The Cree Estate in Cathedral City

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While doing research on Las-Vegas-Dunes-Hotel-owner Charlie “Kewpie” Rich’s former Palm Springs home, which I blogged about last Tuesday, I came across some information about another Coachella Valley location where my girl Jen Aniston and former-husband Brad Pitt had once vacationed.  The property is known as the historic Cree Estate in Cathedral City and it is apparently a big-time celebrity hot-spot and wedding venue.  According to this FASCINATING January 2004 Palm Springs Life article, which chronicles the adventures of area location scout Sylvia Schmitt who manages rentals of the Cree Estate, Brad and Jen spent a Thanksgiving weekend at the secluded Spanish-style hacienda a few years back.  Upon their arrival in the desert, Sylvia met up with the famous couple to hand over the property’s keys and walk the grounds with them.  As you can imagine, I was literally drooling upon reading those words!  Never in my life have I so badly wanted to be a location scout!  Sigh!  Anyway, at some point during their stay, Sylvia received a late-night phone call from Brad who informed her that the home’s dishwasher had broken and was leaking water all over the floor.  Sylvia promptly hired a plumber to go out to the property to fix the leak.  Well, as fate would have it, after the plumber finished working, he ended up hanging out with Jen until about 2 a.m.!!!!  Drool, drool, drool!  How incredibly cool is Jen to hang out chatting with a random stranger until the wee hours of the morning!  I love her even more now after reading that story!  According to Sylvia, the plumber said the experience was “the highlight of his life”.  Um, you’re telling me!!!!!!  So while vacationing in Palm Springs two weekends ago, I, of course, just had to drag the Grim Cheaper right on out to stalk the estate.

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Real estate developer Raymond Cree built his private, 5000-square foot, all-adobe estate, along with two stand-alone guest houses, on a sprawling two-and-a-half-acre plot of land sometime during the 1930s.  The property boasts 6 bedrooms, 6 bathrooms, a whopping 78 palm trees, a regulation-sized tennis court, three separate kitchens, wood-beamed ceilings, white-washed brick walls, a wood-burning fireplace, classical statuaries (including a replica of Michelangelo’s David), two jacuzzis, a swim-up bar, a permanent dance floor, and sweeping views of the San Jacinto Mountains.  The estate also features two black-bottomed swimming pools, one of which is the largest privately owned pool in the entire Coachella Valley and was featured by Huell Howser in an episode of his television series Palm Springs.  Sadly, as you can above, though, even though the front gate was open when we showed up to stalk the place, not much of the ultra-secluded property is visible from the street.

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But, as I have said before, that is why God created aerial views!  As you can see above, the property is quite magnificent and absolutely enormous.   Other stars who have spent time at the Cree Estate include Christina Applegate and now ex-husband Johnathon Schaech, who got married on the premises on October 20th, 2001, with such celebs as David Faustino, Cameron Diaz, Jared Leto, and hairstylist Ken Paves in attendance.  Apparently, in 2003 the contestants and the crew from The Bachelorette stayed at the Cree Estate for over a month during the filming of the series’ first installment starring Trista Rehn, although for the life of me I do not remember that season taking place in the Palm Springs area.  CSI:Crime Scene Investigation’s William Petersen also once vacationed at the property.  Being that rates start at $1,500 per night with a three-night minimum, though, this is one Jen location that I seriously doubt I will ever have the opportunity to visit.  But . . . to any of my friends reading this who might be planning a wedding in the near future, I think you should seriously consider the estate as your venue.  I will even go scout it for you, if you want!  Winking smile You can see some fabulous close-up and interior photographs of the historic Cree Estate here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: The Cree Estate is located at 67698 Carey Road in Cathedral City.  You can visit the home’s vacation rental website here and its wedding website here.

