Michael C. Hall locations – IAMNOTASTALKER

March 29, 2012March 28, 2012

The Ritz-Carlton, Marina del Rey from “90210”

Way back in July of last year, the Grim Cheaper and I found ourselves on the West Side of Los Angeles with a few hours to kill, so we decided to head down to Marina del Rey as I had never before done any stalking there. I ended up absolutely falling in love with the seaside community, especially its downtown shopping area where I know I could have done some serious damage to my credit cards had the GC not been with me. Anyway, one of the area locations that had long been listed in my trusty stalking notebook was The Ritz-Carlton, Marina del Rey hotel, which had made an appearance in the 1998 remake of The Parent Trap. So I dragged the GC right on over there as soon as we got into town. Flash forward to this past February when I was checking out fellow stalker Geoff’s 90210Locations website and, let me tell you, I just about fell out of my chair when I saw that the hotel had been featured prominently in a recent episode of the series. Now, as you all know, I watch 90210 religiously and am always keeping my eye out for locations, but, for whatever reason, I had somehow not recognized the place at all! Am I losing my touch here? Winking smile

The Ritz-Carlton, Marina del Rey is situated on a 5.6-acre plot of land directly overlooking the picturesque marina from which the town gets its name. With its dark paneled walls, marble floors, and huge floral arrangements, the beautiful hotel reminded me quite a bit of The Langham Huntington in Pasadena, which, not so coincidentally, was formerly owned by the Ritz-Carlton Corporation. Needless to say, I fell in love with the place on the spot and so wanted to book a room and spend the night there, but the GC was having absolutely none of that. Shocking, I know. Winking smile

The Ritz-Carlton Marina del Rey, which is Los Angeles’ only waterside AAA Five Diamond hotel, features 304 guest rooms, each with its own “Juliet” balcony, tennis courts, marina and city views, over 30,000 square feet of event space, a fitness center, and a Michelin-recommend restaurant. According to the hotel’s website, it also boasts “L.A.’s only waterfront pool and whirlpool” (pictured above). Besides being a filming location, the place is also a big-time celebrity hot spot. Just a few of the stars who have been spotted there include Adrian Grenier, John Travolta, Johnny Depp, Bridget Marquardt, Brooke Shields, Chris Henchy, Zac Efron, The Bachelorette’s DeAnna Pappas and then fiancé Jesse Csincsak, Brad Garrett, Mary Hart, Halle Berry, Hulk Hogan, Dave Annable, Odette Annable, Jason Lewis, Jason Mraz, Scott Caan, Paul Bettany, and Steve Carell. Snoop Dogg and childhood sweetheart Shante Taylor got married there in 1997. And pop star Britney Spears is a regular guest. In fact, these famous (and oh-so-classy) photos of BritBrit and then fiance Kevin Federline were taken on one of the hotel’s balconies.

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In the Season 4 episode of 90210 titled “No Good Deed”, the Ritz-Carlton, Marina del Rey, popped up twice. The hot tub area was first used as the spot where Naomi Clark (AnnaLynne McCord), wearing a very skimpy, blue cut-out bathing suit (and I’m telling you, if I had that body, I’d be wearing that bathing suit every single day of my life!), convinced movie star Mitchell Nash (Will Kemp) to let her throw a party for him.

That spa area is pictured above.

Later in the episode, the hotel’s pool area was the site of the Hillingsbrook Foundation’s “Clean Up Castillo Bay” charity event which Annie Wilson (Shenae Grimes) hosted.

The spot where Liam Court (my love Matt Lanter) rescued the drowning girl is located just outside of the pool area, in the Marina del Rey harbor.

The scene where the event’s silent auction was held was also most likely filmed at the Ritz, although I did not see any areas which resembled the screen captures above while I was there, nor can I find any similar-looking rooms on the hotel’s website.

In the 1998 remake of The Parent Trap, the Ritz-Carlton, Marina del Rey’s pool stood in for the pool of the fictional “The Stafford Hotel”. Interestingly enough, two other spots were also used to masquerade as The Stafford in the flick – the exterior was the Treasure Island Administration Building in San Francisco and the interior scenes were filmed at the Langham Huntington Hotel in Pasadena.

