the Christmas season, the Balian Family decorates their mansion with THOUSANDS upon THOUSANDS upon THOUSANDS of twinkle lights.  People literally drive from miles around to see the spectacle and, last year, the place was even written up as one of AOL’s Top Twelve Festive Holiday Homes.  Anyway, in last December’s post on the Balian Mansion, I happened to mention another display of Christmas lights in the Altadena area – a one mile stretch of road named Christmas Tree Lane, which, while not a filming location, is definitely a holiday must-see.  Well, one very astute reader named Allyn contacted me shortly after that post was published to let me know that Christmas Tree Lane actually is a filming location, appearing in, among other things, the 1998 teen comedy Can’t Hardly Wait.   Allyn told me that the Lane popped in a scene in which the two nerd characters are shown walking along a cedar tree lined street.   Ironically enough, though, even though Allyn had described the exact location AND the movie in which it was featured, this proved to be a rather difficult stalk for me.  It all started yesterday morning when I popped in my Can’t Hardly Wait DVD and scanned through it TWICE, both times coming up completely empty-handed.  I couldn’t seem to find a scene featuring Christmas Tree Lane ANYWHERE!  It then occured to me that Allyn had perhaps mistakenly told me the wrong movie.  So, I promptly started scanning through a few other teen comedies that I thought Allyn might have confused with Can’t Hardly Wait.  After skipping through Not Another Teen Movie, She’s All That, and  the first two American Pie flicks with absolutely no luck, I became completely perplexed.  And then, like a beacon, it hit me!  I needed to consult with fellow stalker Owen.  Because Owen has long had a penchant for actress Jennifer Love Hewitt (JLove, are you listening??), I figured he would know the movie Can’t Hardly Wait like the back of his hand.  And, sure enough, he did! 

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While my first instinct was that the Christmas Tree Lane segment might only have appeared in a deleted scene or an extended version of Can’t Hardly Wait, fellow stalker Owen clued me in to the fact that it actually pops up about 15 seconds after the credits start rolling at the very end of the movie.  Which explains why I missed it even though I scanned through the movie TWICE!  LOL  In the scene, the two X-Philes, so named because they are huge X-Files fans :), are shown walking along a tree lined street in the early morning.  And just as one X-Phile says to the other, “This town is so lame.  Nothing exciting ever happens here.”, a UFO appears and beams the two right up.  THANK YOU, OWEN!  🙂

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Christmas Tree Lane is, in actuality, a mile long stretch of Santa Rosa Avenue, in between Woodbury Road and Altadena Drive, in Altadena.  The road is lined with over 150 towering deodar trees which were planted by Altadena’s founder, John P. Woodbury, in 1885.  Woodbury had originally seen the large-scale deodar trees during a trip to Italy and returned home to Altadena with several hundred of their seeds, which he immediately planted.   After being cultivated at a ranch for two years, the trees were then deposited all along the mile long driveway leading up to Woodbury’s yet-to-built Altadena mansion.  And while the mansion was never actually completed, that mile long stretch of driveway eventually became Santa Rosa Avenue, a main thoroughfare in Altadena.  In 1920, a rather festive Altadena gentleman named Frederick C. Nash, along with The Pasadena Kiwanis Club, decided to light one small section of Santa Rosa Avenue during the holiday season.  Over the years, more and more trees were added to the spectacle, finally resulting in a one mile stretch of land encompassing 150 trees, which are lit with over 10,000 twinkle lights.  The street was eventually dubbed Christmas Tree Lane and was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places on September 13, 1990.  According to the official Christmas Tree Lane website, the display is “the oldest large-scale Christmas lighting spectacle in the United States” and each December more than 50,000 motorists venture out to Altadena to view it.  The lights on the trees are hung each year by a group of hard-working, dogged volunteers and members of the Board of the Christmas Tree Lane Association.  Up until the year 2000, the electricity costs were paid for by Southern California Edison, but after the deregulation of California utilities, the financial obligation of keeping the trees lit fell to the Christmas Tree Lane Association.  The tree lighting tradition has only been able to continue thanks to the many generous donations received each year.  If you would like to donate your time or money to the Christmas Tree Lane Association, you may  do so here.  I honestly can’t recommend stalking Christmas Tree Lane enough!  It is an absolutely magical display of Christmas lights, the likes of which I have never seen duplicated.  On a side note – the fact is not lost on me that I am wearing a tank top in one of the above photographs, despite the fact that it was taken after dark in late December.  LOL  That’s Los Angeles for you, though!  And while I am usually a big fan of L.A.’s warm climate, during Christmastime I actually prefer there to be a chill in the air.  As Kevin McAllister said in Home Alone 2, “Who wants to spend Christmas in a tropical climate, anyway?”  😉  Come December 26th, though, I am all about the heat!  🙂

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I would be remiss in my duties if I didn’t take the time here to mention two other Pasadena area homes which, while not filming locations, are definitely holiday must-sees. The two houses are actually located on neighboring streets and, let me tell you, both are a site to behold!  The first one is pictured above.