Frankie’s House from “Alpha Dog”

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One location that I have been on the lookout for for what seems like forever now is the home belonging to Frankie Ballenbacher’s (aka Justin Timberlake’s) father, Juergen Ballenbacher (aka Chris Kinkade), in the ultra-dark and depressing movie Alpha Dog.  As I have expressed a few times before on this blog, I was not at all a fan of the 2006 flick, which was based on the real-life kidnapping and murder of 15-year-old Nicholas Markowitz by Jesse James Hollywood and his group of drug-dealing cronies, as it was far too disturbing for my taste.  But I did absolutely fall in love with the mid-century-modern-style abode where the teenaged kidnap victim, who was named Zack Mazursky (aka Anton Yelchin) in the movie, spent the majority of his imprisonment.  I started looking for the Ballenbacher residence pretty much immediately after first watching the film and, even though I knew it was located somewhere in the Palm Springs area, try as I might, I just could not seem to find it.  Then on June 1st, fellow stalker/location manager Scott Trimble, of the STS Locations website, wrote a comment on my post about the Caliente Tropics Resort, the motel featured in Alpha Dog, stating that he had actually worked on the movie.  So I immediately wrote to him and enlisted his help in tracking the place down.  And even though he had only worked on the portion of the movie that was filmed in Los Angeles and was therefore unsure of where the Ballenbacher home was located, he was instrumental in finally helping me to find it.  Thank you, Scott!  Smile So a couple of weekends ago, while out visiting my parents in Palm Springs, I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out to stalk the place.

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In real life, the Ballenbacher residence is known as the Koerner House and it boasts 4 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, 4,224 square feet of living space, and 1.1 acres of land.  The abode was originally designed in 1955 by legendary mid-century modernist architect E. Stewart Williams, the very same man who constructed the Kenaston Residence in Rancho Mirage – the dwelling where Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie posed for their now-infamous July 2005 W Magazine photo shoot.  As you can see above, the home is pretty darn incredible!

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In Alpha Dog, drug-dealing kingpin Johnny Truelove (aka Emile Hirsch) orders his friend Frankie to take Zack, whom Johnny is holding as a marker for a $1,200 debt Zack’s brother has incurred, to Frankie’s father’s house in Palm Springs to hide out for a few days.  The vast majority of the movie was filmed at the dwelling and both the exterior . . .

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. . . and the interior of the property were used in the flick.

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And while the house is pretty darn incredible, it was actually the backyard area, which appeared quite frequently in Alpha Dog, that I became so enamored of.  What an absolutely amazing piece of property!  As you can see above, because it is so strikingly beautiful, it was rather difficult for me to narrow down which screen captures of the backyard to post.

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While driving to stalk the Koerner House, the GC and I spotted several open house signs and, thinking that it might just be the Koerner House that was open and that I might just have the opportunity to go inside and see that amazing backyard in person, I almost had a full-blown heart attack!  Sadly though, it was in fact a neighboring residence that was hosting the open house, so I guess, for the time being at least, I will just have to settle for looking at aerial views of the property.

Big THANK YOU to Scott Trimble, from the STS Locations website, for finding this location for me!  Smile You can follow Scott on Twitter, and learn all about his many location scout adventures, here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: The Koerner House, aka Frankie Ballenbacher’s home from Alpha Dog, is located at 1275 South Calle De Maria in Palm Springs.

Cary Grant’s Former Palm Springs Estate

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Another Cary Grant location (and I promise that this is the last of them for a while for those who are hoping for a change of pace) that the Grim Cheaper and I stalked while vacationing in the Palm Springs area two weekends ago was the “Cary Grant Estate”, aka “Las Palomas”, the Andalusian-style, U-shaped farmhouse that the actor called his desert home for nearly two decades.  I came across information about the property, which is currently for sale for a cool $2,995,000, when doing some cyber-stalking while trying to track down the estate belonging to Charlie Rich, which I blogged about yesterday.  And even though Cary’s daughter, Jennifer, never mentioned Las Palomas in Good Stuff, her newly-penned memoir about her late father, because we were in the area and because I have recently found myself just slightly obsessed with the movie icon, I decided I just had to stalk the place.

