Sarah Jessica Parker – Page 2

July 13, 2016July 12, 2016

The “Sex and the City” McDonalds

Today’s location is a bit of a fail and a lucky twist all in one. My mom always says to trust in the universe – and she’s right. Things happen for a reason. This locale – easily one of my most-wanted ever – is proof of that. I am a pretty simple girl when it comes to most things, especially food. I’ll take McDonald’s over a fancy restaurant any day. So when Aleksandr Petrovsky (Mikhail Baryshnikov) and Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) dined at an NYC Golden Arches outpost in the Season 6 episode of Sex and the City titled “The Ick Factor,” I practically swooned – and vowed to stalk the place someday. The road to tracking it down was fraught with quite a few twists and turns, though, and even involved stalking an incorrect location (pictured above).

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In “The Ick Factor,” Carrie becomes overwhelmed by Petrovsky’s many extravagant romantic gestures. One night, after he recites a Joseph Brodsky poem to her, she asks if she can read him her kind of poetry and then shares a passage from Vogue about a sleeveless hot pink Oscar de la Renta dress.

The next time the two see each other, Alek has a surprise for Carrie – tickets to a Metropolitan Opera opening . . . and the sleeveless hot pink Oscar de la Renta dress. Now, while Met tickets would leave me fairly cold, any guy who bought me a designer dress for no reason at all would be A-OK in my book.

All does not go as planned for the couple, though, as a funny thing happens on the way to the opera. While walking through the courtyard of Lincoln Center, Alek asks Carrie to dance . . .

. . . and she proceeds to faint. When she comes to, she tells him, “It’s too much. I’m an American. Ya gotta take it down a notch.”

So the two forgo the opera and instead head to McDonald’s for a meal of Chicken McNuggets, a Quarter Pounder with Cheese, and Supersize fries. Mickey D’s in a designer dress? Now that’s my kind of date!

While standing at the counter awaiting their order, Carrie gets swept up in the romance of it all and tells Petrovsky that she is finally ready for that dance. As I said, swoon! The moment was, hands down, one of my favorite scenes of the series and I wanted nothing more than to dance in the same spot Carrie did – while wearing a designer dress, of course.

Try as I might, though, I just could never seem to find that McDonald’s. Enter my friend Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong blog, who I mentioned my query to in 2010. Per usual, he went above and beyond to help me, even going so far as to contact the NYC Mayor’s Office of Film, Theatre, and Broadcasting. A very kind woman there told Owen that while she was unsure of which McDonald’s was used in the production, he was welcome to come in and go through the permits. Owen made an appointment to do so, but a few days later he heard from the woman once again. As fate would have it, she had found the information we were seeking on, of all places, HBO’s official Sex and the City website! Now I had visited that website many times, especially its filming locations section, but had stopped doing so once I purchased Sex and the City: Kiss and Tell in 2004, as the book has all of the same location information chronicled. What I didn’t realize what that the HBO website updated its locations page at some point, adding “The Ick Factor” McDonald’s. D’oh! As you can see below, according to HBO, the Sex and the City Mickey D’s (Location #14) is said to be at 57th and 6th. (The actual address, which Owen later dug up, is 45 West 57th Street in Midtown West.)

Upon relaying the information, Owen also notified me of the bad news that the eatery had been shuttered in 2007, which meant no dancing on the premises in a designer dress for me! During its tenure at 45 West 57th, McDonald’s leased all three floors of the 8,500-square-foot spot (paying a whopping $800,000 a year to do so!). When the burger chain vacated the site, it was gutted and divided into three different units. The bottom floor was taken over by an organic café named Danku. Prior to opening, the space underwent an extensive $1-million renovation. Danku did not last long, though. By January 2010, it, too, had closed its doors and a fresh&co outpost eventually moved in. Despite the heavy alterations and numerous changes in tenancy, because it was a location that meant so much to me, I added the address to my NYC To-Stalk List and was beyond excited to finally see it in person this past April.

At the time that Owen notified me of his find, I had no imminent plans to head to New York and was also knee-deep in the middle of wedding planning, so I took HBO at its word and did no further investigating. It was not until I sat down to write this post early last week that things started to go awry. While doing research on the 57th Street McDonald’s, I came across some images of what the interior and exterior looked like shortly after Mickey D’s moved out and very quickly realized it was not the right spot. The most glaring tell was the fact that the 57th Street space featured a large floor-to-ceiling window on its western side (as you can see here). That window is still intact and is pictured in my photograph below. Such a window would have been visible behind Carrie in “The Ick Factor” (in the area noted with a pink rectangle), but, as you can see, that is not the case.

The flooring and tile work behind the counter (both of which you can see in this image), doors (which you can see here) and window casings (which you can see here) at the 57th Street McDonald’s were also vastly different from what appeared on Sex and the City. Not to mention, the 57th Street site boasted a large stairwell near its entrance (you can see it here and here). Those stairs should have been visible on SATC in the area denoted with a pink rectangle below, but were not. No doubt about it, HBO listed the wrong location on its site.

Feeling elated over the fact that the right McDonald’s might still possibly be in operation, I immediately headed on over to Google and pulled up a listing for every single outpost located on the island of Manhattan. I spent countless hours on Street View looking for one with front doors and window casings that matched what appeared in “The Ick Factor,” but came up empty-handed. Then the following day, in a very fortuitous turn, I decided to write about Terry’s (Whoopi Goldberg) apartment from Jumpin’ Jack Flash. In the post, I mentioned an old NYC eatery named La Tablita. While researching that restaurant, I came across this West Side Rag article and immediately froze when I saw the top image. It was of a recently-shuttered McDonald’s, said to be at 81st and Broadway, that had the exact doors and windows I had been looking for.

I quickly ascertained that the address of the McDonald’s was 2271 Broadway and started searching for interior photos of it. I found several on Foursquare and what they showed matched the SATC McDonald’s perfectly! As you can see below, the tiling of the front of the counter (pink arrows), the tiling of the wall behind it (turquoise arrows), and the flooring (blue arrows) all correlate to what appeared in “The Ick Factor.”

The doors (turquoise arrows) and window (green arrows) were also a perfect match, as was the triangular mirrored panel (pink arrows) visible behind Carrie in the scene.

I was most excited to see that the half wall located next to the front counter was the spitting image of the one from “The Ick Factor.”

So there you have it, the long complicated story of the Sex and the City McDonald’s. Though I am saddened that the restaurant is closed, I am thrilled that it has now at least been found – and in such a fortuitous way. Had I not attempted to write about the 57th Street outpost the day before blogging about the Jumpin’ Jack Flash apartment, I would have come across that West Side Rag image and thought nothing of it – and the correct McDonald’s might never have been located! As my mom always says, things happen for a reason. Though Owen does believe that HBO owes me an apology and I tend to agree. So HBO? I’m waiting.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The McDonald’s featured in “The Ick Factor” episode of Sex and the City was formerly located at 2271 Broadway on New York’s Upper West Side.

