Your definitive source to filming locations and all things Hollywood!
While the 2019 Disney+ movie Noelle was largely shot in the Vancouver area, The Outlet Shoppes in Atlanta (located at 915 Ridgewalk Parkway in Woodstock, Georgia) played a key role masquerading as Phoenix’s Desert Ridge Marketplace, where Santa’s daughter, Noelle (Anna Kendrick), crash lands with her reindeer during a last-minute attempt to save Christmas. You can learn all about it in my latest reel.
The La Quinta Resort is where legendary director Frank Capra is said to have penned the screenplay for his Christmas classic It’s a Wonderful Life. Watch my latest reel to learn all about it! Fun fact – according to Reality Steve, the Golden Bachelor is set to tie the knot on the premises in January.
Since I have been on such a Christmas with the Kranks kick as of late, I thought I’d finish out this year’s Yuletide posts by blogging about the movie’s studio locations. The 2004 comedy was unusual in that it utilized the backlots of not one, not two, but three different L.A.-area studios!
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The main backlot set featured in Christmas with the Kranks was the Hemlock Street neighborhood at the now defunct Downey Studios, formerly located at 12214 Lakewood Boulevard in Downey. The residential complex, which took 12 weeks to construct at a cost of $5 million and was comprised of 16 Midwest-style homes, was built specifically for the movie after producers came up empty-handed searching for a Chicago-area community to use in the production. When Christmas with the Kranks wrapped, Downey Studios chose to leave the expansive set intact to be used in future productions. It subsequently popped up in Pineapple Express, Supernatural, 24, and the Jonas Brothers’ “Paranoid” music video. Unfortunately, Downey Studios was shuttered in 2012 and all of its sets and soundstages razed, including Hemlock Street. Today, a retail complex known as The Promenade at Downey stands on the site.
During the time that Downey Studios was in operation, the Hemlock Street homes were visible to passersby from nearby roads. I stalked the place back in 2011 and seeing the façades was a thrill to say the least. You can read a more extensive post I wrote about the former studio here.
Because Downey Studios lacked a downtown backlot set, the production team had to venture elsewhere to film the movie’s urban scenes. They found what they were looking for (well, in part) at Universal Studios Hollywood, located at 100 Universal City Plaza in Universal City. It was in the studio’s New York Street area that cast and crew shot the scene involving Chip’s Market, where Luther Krank (Tim Allen) attempted to buy white chocolate and pistachios for his wife, Nora (Jamie Lee Curtis).
The Pumpkin Seed Paperie & Press stationary store, where Nora failed to place her annual Christmas card order, was also located on New York Street. Unfortunately, the façades used in the movie were destroyed by a fire in 2008 and no longer exist. You can see some images of them on The Studio Tour website here, here, here, and here.
Though not a backlot location, it bears mentioning that another spot at Universal made an appearance in Christmas with the Kranks. One of the property’s restaurants, The Studio Grill by Wolfgang Puck, is where Nora lunched with her friends Merry (Felicity Huffman) and Candi (Caroline Rhea) at the beginning of the movie. You can check out some photos of the eatery here.
For whatever reason, when it came time to film the scene in which Officers Salino (Cheech Marin) and Treen (Jake Busey) drive Blair Krank (Julie Gonzalo) and her new fiancé, Enrique Decardenal (Rene Lavan), home from the airport, producers chose not to utilize the Universal backlot, but instead headed over to Warner Bros. Studio, located at 3400 West Riverside Drive in Burbank. (Big THANK YOU to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for the photo that appears below, which he took during one of the many WB tours that we’ve embarked upon together.)
The scene was shot on Warner Bros. Studio’s famed Hennesy Street.
The spot where the officers arrest a burglar in the scene can be found in the southeastern portion of Hennesy Street.
If that area looks familiar to my fellow stalkers, that’s because it should. It has been immortalized in numerous iconic productions over the years.
I chronicled some of its onscreen appearances for both Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles, but figured it was worthy of a re-cap.
The same area of the backlot is most famous for being the site of the upside-down kiss in 2002’s Spider-Man.
It also served as the rear of the Hudson St. Home for Girls in the 1982 musical Annie.
The southeastern portion of Hennesy Street masked as the block in Okinawa, Japan where Sato’s (Danny Kamekona) dojo was located in 1986’s The Karate Kid Part II.
It was also there that Rachel Green (Jennifer Aniston) introduced herself to Jean-Claude Van Damme in the Season 2 episode of Friends titled “The One After the Superbowl: Part 2.”
Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) attempted to smoke there in the Season 3 episode of Sex and the City titled “Escape from New York.”
And the area was also used as the exterior of Toby Cavanaugh’s (Keegan Allen) loft on Pretty Little Liars.
I would like to wish all of my fellow stalkers a very Merry Christmas! I hope everyone has a safe and joyous holiday! My posts in the coming week will be light, but I promise to be back in 2017 with lots of new content!
For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 
Some cities know how to do Christmas right. Sadly, Palm Springs is not one of them. As I mentioned last year, the desert just seems to be lacking when it comes to Christmas décor. Yes, there are lights and garland strung in certain sections of our local mall and colorful wreaths hung from a few select street lights, but overall the Coachella Valley doesn’t really have a holiday feel. So much so that two years ago, the Grim Cheaper and I decided to make an annual December pilgrimage to Los Angeles so that we could shop in a city that truly embraces the holidays. (You’d be hard-pressed to find a mall in L.A. that does not have a two- or three-story tree. Now that’s how I want to do my Christmas shopping!) Shortly before we ventured out this year, I discovered that Christmas with the Kranks had done some filming at Westside Pavilion, so we headed there first. And it turned out to be a truly magical experience. But more on that in a bit.
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As I talked about in Friday’s post, earlier this month I set out to track down some unknown locations from Christmas with the Kranks. After identifying the Irish pub from the 2004 comedy, I turned my focus on the mall where Nora Krank (Jamie Lee Curtis) and her husband, Luther Krank (Tim Allen), visited “Tans Forever” tanning booth.
While watching the scene, I noticed, via the escalators visible behind Nora and Luther, that the Christmas with the Kranks shopping center had three levels. So I did a Google search for “three-story mall” and “Los Angeles” and was led to this LA Tourist article which mentioned the Westside Pavilion and its three floors of storefronts. One look at images of the Pavilion told me that it was definitely the right place! From there, I just had to figure out the exact spot where filming had occurred.
It was obvious in the scene that the Tans Forever storefront had been created on Westside Pavilion’s second floor. And thankfully the names of a few neighboring businesses were visible in the background, including Shoe Care, Payless ShoeSource, and Regis Hairstylists.
A quick look at Westside Pavilion’s online map showed me that while Regis had since moved, Payless and Shoe Care were still located in the same area – on the mall’s second level near Macy’s. So the Grim Cheaper and I headed right on over to that spot upon arriving at the shopping center.
To our surprise, as soon as we stepped off the escalator we noticed that a film shoot was taking place! As we walked closer, I just about fainted upon realizing the shoot was for The Goldbergs, a show that the GC and I just recently started watching and are officially obsessed with. The cast and crew honestly could not have been nicer and I will be doing a whole post on our experience as soon as the episode that was being filmed airs.
After watching The Goldbergs shoot for a bit, the GC and I attempted to figure out the exact spots where Christmas with the Kranks filming had taken place. We pinpointed the escalator used in the movie easily enough. In the scene, Nora and Luther use the down escalator situated near PacSun to go from the mall’s third level to the second.
Even though I knew the general vicinity, pinpointing the spot where the Tans Forever storefront had been set up proved more difficult. It was not until I got home and enlisted the help of my friend/guest poster extraordinaire Michael (you can read his many amazing posts here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here) that I was able to figure it out. As we discovered, the Tans Forever salon was created in what is now Kid’s Club (that’s the teal storefront in the photograph pictured below).
Thanks to some old Westside Pavilion maps that he found online, Michael learned that at the time of the filming the Kid’s Club space was vacant and had most recently housed a Ritz Camera. Sadly, but not surprisingly, the storefront does not currently look anything like it did in Christmas with the Kranks. Sadder still, while stalking the mall, I came to believe that a different shop had been used in the shoot, so I barely took any photos of Kid’s Club.
We did venture inside, though, while looking for some gifts for the kids on our list and, while the real life interior of the space was also used in Christmas with the Kranks, because it was a shop created especially for the movie, it currently bears no resemblance to its onscreen appearance.
Westside Pavilion has been featured in a few other holiday-themed productions, as well! Though not a Christmas movie, in 1987’s No Man’s Land, Ted Varrick (Charlie Sheen) and Benjy Taylor (D.B. Sweeney) shop at – and steal a Porsche from – the mall during Christmastime.
