Tavern on the Green from “Ghostbusters”

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I adhere to a “more is more” philosophy.  There’s nothing wrong with a little extra!  So I, of course, was a huge fan of the landmark Central Park restaurant Tavern on the Green during the time that it was run by the LeRoy family.  Though many referred to the place as tacky, garish and over-the-top, I found it nothing short of magical and was devastated when it shuttered in 2010, its whimsical décor and furnishings auctioned off to the highest bidders, its famous Crystal Room dismantled piece by sparkling piece.  New York, in my mind, would never be the same.  When the property was re-opened under new leadership a few years later, I was curious how the space would compare to its prior self and promptly added it to my NYC To- Stalk List.  The Grim Cheaper and I finally made it there for cocktails and appetizers, our good friends Kim and Katie in tow, during our April 2016 trip to the Big Apple.  While definitely lacking in extra, the revamped Tavern on the Green did not disappoint.  So even though I briefly covered the eatery in a 2008 write-up, I figured it was definitely worthy of a repost.

The Victorian Gothic-style building that now houses Tavern on the Green was originally constructed in 1870 (yes, 1870!) as a sheepfold (aka a sheep pen) for the hundreds of sheep that called Central Park home.

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In 1934, Parks Commissioner Robert Moses decided the sprawling Calvert Vaux and Jacob Wrey Mould-designed structure would better serve as a restaurant and set about repurposing it.  The sheep were sent to Prospect Park in Brooklyn, their former barn given a massive renovation, and, voilà, Tavern on the Green was born.

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Though popular, the moderately-priced pub went through several ownership changes and remodels in the years that followed.  Finally, in 1974, it was purchased by Warner LeRoy, son of The Wizard of Oz producer Mervyn LeRoy and Doris Warner (daughter of Warner Bros. founder Harry Warner), who began an extensive $10 million remodel and expansion of the site that took three years to complete.  The result of his efforts was a kitschy, fanciful masterpiece that had to be seen to be believed.

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Thanks to LeRoy’s vision, everyday at Tavern on the Green was like Christmas.  The 27,000-square-foot eatery was marked by Tiffany stained glass, Baccarat crystal chandeliers, topiaries, massive murals, hand-painted ceilings, mirrored walls, and thousands upon thousands of twinkle lights.  The site’s most famous dining area, the Crystal Room, a glass-encased space overlooking the restaurant’s terrace and Central Park, was the glittering cherry on top.  Sadly, I failed to take any proper photographs of Tavern on the Green during my visits, but you can check out some images of what it looked like during LeRoy’s tenure here.

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  It did not take long for Tavern on the Green to become an icon – a restaurant synonymous with the city itself and a must-see spot for locals, tourists and celebrities alike.  Just a few of the luminaries who dined there over the years include Grace Kelly, John Lennon, Jennifer Aniston, Liza Minnelli, Seth Meyers, Jon Hamm, Christie Brinkley, George Clooney, Liv Tyler, Drew Barrymore, Alec Guinness, Christian Dior, Martha Stewart, Howard Stern, and Beth Ostrosky.

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When Warner passed away in 2001, his wife and daughter took over operations and the place remained as popular and profitable as ever.  In 2006, Tavern on the Green was one of the highest grossing restaurants in the U.S., second only to Tao Las Vegas.  Sadly, the eatery was hit hard by the economy in 2008 and the following year it was announced that the Parks Department had opted not to renew the LeRoys’ lease.  The family served their last meal on the premises on New Year’s Eve 2009 and a massive auction was held shortly thereafter in which all of the colorful décor was sold off.  The space subsequently served as a visitor center, of all things, until 2012 when it was taken over by Philadelphia restauranteurs Jim Caiola and David Salama, who began a two-year, $20 million renovation.  The new Tavern on the Green opened in April 2014.

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Though undeniably beautiful, the restaurant is a far cry from its predecessor.  Understated and classic, marked by wood detailing and patterned banquettes, the new Tavern is sleeker and more refined than the LeRoy version.  While I did enjoy dining there, I couldn’t help but miss the old Tavern, with all of its over-the-top whimsy.  Regardless, I am so thankful that the place is once again open to hungry patrons.  The Crystal Room may have long since been razed, the twinkle lights removed from the trees, and the paper lanterns cleared away from the terrace, but the site does still retain some of its former magic.