May 25, 2016May 24, 2016

Stuyvesant Square Park from “Sex and the City”

At the risk of this blog becoming solely Sex and the City-based, here I am yet again with yet another locale from the hit HBO series. For those of you non-SATC fans out there, don’t worry, I will be chronicling NYC sites from other productions soon. I will also be interspersing New York spots with ones in L.A., as well, to break up any sort of location monotony. For today, though, it’s all about SATC and SJP. I bring you Stuyvesant Square Park, a spot I have long wanted to stalk thanks to its appearance in the Season 5 episode of Sex and the City titled “Plus One Is the Loneliest Number.”

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In the episode, which originally aired in 2002, Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) meets a cute author named Jack Berger (Ron Livingston) while at her publisher’s office on the eve of the release of her first book. Her publisher suggests that Berger take Carrie under his wing and share with her the ins and outs of the book world. So the two head out to a park to chat, McDonald’s sack lunches in hand. I loved absolutely everything about the scene – Carrie and Berger’s chemistry and easy banter, the picturesque park surroundings, the McDonald’s meals (I’d take McDonald’s over a fancy restaurant any day!), and (especially) Carrie’s dress, shoes and hair. So I, of course, became obsessed with tracking down where filming took place.

The endeavor turned out to be pretty easy thanks to a sign reading “Stuyvesant Square” that was visible in the background of the scene.

In the episode, Carrie and Berger were sitting in the southwest corner of Stuyvesant Square Park, near the intersection of East 15th Street and Rutherford Place, in the general vicinity of the area pictured below.

After finishing their lunches, the two then exit the park through the gate located at East 16th Street and Rutherford Place . . .

. . . and proceed to walk south down Rutherford. It is there that Berger drops the bomb on Carrie that he has a live-in girlfriend.

Stuyvesant Square Park, also known simply as Stuyvesant Square, turned out to be quite the picturesque stalk! The serene site, which is bisected by 2nd Avenue, is comprised of shaded benches, sparkling fountains and meandering pathways, surrounded by a bevy of handsome and historic New York buildings. All that greenery and brick make for some glorious scenery!

The park has quite an interesting history. The tract was originally part of an 120-acre farm owned by Peter Stuyvesant, the last Dutch Director-General of the New Netherland colony. In 1836, Peter’s great-great-grandson, Peter Gerard Stuyvesant, sold a 4-acre parcel of the farm to the City of New York for $5 with the intention that it be used as a public park.

The land sat untouched for several years, though, causing Stuyvesant to file a lawsuit against the city to force development in 1839. It still took quite a while, until 1847 in fact, for landscaping of the site to begin and Stuyvesant Square Park finally opened to the public in 1850.

In 1847, during the development process, a large cast iron fence was installed around the perimeter of the park. Amazingly, it still stands today and has the distinction of being New York’s oldest cast iron fence.

In the 1930s, Stuyvesant Square Park was renovated by landscape architect Gilmore David Clark. Though it was rehabbed once again in 1982 and is currently undergoing some restorations, the space looks much the same today as it did when Clark completed work on it in 1937.

Sex and the City is hardly the only production to have made use of the park’s beauty.

April Wheeler (Kate Winslet) – wearing an amazing white dress – walks by Stuyvesant Square Park after picking up travel documents in the 2008 drama Revolutionary Road. The brief segment was shot on Rutherford Place, just north of East 15th Street.

It was at the park that Patty Hewes (Glenn Close) met with Patrick Scully (Jeff Binder) in the Season 5 episode of Damages titled “But You Don’t Do That Anymore,” which aired in 2012. (I cannot get over how different the park looks during the winter when there are no leaves on the trees!)

A large portion of White Collar’s Season 5 storyline centered around a priceless stained glass window located at a church across the street from Stuyvesant Square Park. As such, the park popped in a couple of episodes, most notably in 2013’s “No Good Deed,” in which Neal Caffrey (Matt Bomer) and Mozzie (Willie Garson) masqueraded as repairmen in order to steal the window.

Stuyvesant Square Park was also where John Reese (Jim Caviezel) took a cell phone call from Lionel Fusco (Kevin Chapman) and discussed the fact that all hell was breaking loose in the city in the Season 4 episode of Person of Interest titled “The Cold War,” which aired in 2014.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Stuyvesant Square Park, from the “Plus One Is the Loneliest Number” episode of Sex and the City, is located at 2nd Avenue and East 15th Street in the Gramercy Park neighborhood of New York.

May 13, 2016May 12, 2016

Two Boots To Go West Pizza from “Sex and the City”

There’s nothing quite like a slice of New York pizza! Just watching characters eat a piece on TV or in a movie is enough to make me drool. So I, of course, had long been dying to stalk the Big Apple pizzeria that appeared in the Season 6 episode of Sex and the City titled “Great Sexpectations.”

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In the episode, Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon) head to a pizza place for a second dinner after not being fulfilled by their meal at Raw, the hip new “vegan non-dairy” restaurant where “nothing is cooked over 118 degrees.” It is there that Miranda tells Carrie about her love for her new “boyfriend,” TiVo. As she explains, “While I’m eating this slice of pizza, my boyfriend is home taping my favorite TV show. With TiVo, when there’s something I don’t enjoy, I just speed right through it. And he surprises me with things that he thinks I might like, which is how I got hooked on Jules and Mimi.”

I loved absolutely every aspect of the scene – from the opening close-up of the girls’ fabulous shoes to the way the camera panned upwards to their faces to the fact that they were standing at a tall table eating their slices, instead of sitting down. The whole thing just looked so appealing and screamed “New York” to me and every time I watched it, I thought, “Yes, I want to do that!”

Unfortunately, there was not a whole lot for me to go on in tracking this location down. Though some signage was visible in the background of the scene, it was not clear enough for me to make out any words or names. Then, a couple of years ago, I came across a mention of On Location Tours’ Sex and the City Hotspots Tour which stated that Two Boots To Go West Pizza in Greenwich Village was the spot where Carrie and Miranda enjoyed their non-raw meal. So I immediately added the site to my New York Must-Stalk List and, as fate would have it, happened to randomly walk right by it on my way to another must-see locale while I was in NYC last month.