The Ritz-Carlton, Marina del Rey was also used extensively in the Season 5 episode of Dexter titled “Take It”, as the hotel where Jordan Chase (Angelina Jolie’s ex-husband Jonny Lee Miller) hosted his “Take It” convention. Quite a few areas of the hotel were used in the episode, including the exterior;

The Ritz-Carlton Ballroom, which you can see a photograph of here;

one of hotel’s outdoor terraces;

The Ritz-Carlton Suite, which you can see a photograph of here;

and two neighboring 7th floor suites.

Big THANK YOU to Geoff, from the 90210Locations website, for informing me of the hotel’s 90210 connection! Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Ritz-Carlton, Marina del Rey, from the “No Good Deed” episode of 90210, the “Take It” episode of Dexter, and The Parent Trap remake, is located at 4375 Admiralty Way in Marina del Rey. You can visit the hotel’s official website here.

October 27, 2011September 29, 2017

Linda Vista Community Hospital

Way back in August, in preparation for my Haunted Hollywood postings, I dragged the Grim Cheaper out to a spot that is, hands down, the spookiest location I have ever visited in all my years of stalking – Linda Vista Community Hospital in Boyle Heights. Because the property is not only a filming location, but has been abandoned for close to two decades now and is largely rumored to be haunted, I figured it would fit in perfectly with my Halloween-themed month. And the stalking gods must have agreed because a magical thing happened while we were there! As fate would have it, we happened to run into one of the hospital’s caretakers while we were snapping pictures outside and when he saw my enthusiasm for the place’s vast filming history, he invited us in for a private tour!

Linda Vista Community Hospital, which was originally named Santa Fe Coast Lines Hospital or Santa Fe Railroad Hospital, was first built in 1904 as a private infirmary for sick and injured employees of the Santa Fe Railroad Line. The 6-story, 150-bed property, which was expanded several times after its opening, was transformed into a community hospital in 1937, at which point its name was changed to Linda Vista. Sadly, as the Boyle Heights area fell upon hard times, the hospital suffered and, in 1989, due to a lack of funds and a drop in Medicare reimbursements, the Linda Vista Emergency Room was closed. Two years later, in 1991, the hospital shuttered its doors altogether. And that’s when Hollywood came a’knockin’. Shortly after the closure, Linda Vista’s property manager, Francis Kortekaas, decided to lease the site out to film crews in order to offset its high maintenance costs and he has not looked back since! Due to its vacancy and aged appearance, location scouts cannot seem to stay away from the place. The hospital, which is on the National Register of Historic Places and is a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument, currently plays host to between 100 and 150 productions each and every year!

Linda Vista Community Hospital is also currently home to the Boyle Heights Paranormal Project, a research team that not only conducts intensive investigations of paranormal activity on site, but hosts regular events on the property – including late-night “flashlight tours” and overnight visits in which those stalkers far more brave than myself can actually spend the night inside of the hospital. Um, I think I’ll pass on that one! Winking smile It was scary enough just being in that place in the broad daylight!

On our tour of Linda Vista Community Hospital, the GC and I were shown most areas of the property, including the hallways;

the front lobby;

the chapel;

an examination room;

the original morgue, which was dressed for the filming of an Eminem music video that had taken place a few days prior;

the original morgue freezer;

a room where serial killer Richard Ramirez supposedly camped out before he was caught;

and the basement area, which was used extensively in the pilot episode of ER and was the area that I had most wanted to see.

The basement contains a lobby area, which had been dressed with fake blood for a student film;

a kitchen/break room;

a surgical room;

and a fake morgue, which was constructed specifically for filming.

As you can see above, only one of the morgue freezers actually opens, the rest are fake. SO INCREDIBLY COOL! And while I have to say that I was scared out of my wits pretty much the entire time, the tour was one of the most exciting experiences of my life. 🙂 You can check out some more interior photographs of Linda Vista Community Hospital here.