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I really think Caiola and Salama need to reinstate the twinkle lights, though.  As I said above, there’s nothing wrong with a little extra – and the Edison bulbs currently strung across the patio just aren’t cutting it.

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Thanks to Tavern on the Green’s unique beauty, location managers flocked to it during the Warner days.  The eatery most famously appeared in Ghostbusters.  It is there that Louis Tully (Rick Moranis) runs while being chased by the “terror dog” and unsuccessfully tries to catch the attention of the patrons inside in the 1984 hit.

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Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen) heads to the bathroom at Tavern on the Green to meet with the FBI and hand over his taped conversation with Gordon Gecko (Michael Douglas) at the end of 1987’s Wall Street.

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CC Bloom (Bette Midler) and John Pierce (John Heard) take Hillary Whitney Essex (Barbara Hershey) and Michael Essex (James Read) to Tavern on the Green for dinner in 1988’s Beaches.

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I am 99.9% certain, though, that only the exterior of the restaurant appeared in the movie and that interiors were filmed elsewhere, likely at an eatery in L.A.

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That same year, Tavern on the Green was featured in the opening scene of the comedy Arthur 2: On the Rocks.  It is there that Linda Marolla Bach (Liza Minnelli) tells Arthur Bach (Dudley Moore) that she cannot have children.

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In 2001’s Made, Bobby (Jon Favreau) and Ricky (Vince Vaughn) meet up with Ruiz (Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs) at Tavern on the Green to discuss a money drop.

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Alfie (Jude Law) picks up Nikki (Sienna Miller) and her friends in his cab outside of Tavern on the Green one lonely Christmas Eve night in the 2004 movie Alfie.

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Boy’s (Anton Yelchin) Senior Prom takes place at Tavern on the Green in 2009’s New York, I Love You.

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Post-closing, Tavern played a central role in the 2011 comedy Mr. Popper’s Penguins as the restaurant Mr. Popper (Jim Carrey) tried to buy from Mrs. Van Gundy (Angela Lansbury).  Only the exterior of the site was utilized in the filming, though.

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Because the space had already been transformed into a visitor center and the Crystal Room had long since been dismantled by the time filming took place, the restaurant’s interior was re-imagined on a soundstage for the shoot.  According to the movie’s production notes, production designer Stuart Wurtzel, “re-created the wood-paneled front vestibule of the Tavern, the famous Crystal Room with its ornate chandeliers and flower-filled décor, and approximately twelve feet of Central Park so the views outside the plate-glass windows would look authentic.  ‘It’s a sort of emotional composite of how people remember it,’ he says.”

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Following its 2014 re-opening, Tavern popped up in the Season 1 episode of The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt titled “Kimmy is Bad at Math!” as the spot where Logan Beekman (Adam Campbell) took Kimmy Schmidt (Ellie Kemper) on a date.  While there, she exclaims, “I can’t believe I’m at the Ghostbusters restaurant!”

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It was also there that Luann de Lesseps met with ex-boyfriend Jacques Azoulay to discuss their upcoming comedy show in the Season 12 episode of The Real Housewives of New York titled “Just the Sip,” which aired in 2020.

And while I thought that the Tavern’s lantern-strung terrace was the spot where Mr. Big (Chris Noth) and Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) dined in the Season 2 episode of Sex and the City titled “The Caste System,” I contacted the episode’s director, Allison Anders, who informed me that filming actually took place on the rear patio of a private house on the Upper West Side that was dressed to look like a restaurant.  Of the re-designed space, she said, “I was so thrilled with the result and that all these years later it rang true for you makes me very happy indeed.”

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

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Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: Tavern on the Green, from Ghostbusters, is located at Central Park West and 67th Street on New York’s Upper West Side.  You can visit the eatery’s official website here.