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Not only do both houses feature a myriad of multi-colored twinkle lights, but they also boast musical animatronic displays starring such characters as Mickey Mouse, Snoopy, and The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, among countless others!  Not kidding!  I can’t even tell you how much fun it is to visit these two homes each year and to see what new Christmas decorations have been added to the already over-the-top spectacles.  LOVE IT! 

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Big THANK YOU to Allyn and Owen for helping me out with this location!  🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  🙂

Stalk It: Christmas Tree Lane is a mile long section of Santa Rosa Avenue located between Woodbury Road and Altadena Drive in Altadena.  This year, the lights will be turned on nightly from dusk until midnight through January 6th.  If you would like to donate time or money to the Christmas Tree Lane Association, you can do so here.  At the end of Can’t Hardly Wait, the two X-Philes are shown walking north on Santa Rosa Avenue, directly in front of the house numbered 2287.  The Balian Mansion is located at 1960 Mendocino Lane in Altadena, just a short distance from Christmas Tree Lane.  The other two must-see houses in the area are located at 1776 Las Lunas Street and 1775 Monte Vista Street in Pasadena, just north of the 210 Freeway.

The Rubio House

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One of my new favorite shows of the television season is the CBS series The Mentalist. Simon Baker’s acting on the show is truly incredible and I absolutely love watching his character! Anyway, while watching last week’s episode, I recognized not one, but two filming locations! The first location I recognized is a home that is used fairly often in movie and television productions and is known to us stalkers as “the Rubio house”. While watching the episode on Tuesday night, I turned to my boyfriend and screamed “Oh my god, that’s the Rubio house!” to which he replied “What’s the Rubio house?” and I realized I had yet to blog about it. So here goes. 🙂

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The Rubio house is a large colonial style home located on Rubio Street in Altadena, just a few miles north of Pasadena. On Tuesday night’s Mentalist episode, which was entitled “Seeing Red”, the home belonged to millionaire murder victim Rosemary Tennant. The interior and exterior of the home, especially the front porch area, were featured several times in the episode. According to the Movieland Directory, the Rubio house has also been featured in the pilot episode of 7th Heaven (as the Camden family home), How Stella Got Her Groove Back, The Babysitter’s Club, Can’t Hardly Wait (as the party location), Bye Bye Love, V: The Final Battle, and The Great Mom Swap. According to Seeing Stars the first two American Pie movies also used the interior of the Rubio house – Stiffler’s parties at the beginning of both flicks were filmed there. There are some conflicting reports and ongoing debates among stalkers that the home was also used as Tom Cruise’s house in the movie Risky Business. But according to one of my fave tour books, it has been confirmed through several location scouts who worked on the 1983 movie that the entirety of Risky Business was shot on location in Chicago, Illinois and that the Rubio house was not, in fact, used. I am sure it is something stalkers will continue to debate about for years to come, though. 🙂

Note – Just got a comment from Timothy over at Altadenablog that the Rubio house was also used as Lindsay Lohan’s residence in the movie I Know Who Killed Me. Thanks for the info and the shout out Altadenablog!

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The Rubio house is HUGE in person – much, much larger than it appears onscreen. It is easy to see why producers choose to use this home again and again in productions, as it looks like a very typical American home that could be found anywhere in the Midwest.

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The next location I recognized from The Mentalist was the swamp area from the Warner Brothers Lot, which Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and I had just visited a few weeks beforehand. In The Mentalist, the car that killed murder victim Rosemary Tennant is found in the WB swamp and a short scene takes place there as Simon Baker and his crew watch as the car is being removed from the water. As I mentioned in last week’s post about our WB tour, the swamp has been used in numerous productions over the years including ER, Million Dollar Baby, and Gilligan’s Island.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Mentalist house is located at 1090 Rubio Street in Altadena. The swamp is located on the Warner Brothers backlot and can only viewed while on a WB tour. Warner Brothers Studios is located at 3400 Riverside Drive in Burbank. Tours run every 30 minutes Monday through Friday from 8:20am to 4:00pm. Advance reservations are recommended. Tickets cost $45 per person. You can learn more about the tour here .