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Linda Vista Community Hospital has been featured in so many productions over the years that it would be virtually impossible for me to chronicle them all here. But I will do my best to try. In a flashback scene in the Season 1 episode of Dexter titled “Let’s Give the Boy a Hand”, Linda Vista stood in for the Angel of Mercy Hospital where Harry Morgan (aka James Remar) took his son, Dexter (aka Michael C. Hall), to show him where his grandfather worked for thirty years. Harry and Dexter then posed for a photograph out in front of the hospital.

When the scene then switches back to the present day, Dexter once again heads out to the Angel of Mercy Hospital, which has since been abandoned, where he finds Tony Tucci (aka Brad William Henke) – one of the Ice Truck Killer’s victims – alive, but with a severed right foot.

The next episode of Dexter, titled “Love American Style”, in which the Miami Metro Police Department investigates the torture of Tony Tucci, was also filmed at Linda Vista.

In the Season 1 episode of Charmed titled “Dream Sorcerer”, the exterior of Linda Vista stood in for Bay General Hospital where Prue Halliwell (aka my girl Shannen Doherty) recuperated after being in a car accident.

I am not sure, though, if the interior hospital scenes were also filmed at Linda Vista or at a different location.

In the Season 1 episode of FlashForward titled “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”, Linda Vista stood in for the abandoned Raven River Psychiatric Hospital in Arizona, where Dr. Olivia Benford (aka Sonya Walger) and Agent Shelly Vreede (aka Barry Shabaka Henley) investigated former patient Gabriel McDow (aka James Callis). When Olivia and Shelly first pull up to the hospital, Olivia says, “It’s like the setting in one of those slasher movies!” LOL

In the Season 1 episode of Moonlight titled “Arrested Development”, Linda Vista’s fake morgue was used as the morgue of St. John Hospital where Mick St. John (aka Alex O’Loughlin) and Beth Turner (aka Sophia Myles) investigated a Jane Doe who had been killed by a vampire.

Linda Vista’s former asylum building was also used in that episode, as the supposed-Los-Feliz apartment building where Mick and Beth tried to catch Jane Doe’s killer.

The asylum building, which is pictured above, is located just south of the main hospital.

In the second episode of the recently-aired Bachelor Pad 2, Michael Stagliano wins a date in which he takes Erica Rose, Michelle Money, and former-fiancé Holly Durst for an overnight visit to Linda Vista Hospital. As I said above, I think I’ll pass on that one!

While all of the later episodes of the television series ER were shot on a soundstage at Warner Brothers Studios in Burbank, as I mentioned above, the pilot, which was titled “24 Hours”, was shot in its entirety at Linda Vista. And even though I was never a huge fan of ER, I cannot tell you how cool it was to see that area of the hospital!

Linda Vista was one of several different locations used as the exterior of the Honolulu Hospital where Nurse Lt. Evelyn Johnson (aka Kate Beckinsale), Nurse Betty Bayer (aka Jamie King), Nurse Sandra (aka Jennifer Garner), and the rest of the girls worked in Pearl Harbor.

A false front was built on the back side of the hospital, in the area denoted with a pink rectangle above, for the filming.

And while the Pearl Harbor interior hospital scenes also supposedly took place at Linda Vista, I did not see any rooms on our tour that even remotely resembled the rooms pictured above.

Mike, from MovieShotsLA, happened to be at Linda Vista during the filming of Pearl Harbor and snapped the above photograph while there. As you can see, there looks to have been some sort of set built in the parking lot area of the hospital and because the window sizes and shapes of that set match up to what appeared onscreen, I am guessing that it is where the interior hospital scenes were filmed.

In 1995’s Outbreak, Linda Vista stood in for the hospital in Cedar Creek, California where the massive outbreak first occurred.

In 1999’s End of Days, Linda Vista was used as the New York hospital where Christine York (aka Robin Tunney) was born.

It was also where Satan (aka Gabriel Byrne) found and killed Thomas Aquinas (aka Derrick O’Connor).

In 1985’s To Live and Die in LA, the hospital, which in a nod to its history was called Santa Fe Hospital, was where prisoner Carl Cody (aka John Turturro) pretended to have a sick relative in order to escape from Secret Service Agent Richard Chance (aka William Peterson).