The first Two Boots eatery was originally established by Doris Kornish, Phil Hartman (not that Phil Hartman), and John Touhey at 37 Avenue A in the East Village in 1987. The restaurant, named for the shoe-like shapes of both Italy and Louisiana, served Cajun/Italian fare, including a popular cornmeal crust pizza. Demand for the unique slices was so great that a second takeout location named Two Boots To Go was opened nearby in 1989. Additional branches continued to follow, including Two Boots To Go West at 201 West 11th Street in the West Village in 1995. There are now 15 Two Boots outposts dotted throughout Manhattan, as well as in Brooklyn, Connecticut, Baltimore, New Jersey, Nashville, and Los Angeles.

Sadly, we had just eaten lunch a few minutes prior to happening upon Two Boots To Go West (at a different SATC pizza place, which I will be blogging about soon), so we were not able to sample the slices, which is a shame because the pizza looked – and smelled – uh-ma-zing! I am so heading right on over to one of Two Boots’ L.A. branches the next time I am in town.

I did manage to pop in and snap a few quick pics while I was there, though.

Seeing the restaurant in person threw me a bit as it did not look as I had imagined it to. On Sex and the City, only one side of the eatery was shown and the shots were all fairly tight, so I envisioned it to be tiny. In real life, Two Boots To Go West is actually quite large.

I was so thrown by the layout, in fact, that not only did I think for a time that I might be at the wrong Two Boots outpost, but I also failed to to snap photos of the exact spot where Carrie and Miranda dined.

For “Great Sexpectations,” one of the eatery’s tall tables was brought to the center of the restaurant, directly in front of the pizza counter, and that is where Miranda and Carrie stood. In actuality, there are no tables in that spot, as that is where the line is typically situated. You can check out an image taken from the same angle that was shown on Sex and the City here.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Two Boots To Go West Pizza, from the “Great Sexpectations” episode of Sex and the City, is located at 201 West 11th Street in New York’s West Village. You can visit the eatery’s official website here.

May 2, 2016May 1, 2016

Old Town Bar from “Sex and the City”

My recent trip to New York was nothing short of epic and I somehow managed to stalk a good 100 locales while there. I cannot wait to blog about all of them! The spot I was most excited about visiting was one that had been perched at the top of my NYC To Stalk list for years, but that I had never actually made it to during any of my previous Big Apple vacays. I am talking about Old Town Bar, a historic Union Square-area watering hole that appeared in an early episode of fave show Sex and the City. Fate took hold during this trip, though, as one evening the Grim Cheaper, my friend Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong website, and I happened to randomly find ourselves just a few blocks from the tavern, which also goes by the name “Old Town Bar & Restaurant,” right around dinnertime, so we popped in for a bite to eat. The establishment turned out to be everything I hoped it would be – and more.

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Old Town Bar is the quintessential historic Manhattan watering hole. As author Jef Klein says in his book The History and Stories of the Best Bars of New York, “A setting that calls to mind a Scott Joplin tune, the Old Town Bar & Restaurant is absolutely vintage, Gilded Age New York.”

The eatery was originally established in 1892 (yes, 1892!) as Viemeister’s, a German restaurant/bar.

At the time of its inception, the property’s lower level housed a tavern that was only accessible to men, while the second floor (pictured below) was comprised of a dining room that was open to men, women and children.

During the Prohibition years, the establishment operated as a speakeasy known as Craig’s Restaurant. According to The History and Stories of the Best Bars of New York, some of the vintage booths still boasts seats that lift, “a “holdover from those days when customers needed a place to hide booze in a hurry.”

When Prohibition ended in 1933, the site was purchased by a man named Claus Lohden and rebranded “Old Town Bar.” Lohden and his children ran the place through 1985, at which time it was taken over by longtime employee Larry Meagher, who started working there in the ‘70s. By that point, the tavern had fallen into a bit of disrepair, so Larry began to restore it. Amazingly, and thanks in large part to his efforts, much of the original 1892 décor remains intact, including the 55-foot mahogany and marble bar, the 16-foot high tin ceilings (which according to The History and Stories of the Best Bars of New York were “last painted white on Election Day 1952” and are “stained a dark brown, thanks to years of cigar and cigarette smoke”), chandeliers (once gas-powered that have since been converted to electric), intricate black and white tile flooring, and a 258-square-foot bevel edge plate mirror. Even the property’s dumbwaiters are historic – according to the Old Town Bar website, they are “New York’s oldest active restaurant conveyers.” The urinals are also noteworthy. They hail from 1910 and are the last Hinsdale urinals still in operation on the East Coast. A 100th birthday party was infamously held in their honor in 2010. Yes, Old Town Bar is a place that appreciates and celebrates its history.

Today, the site is run by Larry Meagher’s five children, who work painstakingly to ensure that the watering hole’s history is kept alive. (And yes, I’m really annoyed at the a**hat in the second picture below who ruined my photo.)

Old Town Bar has long been popular with the literary set and has counted such luminaries as Pulitzer Prize winner Frank McCourt, poet Seamus Heaney, journalist Jim Dwyer, Payback author Thomas Kelly, novelist Nick Hornby, writer Nuala O’Faolain, dramatist Brian Friel, poet Billy Collins, screenwriter Budd Schulberg, and columnist Christopher Hitchens as patrons. Artist Andy Warhol was also known to frequent the site.

It’s not hard to see the appeal of the place – not only is the ambiance fabulous and oh-so “old New York,” but the food is excellent! Any restaurant that features chicken strips on the regular menu (not just the kids’) is my kind of spot!

Thanks to its old world aesthetic, location managers have long flocked to Old Town Bar. The sheer amount of productions it has appeared in is amazing! In fact, I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I started writing this post.

It is there that Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) – in an epic, slow-motion, heart-pounding moment – runs into Mr. Big (Chris Noth) for the first time since their break-up in the Season 2 episode of Sex and the City titled “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” Even though the circumstances couldn’t be better for Carrie – she looks fabulous and has the “New Yankee” Joe (Mark Devine) on her arm – seeing Big causes her to break down.

I learned about Old Town Bar’s appearance in the episode thanks to the book Sex and the City: Kiss and Tell, in which co-executive producer John Melfi is quoted as saying, “On Sex and the City, we try to have a location make sense for the scenes. We’ll go to a historic location like the Old Town Bar, where Carrie went on a date with the Yankee, and we’ll be careful not to damage the mirrors or the booths because it’s a staple of New York and we want people to know that that’s a real bar. We’re really proud to be able to shoot in these places.”

Old Town Bar was also featured prominently in the opening credits of The David Letterman Show from 1982 to 1993. In the segment, the camera panned the front of the watering hole and then ventured inside and scanned the interior. Sorry for the craptastic screen captures below – the only clip of the credits available on YouTube is of low quality.

You can watch that clip by clicking below.

In the 1990 drama State of Grace, Frankie Flannery (Ed Harris) attempts to offload five cases of Bushmills to a unwilling bar owner at the watering hole.

That same year, Old Town Bar popped up in the drama Q & A as the spot where Asst. Dist. Atty. Aloysius ‘Al’ Francis Reilly (Timothy Hutton) met with Leo Bloomenfeld (Lee Richardson) for a corned beef lunch.

Old Town Bar was used in establishing shots of Riff’s Bar, Jamie Stemple Buchman (Helen Hunt) and Paul Buchman’s (Paul Reiser) regular hangout – where Ursula Buffay (Lisa Kudrow) haphazardly waited tables – on the ‘90s television series Mad About You.

Interior scenes that took place at Riff’s were obviously not filmed on site, but on a set located at The Culver Studios, where the series was lensed.

I was thrilled to spot a letter hanging on the wall at Old Town Bar from one of the Mad About You associate producers that detailed the first appearance of the property on the series.

The music video for House of Pain’s 1992 hit “Jump Around” was largely filmed at Old Town Bar.

You can watch that video by clicking below.

Portions of Madonna’s 1993 “Bad Girl” music video were also lensed at Old Town Bar.

You can watch the “Bad Girl” video by clicking below.

According to the Old Town Bar website, the watering hole also made an appearance in the 1994 comedy Bullets Over Broadway. I believe the scene shot on the premises is pictured below.

Though some elements don’t seem to correlate with the set-up of the actual bar, the paned glass panel pictured behind John Cusack and Dianne Wiest in the screen captures match what was shown on Sex and the City, as does the posted “MEN” sign and the coat hooks positioned next to it.

In 1997’s The Devil’s Own, Rory Devaney (Brad Pitt) meets up with Billy Burke (Treat Williams) at Old Town Bar.

The establishment masks as Rex’s, the restaurant where Alice (Chloe Sevigny), Charlotte (Kate Beckinsale), Des (Chris Eigeman) and Jimmy (Mackenzie Austin) go on a group date and discuss feminism, in 1998’s The Last Days of Disco.

In the 2000 drama Boiler Room, Chris Varick (Vin Diesel) and his co-workers get into a fight with some J.P. Morgan brokers at Old Town Bar.

In 2008, the exterior of the site popped up in a brief establishing shot in the drama Life in Flight, though interiors were filmed elsewhere.

Old Town Bar appeared twice in the Season 1 episode of Bored to Death titled “The Case of the Stolen Sperm,” which aired in 2009 – first in the scene in which Jonathan Ames (Jason Schwartzman) and George Christopher (Ted Danson) ran into reviewers Richard Antrem (Oliver Platt) and Louis Greene (John Hodgman), and later in the scene in which Richard challenged George to a boxing match.

Serena van der Woodsen (Blake Lively) and Ben Donovan (David Call) celebrated Valentine’s Day at Old Town Bar in the Season 4 episode of Gossip Girl titled “It-Girl Happened One Night,” which aired in 2011.

In the Season 1 episode of Person of Interest titled “Matsya Nyaya,” which aired in 2012, John Reese (James Caviezel) and Joss Carter (Taraji P. Henson) had a heart-to-heart about trust – and saved one of their numbers – at Old Town Bar.

And the tavern was where Joey (Jamie Bell) proposed to Angie (Genesis Rodriguez) at the end of the 2012 thriller Man on a Ledge.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Old Town Bar, from the “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” episode of Sex and the City, is located at 45 East 18th Street, near Union Square, in New York. You can visit the watering hole’s official website here.

February 22, 2016February 22, 2016

Beeman Park from “Girls Just Want to Have Fun”

I often get asked if I think that someday down the road I might run out of places that I am passionate about stalking. That is like asking if I will ever tire of shopping! The answer is a definitive no! As long as movies and TV shows continue to be made, this girl will continue a’stalking, passionately so! Heck, even if Hollywood did cease churning out new films and television series, my To-Stalk List would remain full. I am constantly discovering new-to-me productions that warrant stalking, not to mention the fact that there are countless locations from films and shows I have long been a fan of that I have yet to visit. Case in point – Studio City’s Beeman Park which was featured in the 1985 romcom Girls Just Want to Have Fun, one of my all-time favorite flicks. Fellow stalker Chas, of the It’s Filmed There site, tracked down the locale a few years back, but, for whatever reason, I failed to stalk it until recently. When I finally did make it out there, though, I could not have been more thrilled and was immediately brought right back to the first time I watched the movie over 30 years ago!

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Beeman Park, which is also known as Studio City Recreation Center, is a very cute little spot that I had never heard of until Chas discovered it, which is actually quite surprising being that it has appeared onscreen numerous times.

The 4.5-acre park features four baseball diamonds, a jogging path with fitness stations, two basketball courts, a picnic area, a playground, four tennis courts, barbeque pits, and an auditorium.

Studio City Recreation Center is a very peaceful space. While we were walking around, we saw couples jogging, adults reading, kids engaging in pick-up basketball games, and fathers and sons playing catch on the various baseball diamonds. Though there were plenty of people on the premises, it was still quite quiet and tranquil – the perfect spot to spend a shady afternoon.

Beeman Park is also quaintly picturesque and it is not hard to see how it has wound up onscreen so many times over the years.

In Girls Just Want to Have Fun, Studio City Recreation Center masks as the unnamed downtown Chicago park where the Dance TV auditions are held. Though it is only featured in one scene, it is a rather prominent scene and several areas of the park are shown.

Those areas are denoted in the aerial view below.

In the beginning of the scene, Jeff Malene (Lee Montgomery) and Drew Boreman (Jonathan Silverman) drive onto the property via an access way on the park’s eastern side located at approximately 4457 Beeman Avenue. The house visible in the background of the segment is located at 4456 Beeman. The residence’s exterior has been altered in recent years, but you can see what it looked like previously via the Google Street View image pictured below, which was taken in July 2007.

A current photograph of the house is pictured below.

Though the access way that Drew and Jeff drove through is still intact, it is no longer accessible to cars.

After entering the property, Drew and Jeff park on a patch of grass located in the southern portion of Studio City Recreation Center, just south of the baseball diamonds. The same area is pictured in the photograph below, albeit from a different angle. It is there that Drew accidentally hits on a young Maggie Malene (Shannen Doherty) and calls her a punk, which, FYI, is not as cool new wave, but is a lot better than preteen!

The building that was visible behind Drew and Jeff in the scene is still there today, although it currently looks a bit different than it did when Girls Just Want to Have Fun was shot.

The colorful (and definitely ‘80s-style) stage where the actual auditions took place was set up on top of the park’s southwestern-most baseball diamond, in the area pictured below.

And come on, fans of the movie – you can’t look at the screen capture below and not have the lyrics to “Dancin’ in the Street” come pouring into your head, am I right? “Callin’ out around the world, are you ready for a brand new beat? Summer’s here and the time is right, for dancin’ in the street. They’re dancin’ in Chicago (dancin’ in the street), and down in New Orleans (dancin’ in the street), in New York City (dancin’ in the street). All we need is music – music, sweet, sweet, sweet music. There’ll be music everywhere – everywhere! They’ll be swingin’, swayin’ and records playin’ and dancin’ in the street!” I digress, but man, just one glimpse of that scene and all the lyrics come flooding right back!

I have always been obsessed with the Bob Fosse-style arm movements that Janey Glenn (Sarah Jessica Parker) employed during her audition, so I, of course, had to re-create them while I was there. (If I only had a stage!) I mean, it’s no wonder that Jeff fell in love with her in that moment.

You can watch a portion of the Girls Just Want to Have Fun audition scene by clicking below.

Studio City Recreation Center was also where Perry Cox (John C. McGinley) and Jordan Sullivan’s (Christa Miller) divorce ceremony was held in the Season 4 episode of Scrubs titled “My New Game,” which aired in 2004.

Beeman Park was the site of a couple of Laire (aka “Live Action Interactive Role-playing Explorers”) events in the 2008 comedy Role Models.

In the movie, it was made to appear as if “The Burger Hole” was located across the street from the park, but, in actuality, the restaurant, which is a Shakers in real life, can be found about 15 miles away at 601 Fair Oaks Avenue in South Pasadena.

Studio City Recreation Center was also where the Annual Pawnee Easter Egg Hunt was held in the Season 1 episode of Parks and Recreation titled “Canvassing,” which aired in 2009.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Big THANK YOU to Chas, from the It’s Filmed There website, for finding this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Beeman Park, aka Studio City Recreation Center from Girls Just Want to Have Fun, is located at 12621 Rye Street in Studio City. From what I have been able to piece together, the stage was set up diagonally in the eastern portion of the park, in the spot denoted with a pink rectangle below, the parking area was in the southern part of the park, in the spot denoted with a blue rectangle below, and the place where Jeff and Drew drove into the park (which is no longer accessible to cars) is located directly across the street from the house at 4456 Beeman Avenue, and is marked with the purple arrow below.

November 24, 2015November 23, 2015

Westfield Culver City from “Girls Just Want to Have Fun”

Some filming locations are maddeningly elusive. One that remained a thorn in my side for ages was the mall where Janey Glenn (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Lynne Stone (Helen Hunt) shopped in Girls Just Want to Have Fun, which, for those who haven’t been paying attention over the years, is one of my all-time favorite movies. Thanks to some help from my friends Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong blog, and Michael, of The Brady Bunch’s Golden Spoon fame, I was finally able to stalk the place this past August. As it turns out, the Girls Just Want to Have Fun Mall is none other than Westfield Culver City, aka the former Fox Hills Mall. The road to finding it was quite a long one, though.

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Westfield Culver City was originally established as the Fox Hills Mall in 1975. The complex, which was designed by the Gruen Associates architecture firm, was Los Angeles’ first tri-level indoor shopping center. The site has undergone several name changes and remodels over the years and currently looks a bit different than it did during the Girls Just Want to Have Fun days, though some recognizable elements still exist. Besides its many appearances on the silver screen, the mall boasts another claim to fame – it was at Fox Hills that Gary Coleman famously worked as a security guard in the ‘90s.

In Girls Just Want to Have Fun, Janey and Lynne are shown hanging out in what is a supposed Chicago-area shopping mall. While there, they happen upon the DTV cast doing an autograph signing;

they act goofy by riding an escalator the wrong way;

and they run into Maggie Malene (Shannen Doherty) and Drew Boreman (Jonathan Silverman), who is getting fitted for a tux.

Maggie happens to mention that Drew is renting the tux for Natalie Sands’ (Holly Gagnier) debutante ball which is taking place later that evening. (I blogged about the ball scene location here.) Since Janey and Lynne are seeking revenge on Natalie for numerous past wrongs, they decide to steal Drew’s invitation and make copies of it at the mall’s Big Red Q Quickprint Centers, which they then proceed to pass out to various miscreants on Melrose Avenue.

Back in April, I sent some screen captures of the Girls Just Want to Have Fun mall scene to Owen to see if the complex looked familiar to him. It didn’t, but he kindly decided to help with my quest. He scoured Google images of Los Angeles-area shopping centers and while looking at photos of Westfield Culver City, spotted some elements that matched what appeared in my screen grabs, most notably the escalators. He then did a search to see if anything had been filmed at the mall during the same time period as GJWTHF and saw on Chas’ It’sFilmedThere site that The Boys Next Door had been shot on the premises the very same year! In one of the screen caps featured on Chas’ site (pictured below), he noticed the same diagonal red-striped flooring that was visible in GJWTHF and was pretty sure he had nailed the right spot. As always, we wanted further proof, though. (The huge red staircase visible in the screen capture below was a focal point of Fox Hills’ original design. The shiny glass-and-steel structure rose from the mall’s bottom level to the top. Sadly, it was removed during Westfield’s latest remodel in 2009.)

At around that same time, Michael had tracked down a mall that appeared in an episode of The Brady Bunch. He mentioned his hunt to me and how he had utilized a Shopping Mall Directory from the ‘70s that he found in his local library during his search. While watching the GJWTHF scene, I had identified the signage of three stores in the background – Advance Cutlery, Contempo Casuals and Thom McAn. I asked Michael if he wouldn’t mind looking at an ‘80s version of the directory to see which L.A.-area malls housed those three stores. A couple of days later, he came back to me with an answer – Fox Hills was the only mall with a listing for all three! Eureka! (Though Big Red Q Quickprint Centers is, in fact, a real company, Michael could not find a listing for one at any L.A. mall, so we believe that its appearance in GJWTHF was a matter of product placement.)

Not only did Michael search the directory for me, though, but he also went above and beyond in further determining that Fox Hills was the correct spot. Because The Boys Next Door was lensed the same year as Girls Just Want to Have Fun, he thought a viewing of it might provide further ratification. And it did! Michael rented the flick via Amazon and was able to confirm with 100% certainty that Fox Hills was indeed the GJWTHF mall. At the end of The Boys Next Door, Roy Alston (Maxwell Caulfield) and Bo Richards (Charlie Sheen) are chased into Fox Hills by the police. During the chase, they pass by a Gingiss store. Anyone who lived through the ‘80s and ‘90s is familiar with Gingiss. Growing up, it was THE place to rent tuxes come prom season. It has since been sold to May Department Stores and is no longer a mall staple, though. Michael recognized the Gingiss storefront from The Boys Next Door as being the same formalwear shop featured in Girls Just Want to Have Fun. As he explained, “The weird floor stripe runs into the shop in the same part of the entrance as GJWHF. The store carpet is the same color, and there’s a similar riser in the window. And, there’s even the same(!) bright red tuxedo jacket in the corner of the window and metal light on the other corner of the riser.”