The New York Public Library from “Sex and the City: The Movie”

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In honor of today’s big premiere of Sex and The City 2, I thought I’d blog about a location from the original movie that I stalked this past October while I was in Manhattan – the New York Public Library.  And even though I’ve actually blogged about this location once before, since I did not include any interior photographs, I thought the place was definitely worth re-visiting.  In the original Sex and the City movie, Carrie Bradshaw (aka Sarah Jessica Parker) and her fiancé Mr. Big (aka Chris Noth) plan to hold their upcoming nuptials at the library because, as Carrie says, it is “the classic New York landmark that housed all the great love stories”.  The New York Public Library was constructed during the years 1902 through 1911 on the site of the former Croton Reservoir and was designed by the architecture firm Carrere & Hastings.  The Beaux-Arts structure, which is made of white marble and cost $9 million to build, encompasses two full blocks of New York City land and contains 88 miles of shelving which holds over seven million books.  Amazingly enough, any one of those seven million tomes can be requested and delivered to the library’s main circulation desk within a period of ten minutes or less!  The New York Public Library, which was named a National Historic Monument in 1965, is a truly amazing piece of architecture and, being that it is symbolic of the two great loves of Carrie Bradshaw’s life – New York City and writing – it is easy to see why producers chose it as the site of her ill-fated wedding.

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The library shows up twice in Sex and the City: The Movie. It first appears in the scene in which Carrie, while returning the book “Love Letters of Great Men, Volume I”, spots a wedding being set up in the library’s mezzanine.  She immediately decides the place is the perfect location for her own upcoming nuptials.

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That first scene was shot in the extremely beautiful McGraw Rotunda, which is located on the library’s second floor.

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The New York Public Library next appears in the big wedding scene, during which Mr. Big stands Carrie up at the altar.  And I should state here that the wedding scene seriously annoyed me.  I mean, honestly, how many times can we expect Big to screw up before Carrie leaves him for good????  The SATC writers really need to come up with a new way of creating tension, because the whole Big-breaks-Carrie’s-heart thing was already getting old way back in Season 3.  We should be long past that storyline by now, but I digress.

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According to the SUPER nice security guard I spoke with, producers had the McGraw Rotunda intricately decorated with thousands upon thousands of flowers and other adornments for the wedding scene, yet none of it was visible in the movie.  The only time any of the wedding decorations can be spotted is in the above-pictured blink-and-you’ll miss it scene in which Anthony Marentino (aka Mario Cantone) tells an assistant to keep all of the wedding guests off of the main stairwell.

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The scene in which Mr. Big tells Carrie via telephone that he “couldn’t get out of the car” and that he will not be going through with the wedding was filmed in the library’s Astor Hall area, just off of the main lobby.

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Miranda (aka Cynthia Nixon) and Charlotte (aka Kristin Davis) immediately grab Carrie and rush her out of the library’s northernmost front door.

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And, while I was stalking the library, I, of course, just had to reenact the scene in which a devastated Carrie drops her cell phone after finding out that Big has stood her up.

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Sex and the City: The Movie was hardly the first production to film at the library, though.  The building was also the site of the benefit gala in the Season 3 episode of Gossip Girl titled “Ex-Husbands and Wives”

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In the 1961 movie Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Paul Varjak (aka George Peppard) and Holly Golightly (aka Audrey Hepburn) stop into the library during their “things we’ve never done before” day.  And while the real life exterior of the library appeared in that scene, I cannot say for certain that the actual interior was also used.  The interior scenes quite possibly may have been filmed on a studio soundstage.  The library also appeared in a later scene in the movie as the spot where Paul first tells Holly that he loves her.  And I just have to say here that I find it absolutely amazing that Audrey Hepburn’s costumes are still stylish today, almost five decades after Breakfast at Tiffany’s was filmed!  I mean, how adorable is the orange jacket pictured above?  But, again, I digress.

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In the original Spider-Man movie, Uncle Ben (aka Cliff Robertson) drops off Peter Parker (aka Tobey Maguire) at the library, where he is supposedly going to do some studying.  Peter instead goes to a wrestling match dressed as Spider-Man.  When Ben later comes to pick Peter up, he gets killed outside of the library’s main entrance.

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Jenna Rink (aka Jennifer Garner) and Matt Flamhaff (aka Mark Ruffalo) stage part of their “Class of 2004” photo shoot in front of the New York Public Library in fave movie 13 Going On 30.