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The Cary Grant Estate was originally built in 1927 and was commissioned by Dr. Jacob John Kocher, Palm Springs’ very first pharmacist.  When Cary laid eyes upon the property in 1954, along with his then-wife, actress Betsy Drake, it was love at first sight and he immediately set about purchasing the place.  He owned it for the next 18 years and, for a time at least, made the secluded sanctuary, with its large pool, sparkling fountains, trellised arbors, and towering palm trees, his primary residence.  Cary nicknamed the property “Las Palomas”, Spanish for “The Doves”.  Just a few of the luminaries who visited Cary during the nearly two-decades that he lived at the estate include Howard Hughes, Alfred Hitchcock, Grace Kelly, Sophia Loren, Frank Sinatra, Clark Gable, and Katharine Hepburn.  Grant, a longtime supporter of the U.S. armed forces, also made it a practice of hosting numerous events on the property for the Marine Corp soldiers stationed at the nearby Twentynine Palms military base.  Sometime after Grant sold the home in 1972, it was purchased by professional bodybuilder and three-time-Mr. Olympia-winner Frank Zane.  Upon Zane’s departure, the property fell into serious disrepair due to years of neglect.  And then, in 1998, it was rescued by Jane Cowles Smith, an author/doctor who purchased the dilapidated estate and immediately set about a painstakingly-detailed and historically-accurate 11-year renovation process , during which she restored the dwelling to its original grandeur.  She also had the property designated a Class 1 Historic Site by the City of Palm Springs.  Sadly though, as you can see above, not much of the 6-bedroom, 6-bathroom, 6,000-square-foot, ultra-private abode, which sits on 1.54 lush acres of land, can be seen from the street.

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Something that can be seen from the street, though, is the estate’s mailbox (pictured above).  When Grant first purchased the property, he commissioned his close friend, legendary Los-Angeles-area architect Wallace Neff, to build a second-story addition, consisting of two bedrooms and two baths, above the home’s garage.  It is said that at that same time Neff also designed a small-scale replica of Las Palomas to be used as the home’s mailbox.  I find it so incredibly cool that that mailbox is still there, almost six full decades later!  LOVE IT!

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Sadly, the aerial views of the property are not that great, but you can visit the home’s real estate listing and see some close-up photographs of the place here and you can read a more in-depth history of the estate here and here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: The Cary Grant Estate, aka Las Palomas, is located at 928 North Avenida Palmas in Palm Springs.

Charlie Rich’s Former Palm Springs Estate

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Another location that Jennifer Grant spoke fondly of in Good Stuff, the memoir about her late father, actor Cary Grant, was the Palm Springs estate belonging to Cary’s good friend, Las Vegas Dunes Hotel owner Charlie “Kewpie” Rich.  Many weekends of Jennifer’s childhood were spent at “Uncle Charlie’s” lush, four-acre Coachella Valley oasis, which the Beverly Hills, 90210 actress described as “my adolescent wonderland” and a “desert Disneyland”.  In the book, Jennifer writes, “Our number-one weekend getaway was to Uncle Charlie’s Palm Springs estate. Uncle Charlie was a staple in our life. Kewpie was maybe five feet tall, bald as they come, with a year-round tan (sometimes orange out of the Coppertone bottle – which Dad heckled him for) and a heart that never stopped giving. Uncle Charlie lived in a Spanish adobe on several acres of manicured, palm-tree-lined property. I learned to drive a golf cart and play putt-putt on that lawn. We stayed in the pool house, near the good-for-guppy-hunting pond and gorgeous rose gardens.”  Well, as you can imagine, as soon as I read those words, I became absolutely obsessed with tracking the place down.  And while vacationing in the Desert two weekends ago, I spent quite a few hours doing just that.  I ran into a few snags along the way, though, as I was originally under the very incorrect assumption that Charlie “Kewpie” Rich, hotel owner, and Charlie Rich, country crooner, were one in the same.  As it turns out, they are most definitely not!

