Pomona College’s Harwood Court – aka Eastland School from “The Facts of Life”

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Well over six months ago, my good friend Mikey, from the Mike the Fanboy website, asked if I would like to do some stalking with him of Harwood Court, the Pomona College dormitory which stood in for the fictional Eastland School, attended by Blair Warner (Lisa Whelchel), Dorothy ‘Tootie’ Ramsey (Kim Fields), Natalie Green (Mindy Cohn), and Joanne ‘Jo” Polniaczek (Nancy McKeon), in the 1980’s television series The Facts of Life. My answer, of course, was a resounding “YES!”  Because both of our schedules have been a bit hectic as of late, though, we were not able to make it out there until this past Sunday afternoon.  Needless to say, we were both pretty excited about the whole adventure when it finally came to pass and, a few days before we headed to Claremont, Mikey sent me an email which stated, “Wow, this is just like going scuba diving with Jacques Cousteau, or playing football with Tim Tebow, or getting a pants-dropping lesson from Marky Mark!  Well, maybe not that last one!”  Um, my stalking skills being compared to the scuba skills of Jacques Cousteau?!?!  LOVE IT!

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This location was actually found by Robert, of the Movie Locations and More website, way back in the Summer of 2010.  Earlier that year, Robert had read online that the exterior of Eastland School was a building on the Pomona College campus in Claremont, but because Google Street View of that area is not particularly clear, he was unable to track down the exact structure used via the internet.  So when he came to Los Angeles for a stalking visit a few months later, he drove around the 140-acre campus, screen shot in hand, and, amazingly enough, was able to track down the building fairly quickly.  Thank you, Robert!  In reality, Eastland School is the Harwood Court residential hall – a 68,000-square-foot unisex dormitory that was built in 1921 and currently houses 170 students.  The structure, which was originally an all-female dorm, was completely renovated by the Wheeler & Wheeler architectural firm in 1990.  Thankfully though, it still looks much the same as it did onscreen in The Facts of Life.

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A few years ago, Mikey had actually purchased one of Molly Ringwald’s costumes from the first season of The Facts of Life, as well as a promotional lunch box from the series that he had signed by none other than Mrs. Edna Garrett (Charlotte Rae) herself, and he brought both items with him on our stalk to add to the fun.  On our way there, he mentioned that he thought I might be able to fit into the track jacket portion of Molly’s former costume and, shockingly, he was right!  I cannot tell you how nervous I was to be wearing such an amazing piece of television history, while drinking a Starbucks, no less, so I only kept it on long enough to snap a couple of pics.

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Molly is pictured wearing one of the track jackets above.  So incredibly cool!!

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While we were there, a resident happened to walk out of Harwood Court and we stopped her to ask if she would take a photograph of Mikey and me.  She obliged and afterwards I inquired if she was aware that her dorm was, in fact, The Facts of Life school.  Shockingly, she had not actually been aware, and, even more shockingly, she did not seem to be too impressed by the news.  Ah well, I guess not everyone is a stalker.  Winking smile

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Harwood Court showed up as the fictional Peekskill, New York-area Eastland School during the opening credits of The Facts of Life’s entire nine-season run.

“The Facts of Life” Filmed at Harwood Court Residence Hall at Pomona College

You can watch the series’ opening credits by clicking above.  On an interesting side-note – the show’s insanely-catchy theme song was co-composed by Alan Thicke, aka Jason Seaver, the patriarch of the Seaver family on Growing Pains, and real-life father of R&B singer Robin Thicke.

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While doing research before heading out to Pomona College with Mikey on Sunday, I discovered that Harwood Court had also appeared in several other productions.  In 1985’s Real Genius, it was featured as the dormitory where Chris Knight (Val Kilmer), Mitch Taylor (Gabriel Jarret), and Jordan (Michelle Meyrink) lived.

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And while some of the real-life interior of the building was actually used in the movie . . .

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. . . I am fairly certain that the hallway and dorm rooms were sets.

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In 1987’s Teen Wolf Too, Harwood Court stood in for the Hamilton College dormitory where Todd Howard (Jason Bateman) lived with his roommate, Stiles (Stuart Franklin).

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The back side of the building appeared in the movie’s beyond-words-awful “Do You Love Me” dance sequence.

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I believe that the interior scenes were all filmed on a set, though.

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In the Season 1 episode of the reality series Top Chef Masters titled “Masters Get Schooled”, the Elimination Challenge, in which professional chefs Michael Schlow, Hubert Keller, Tim Love, and Christopher Lee were required to cook a gourmet meal in a dorm room, was held at Harwood Court.

You can read Mikey’s fab write-up of our The Facts of Life stalk on the Mike the Fanboy website here and you can watch a video Mikey put together of our adventure by clicking above.

Big THANK YOU to Robert, from the Movie Locations and More website, for finding this location and to Mikey, from the Mike the Fanboy website, for inviting me to stalk it with him.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: Harwood Court residence hall, aka Eastland School from The Facts of Life, is located on the campus of Pomona College at 170 East Bonita Avenue in Claremont.

Barney’s Beanery in West Hollywood

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Another location that has long been stockpiled (or should I say stalk-piled?) in my ever-growing stalking backlog is the original Barney’s Beanery restaurant in West Hollywood, which has been featured in numerous productions over the years and which I visited with fellow stalker Chas, from the It’sFilmedThere website, this past July.  For whatever reason, even though the eatery is a major celebrity hot spot and a veritable Los Angeles institution, in my ten-plus years of living in Southern California I had yet to stalk the place.