Michael then did a Google search for “Gingiss Formalwear” and came across the company’s logo and made another connection. As he said, “You’ll recognize their stylized ‘I’ from the back wall in GJWHF.” You can check out an old image of a Gingiss store in Florida here in which that same large man-shaped-like-an-I placard is visible on the back wall.

As if that wasn’t enough, Michael kept digging and found further proof! In another email, he stated, ”Since that just about confirms it, it’s probably not necessary to point out the other similarities: the structural poles, shiny metal mirror-like paneling all over the mall (as seen in the first few seconds of the GJWHF clip). And I think you might even be able to see a little bit of the huge red staircase in the GJWHF clip as they’re running into the Quickprint.”

Because I desperately wanted a photo in front of the escalators that SJP and Helen Hunt rode in the movie, Michael did some further investigating. Like I said, he went above and beyond! While watching The Boys Next Door, he was able to determine that a Round Table Pizza . . .

. . . and Regal Shoes were located near Gingiss. More on them in a minute.

Through my own investigations, I discovered that the movie Nightmares had also done some filming at Fox Hills. The 1983 flick is actually an anthology of four different horror stories. The segment shot at Fox Hills is named “Bishop of Battle” and stars Emilio Estevez as video game-obsessed teen J.J. Cooney.

Most of “Bishop of Battle” takes place at the SEGA Center (later renamed Time-Out), an actual arcade that used to be located inside of Fox Hills Mall. Though Nightmares is not available to stream online or for purchase anywhere, segments of it pop up on YouTube regularly. While they are taken down almost just as quickly as they appear, Michael was able to watch several clips of it and piece together where the arcade was formerly located.

Thanks to its diagonal layout and proximity to a ramp leading to a parking area, Michael determined that the storefront now houses Fast Fix Jewelry and Watch Repairs.

Fast Fix is located on the mall’s second level, next door to JCPenny.

I am unsure if the interior of the Nightmares arcade was a set or if scenes were actually filmed inside of the SEGA Center.

In some other (much less clear) Nightmares clips, Michael spotted the same area from GJWHF pop up. He then compared the layout of storefronts shown in Nightmares to a current map of Westfield Culver City and was able to figure out not only where the escalator from GJWTHF is, but also the Gingiss store! As he pointed out in an email, “It looks like Regal Shoes was on a corner.”

He explained further, “It’s hard to say looking at the current-day mall map because it’s hard to visualize the escalator placement, but it seems like Gingiss may have been down near JCPenney. With Regal Shoes being where Zales Jewelers is now (with the distinctive corner), and Gingiss where Love D is. And Qdoba having been Round Table Pizza. You’ll probably be able to figure things out better in person, but at least it’s something to start with.” As it turned out, it was not just something to start with, but was actually spot on!

The Gingiss storefront from Girls Just Want to Have Fun does indeed currently house Love D.

The shop sells affordable shoes, handbags and other accessories.

I honestly could NOT have been more excited to be there!

In The Boys Next Door, a back corridor entrance was visible just to the right of Gingiss. That entrance, now closed off with a door, is still there to this day! You can just barely see it on the very right-hand side of my photo below.

And, as Michael pointed out, the chain of round ceiling lights visible in the corridor outside of Gingiss in GJWTHF are a direct match to the lights that are there now.

The escalators from GJWTHF are located just outside of Love D and lead up to the second level entrance to JCPenney.

I tried to get a matching shot of the escalators from the angle that appeared in the movie, but the kiosk that is now situated outside of Love D blocked my view.

As you can see, though, the shape of the bottom of the escalators and the raised circular markings that run down the center connector match what appeared onscreen.

While it appears that some sort of sunken sitting area was situated behind the escalators in 1985, that is no longer the case.

Today, there is now an indoor playground in that area.

As I mentioned above, Fox Hills/Westfield Culver City has appeared onscreen countless times over the years. In 1977, Carrie Fisher did a promotional interview for Star Wars at the SEGA Center, though very little of the arcade was shown.

You can watch a clip of the interview by clicking below.

Fox Hills was also featured in a fabulously cheesy 1978 commercial for Kinney Shoes starring Ken Berry.

You can watch that ad by clicking below.

In 1983, Fox Hills popped up in the Season 1 episode of Scarecrow and Mrs. King titled “The ACM Kid” as the mall where Mrs. Amanda King (Kate Jackson) takes Aleksei Kalnikov (Meeno Peluce).

Though Aleksei plays in an arcade in the episode, that arcade does not appear to be the SEGA Center. I have a hunch that Fox Hills was used in establishing shots in “The ACM Kid,” but that all actual filming took place on a set.

Thanks to the 80s Film Locations site, I learned that the 1986 movie Thrashin’ was shot in the Fox Hills parking garage.

The round ramp that the kids skate down in the flick is located in the south east section of the mall property, just southwest of where Fox Hills Drive intersects with Hannum Avenue.

In 1991’s Point Break, the Ex-Presidents lead Johnny Utah (Keanu Reeves) and Pappas (Gary Busey) on a car chase through the Fox Hills parking lot.

In the scene, the cars enter the mall property via Slauson Avenue, just east of where it intersects with Sepulveda Boulevard.

In the Season 2 episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia titled “Charlie Gets Crippled,” Westfield Culver City is where Mac (Rob McElhenney) and Dennis Reynolds (Glenn Howerton) pretend to have polio.

As you can see below, at the time that the episode was shot in 2006, the diagonal brickwork flooring that was visible in Girls Just Want to Have Fun was still intact.

The final scene of the 2007 comedy Superbad was also lensed at Westfield Culver City.

Seth (Jonah Hill) and Evan (Michael Cera) meet up with Becca (Martha MacIsaac) and Jules (Emma Stone) on the mall’s second floor, in front of the escalators near Foreign Exchange and AT&T Spring Mobile.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Big, HUGE THANK YOU to fellow stalkers Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, and Michael for tracking down this location.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Westfield Culver City, aka the former Fox Hills Mall from Girls Just Want to Have Fun, is located at 6000 Sepulveda Boulevard in Culver City. You can visit the mall’s official website here.

June 3, 2015June 2, 2015

The California Bank Building from “Girls Just Want to Have Fun”

Since we’re on the subject of Girls Just Want to Have Fun, I thought I would blog about another locale from the movie that I recently hit up – downtown L.A.’s California Bank Building, which masked as the Dance TV (aka DTV) studio in the 1985 flick. A couple of years back, Chas, from the It’sFilmedThere website, managed to track down the location via a helpful crewmember, but because nothing about the structure matched up to what was shown onscreen, I was never sold on it being the right place. So a couple of weeks ago, I set out to verify or invalidate the information. When I told Mike, from MovieShotsLA, of my query, his response was, “Girls Just Want to Have Fun? I thought we were done with that movie!” Oh, Mike, we will never be done with that movie! So I quickly got started on the hunt and, though it was quite a lengthy process, wound up discovering that the California Bank Building was, indeed, the right spot.

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The California Bank Building was designed in 1960 by architect Claud Beelman, who was also responsible for The Historic Mayfair Hotel from The Office and The Standard, Downtown L.A. from Fracture. The 300,000-square-foot structure originally served as the headquarters of California Bank. Standing at 18 stories and 267 feet tall, the property was the tallest commercial building in Los Angeles at the time of its inception. This was due in large part to the fact that a 1904 law limiting the height of buildings in Los Angeles to 13 stories or 150 feet was repealed in 1956, shortly before the ground was broken on the new structure.

In its original state, the California Bank Building featured a large, box-like three-story granite base. You can see some photographs of what it looked like in its early days here and here. Sadly, in 2008 the site underwent an extensive renovation that rendered it virtually unrecognizable from its former self. The straight vertical lines that once encased the façade giving it a sleek, towering aesthetic are now broken up by balconies. The edifice of the structure, which was renamed SB Tower, was also painted white and green.

Most jarring of all, though, is the fact that windows were cut into the granite base and a large mural painted over the exterior.

Those portions of the building did not appear in Girls Just Want to Have Fun, though. In actuality, only the entrance area and lobby were shown. But those, too, were rendered unrecognizable during the renovation. In the scene pictured below, Drew Boreman (Jonathan Silverman), best friend of Jeff Malene (Lee Montgomery), is shown selling DTV memorabilia while standing outside of the property, in an alcove that formerly led to the lobby area.

As you can see in my recent photograph of the building’s entrance pictured below, that alcove has been completely removed. So when I first viewed the location via Google Street View, I was convinced it was the wrong place. Never in my wildest dreams did I think the renovation would have included such a major restructuring of the ground floor! As it turns out, I was wrong.

Thanks to Geoff, from the 90210Locations website, I learned that Google recently made it possible to view Street View renderings from years past, so I toggled back to 2007 and 2008 and, as you can see below, the alcove was once, in fact, there and does resemble what appeared onscreen. Because the imaging is so grainy, though, I was still not 100% convinced. I needed more proof.

I was able to match a few things up to this historic image of the California Bank Building, though it still was not enough for me to write off on the location. In the image, you can see that a sign was posted on the wall of the alcove in the same place that a placard was situated in the movie (denoted with a pink circle below). The image also shows that the building had some sort of corner detailing on the outside portion of the alcove, which matches what appeared in Girls Just Want to Have Fun (denoted with a pink arrow below).

Another detail that matched up to what appeared onscreen was the SB Tower’s address number. The number “600” was visible behind Drew in the movie and the SB Tower is located at 600 South Spring Street . Still though, I wanted more.

Finally, came the clue I was looking for. While re-watching the movie for the umpteenth time, I was able to make out a sign located across the street from the DTV studio that read “Mi Tierra Restaurant.”

I searched the July 1987 Pacific Bell Street Address Telephone Directory for an eatery by that name and only two listings came up. The first was for “Mi Tierra Restaurant No. Two” located at 1903 West Olympic Boulevard in Westlake. The second was for simply “Mi Tierra Restaurant” at 611 South Spring Street. 611 South Spring Street is located directly across the street from the California Bank Building! Further proof – at 613 South Spring, right next to Mi Tierra, is a listing for Golden Eagle Dry Cleaning Shop.

What was pictured next to Mi Tierra in Girls Just Want to Have Fun? Yep – a dry cleaning shop!

While I am distressed that the structure has changed so drastically and that I never got to see it in its original state, I am thrilled to now be able to say with absolute certainty that the California Bank Building was indeed DTV studio from Girls Just Want to Have Fun.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Big THANK YOU to Chas, from It’sFilmedThere, for finding this location. 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: SB Tower, aka the California Bank Building from Girls Just Want to Have Fun, is located at 600 South Spring Street in downtown Los Angeles. You can visit the property’s official website here.

June 2, 2015June 2, 2015

The “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” Park

Today’s post was a true labor of love – one that required stalking a location three separate times and a massive amount of help from a fellow stalker named Michael. While most of the locales from the 1985 movie Girls Just Want to Have Fun (one of my all-time faves) have been tracked down and detailed on this blog, one that I have long wondered about is the park where portions of the dance practice montage sequence took place. As luck would have it, I happened to meet the flick’s leading man, Lee Montgomery who played hunky Jeff Malene, at the Hollywood Show back in April and got the information straight from the horse’s mouth.

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When I heard that Lee would be making an appearance at the Hollywood Show, I just about flipped my lid from excitement and informed the Grim Cheaper that I would be attending come hell or high water. And I am so glad that I did. Lee truly could NOT have been nicer! He spent quite a bit of time chatting with me and filled me in on several behind-the-scenes tidbits, including the fact that he and Sarah Jessica Parker, who played Janey Glenn, underwent extensive dance training for weeks before filming began and that much of the onscreen dancing, including the lifts, was actually performed by them. At one point, I mentioned that there was a missing GJWHF locale that I was interested in tracking down. Now, in no way, shape or form did I expect Lee to remember a location from over 30 years ago, but I decided to broach the subject anyway and was shocked when he recalled it immediately! When I asked him where the dance montage in the park had taken place, without skipping a beat, he replied, “Oh, the row of trees? That was in Griffith Park, near the merry-go-round.” Um, THANK YOU, Lee!

For those not familiar with the Girls Just Want to Have Fun dance practice montage (and if that’s the case, then for shame!), you can watch it by clicking below.

The three spots that I was interested in tracking down were the row of trees that Janey and Jeff danced between . . .

. . . the tree that Jeff flipped off of while his sister, Maggie Malene (my girl Shannen Doherty), sat nearby . . .

. . . and the hill that Janey and Jeff flipped down.

