Red Studios Hollywood – aka Kinograph Studios from “The Artist”

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In early March, my friend Tony, the fellow stalker who has the amazeballs On Location in Los Angeles Flickr photostream, wrote a comment on my post about the duplex where George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) lived in The Artist alerting me to a blog named Silent Locations.  The blog, which is authored by business lawyer/film historian John Bengtson, features a six-part column chronicling several locales that appeared in The Artist and their connection with various silent films made during Hollywood’s heyday.  I highly recommend checking out the feature and the site in general.  It is fabulous!  Anyway, one of the places mentioned in the column was Red Studios Hollywood, the exterior of which stood in for both the exterior of Kinograph Studios in The Artist and Maroon Cartoons in 1988’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit.  So I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out to stalk the place on a very windy Sunday afternoon two weekends ago.

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The site where Red Studios Hollywood now stands was originally founded as Metro Pictures Back Lot #3 in 1915, long before the company joined forces with Goldwyn Pictures and became Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.  During its Metro heyday, such films as Scaramouche, Little Robinson Crusoe and The Champ were filmed on the premises.  Beginning in May 1946, the lot went through a series of different owners, the most prominent of whom were Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz.  The showbiz powerhouse couple leased the property in 1953 and turned it into the very first Desilu Studios, where they shot seasons 3 through 6 of I Love Lucy.  In 1974, the lot became known as Ren-Mar Studios, an independently owned and operated facility where various production companies were able to rent out studio space.  Legendary television producer David E. Kelley made his home there in the 80s and shot Picket Fences (one of my faves!), Chicago Hope, The Practice and the first two seasons of Ally McBeal.  In January 2010, the lot was sold yet again, this time to Red Digital Camera Company, who renamed the place Red Studios Hollywood.

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A few of the countless other productions that have been filmed on the premises over the years include The Golden Girls, The Dick Van Dyke Show, the first four episodes of Seinfeld, The Andy Griffith Show, Make Room for Daddy, Lizzie McGuire, NewsRadio, Empty Nest, Monk, and, most recently, True Blood. The series Weeds was also filmed on the lot, back when it was Ren-Mar, and during Season 4, after Agrestic burned down, producers had Nancy Botwin (Mary-Louise Parker) move to a fictional seaside town named “Ren Mar” in honor of the historic studio.  Love it!

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In The Artist, the back entrance of Red was used as the main entrance of Kinograph Studios, where George Valentin worked at the beginning of the flick.

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As you can see above, that area was changed drastically for the movie – so much so that it is virtually unrecognizable today.  A huge false front was built over the actual studio entrance for the filming and the Hollywood Rounder blog was lucky enough to get to watch it being constructed.  You can check out some very cool pics of the construction here and here, the fake security guard kiosk here, and the finished product here.

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Interestingly enough, when Peppy Miller (Berenice Bejo) is shown being dropped off at a location that is supposedly directly across the street from the Kinograph entrance, she is actually on New York Street at Paramount Studios, in front of the building that is used regularly as the Boston police station on Rizzoli & Isles.

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At one point in The Artist, George is also shown walking in between some of the Red Studios Hollywood soundstages.

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The area where he walked is denoted with a pink circle above.

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In Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Red’s main entrance on Cahuenga Boulevard stood in for the entrance to Maroon Cartoons, where the famous animated hare worked.

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The courtyard just beyond that entrance was also used in the filming.

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That area is denoted with a pink circle above.

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On a Who Framed Roger Rabbit side-note – while doing research prior to writing this post, I came across a blurb in The Worldwide Guide to Movie Locations book which, in reference to the flick’s title, stated, “No, there is no question mark, as it’s considered bad luck in a film title.”  I had never before heard that bit of trivia and found it interesting, especially since my good friend Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong grammatical errors blog, had recently written a post which mentioned WFRR’s punctuation error.  Superstition or not, I think the flick really needed the mark in its title and I found myself inadvertently adding one each time I typed “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” in this post.  I guess some habits are hard to break.

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The music video for Britney Spears’ hit 2000 song “Lucky” was also shot at Ren-Mar and the exterior of the studio is visible in the MTV Making the Video special about the production.

You can watch Part I of the Making the Video of “Lucky” by clicking above.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker John Bengtson, from the Silent Locations blog, for finding this location and to fellow stalker Tony, from the fantastic On Location in Los Angeles Flickr photostream, for pointing me to John’s site!  Smile

Stalk It: Red Studios Hollywood, aka Kinograph Studios from The Artist, is located at 846 North Cahuenga Boulevard in Hollywood.  You can visit the official Red Studios Hollywood website here.  The area of the studio used in The Artist can be found on Lillian Way, in between Willoughby and Waring Avenues.  The studio’s main entrance on Cahuenga Boulevard is the entrance that stood in for Maroon Cartoons in Who Framed Roger Rabbit.  Red Studios Hollywood is not open to the public and does not currently offer a tour.

The Alleyway and The Blue Banana Club from “Pretty Woman”

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As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago in my post about the Pretty Woman party house, fellow stalker Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and I have recently been on the hunt for a few of the flick’s more elusive locations – the two most important of which being the alleyway where the body of “Skinny Marie” was found and, across the street from it, The Blue Banana Club where Vivian Ward (Julia Roberts) and Kit De Luca (Laura San Giacomo) hung out in the film.  And, amazingly enough, Mike was able to track down both locales in a relatively short period of time – as were fellow stalkers E.J., from The Movieland Directory website, and Scott Michaels, from the Findadeath website, whom I also enlisted in the hunt.  So, while out doing some stalking in the Hollywood area three weekends ago, I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on over to stalk both spots.