The Season 5 holiday-themed episode of Modern Family titled “The Old Man and the Tree,” which aired in 2013, was also shot at Westside Pavilion. It is there that Mitchell Pritchett (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) shops for a Puppy Pound toy for his daughter, Lily (Aubrey Anderson-Emmons), and that Alex Dunphy (Ariel Winter) and Haley Dunphy (Sarah Hyland) work as Mrs. Claus and an elf, respectively, for an absentee Santa Claus.
The mall has also appeared in a couple of non-Christmas-themed productions. Tom Petty rode the escalators there in his 1989 “Free Fallin’” music video, which you can watch here.
And the exterior of the Pavilion was used in an establishing shot in the 1995 comedy Clueless. (All of the movie’s interior mall scenes were lensed at Westfield Fashion Square in Sherman Oaks, which I blogged about here.)
For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.
Big THANK YOU to my friend Michael for all of his help in pinpointing the Tans Forever storefront! 
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: Westside Pavilion from Christmas with the Kranks is located at 10800 West Pico Boulevard in Rancho Park. Filming took place on the second level in and around what is now Kid’s Club. You can visit the mall’s official website here.
If there is anything I have learned over the past ten-plus years that I have lived in Southern California, it is that stalking tips often come from the most unlikely of places. Take for instance this past weekend. The Grim Cheaper’s father has long been a collector of model trains, so last Sunday afternoon the GC headed over to the Whistle Stop train store in Pasadena to do some Christmas shopping for his dad. While there he stumbled upon some vintage locomotive photographs taken by photographer Stan Kistler. Amazingly enough, one of those photographs happened to be a May 1946 image of the former Santa Fe Lamanda Park Train Station in Pasadena which at the time was dressed to appear as the Bedford Falls Train Station for the filming of It’s A Wonderful Life! And while the GC did not actually purchase the photograph for me (he didn’t earn that nickname for nothin’!), when he got home he immediately told me about it and, let me tell you, I almost fell out of my chair! I could not believe that one of the most famous Christmas movies of all time had been filmed right in my own backyard and that I had not previously known about it! Because the GC had failed to write down – or remember – exactly which station had been used in the filming (men!), I immediately ran right over to the Whistle Stop to find out. I also purchased the photograph (which is pictured above), not for myself, but for fellow stalker David in Seattle, as It’s A Wonderful Life is one of his all time favorite movies.
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Written on the back of the photograph was the information that I was seeking. The It’s A Wonderful Life train station was actually the now-defunct Santa Fe Lamanda Park Station located at the intersection of East Walnut Street and North San Gabriel Boulevard in Pasadena. Sadly, the station was torn down in 1953.
And even though the station is no longer in existence, I just had to stalk its former site. The above photograph is what the intersection of North San Gabriel Boulevard and East Walnut Street looks like circa 2010. As you can see, there is no sign of the former station anywhere, which I had expected. What I had not expected, though, was the fact that there was also no sign of the former railroad tracks. Before arriving at the intersection, I had been convinced I would be able to find some small remnant of the tracks somewhere in the vicinity.
What I did spot while I was there, though, was an elevated section of the road that looked to be just about the same size as a set of train tracks. That area is marked with the pink lines in the above photograph.
Another view of that elevated portion of land is pictured above. I am guessing that the former railroad tracks are located just beneath that area of land and that instead of actually removing the tracks when the Santa Fe Railroad Line was dismantled in the 1950s, workers simply just poured cement over them leaving what you see above.
So, if my hunch is correct and that bit of land is in fact the former home to a set of train tracks, then I am fairly certain the patch of grass pictured above is where the Lamanda Park Train Station used to be located. But again, that is just a guess.
The station was featured towards the beginning of It’s A Wonderful Life in the scene in which George Bailey (aka James Stewart) and Uncle Billy (aka Thomas Mitchell) wait to pick up Harry Bailey (aka Todd Karns), who has just returned home after graduating from college, at the Bedford Falls train station.
Pictured above is a close-up view of the vintage photograph I purchased for David. The “Bedford Falls” prop signs are denoted with the pink arrows and one of the production’s lighting rigs is denoted with a blue arrow. So incredibly cool! You can see a photograph of what the Lamanda Park station looked like back in 1936 on the Palomar Skies blog here and here.
A very MERRY CHRISTMAS to all of my fellow stalkers! I hope you all have a fabulous holiday with your loved ones. 