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In 1997’s Picture Perfect, the library was the site of the Gulden’s Mustard party where Kate Mosley (aka my girl Jennifer Aniston) first becomes disillusioned with the advertising world.

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And while a large portion of the movie The Day After Tomorrow was set in the New York Public Library, no filming actually took place there.  Instead producers built a replica of the library’s interior on a studio soundstage that they later destroyed during the massive flood scenes.  According to the security guard that I spoke with, set designers spent weeks taking measurements of the interior of the library so that it could be exactly replicated for the filming.

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In The Thomas Crown Affair, the inside of the library stood in for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as the Met refused to let any interior scenes be shot on the premises.

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The first Ghostbusters movie actually opens with a shot of the New York Public Library and its famous stone lions, who are named Patience and Fortitude.  The library has also appeared in the movies On The Town, Pickup on South Street, A Thousand Clowns, The Clock, King Kong, and You’re a Big Boy Now, and in the television series Kings.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  🙂

Stalk It: The New York Public library is located on the corner of Fifth Avenue and West 42nd Street in New York City.  It is open to the public daily.

The Firehouse from “Ghostbusters”

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This past weekend while doing some stalking in Downtown L.A. I dragged my fiancé out to see an oft-used filming location that has long been at the top of my “To-Stalk” list.  That location is known as Fire Station #23, a real life former working fire house that served as the offices of Dr. Raymond Stantz (aka Dan Aykroyd), Dr. Peter Venkman (aka Bill Murray), Dr. Egon Spengler (aka Harold Ramis), and Winston Zeddmore (aka Ernie Hudson) in the 1984 movie Ghostbusters.  And as fate would have it, when we pulled up to the now-defunct fire station, the caretaker of the property, an EXTREMELY nice man named Daniel Taylor, happened to be standing outside speaking with a student filmmaker.  So, I, of course, struck up a conversation with him and asked if it might be alright if I stepped inside to take a look around and snap a few photographs.  And, let me tell you, I just about fell over from excitement when Daniel told me to go right in!  YAY!

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Fire Station #23 actually has quite a storied, and sometimes scandalous, history.  The structure, which first opened on October 2, 1910, was designed by the prominent architectural firm of Hudson & Munsell and served as the headquarters of the Los Angeles Fire Department for over a decade.  The three story building, which cost between $57,000 and $60,000 to construct and measured 26 feet wide, 167 feet deep and encompassed 13,600 square feet of space, has been mired in controversy ever since the day it was first dedicated.  In the beginning, angry citizens deemed the construction costs far too steep for a public building, especially since tax payers were footing the bill and considering the extravagance with which the place was built.   And it has been said that no other fire station in the country is as opulent.  The top floor of the structure housed the Fire Chief’s suite, an apartment which every fire chief from 1910 to 1928 called home.  The suite featured a marble bathroom complete with a double bathtub, Peruvian mahogany wall paneling, imported Italian tile detailing, oak flooring, a private elevator, a brass bed, a roof garden, a marble fireplace, and French bevel glass mirrors.  The second floor contained the captain’s dwelling, a library with built-in bookshelves, and bunks for twenty firefighters.  The bottom floor contained an open arcade with enamel tiled walls, 21 foot high pressed tin ceilings, and stalls to accommodate ten horses.  Pretty amazing for a fire house, huh?  The Los Angeles Times even dubbed the place “the Taj Mahal of fire stations”.

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Fire Station #23 remained in operation for fifty years, whereupon its men responded to over 60,000 fires.  But with the city moving towards building more modernized stations, Engine Truck Company #23 closed its doors for good on November 23rd, 1960.  Because a station in Pacific Palisades adopted the “23” company number, the shuttered station took on the name “Old 23”.  For the next six years, the fire department utilized the space for medial records storage and as a training facility.  In 1966, the same year it became a City of Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument, the fire house was shut down by the department completely.  For the next ten years, as the area surrounding the building became more and more impoverished, the station fell into serious disrepair and suffered from extreme vandalism and looting.  In 1979, the Fire Commission decided to renovate the property and eventually turn it into a firehouse museum.  A non-profit organization named Olde 23 was set up to oversee the restoration process and to raise funds for the massive undertaking.  In 1980, the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places.  Nine years later, though, in 1988, the plans for turning Old #23 into a museum were nixed and the city opened their Los Angeles Fire Department Museum at a location in Hollywood instead.

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Seven years later controversy came raining down upon the fire house once again when Los Angeles Times staff writer Robert J. Lopez authored a front page article accusing the Olde 23 corporation of misuse of funds.  According to the article, Olde 23 had been collecting massive amounts of money (over $210,000 to be exact) thanks to the numerous film shoots that had taken place on the premises over the years.  Not only had the company failed to turn that money over to the city, though, but no one had even informed the city that any sort of filming was going on.  Being that a city department is responsible for handing out film permits, I’m not quite sure how this even happened, but I guess it’s just another case of a beaurocracy’s right hand not knowing what the left is doing.  Causing further scandal was the fact that even though the city had moved the museum location to a different site seven years prior, Olde 23 was still collecting not only filming fees that would supposedly go into the museum fund, but also donations for the project.  AND (yes, there’s more!) the supposed non-profit was ALSO collecting filming fees from production companies for shoots that were taking place at other firehouses in the area – firehouses that the Olde 23 company had no jurisdiction over!  LOL  Talk about a sh*tstorm!!  😉  President and C.E.O. of the Olde 23 company was none other than Los Angeles Fire Chief Donald O. Manning himself, who resigned from his post just 8 days after Lopez’s newspaper article hit the stands.   Following his resignation, Fire Station #23 continued to host film shoots, with the money going to the City of Los Angeles, the property’s rightful owner.  Just this past September, though, the building was designated surplus property and the city is considering selling it to several different private investors, including a restaurant developer and a non-profit arts education group.

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Daniel Taylor, who has been caretaker of the property since 1985 and who the city is currently trying to evict, has different plans for the building, though.  He recently formed the Corporation for History, Arts, and Culture (CHAC) with the hopes of restoring the old firehouse to its original grandeur for use as both a cultural center and a filming location.  He estimates the restoration project to cost upwards of $8 million and is trying to raise funds now.  If you would like to learn more about the cause, you can do so on CHAC’s official website.  And while the future of the historic firehouse remains to be seen, in the meantime I highly recommend stalking it as it is a truly beautiful and unique building.

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In Ghostbusters, the exterior of the gang’s headquarters (pictured above) was actually filmed at Hook & Ladder Company #8 located at 14 North Moore Street in New York.

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But for the interior filming, cast and crew came to Fire Station #23 in Downtown Los Angeles.  And I am happy to report that the interior looks almost exactly the same today as it did in 1984 when Ghostbusters was filmed!  Amazing!

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The boys’ back office area is not there in real life, though, and I am assuming it was just a set that was added solely for the filming.

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The upstairs of the firehouse was used in the filming, as well, but unfortunately I didn’t get to see that area while I was there.

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Five years later cast and crew returned to Fire Station #23 once again to film the interior scenes for Ghostbusters II.

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And I just about died when I spotted the wooden wall adornment pictured above, which was featured in the sequel.  So cool!

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The firehouse was also featured in 1994’s The Mask, in which it doubled as Jim Carrey’s deceitful car mechanic’s office.

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He later vandalizes the place after turning into “The Mask”.

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In 2003’s National Security, the firehouse was used as the location of Earl Montgomery (aka Martin Lawrence) and Hank Rafferty (aka Steve Zahn’s) stakeout.  Only the exterior of the building and a very small portion of the interior (pictured above) were featured in that shoot, though.  Firehouse #23 has also appeared in V.I. Warshawski, Police Academy 2, Flatliners, Set It Off, RE(e)volution, Big Trouble in Little China, in the television series Firehouse, and in the Season 4 episode of The A-Team entitled “The Road to Hope”.  All in all, it has been featured in more than 50 commercial, television, movie, and music video productions over the years.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  🙂

Stalk It: Fire Station #23, aka the firehouse from Ghostbusters, is located at 225 East Fifth Street in Downtown Los Angeles.  Unfortunately, the station is not in the safest of areas, so please exercise caution if you choose to stalk it.  You can visit the CHAC Fire Station #23 website here.