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In one of Pretty Woman’s opening scenes, Vivian is shown walking through an alleyway where the dead body of a fellow prostitute named Skinny Marie has just been pulled out of a garbage dumpster.

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While watching the scene, Mike happened to recognize the unique roofline of the historic Miceli’s Restaurant in the background behind a very young Hank Azaria, who played the role of a nameless homicide detective who laments about tourists taking photographs of Skinny Marie’s body in the flick.  From there, Mike simply used Google Street View to look for an alley in the area half a block west and on the opposite side of the street from Miceli’s.  And voila, it was not long before he found the right spot!  Yay!

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As it turns out, though, the Pretty Woman alleyway is not actually an alleyway at all, as we had originally thought, but the main lobby of The Outpost Building – a Spanish-Colonial-style structure that was commissioned by a Mr. and Mrs. B.C. Donnelly and designed by architect B.B. Horner in 1927.  The historic property, which was fashioned after stores in Madrid, Spain, was originally comprised of apartment units that became home to countless aspiring starlets during the Hollywood heyday, but today is made up solely of offices and retail space.

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Sadly, the building was closed when we showed up to stalk it, but I did manage to snap the above photographs through the glass front doors.  As you can see, the “alley” still looks exactly the same today as it did in Pretty Woman, despite the fact that over twenty-two years have since passed!  Even the shoe shine stand that Vivian walked by is still there!  LOVE IT!

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Amazingly enough, when I showed Mike the photographs I had taken of the lobby of The Outpost Building, he immediately recognized the place as the “Celebrity Apartments” where Tom Turner (Greg Kinnear) lived in the 1996 comedy Dear God. Both the exterior of the property . . .

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. . . and the lobby area were used in the flick.  In an interesting twist, Dear God was directed by none other than Garry Marshall, the very same man who also directed Pretty Woman.  I guess the guy just has a thing for The Outpost Building!

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Thanks to the Lenrek website, I also discovered that in the 1984 cult classic Angel, high school student/prostitute Molly “Angel” Stewart (Donna Wilkes) walked from the rear entrance of The Outpost Building, through the lobby and out the front door while on the search for a serial killer.

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Interestingly enough, according to the GPSMyCity website, The Outpost Building also has a connection to novelist Raymond Chandler.  In his 1939 mystery The Big Sleep, Chandler describes Geiger’s Rare Books and Deluxe Editions as follows: “A. G. Geiger’s place was a store frontage on the north side of the boulevard near Las Palmas.  The entrance door was set far back in the middle and there was a copper trim on the windows, which were backed with Chinese screens, so I couldn’t see into the store.  There was a lot of oriental junk in the windows.  I don’t know whether it was any good, not being a collector of antiques, except unpaid bills.  The entrance door was plate glass, but I couldn’t see much through that either, because the store was very dim.  A building entrance adjoined it on one side and on the other was a glittering credit jewelry establishment.”  Apparently, numerous Chandler aficionados believe that that description was inspired by none other than The Outpost Building.  So incredibly cool!

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Once Mike had located The Outpost Building, tracking down The Blue Banana Club was a snap, since in the movie it was shown to be situated directly across the street from the alleyway where Skinny Marie’s body was found.

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Shockingly enough, The Blue Banana Club was actually a part of the historic Egyptian Theatre!  At the time that the movie was filmed, the property belonged to the United Artists Corporation and it looked considerably different than it does today, but you can see pictures of the place in its Pretty Woman state on The Bruce Torrence Hollywood Photograph Collection website here and here, and on the Gorillas Don’t Blog website here.  Ironically enough, a few minutes after Mike had texted me to let me know that The Blue Banana was actually the Egyptian Theatre, I received an email from both E.J. and Scott telling me the exact same thing.  Great minds . . .

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Today, the storefront that stood in for The Blue Banana houses the newly-opened Maui and Sons Bar & Grill.  I am, unfortunately, unsure of what was in that location at the time of the filming, but back in the 1930s through the 1950s it housed the Larry Dine men’s clothing store and, in more recent years, it was the site of a Lickity Split ice cream shop.

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In his commentary on the Pretty Woman 15th Anniversary Special Edition DVD, Garry Marshall states that, while set dressers had created a fake exterior for the outside of The Blue Banana Club, the interior scenes were filmed at an actual club located somewhere in Hollywood.  Sadly though, as of yet, we have been unable to track down that location.

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The interior looks like it might have been some sort of historic building, though, as it features some fairly ornate detailing, as you can see in the above screen capture.

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On a side-note – My good friend Katie, from the Matthew Lillard Online website, is hosting a contest today to win two tickets to the Hollywood Rush show, in which the cutie actor will be directing a ten-minute play, taking place this Sunday night at 7 p.m. at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre in L.A.  You can enter the contest on Matthew Lillard Online or on twitter at @mattlillardfans.

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Big THANK YOU to fellow stalkers Mike, from MovieShotsLA, E.J., from The Movieland Directory, and Scott, from Findadeath, for finding these locations!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: The Pretty Woman alleyway is actually the lobby of The Outpost Building, which is located at 6715 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood.  You can visit the property’s official website here.  Maui and Sons Bar & Grill, aka the exterior of The Blue Banana Club from Pretty Woman, is located across the street at 6708 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood.  You can visit the restaurant’s official website here.