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Barney’s, which dubs itself as being the third oldest restaurant in Los Angeles, was originally founded by John “Barney’” Anthony, a Los Angeles native who got his culinary start by serving chili burgers and onion soup to his fellow soldiers during World War I.  He opened his first men’s-only Beanery in Berkeley, California in 1920, but moved it to its present location on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood in 1927, after deciding that he wanted to live in a warmer climate.  The eatery started out as little more than a one-room wooden shack with a small bar, but thanks to its location, which at the time was in the middle of nowhere, on Route 66, it attracted hundreds of travelers who were making their way from the East Coast to California.  It became common practice for those patrons to leave their license plates behind at the bar in a symbol of saying goodbye to their previous life.  The Barney’s of today is literally wallpapered with hundreds upon hundreds of old out-of-state license plates.  When Anthony passed away on November 25th, 1968, a man name Erwin Held purchased the restaurant and promised to keep it in its original form.  And despite a few expansions and another change in ownership (today the restaurant belongs to David Houston and Avi Fattal), the ramshackle little roadhouse-style Barney’s Beanery still looks much the same today as it did when it originally opened in 1927.  In recent years, David and Avi have opened up four sister eateries and now have Barney’s locations in Old Town Pasadena, Santa Monica, Burbank, and Westwood.

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The restaurant’s long-time popularity is largely due to its down-home food.  Unbelievably, the menu features over 1,000 items (and no, that is a not a typo!), including 45 different varieties of chili, 20 different burgers with 24 different toppings, 13 types of hot dogs, and 200 varieties of beer.  As they say at Barney’s, “If we don’t have it, you don’t want it!”   The menu is so large in fact, containing everything from Mexican fare to pizza and calzones, that it is printed in newspaper format and boasts a whopping 12 pages!  And while I did not eat at the original location with Chas that day, the Grim Cheaper and I used to frequent the Santa Monica outpost almost weekly when he lived on the West Side and I have to say that the fare is INCREDIBLE!  The place serves up comfort food at its finest, including delectable chicken strips (my fave!) and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (SO COOL!).  As owner David Houston is quoted as saying on the inmag website, “We’re not concerned about dieting, carb counting and all that because this is where you go to get away from it all.”  LOVE IT!

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As I mentioned above, several productions have been filmed at Barney’s.  The restaurant appeared almost weekly on the television series Columbo, as the regular hang-out of the show’s eponymous chili-loving Lieutenant Columbo (aka Peter Faulk).  It first showed up in 1971 in the the Season 1 episode titled “Ransom for a Dead Man”, in which filming took place at the actual eatery. It next popped up in the Season 1 episode titled “It’s All In The Game” and in numerous later episodes as well, but only the exterior of the restaurant was actually used. The interior was just a set that had been based on the real Barney’s interior.

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In 1984’s Body Double, Jake Scully (aka Craig Wasson) grabs a drink at Barney’s Beanery after discovering his girlfriend in bed with another man.

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in 1985’s Real Genius, Barney’s stood in for Purgatory, the burger joint where Chris Knight (aka Val Kilmer) and his friends met up with Lazlo Hollyfeld (aka Jon Gries).

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Val Kilmer returned to Barney’s in 1991 to shoot a rather disgusting scene for The Doors, in which Jim Morrison relieves himself on the bar.  What is odd is that while Barney’s today still looks much the same as it did in Body Double, it does not look the way it did in The Doors, which was filmed some seven years later.  I am guessing that producers had the bar dressed for the filming of The Doors to make the place appear as it did back in the days when Jim Morrison actually did hang out there.

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In 2003’s Stuck on You, Barney’s Beanery was where conjoined twins Bob Tenor (aka Matt Damon) and Walt Tenor (aka Greg Kinnear) discuss undergoing surgery to separate themselves.  The restaurant was also featured in the 1986 flick Out of Bounds, which unfortunately I could not find a copy of anywhere. Fail!

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As I mentioned above, Barney’s has long been a celebrity hot spot.  Just a few of the stars who have dined there over the years include Clara Bow (Hollywood’s first “It Girl”), Jim Morrison, John Barrymore, Clark Gable, Errol Flynn, Judy Garland, Lou Costello, Charles Bukowski, Marlon Brando, Bette Davis, Jack Nicholson, Elliot Gould, Bette Midler, Mel Gibson, Emilio Estevez, Demi Moore, Drew Carey, Rob Lowe, Keefer Sutherland, Charlie Sheen, John Cusack, Andrew McCarthy, Liza Minnelli, Matthew McConaughey, David Arquette, Chace Crawford, Lauren Conrad, my girl Jen Aniston, my other girl Marilyn Monroe, Ashton Kutcher, Courteney Cox, Josh Stewart, Wilmer Valderrama, Ed Westwick, Jessica Szohr, Adam Sandler, Billy Idol, James Dean, Ronald Regan, and Jean Harlow.  Supposedly Quentin Tarantino wrote much of Pulp Fiction while sitting in his favorite booth at Barney’s.  And Janis Joplin famously ate her last meal at the restaurant shortly before midnight on October 3rd, 1970.  Janis apparently carved her name into the tabletop pictured above which is currently affixed to Barney’s ceiling.  Unfortunately though, we could not find that carving anywhere, but the FindaDeath website has a great picture of it, which you can take a look at here.

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Big THANK YOU to Chas, from the It’sFilmedThere website, for taking me to this location.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: Barney’s Beanery, from Body Double, is located at 8447 Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood.