The Mills View House from “Picket Fences”

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Well, my fellow stalkers, it is finally that time of year again, the month I look forward to all year long – October!  With it comes fall leaves, cooler temperatures, and my favorite holiday of them all, Halloween.  And you know what that means – I will once again be devoting the entire month of blog posts to locations having to do with Haunted Hollywood!  First up is the Mills View house, a Monrovia-area property that I learned about way back in March from a journalist named Toni Momberger who interviewed me for an Inland Valley Daily Bulletin newspaper article she was writing about famous movie homes.  Toni told me that she had toured the huge, Victorian-style abode as part of her research for the article and she was shocked to discover that I had never before heard of the place.  As fate would have it, the house had been featured prominently in not one, but two spooky productions over the years, so I figured it would be the perfect start to my Haunted Hollywood theme and I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out to stalk it a few weeks back.

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The 5-bedroom, 2-bath, 3,140-square-foot Mills View house, which was built in 1887 by architects Luther Reed Blair and Uriah Zimmerman, was originally situated on a 5-acre plot of land on what was then the corner of Banana Avenue (now Hillcrest Boulevard) and Melrose Avenue.  The Eastlake-Victorian-style home was commissioned by William N. Monroe, the founder of Monrovia, as a wedding gift for his son, Milton Monroe, and his new bride, Mary Nevada.  Construction on the property began in May of 1887, shortly after Milton and his wife were married, and was completed a mere seven months later.  Sadly, the Monroes divorced a short time after tying the knot and ended up selling their wedding home to Colonel John H. Mills and his wife, Elizabeth Cook Mills, in 1893.  The Mills dubbed their new residence “Mills View” because on a clear day the island of Catalina was supposedly visible from one of the third floor windows.  Unfortunately, Colonel Mills passed away only three months after moving into the home and it went through several ownership changes after Elizabeth subsequently died in 1905.  Mills View, which boasts numerous stained glass windows, a third floor attic, hardwood flooring throughout, and five fireplaces with original tilework, became a Monrovia City Landmark on June 4, 1996.

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According to this Monrovia Patch article, Mills View has appeared in over 20 productions since 1980 alone. Sadly though, I know of only two – both of which, as I mentioned above, fit the thriller genre.  And the property definitely does give off a spooky vibe in person – I think primarily due to its gargantuan size – so it is not very hard to see why location scouts have flocked to it over the years.

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In the Season 1 Halloween-themed episode of fave show Picket Fences titled “Remembering Rosemary”, Mills View was where Rosemary Bauer committed suicide ten years prior by jumping out of a third-floor window, and where Sheriff Jimmy Brock (aka Tom Skerritt) and his deputies Maxine Stewart (aka Lauren Holly) and Kenny Lacos (aka Costas Mandylor) returned to investigate the case after deciding to re-open it a few days before Halloween.

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I am fairly certain that the real life interior of the house, which you can see some photographs of here, was used in the episode.

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Mills View was also the primary location used in the 1986 horror flick House.  In the movie, it was the haunted property that mystery-writer Roger Cobb (aka William Katt) inherited from his Aunt Elizabeth (aka Susan French).  According to the House production notes, for the onsite filming, which lasted two weeks, production designer Gregg Fonseca repainted the exterior of the property and  added Victorian gingerbread detailing, a few spires, a wrought-iron fence, and a sidewalk.  At the rear of the residence, he covered up the home’s real life clapboard siding with a fake brick edifice and added some much-needed landscaping.

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No filming took place inside of the actual home, though.  For all of the interior scenes, a replica of the house, which included two full stories, a living room, a den, a staircase, and three upstairs bedrooms, was built on a soundstage at Ren Mar Studios in Hollywood.

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And I am fairly certain that the pool shown in the movie was either a fake built on the property solely for the filming or that a second location was used, as Mills View does not currently appear to have a pool.

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Two very lucky British House fans were given a personalized tour of Mills View last year and wrote a great blog post about it which you can check out here.

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On a Halloween side note – I was finally able to dig up a photograph of me dressed up as Agent Dana Scully for Halloween one year during college, which I had mentioned in the blog post I wrote about meeting David Duchovny back in June.  The only picture I could find, though, was not a very good one as my eyes are closed in it.  Ah well.  That is my good friend Alex, who was dressed up a Parrothead, posing with me.

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While going through boxes at my parents’ new house looking for the Dana Scully picture, I also stumbled upon my Fox Mulder doll, which I could NOT have been more excited about!  I am so going to have to stalk DD again and get him to sign the doll for me.  How incredibly cool would that be??

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: Mills View, from the movie House and the “Remembering Rosemary” episode of Picket Fences, is located at 329 Melrose Avenue in Monrovia.