The 2007 Duran Duran “Falling Down” music video, in which a Britney Spears’ inspired starlet is forced into rehab, was shot at Linda Vista Community Hospital.

Duran Duran “Falling Down” Music Video–Filmed at Linda Vista Hospital

You can watch that video by clicking above.

And the 2005 video for the Garbage song “Bleed Like Me” was also filmed at Linda Vista.

Garbage “Bleed Like Me” Music Video–Filmed at Linda Vista Hospital

You can watch that video by clicking above.

Linda Vista Hospital also supposedly appeared in The Cell, but I scanned through the flick earlier today and could not find it anywhere.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Linda Vista Hospital is located at 601 South St. Louis Street in the Boyle Heights area of Los Angeles. You can visit the hospital’s official website here. You can check out the Boyle Heights Paranormal Project’s Facebook page here and you can find out more about their upcoming events and tours here.

October 29, 2010September 29, 2017

The Fisher & Sons Funeral Home from “Six Feet Under”

One location that I stalked well over a year ago, but for whatever reason have yet to blog about, is the Victorian-style residence which stood in for the supposed North Hollywood-area Fisher & Sons (and later Fisher-Diaz) Funeral Home on the immensely popular HBO series Six Feet Under. Amazingly enough, up until yesterday morning, I had never seen even one episode of the show and, unfortunately, I have to say that after watching the pilot episode yesterday morning, I wasn’t all that impressed with it. It’s a bit of an odd series. The only part I enjoyed was one of the opening scenes in which David Fisher (aka a pre-Dexter Michael C. Hall) tells a supposedly grieving widower (played by Harper Roisman) that his wife is at peace now, to which the widower replies, “If there’s any justice in the universe, she’s shoveling sh*t in hell!” LOL LOL LOL

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But while I didn’t especially like the pilot, I did absolutely fall in love the main house featured in it. In real life, the property is known as the Auguste Marquis Residence and it was originally built in the Queen Anne/Eastlake style (much like the “Thriller” house that I blogged about yesterday) in 1904 and is Los Angeles’ 602nd historic cultural monument. The dwelling, which currently houses the Filipino Federation of America, boasts 5 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a whopping 6,324 square feet of living space, and sits on over half an acre of land. The home was originally built for a Swiss native named Auguste Rodolphe Marquis, who worked for Death Valley’s Johnnie Consolidated Gold Mining Company, from which he made a considerable fortune. The property was purchased shortly after the second World War by General Hilario Camino Moncado, a native of the Philippines and founder of the Filipino Federation. His heirs still own the property to this day.

The Auguste Marquis Residence was featured each week as the home where the dysfunctional Fisher Family – siblings David, Nate (aka Peter Krause), and Claire (aka Lauren Ambrose) and their mother Ruth (aka Frances Conroy) – lived and operated their mortuary business on Six Feet Under, which ran from 2001 through 2005.

In real life, the Fisher & Sons Funeral Home sign is, of course, not there.

And while the home was mostly just used for establishing shots, some occasional filming was also done onsite there throughout the series five year-run, as was the case with the pilot episode, screen captures of which are pictured above.

The interior of the Fisher home was a set that was built on a soundstage at the Columbia/Sunset Gower Studios in Hollywood and, from what I’ve been able to discern online, looks nothing like the interior of the actual Auguste Marquis Residence. A short film named Good Night was also filmed on location at the Six Feet Under funeral home in September of 2009 and Don Cunanan, the set photographer, snapped some pictures of the filming, in which you can see some of the residence’s real life interior. You can take a look at those photographs here.

On a coincidental side note – I was floored to spot Mountain View Cemetery, which I just blogged about this past Tuesday, featured quite extensively in the pilot episode of Six Feet Under, as the site of the funeral of Nathaniel Samuel Fisher (aka Richard Jenkins).

And I’d like to wish all of my fellow stalkers a VERY happy Halloween! Hope your holiday is fun and candy-filled!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Filipino Federation of America – aka Fisher & Sons funeral home from Six Feet Under – is located at 2302 West 25th Street in the West Adams District of Los Angeles.