Watson Drugs and Soda Fountain from “That Thing You Do!”

Watson Drug Store (10 of 11)

Another That Thing You Do! locale that I dragged the Grim Cheaper out to stalk while the two of us were in the city of Orange in early October was Watson Drugs and Soda Fountain, which popped up twice in the 1996 flick.  And while I really wanted to grab a bite there, sadly the GC and I had just eaten prior to arriving in Orange.  It was still extremely cool to see the place, which is Orange County’s oldest drugstore and the city of Orange’s oldest continually operating business, in person, though.

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The pharmacy portion of Watson’s was originally founded on Glassell Street by a pharmacist named Keller E. Watson, Sr. in 1899.  Two years later, K.E. Watson’s, as it was then known, was moved around the corner to a building on East Chapman Avenue where it has remained ever since (although it has occupied various different storefronts).  In 1915, Keller added a soda fountain to the site and Watson Drugs and Soda Fountain was born.  When Keller retired in the 1930s, his son, Keller E. Watson, Jr., took over the operations until he, too, retired in 1965.  The shop subsequently went through a succession of different owners and then, in 1971, Scott Parker, a pharmacist from Utah, purchased a portion of it.  Scott took over the site completely in 1986 and, while the pharmacy section was closed in 2011, the Parker family still runs the establishment to this day.

Watson Drug Store (2 of 11)

Watson Drug Store (3 of 11)

As you can see below, walking inside the eatery is like taking a step back in time.  Besides serving up hamburgers, shakes and its famous malts, the place also sells gifts and cards, so, of course, I just had to do a little shopping while I was there.  Winking smile

Watson Drug Store (8 of 11)

Watson Drug Store (9 of 11)

Watson Drugs first popped up in That Thing You Do! in the scene in which Guy Patterson (Tom Everett Scott) informed Faye Dolan (Liv Tyler) that he had just accidentally hit her car, which was parked outside.  As you can see below, both the exterior and the interior of the shop were dressed heavily for the shoot.

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Watson’s later appeared in the scene in which Guy gave Faye and his fellow Wonders – Jimmy Mattingly (Johnathon Schaech), Lenny Haise (Steve Zahn), and T.B. Player (Ethan Embry) – portable radios so that they would be able to keep an ear out for their song at all times.

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Thanks to its old-fashioned charm, Watson Drugs and Soda Fountain has long been a favorite of location managers.  In the 1987 made-for-television movie The Stepford Children (which looks pretty good, shockingly!), the diner was where Laura Harding (Barbara Eden) told her husband, Steven Harding (Don Murray), that she wanted to leave Stepford and move to a new town.

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In 2004, the interior of Watson’s masqueraded as two different Massachusetts-area locales in the Season 1 episode of Medical Investigation titled “Progeny.”  It first stood in for the soda shop where a child named Joey White (Adam Taylor Gordon) had a seizure and collapsed.  The space was dressed heavily for the shoot, though, and is not very recognizable in the scene.

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And, for whatever reason, producers chose to use a different location to stand in for the shop’s exterior, as you can see below.

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Later in the episode, Watson’s popped up as the diner where Dr. Stephen Connor (Neal McDonough) and his team – Dr. Natalie Durant (Kelli Williams), Dr. Miles McCabe (Christopher Gorham), Eva Rossi (Anna Belknap), and Frank Powell (Troy Winbush) – discussed what might be causing Joey’s ailment.

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Once again, a different location stood in for the coffee shop’s exterior.  That exterior, which was also used as Rosalita’s Bar on the television series Happy Endings, can be found on the Paramount Studios backlot.

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In the 2006 comedy The Benchwarmers, Watson Drugs was where Gus (Rob Schneider) met his new statistician, Sammy Sprinkler (Alex Warrick).  Both the exterior . . .

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. . . and interior of the diner were used in the scene.

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According to the Filmed in Orange website, Watson’s appeared in Fallen Angel, but, unfortunately, I could not find a copy of the 1945 production with which to make screen captures for this post.  And while the eatery’s website asserts that the spot was featured in the 1981 comedy The Cannonball Run, I scanned through the flick and did not see it anywhere.  Watson’s website also states that Don Knotts, Shelley Hack and Jimmy Smits have all shot commercials on the premises and that George W. Bush made a stop there to pick up a malt while campaigning for the presidency in 2000.

Watson Drug Store (5 of 11)

Watson Drug Store (11 of 11)

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter and InstagramAnd you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Watson Drug Store (4 of 11)

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: Watson Drugs and Soda Fountain, from That Thing You Do!, is located at 116 East Chapman Avenue in Orange.  You can visit the eatery’s official website here.  Tiddlywinks Toys and Games, aka Patterson’s Appliances from the movie, is located just around the corner at 129 North Glassell Street.  The That Thing You Do! mailbox scene was filmed just a few storefronts north of Tiddlywinks, in front of 173 North Glassell Street.  The building that was dressed to look like a Woolworths in the flick can be found across the street at 160/162 North Glassell.