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Charlie Rich’s Palm Springs House–Villa Paradiso

It was not until I came across the YouTube video posted above that I realized my mistake.  Thankfully, said video lead me to a real estate listing for the estate formerly belonging to the correct Charlie Rich, complete with an address!  Yay!  So I immediately dragged the Grim Cheaper right on our to stalk the place – in 108-degree weather, no less!

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Charlie Rich’s former home, which Cary Grant dubbed “Villa Paradiso”, was originally built in 1928 and features 8 bedrooms, 14 bathrooms (not kidding!!!), 13,000 square feet of living space, a four-car garage, a climate-controlled fur-storage-closet (also not kidding!!!), a swimming pool, a pond, over one hundred palm trees, several eighty-year-old Cypress trees, sweeping mountain views, and 3 stand-alone guest houses, one of which was built by Uncle Charlie especially for Cary Grant.  Cary’s guest house boasts a formal living room, a fireplace, a large bar, a kitchen, two bathrooms, and one large bedroom.  A photograph of that guest house circa 1970 was featured in Good Stuff and I was absolutely FLOORED to discover a recent picture of the structure on the property’s real estate listing in which it still looks almost exactly the same as it did when Cary and Jennifer vacationed there.  SO INCREDIBLY COOL!  According to the real estate listing, Howard Hughes also spent quite a bit of time at the property.

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Sadly, not much of the ultra-private estate, which is currently for sale for a cool $8,950,000, is visible from the street.

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Thank god for aerial views!  As you can see above, the place is pretty darn magnificent and majorly dwarfs everything which surrounds it.  I cannot even imagine owning a home like that!  Sigh!  You can visit two of the property’s real estate listings and see some great close-up photographs of it here and here.

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On a stalking side note – fellow stalker/celebrity enthusiast Pinky Lovejoy, of the Thinking Pink blog, her dog Sammy, the GC, and I were lucky enough to  run into a few stars while hanging out together this past Saturday night in Beverly Hills.

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While walking to our cars after grabbing dinner, Pinky happened to spot The Hangover star Ken Jeong, who could not have been nicer or funnier!  He practically did an entire, private stand-up comedy routine for us, right there on the sidewalk.  So incredibly cool!  And he gave Pinky a kiss on the cheek after posing for a pic with her!  How cute is that?

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We spotted Kevin Nealon a few minutes later and he was also a total sweetheart and even remembered meeting Pinky at the Sundance Film Festival a couple of years ago.

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And last, but definitely not least, we saw Ed Helms from The Office and The Hangover.  I had previously heard that Ed is not especially fan-friendly, but I am very happy to report that that information is not accurate as he was super sweet to Pinky and me and happily posed for a picture with both of us.  Mine sadly came out a little blurry, which I did not realize until after I got home.  Such a bummer, but I am stoked nonetheless to have gotten a picture at all.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: Charlie Rich’s former home is located at 457 West Hermosa Place in Palm Springs.

Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston’s Honeymoon Suite at the Ingleside Inn

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As I mentioned in Monday’s post, I spent my recent birthday weekend in Room 148 of the Ingleside Inn in Palm Springs – the very room where Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston stayed during their mini-honeymoon shortly following their July 29th, 2000 wedding.  I first found out about the Ingleside Inn back in April of 2009 thanks to this Jetsetters Magazine article and, as you can imagine, just about died upon hearing that my girl Jen had honeymooned there.   Then, shortly thereafter, the Grim Cheaper ended up proposing to me at the Ingleside, so the hotel has always had a very special place in my heart.  During that proposal weekend, I, of course, just had to ask Melvyn Haber, the Ingleside’s longtime owner, what room it was that Brad and Jen had stayed in.  Before I could even get the question fully out of my mouth, he replied, “Room 148, the Princess Room.”  And that right there is just one of the many reason that I fell in love with the hotel!  Almost a full decade later, Melvyn STILL knew the exact room where Brad and Jen had stayed right off the top of his head!