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: The former Lamanda Park station, aka the Bedford Falls train station from It’s A Wonderful Life, was located at the intersection of East Walnut Street and North San Gabriel Boulevard in Pasadena. My best guess as to the station’s exact location is denoted with the pink arrows in the above aerial view.
As difficult as it may be to believe, even though I absolutely love Christmas and even though I am a huge film buff, up until this past weekend I had never in my life watched the 1946 holiday classic It’s A Wonderful Life. I know, I know, for a person like me, not having seen that movie borders on sacrilege! But when fellow stalker David contacted me a few months back and let me know that he had tracked down a location used in the film, I just HAD to stalk the place – and, of course, include it in my Christmas posts. I also just HAD to sit down and finally watch It’s A Wonderful Life, which my fiancé and I did this past Saturday night. I have to admit that I didn’t actually have high hopes for the flick, as I pretty much expected it to be right on par with Citizen Kane, a movie I could hardly sit through despite the fact that it is generally regarded as the greatest film of all time. So, I was absolutely shocked when I ended up LOVING It’s A Wonderful Life. The movie was funny, heart-warming, and poignant. Most shocking of all, though, was how prevalent and timeless it actually was, despite the fact that it was filmed over 63 years ago. I literally almost fell off the couch laughing in the scene in which the Bailey’s housekeeper, Annie, eavesdrops on George and his father’s dinner conversation, causing George to say, “Well, Annie, why don’t you draw up a chair, then you’d be more comfortable and you could hear everything that’s going on.” LOL LOL LOL For those of you hold-outs out there who have yet to watch It’s A Wonderful Life, the movie truly is a must-see – especially in these days leading up to Christmas. 🙂
Unlike me, fellow stalker David has long been a fan of It’s A Wonderful Life. In the late ‘80s, he even got to stalk the inside of the Beverly Hills High School gym, where the infamous Charleston dance contest scene took place. And, yes, the floor of the BHHS gym really does open up to reveal a 25-yard swimming pool which is housed beneath. You can see a photograph of the pool here. So cool! Anyway, flash forward to about twenty years later when David’s wife bought him a book about the making of It’s A Wonderful Life for Christmas. The book stated that the house belonging to the Martini Family in the movie was located somewhere in La Canada Flintridge, a small city situated just outside of Pasadena. So, of course, David got to cyber-stalking, but, sadly, couldn’t seem to locate the residence. A short while later, though, he discovered a little website called Zillow, which he used to search the La Canada Flintridge area, and voila, it wasn’t long before he stumbled upon the correct house! YAY! David immediately posted the newfound address on Wikipedia’s It’s A Wonderful Life page, but – surprise, surprise – that information was quickly removed due to the fact that no source had been cited. Why legitimate information on Wikipedia is continuously removed while incongruous information is allowed to stay posted is BEYOND me. Not that I am bitter about it or anything. 😉 Anyway, David got into a bit of a Wiki-war with the administrators of the encyclopedia website, re-posting the information each and every time it was taken down LOL, which finally resulted in his posting about the house being deleted from the site for good. But, ironically enough, in the midst of the Wikipedia battle, numerous filming location websites and It’s A Wonderful Life fansites picked up David’s information and posted it online, ultimately resulting in Wikipedia re-posting the address and deeming it “reliable” years later. LOVE IT! 🙂
The Martini House is featured very briefly in It’s A Wonderful Life, in the scene in which George (aka James Stewart) welcomes the Martini Family to their new home in Bailey Park and his wife Mary (aka Donna Reed) presents them with bread, so “that this house will never known hunger”, salt, so “that life will always have flavor”, and wine, so “that joy and prosperity may reign forever”. 🙂 I am very happy to report that the house looks EXACTLY the same today – over 63 years later!!!!!! – as it did when the movie was filmed! 🙂 Even the position of the address number, the doorbell, and the mail slot are EXACTLY the same! LOVE IT! LOVE IT! LOVE IT! 🙂
The Martini’s neighbor’s home, which flashes by quickly in the scene, also looks very much the same as it did back in 1946.
A few of the other homes on the street were also featured briefly in the Martini house scene, but as you can see in the above screen captures and photographs, those residences look much different today.
And try as I might, I have not been able to determine the exact house in front of which Sam Wainwright was parked during that scene, but I am pretty sure it is the property pictured above, which as you can see, has also changed significantly. Don’t quote me on that one, though. 🙂
The shot showing the Bailey Park entrance sign was filmed just down the street from the Martini House, at the corner of Viro Road and Lamour Drive, but as you can see in the above screen capture and photograph, that corner looks much different today. The curved tree where the sign once hung is now gone and new foliage has popped up all along Viro Road blocking the view of most of the houses.