The “That Thing You Do!” Mailbox Scene

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Well folks, this post sadly marks the end to my 2013 Haunted Hollywood locales, which is especially depressing because this year was easily the Best. Halloween. Ever.  Once again, the GC and I (dressed up as The Bachelorette’s Emily Maynard and Jef Holm) headed out to our friends’ house in Malibu.  (And yes, I am aware that Emily and Jef are no longer together, but neither are Brenda and Dylan and we dressed up like them, too, one Halloween. 😉 )   Dick Van Dyke ended up not hosting his usual Halloween shindig this year (you can read about his 2011 fest here and his 2012 fest here), so we went instead to a party that our friends’ friends were having in a different gated community nearby.  And let me tell you, it was UH-MA-ZING.

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Not only was every single house in the neighborhood dressed to the nines (I swear, nobody does Halloween like the ‘Bu) . . .

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. . . but there were celebrities galore, including none other than Gwyneth Paltrow!  The GC actually spotted Gwyneth first and, while I just about died of excitement on the spot, because she was with her children, I restrained myself from asking for a photo.  I obsessed about it, though, for the next thirty minutes or so and eventually, without me knowing, the GC went up to her and said, “Gwyneth, could you please take a picture with my wife before her head explodes?”  Next thing I knew, there was a tap on my shoulder and GP was standing in front of me, saying “I heard you wanted a photo.”  Yeah, I was DYING.  And absolutely falling in love with the GC all over again.  Smile  Gwyneth truly could NOT have been nicer (easily one of the sweetest celebs that I have ever had the pleasure of meeting) and I adore her even more now than I did before.  So suck it, Vanity FairWinking smile

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Also in attendance were Cindy Crawford . . .

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. . . and Neil Patrick Harris.  Like I said, Best. Halloween. Ever.  Not sure how I’m ever going to recover from this one!  Here’s hoping next year is just as good.  Smile

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In the meantime, though, it is back to regular, non-haunted postings here at IAMNOTASTALKER.  So here goes!  As I mentioned in my post about the Cecil Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, in early October Miss Pinky Lovejoy, of the Thinking Pink blog, hosted her bachelorette party at my favorite place in the entire world, Disneyland.  Because we did not want to make the long drive back to Palm Springs that night, the GC and I got a hotel room in the area, which turned out to be a fateful decision.  The following morning, on our way out of town, I did a GPS search for a nearby Starbucks and when I saw that the closest outpost was located in the city of Orange, I just about had a heart attack as my very favorite movie scene EVER had been filmed in Orange – the mailbox scene from 1996’s That Thing You Do!  So I immediately braced the GC for the fact that we would be making a little unexpected stalking detour.

That Thing You Do Mailbox Scene (7 of 15)

In the scene, Faye Dolan (Liv Tyler) is listening to a portable radio and mailing letters in what is supposedly 1960s downtown Eerie, Pennsylvania, when she hears “That Thing You Do!”, her boyfriend’s band’s song, playing on the radio for the very first time.  She starts screaming and runs down the street towards an Army/Navy store where she finds fellow band member T.B. Player (Ethan Embry).  The two then race to Patterson’s Appliances, where another band member, Guy Patterson (cutie Tom Everett Scott), works.  (I will be blogging about the location of Patterson’s Appliances tomorrow.)  Guy turns all the radios in the store to the station playing the song and, shortly thereafter, the other two members of the group, Jimmy Mattingly (Johnathon Schaech) and Lenny Haise (Steve Zahn), show up and proceed to dance around manically.  Liv Tyler is sheer perfection in the scene and it is physically impossible not to be happy while watching it.

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That Thing You Do Mailbox Scene (1 of 15)

You can take a look at the That Thing You Do! mailbox scene by clicking below.  Go ahead, try not to smile while watching – I dare you.  Winking smile

In the scene, the mailbox was set up in front of an empty storefront located at 173 North Glassell Street, in pretty much the exact spot where the red sandwich board sign is situated in the photograph below.

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I found this locale thanks to the Seeing Stars website and my trusty iPhone.  As soon as the GC and I arrived in Orange, I watched the scene on YouTube and saw that the mailbox was located across the street from a Woolworth store.   Seeing Stars listed the address of the store that masqueraded as Woolworths as 160 North Glassell Street, so from there it was simply a matter of matching up the angles of what appeared onscreen to the real life buildings.   You can check out some images of the Woolworths building and the rest of the downtown area dressed for the filming on the City of Orange website here.

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That Thing You Do Mailbox Scene (4 of 15)

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter and InstagramAnd you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

That Thing You Do Mailbox Scene (12 of 15)

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: The mailbox scene from That Thing You Do! was filmed in front of what is now a vacant storefront located at 173 North Glassell Street in Orange.  The building that was dressed to look like a Woolworths in the flick can be found across the street at 160/162 North Glassell.