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Flash forward to a couple of weeks ago.  My dad called me up to let me know that he had booked Brad and Jen’s honeymoon suite as a surprise for my upcoming birthday.  (He had to tell me about his plans a few weeks early as the GC and I had been thinking about spending my birthday at Disneyland and were thisclose to booking a hotel room there.)  I happened to be driving at the time and got so excited upon hearing his news that I literally almost crashed the car!  For those who have never visited the Palm Springs area, it gets EXTREMELY hot there during the summer months – we are talking like 115 to 120 degrees hot – so hotels drastically drop their rates from early June through the end of August.  Because of this, and the fact that the Ingleside inn is not overly-expensive to begin with, my dad was able to get Brad and Jen’s room for only $200 per night!  My birthday just so happened to fall on my mom’s very last day of work ever (she retired this year), so he also booked a suite at the hotel for them, and talked the GC into booking a second night in Brad and Jen’s room so that we could all spend the weekend together.  Now mind you, my dad was extremely sick during this time and was in and out of the hospital, so how he managed to come up with such an incredible idea AND do all of the planning without me or my mom’s help – not to mention that he also purchased some FABULOUS gifts for the two of us – is absolutely BEYOND me!!  It was one of the best, most exciting weekends of my entire life and I cannot believe he pulled it all off while feeling so incredibly sick!  Best.  Present.  Ever.

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When we first arrived at the Ingleside Inn and were checking in at the front desk, I saw the above-pictured “Happy Birthday Lindsay” message displayed on the marquee in the front lobby and just about fell over.  So incredibly cool!!  The lobby sign is very typical of the personal touches that the Ingleside Inn employs in order to make guests feel at home.  Love it!

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After checking in, we were handed the above-pictured room key.  As you can see, the Ingleside Inn still uses actual brass room keys, not the keycards that are typically found in hotels today.  So, as you can imagine, as soon as those keys were handed over, I turned to the GC and said, “OH MY GOD!  Jennifer Aniston once held this key in her hand!”  Granted, the key quite possibly could have been swapped out for a new one in the decade that has passed since Jen stayed at the Ingleside, but just let me have my fantasy!  Winking smile

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I covered the Ingleside Inn’s vast history in the post I wrote about the hotel back in May of 2009, so I won’t go over it again here. But needless to say, the tiny, 30-room inn, which sits on just over 2.5 acres of land, has had quite a celebrated history since it was first founded in 1939. Thanks to its extreme privacy and award-winning service, celebrities have long been drawn to the place like moths to a flame. Just a few of the luminaries who have stayed there over the years include Frank Sinatra, Kate Hudson, Goldie Hawn, Kurt Russell, Greta Garbo, Elizabeth Taylor, Debbie Reynolds, Lance Bass, Donald Trump, Marla Maples, Ava Gardner, Clark Gable, Marlon Brando, Gary Cooper, John Wayne, Bob Hope, John Travolta, David Boreanaz, Joan Collins, Cher, Howard Hughes, and Rita Hayworth.  The Ingleside is by no means fancy or extravagant, though. It is a very simple, low-key retreat where people go to truly get away from it all. The Inn is not a party hotel, it is not a place for families, and it is not modern in any way, shape, or form. It is an extremely quiet, private, and relaxing sanctuary; the type of place where an A-List star can lay out by the pool and not worry about being approached by a fan or fellow guest.

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Brad and Jen’s honeymoon suite features a wood-burning fireplace, a sitting area, a king-sized bed, two picture windows, and a plasma TV, and while it is extremely nice, it is not overly-luxurious or the type of place one would expect one of the most famous couples in the world to have spent their honeymoon.  And that right there is why I LOVE Jen so much!  Of course she would choose a simple, laid-back, low-key space to spend her first few days of married life.  And while Brad and Jen’s room is a suite, it is by no means the Ingleside’s largest.  There are two others that are far bigger than the Princess Room, which led me to wonder how the couple ending up choosing it for their honeymoon.

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Besides the fact that Jen has always been a fan of small spaces (the bungalow she rented in Malibu post-divorce measured a scant 1,531 square feet, the home on Blue Jay Way where she lived during the height of her Friends’ success measured only 2,903 square feet, and she is currently selling her 9,105-square-foot Beverly Hills manse as it is reportedly too large for her), as it turns out, the Princess Room is by far the hotel’s most private and secluded suite.  It is located towards the very back of the property, far away from the pool and the award-winning Melvyn’s restaurant, but close to the back parking area, which means that Brad and Jen could have parked their car and been inside of their room less than ten steps later.  As you can see above, there is also a gate surrounding that particular wing of the hotel, which consists of three rooms, and the actual suite itself is bordered by a large stucco wall.

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The Princess Room is one of the few at the hotel that also boasts a completely private patio area, which I absolutely fell in love with while there.

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As you can imagine, pretty much all weekend I was saying things like “I just took a shower where Jennifer Aniston once showered!” or “Jennifer Aniston sat on this couch!” or, my personal favorite, “Jennifer Aniston slept here!”  My head was literally about to explode the entire time I was there!  And poor, poor fellow stalker Owen!  I must have sent him about 100 text messages, all saying things like, “I just washed my face where Jennifer Aniston once washed her face!”   Smile

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My parents stayed in Room 145, aka “Margaret’s Room”, which according to one of the super-nice front desk clerks that we spoke with while there, was one of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver’s favorite suites.  The former Governator and his soon-to-be ex-wife stayed at the hotel on an almost monthly basis at one point in time.

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My parents’ room boasted a HUMONGOUS semi-private patio (semi-private as it has an opening on the backside that is accessible to the public) that was honestly bigger than most backyards!

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All in all, it was an A-MA-ZING weekend and, as you can see above, I was BEYOND sad to check out of what the GC and I had dubbed “our perfect little room”.

Ingleside Inn–Brad and Jen’s honeymoon hotel

You can watch a video about the Ingleside Inn, in which owner Melvyn Haber is interviewed, by clicking above.

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And you can watch another video, which shows the Inn’s beautiful grounds, by clicking above.

On a stalking side-note – This Sunday (June 19th), stalking gods Harry Medved and Karie Bible will be signing copies of their new book Location Filming in Los Angeles at Vroman’s Bookstore, which is located at 695 East Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena.  They will also be conducting a walking tour of some famous Pasadena movie sites, including locations from Knocked Up, The Prestige, Live Free and Die Hard, and Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator immediately following the signing at 4 p.m.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: The Ingleside Inn is located at 200 West Ramon Road in Palm Springs.  Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston spent their honeymoon in the hotel’s Princess Room, aka Room 148.  Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver frequently stayed in Margaret’s Room, aka Room 145.  You can visit the Ingleside Inn’s official website here.

Caliente Tropics Resort from “Alpha Dog”

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Another location that I dragged the Grim Cheaper out to stalk while visiting the Palm Springs area two weekends ago was the Caliente Tropics Resort which appeared in the ultra-disturbing 2006 movie Alpha Dog. I found this location thanks to fave stalking book Hollywood Escapes: The Moviegoer’s Guide to Exploring Southern California’s Great Outdoors, which was written by stalking god Harry Medved (who, as it just so happens, will be signing books at Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena on Sunday, June 19th at 2 p.m., but I digress). For those who have yet to see Alpha Dog – and I can’t really say that I would recommend doing so as it is extremely depressing – the movie very closely follows the true life story of the kidnapping and murder of 15-year-old Nicholas Markowitz by drug dealer Jesse James Hollywood and his gang of friends. Pretty much the only differences between the actual story and its onscreen counterpart are the names of those involved and the setting. In real life, Nicholas was kidnapped from his hometown of West Hills and taken to Santa Barbara, where he was held hostage for three days, during which time he attended a pool party at the Lemon Tree Inn. In Alpha Dog, the Markowitz character, who was named Zack Mazursky, was kidnapped from Claremont and then taken to Palm Springs for the weekend, during which time he attended a pool party at the Caliente Tropics Resort. It was that resort that the GC and I set out to stalk two weekends ago.