Lake Arrowhead Resort and Spa from “House, M.D.”

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The third and final location that I stalked while vacationing in Lake Arrowhead this past Thanksgiving with my family and the Grim Cheaper was the Lake Arrowhead Resort and Spa, which was featured prominently in the Season 6 episode of House, M.D. titled “Known Unknowns”.  The property, which was originally named the Arlington Lodge, was first built in 1923 by A.L. Richmond, the owner of the Arlington Hotel in Santa Barbara, and was designed by architect McNeal Swasey at a cost of $500,000.  The upscale Lodge boasted numerous luxuries, including ornate drawing rooms, outdoor terraces, guest quarters with private bathrooms, and a main lobby, dubbed the “Great Hall”, which featured a 45-foot tall vaulted ceiling, a large fireplace, and a grand staircase.  The resort was opened to the public on June 23, 1923 and became an immediate success.  According to legend, such Hollywood luminaries as Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, Roy Rogers, Carole Lombard, and Gary Cooper were all frequent guests.  The hotel also attracted movie crews and such films as 1952’s Just For You, which starred Jane Wyman, Natalie Wood, Bing Crosby, and Ethel Barrymore – Drew’s great-aunt, 1965’s I’ll Take Sweden, which starred Bob Hope, Tuesday Weld, and Frankie Avalon, and 1973’s made-for-TV movie A Summer Without Boys, which starred Barbara Bain and Michael Moriarty, were all filmed on location there.  Sadly though, the Arlington Lodge burned to the ground in October of 1938.  And while it was rebuilt shortly thereafter, the entire resort was razed in December of 1976 in order to make room for a new hotel, the Arrowhead Hilton Lodge, which opened to the public in 1982.  And while Bob Hope, Gerald Ford, and Baron Hilton – Paris’ grandfather – were all in attendance for the resort’s grand opening, it doesn’t seem as if many celebrities frequent the hotel today.  Currently the property, which is now known as Lake Arrowhead Resort, boasts 162 guest rooms and 11 suites, a full-service spa, a fitness room, a coffee bar, an upscale restaurant named BIN189, and a 40-foot pool. 

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Sadly though, I have to say that the Lake Arrowhead Resort and Spa is truly nothing special.  Don’t get me wrong, the place is O.K., but after the website had touted its “idyllic” and “majestic” ambiance, I had expected a heck of a lot more than what was actually there.  The setting is absolutely gorgeous, but truth be told, ALL of Lake Arrowhead is that beautiful.

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  And while the BIN189 restaurant is absolutely GORGEOUS, I cannot in any way, shape, or form recommend eating there.  While we were stalking the hotel, we popped into the restaurant and were enticed by its roaring, oversized fireplace and decided to grab a drink there, but as soon as we sat down, a woman came into the eatery with her large dog (which one would think would be a health code violation, but I guess not) and the dog proceeded to bark hysterically at the top of its lungs.  The dog was so terribly loud that we had to get up and leave.  All of the patrons in the restaurant at the time were quite upset over the barking dog and three groups besides ours ended up walking out in the middle of their meal.  You’d think at an average cost of $35 a plate, the management would have done something  -like kick the freaking woman and her dog out -but because the hotel is “pet friendly”, the servers all said that there was absolutely nothing they could do.  So, that was pretty much it for that place!  My family literally could not get out of there fast enough and I therefore did not get to stalk very much of the resort!  🙁

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In the “Known Unknowns” episode of House, M.D., in which doctors Gregory House (aka Hugh Laurie), James Wilson (aka Robert Sean Leonard), and Lisa Cuddy (aka Lisa Edelstein) attend a pharmacology and public policy conference in the Adirondacks, extensive use was made of the Lake Arrowhead Resort and Spa.   According to a review that I read on Travelocity, the vast majority of the hotel – including the restaurant and pool – was closed off during the filming, yet the hotel management failed to inform guests of that fact when they made their reservations – which sounds pretty much right on par as to the level of customer service that we experienced while there.  Anyway, filming of the episode took place in the lobby area;

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down by the lake;

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on the outdoor terraces;

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in one of the meeting rooms;

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and in BIN189, which was both the site where the big 80’s party scene was filmed;

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and where the doctors ate breakfast on the last morning of their conference.

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I am fairly certain that the two guest rooms shown in the episode were not actually Lake Arrowhead Resort hotel rooms, but were sets that were built on a studio soundstage, as they just don’t seem to match up to the rooms that are pictured on the hotel’s website.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: Even though I REALLY wouldn’t recommend stalking this particular location, Lake Arrowhead Resort and Spa is located at 27984 California 189 in Lake Arrowhead.  You can visit the hotel’s official website here.