Bullocks Wilshire – The Department Store from “Christmas Vacation”

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One location that I have been dying to stalk for months now is the former Bullocks Wilshire department store located just outside of Downtown Los Angeles  – a spot which has been featured in countless productions since its grand opening way back in 1929.  And, even though I am usually a big fan of immediate gratification, I waited to stalk this location until just recently as I wanted to blog about it in December, along with my other Christmas movie posts.  So, what holiday movie was the building featured in, you ask?  One of my very favorite Christmas flicks of all time – the 1989 holiday classic Christmas Vacation.   In the movie, Bullocks Wilshire stood in for the Chicago area department store where Clark Griswold (aka Chevy Chase), accompanied by his son, Rusty (aka The Big Bang Theory’s Johnny Galecki), shopped for lingerie.  I found this location thanks to fellow stalker Mike, from MovieShotsLA, who, as luck would have it, just happened to be driving right by the department store on the day filming took place way back in 1989.  Once Mike noticed the production trucks, he, of course, immediately pulled over to inquire about what was being filmed and to watch some of the action.  And, let me tell you, when Mike told me about the location a few months back, I just about passed out from excitement as I had always wanted to know where that scene had taken place!  Thank you, Mike!  🙂

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The Bullocks Wilshire building was originally built in 1929 by the father and son architecture firm of John and Donald Parkinson, a team who was also responsible for designing the Continental Building, which is better known as Los Angeles’ first skyscraper, Union Station, L.A.’s City Hall and the Memorial Coliseum.  Department store magnate John G. Bullock commissioned the building in the hopes of creating the most luxurious and upscale shopping experience Angelinos had ever seen. The interior, which was designed by Eleanor Lemaire and Jock Peters, was the utmost in splendor, featuring travertine flooring, marble walls, ornate elevators, and rosewood display cases.  

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For the design of the relief located above the department store’s Wilshire Boulevard entrance, which reads, “To build a business that will never known completion”, Bullock looked to MGM art director Cedric Gibbons, who is best known for designing the first ever Oscar statue.

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Because Bullock wanted to cater to the growing number of motorists in the L.A. area, the department store was the first in Los Angeles ever to feature a porte cochere, aka a covered driveway under which shoppers could hand over their vehicles to waiting valets.

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  The building’s most remarkable feature – in my mind, at least – has to be the highly elaborate mural painted on the ceiling of the porte cochere.  Romanian painter Herman Sachs designed the brightly colored fresco secco as a tribute to Mercury, the god of travel.  The painting features renderings of different forms of modern-day transportation, including airplanes, trains, and ships. 

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Upon its opening on September 26, 1929, the 241 foot tall Bullocks Wilshire encompassed over 230,000 square feet of retail space which included a perfume hall, a penthouse tea room, a “doggery” which sold trinkets for shoppers’ furry companions, a saddle shop, a Louis XVI room, a furrier, live mannequins, a salon, and a private suite where the truly elite could shop in complete privacy, all the while sipping martinis and snacking on the finest hors d’oeuvres.  Years later, Bullock added a Chanel Room, a photography studio operated by celebrity photographer Neil Gittings, and a Ladies Custom Salon, run by future Hollywood costume designer Irene Lentz.  Thanks to Bullock’s incredible attention to detail, the department store quickly became the place to see and be seen in Los Angeles.  Such stars as Mae West, Clark Gable, Greta Garbo, Alfred Hitchcock, John Wayne, and Marlene Dietrich all visited Bullocks Wilshire at one time or another.  And actresses June Lockhart and Angela Lansbury and former First Lady Patricia Nixon even worked there in their early years.  Thanks to the building’s architectural detail and rich history, Bullocks Wilshire was added to the National Registry of Historic Places on May 25, 1978.  Sadly, in the late 80s, the store began a precipitous decline, eventually being sold to the Macy’s chain.  A few years later, the historic building was heavily vandalized both inside and out during the riots of 1992, with looters destroying display cases, prized artifacts, and even setting fire to the property.  Bullocks Wilshire ended up closing its doors for the last time in 1993.  But its story doesn’t end there.    About a year later, the property was purchased by Southwestern Law School, which had long occupied a neighboring building.  The school then set out on a ten year, $29 million restoration project which completely restored the historic building back to its original state.  For this endeavor, Southwestern Law School received a National Preservation Award from the National Trust for Historic Preservation.   Today, Bullocks Wilshire is used as a part of the Southwestern Law School campus, where, coincidentally, actor Jerry O’Connell (husband of Rebecca Romijn) is currently a student.  🙂