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The Caliente Tropics Resort was originally constructed in 1964 as part of motel mogul Ken Kimes’ tiki-themed motor-hotel chain and was known simply as The Tropics. (While Kimes built and owned over 60 successful motels in his lifetime, he is perhaps best known for being married to murderer/con-woman/Elizabeth-Taylor-impersonator Sante Kimes). In its early years, the Tropics was THE place to vacation in the Coachella Valley and such luminaries as Elvis Presley and most of the members of the Rat Pack were frequent guests. Nancy Sinatra even lived there for a time during her childhood. Sadly, the motel fell into disrepair sometime during the 80’s and remained that way until the year 2000, whereupon it was purchased by new owners who immediately embarked upon a $2.2 million restoration project to bring the property back to its original, Polynesian-themed grandeur.

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The Caliente Tropic Resort boasts the third largest pool in the Coachella Valley. It holds a whopping 100,000 gallons of water and, amazingly enough, looks exactly the same today as it did when the place first opened in 1964. The pool also has the distinction of being the site of one of the very first Miss Hawaiian Tropic contests.

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In Alpha Dog, the Caliente Tropics Resort is stated to be in Palm Desert, but in actuality the hotel is located about eleven miles west of Palm Desert, right in the heart of Downtown Palm Springs. In the movie, Frankie Ballenbacher (aka Justin Timberlake) takes Zack Mazursky (aka Anton Yelchin) to a party at the Caliente at the behest of drug-dealer/kingpin Johnny Truelove (aka Emile Hirsch), who has kidnapped the teenager in order to hold him as a marker for a debt his brother owes. Several areas of the hotel appeared in the flick, including the exterior, which you can see above. And I really do have to apologize for the quality of my screen captures – as I mentioned earlier, Alpha Dog is a very dark movie and my screen captures definitely reflect that.

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The pool area also appeared in the movie as the spot where Zack – ahem – “swam” with his new friends Julie Beckley (aka Amanda Seyfried) and Alma (aka Amber Heard).

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I am fairly certain that one of the hotel’s real life rooms was also used in the filming, but I was, unfortunately, not able to verify that while I was stalking the place.

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The Caliente Tropics Resort was also featured in the 1997 movie City of Industry as the hotel where Roy (aka Harvey Keitel) and Lee Egan (aka Timothy Hutton) stayed while in Palm Springs planning the heist of a local jewelry store.

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While stalking the hotel, the GC spotted three cement blocks bearing sets of handprints, a la Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. One of the blocks was signed by someone named “Anna Nicole”, whom I logically assumed was reality star Anna Nicole Smith. I promptly went to the front desk to inquire about the blocks, but not only did the woman working in the office not know who the Anna Nicole in question was, but she had also been unaware up until that time that there were even signed cement blocks with handprints on the premises! Needless to say, she was not exactly a wealth of information. Winking smile Anyway, while she was speaking with me, she told me she did not believe the handprints belonged to the reality star, saying with a crinkled nose, “I seriously doubt Anna Nicole Smith would have ever stayed here.” LOL

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As it turns out, though, Miss Smith did in fact once stay at the Caliente Tropics Resort during the filming of the Season 2 episode of The Anna Nicole Show titled “Anna (Palm) Springs into Action”. In the episode, Anna ventures out to the Desert in order to judge the 2003 American Guy male beauty contest. And, ironically enough, the woman at the front desk was actually not too far off in her assessment of the situation, as Anna complained about her accommodations the entire time she was there, calling the hotel “cheapy” and “embarrassing”.

The Anna Nicole Show–Caliente Tropics Resort

You can watch a clip from the “Anna (Palm) Springs into Action” episode of The Anna Nicole Show, in which the Caliente Tropics Resort is shown, by clicking above.