In real life, the Martini neighborhood was completed in 1946, just prior to the filming of It’s A Wonderful Life. With the picturesque mountains in the background and the obviously new construction, it’s not hard to see why producers chose the community to stand in for the newly built Bailey Park neighborhood in the flick. As you can see, though, the area has grown quite significantly since the ‘40s.
I highly recommend stalking the Martini house to all fans of It’s A Wonderful Life. It truly is remarkable to see a location look exactly the same in person as it did in a movie which was filmed over six decades ago!
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Big THANK YOU to David for finding this location.
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂
Stalk It: The Martini house from It’s A Wonderful Life is located at 4587 Viro Road in La Canada Flintridge. The neighbor’s house is located at 4581 Viro Road. The entrance to the Bailey Park community can be found at the Southwest corner of Viro Road and Lamour Drive. In the shot showing the Bailey Park sign, the camera was looking north. In the scene, George’s car turns west off of Viro Road onto East Lamour Drive, but, in reality, he should have just continued straight on Viro Road to head to the Martini House. The houses George and Mary walk in front of at the end of the scene are located at 4588 and 4592 Viro Road. And, finally, I believe that the house where Sam’s car was parked is located at 4582 Viro Road.
I wanted to publish this post on Christmas day, but unfortunately ran out of time. 🙁 Better late than never! Anyway, one of my all-time favorite Christmas movies is the 1947 film Miracle on 34th Street. So, of course, every December while in New York, I drag my boyfriend out to stalk the main filming location used in the movie – the famous Macy’s department store located at the intersection of 34th Street and Broadway.
The Miracle on 34th Street Macy’s, which is also known as the Herald Square Macy’s, is the company’s flagship store. With nine floors and 2,150,000 square feet of shopping space, it has the distinction of being known as “The World’s Largest Store”. In fact, Macy’s takes up almost an entire New York City block! It’s humongous! R.H. Macy first opened the New York branch of his department store on the corner of 14th Street and 6th Avenue in 1858. The store moved to its current location, a nine story building designed by the architecture firm De Lemos & Cordes in 1902. The Palladian style building which houses Macy’s became a National Historic Landmark in 1978 and has one of the only wooden escalators currently still in use.
Both the interior and the exterior of the Herald Square Macy’s were used in the filming of Miracle on 34th Street. In fact, the filming of the movie required more power than Macy’s had on hand, creating the need for additional power sources to be set up in the basement of the department store. Even though filming took place over sixty years ago, I am happy to report that much of both the interior and the exterior of Macy’s are still recognizable from the movie. Besides Miracle on 34th Street, Macy’s was also featured in the 1956 film Lovers and Lollipops, the Beat This: A Hip Hop History television special, and Kanye West’s “Heard ‘Em Say” video. Popular essayist David Sedaris also wrote a short story entitled “SantaLand Diaries” based on his real life experiences working as one of Santa’s elves at the 34th Street Macy’s.
But Macy’s most significant claim to fame would have to be its incredible SantaLand department, which takes up almost all of Macy’s eighth floor during the Christmas season. During the month of December, all of Macy’s nine floors are completely decked out with wreaths, ribbons, and twinkle lights. Walking into Macy’s at Christmastime is like entering a winter wonderland. But nothing quite compares to Santa’s New York home – the place where children of all ages can sit on the real Santa Claus’ lap.
SantaLand has seen quite a few changes since Natalie Wood first visited it and sat on Santa’s lap in Miracle on 34th Street. The modern day SantaLand is a magical holiday wonderland, complete with numerous miniature railroad displays, dancing bears, and talking trees that look like they came straight out of Disneyland. My personal favorite SantaLand character is an animatronic elf who cleans a miniature railroad display case (pictured above). His hand actually goes back and forth wiping the case clean with a red cloth. 🙂 So cute!!!
I highly recommend stalking the Miracle on 34th Street Macy’s, especially the real Santa Claus and the SantaLand department. There’s nothing else quite like it to get you in the Christmas spirit! 🙂
Oh, please Santa, bring me anything from Louis Vuitton! 🙂
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂
Stalk It: The Miracle on 34th Street Macy’s is located at 151 West 34th Street in Midtown Manhattan.