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And, while the building is not actually opened to the public, while stalking the place, I ventured inside and asked the security guard on duty if I might be allowed to take a quick peek.  The guard truly could NOT have been nicer and allowed my fiancé and me to walk around the school.  Unfortunately, though, photography is not allowed indoors, so I couldn’t take any pictures, other than the two pictured above, which I snapped through the building’s front window.  But, take my word for it, the interior – which you can see photographs of here – is nothing short of magnificent.  Walking into Bullocks Wilshire is like stepping back in time to a more glamorous era.  The cafe, the lounge area, even the bathrooms have all been restored to their original state and I couldn’t have been more excited to be seeing it all with my own two eyes.  And, even though the building is now technically a college campus, the interior still looks much as it did when it operated as an upscale department store.  I was so mesmerized with the place, in fact, that I am just dying to get my hands on a copy of this book to learn more about the building’s rich history!

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Bullocks Wilshire shows up just briefly in Christmas Vacation in the very memorable scene in which, while out shopping with his son Rusty, Clark Griswold meets and flirts with a lingerie saleswoman named Mary and utters that famous line, “It’s a bit nipply out”.  LOL LOL LOL When I was a Senior in high school – and I should mention here that I went to a Catholic high school – one of my classmates, Marcus, came up with the inspired idea of reading a surf report to the entire school each morning during our daily announcements.  Marcus’ little experiment was going well, too, until one particularly cold morning, when he announced to the student body that the ocean “was a bit nipply” that day.  Needless to say, that was the end of that morning’s announcements – and our daily surf report.  But, ever since that fateful day, even all these years later, I can’t help but think of Marcus and laugh every time I watch the Christmas Vacation shopping scene.  🙂

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Bullocks Wilshire was also the store where Benjamin Siegel shopped at the beginning of the movie Bugsy;

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its La Directoire room was the site of the ”Romantic Dinner” Taco Bell commercial featuring Gidget, the talking Chihuahua;

it was where Angela Chase (aka Claire Danes) shopped with her mother Patty (aka Bess Armstrong) in the Season 1 episode of My So-Called Life titled “The Zit”;

and the Louis XVI Room was where the Mother/Daughter Fashion Show was filmed in that same episode.

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it was the location of the eponymous elevator in Aerosmith’s “Love in an Elevator” music video

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the exterior was featured briefly in Public Enemy’s “By The Time I Get to Arizona” music video;

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and in The Aviator, it stood in for the nightclub where Howard Hughes and Ava Gardner got attacked by Hughes’ former girlfriend.

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Supposedly, the final scene in Ghostbusters was filmed on the roof of Bullocks Wilshire, but as you can see in the above screen captures and photograph, the Ghostbusters roof and the Bullocks Wilshire roof look nothing alike.  And, while it’s entirely possible that some close-up filming for that scene did take place on top of the Bullocks Wilshire tower, my best guess is that the entire scene was filmed on a studio soundstage somewhere in Hollywood.  Bullocks Wilshire has also been featured in the movies Topper (where it stood in for the luxurious Connecticut area Seabreeze Hotel), Tarzan’s New York Adventure (where it was used as a New York hotel), Dunston Checks In (where it again stood in for a New York hotel), Fist of the North Star, On Deadly Ground, Family Plot, The Tie That Binds, Rough Magic, and in episodes of Murder, She Wrote, Judging Amy, and The Agency.

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Big THANK YOU to Mike for finding this location!  🙂

On a very sad side note – My thoughts and prayers go out to Brittany Murphy’s friends and loved ones today.  I can’t even imagine losing someone so young, especially this close to the holidays.  🙁    Rest in peace, Brittany.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  🙂

Stalk It: Bullocks Wilshire is located at 3050 Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles.  You can visit the building’s official website and see interior photographs of it here.  Because Bullocks Wilshire is part of the Southwestern Law School campus, it is not open to the public. Once a year, though, tours of the property are given.  You can check the Southwestern Law School website for further tour information.