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Unfortunately I never was able to figure out who the other sets of handprints belonged to. The block on the left looks as if it says, “Sav-A-Pet”, “Petsmart”, “Herb M.”, and “Marcel”, but after Googling countless combinations of those particular words, I came up empty-handed. And I am at a complete loss as to what is spelled out on the block on the right. I believe the first word is “Harold”, but neither the GC nor I could figure it out while we were stalking the hotel. Ideas, anyone?

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Anna Nicole Smith handprints - Caliente Tropics Motel

Stalk It: Caliente Tropics Resort, from Alpha Dog, is located at 411 East Palm Canyon Drive in Palm Springs. You can visit the hotel’s official website here. The cement block featuring Anna Nicole Smith’s handprints can be found in the patch of grass located just south of the resort’s pool, in the area marked with a pink “X” in the above aerial view.

The “Ocean’s Eleven” House

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One location that I dragged the Grim Cheaper out to stalk last weekend while vacationing in Palm Springs was the supposed-Las-Vegas, Nevada-area residence where Reuben Tishkoff (aka Elliot Gould) lived in the 2001 heist movie Ocean’s Eleven.  I had absolutely fallen in love with the mid-century-modern-style residence while first watching the film just about a decade ago and was shocked to discover, thanks to a free Map of the Stars’ Vacation Homes that I once picked up at the Palm Springs Visitors’ Center, that it was located in the Coachella Valley.  And while I had actually dragged the GC out to stalk the dwelling once before quite a few years back – long before I ever started my blog – because I had only taken one photograph of it, I decided the place was definitely worthy of a re-stalk.

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Reuben Tishkoff’s house popped up twice in Ocean’s Eleven.  It first appeared in the scene in which Danny Ocean (aka George Clooney) and Rusty Ryan (aka cheater, cheater, pumpkin eater Brad Pitt) try to convince the millionaire hotelier to put up the money to fund their proposed casino heist.

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It later showed up as the spot where Danny pitched his plan for robbing the Bellagio, the Mirage, and the MGM Grand casinos to his band of cohorts including Frank Catton (aka Bernie Mac), Livingston Dell (aka Eddie Jemison), Yen (aka Shaobo Qin), Saul Bloom (aka Carl Reiner), Linus Caldwell (aka Matt Damon), Basher Tarr (aka Don Cheadle, who, interestingly enough, had an uncredited role in the film), and brothers Virgil and Turk Malloy (aka Casey Affleck and Scott Caan, respectively).  Quite a bit of the house was featured in the movie including the front gate and the front door areas (both are pictured above);

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the backyard;

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. . . and the living room.

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And while not a lot of the property can actually be seen from the street, this is one location that I would still definitely recommend stalking as it is just so unique. According to IMBD’s Ocean’s Eleven trivia page, the abode was designed in 1959 by Archibald Quincy Jones, the same architect who gave us the Palm Springs Tennis Club, Campbell Hall Episcopal School in North Hollywood (Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen’s alma mater) and the once popular, but now-defunct restaurant Romanoff’s On the Rocks.  According to the Ocean’s Eleven production notes, which I found online, director Steven Soderbergh and production designer Phil Messina wanted the residence of the “old school” Tishkoff character to be a “throwback to the 1950s and 60s”. Messina says, “We looked for sweeping, low line, mid-century homes in Las Vegas and discovered that that architecture doesn’t exist there anymore.  I had a book on modern houses in Palm Springs and that’s where we ended up filming Tishkoff’s house.”  IMDB also states that the homeowners were paid a whopping $200,000 for the property’s onscreen appearance!  Yowza, now that’s what I call a paycheck!  In real life, the one-story residence boasts 3 bedrooms, 6 baths, 6,307 square feet of living space and sits on a 1.2-acre corner plot of land located just about a mile away from the heart of Downtown Palm Springs.

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As you can see in the above photographs, the house also boasts some amazing views of the San Jacinto Mountains.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: The Ocean’s Eleven house is located at 999 North Patencio Road in Palm Springs.  Here is a Bing map link to that location.