As soon as I got home from the Hollywood Show, I popped in my Girls Just Want to Have Fun DVD and was SHOCKED to discover that the area of Griffith Park featured in the dance practice montage was Park Center, the very same area that was utilized in the Full House Season 1-3 opening credits. I had detailed that exact spot in a September 2014 blog post, but until that moment had failed to recognize its appearance in GJWTHF. I figured out the location thanks to a very unusual tree that I remembered from the Full House credits.

The tree has an extremely unique shape. From the trunk it immediately bends to the side and runs almost parallel to the ground and then turns back upward, forming an almost 90-degree angle with its lower portion. Its white, speckled bark is also quiet unusual.

As it turns out, that is the very same tree that Jeff flipped off of in Girls Just Want to Have Fun. As you can see below, the curve of the tree, the speckled bark and the chopped off branch on the left-hand side match perfectly to what appeared onscreen.

Now I should mention here that the first time the GC and I stalked Park Center, we made the unfortunate decision to head out there on a Sunday and not only was the place jam-packed with picnickers, but there was a piñata tied to Jeff’s tree! Humph! So these photos were taken during our second stalk of the park. On that particular visit, I, of course, had to re-created the montage moment . . .

. . . but I did not attempt Jeff’s flip. That tree is a LOT higher off the ground than it looks! I did jump off the tree, however, but was not nearly as graceful as Jeff.

I have never been very good at pinpointing outdoor locations, so to track down the other two Girls Just Want to Have Fun montage spots I enlisted the help of a fellow stalker who I knew had an aptitude for park-like settings – Michael. He is the one who had originally made the discovery of Park Center’s appearance in the Full House opening credits. Michael was only too happy to help and was an immeasurable source of guidance with this particular hunt. He immediately noticed that the hill that Jeff and Janey flipped down was the same hill that was featured in Full House, just shot from a slightly different angle. Griffith Park’s Park Services Building, which is visible in the background of both productions, is denoted with pink arrows below.

While it was hard to pinpoint the exact angle from which the hill scene was shot (as I said, outdoor places are not my forte), I believe my photograph below was taken from pretty much the right spot. I believe the pine tree to the right of the frame is now gone, but the split-branched tree in the middle of my photograph appears to match was was pictured onscreen, as does the shaping of the hill itself.

The one spot that Michael was unsure about was the row of trees that Janey and Jeff danced between. So during our first trek out to the park (on picnic day!), the GC and I walked around all of Park Center to see if we could find the right place and he fairly quickly zeroed in on the trees pictured below. In my recollection of the scene, Janey and Jeff had danced between two parallel rows of trees, while the trees that the GC had found were situated in one row, with a lone tree situated parallel to it. I was certain it was the wrong spot.

When I got home and compared my photographs to the montage scene, though, I saw that he was spot on! Nicely done, GC!

As fate would have it, during our second venture out to Griffith Park, a man happened to be sleeping next to the row of trees, in the exact spot where we wanted to take photographs. I did end up posing for a pic, but because of Sleeping Beauty, we could not match the angle of the photo to the angle shown in the movie – which meant (you guessed it!) another trip out there. I swear, if the GC never sees Griffith Park again it’ll be too soon.

During our third trip to the park, we managed to take photographs from the right spot. Well, almost.

We should have moved one tree farther back. As you can see below, the tree that is in the foreground of our photograph is the second tree visible in Girls Just Want to Have Fun. That is as good as it is going to get, though, because there is no way the GC is ever setting foot in Park Center again. Winking smile

And I am pretty sure that if I ever ventured out there on my own and asked a stranger to take my photograph posing like I am below, they’d probably try to have me committed. Winking smile

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Michael for all of his help in finding these locations! Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Girls Just Want to Have Fun dance montage was shot in the Park Center area of Griffith Park, which is located at 4730 Crystal Springs Drive in Los Feliz. A detailed aerial view denoting where the montage’s three park segments were filmed in relation to the merry-go-round is pictured below.

April 2, 2015March 26, 2015

Latest L.A. Mag Post – About My Filming Location Holy Grail

Don’t forget to read today’s Los Angeles magazine post – about the the Girls Just Want to Have Fun apartment building. My articles typically get published in the late morning/early afternoon hours.

March 30, 2015March 30, 2015

The Georgian Ballroom from “Girls Just Want to Have Fun”

Had you asked me last week, I would have told you that I was an expert on both Pasadena and its filming history. But something happened on Wednesday afternoon that rocked me to my stalking core. While writing a blog post for Los Angeles magazine, I got on a bit of a Girls Just Want to Have Fun kick and decided to attempt to track down a few of its unknown locations, one of which was the Lakeview Country Club where Natalie Sands’ (Holly Gagnier) debutante ball was held. As it turns out, the country club scene not only took place in Pasadena, but at a spot I am extremely familiar with – The Langham Huntington hotel! At the time of the filming, the property was known as The Huntington Sheraton. I was absolutely reeling upon making the discovery. Then, while doing further research, I learned something even more shocking – the historic hotel was actually demolished in 1989 and then rebuilt from the ground up! What the wha?

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There’s a lot of ground to cover today, but I thought I’d start with how I made the Girls Just Want to Have Fun discovery. While scouring through the debutante ball scene, I spotted two different signs reading “Georgian Room.” So I did some Googling of the words “Georgian Room” and “Los Angeles” and eventually a listing for a Georgian Ballroom came up. I clicked on it and, lo and behold, it was a link to photos of the Georgian Ballroom at The Langham Huntington hotel.

Amazingly, the intricate gold ceiling pictured in the images was an exact match to the ceiling that appeared in Girls Just Want to Have Fun!

Oddly though, the hallway featured briefly in the scene did not resemble The Langham hallways in any way, shape or form. While GJWTHF was filmed three decades ago and the hotel’s décor bound to have changed during such a lengthy time period, I just could not get over the fact that nothing about the hallway in the movie paralleled the hotel’s actual hallways. Nothing. The hallway pictured in GJWHF was dark and Spanish in style, while The Langham’s hallways are very bright and open and boast a Louis XIV design. So I started doing some research and just about fell over when I read that The Huntington Sheraton was demolished in the late ‘80s. Because The Langham is repeatedly touted as being one of Pasadena’s most historic properties, I was shocked to discover this information. Not to mention the fact that I lived in the Crown City for over a decade and have visited The Langham dozens of times! How did I not know about this??

The Langham Huntington was originally constructed as The Wentworth in 1907. Commissioned by General Marshall C. Wentworth, the hotel had problems from the get-go and was shuttered and declared bankrupt a short five months after opening. In 1911, Henry Huntington stepped in to purchase the site and hired architect Myron Hunt to remodel and expand it. The property reopened three years later under the name the Huntington Hotel. It quickly gained a reputation as Pasadena’s finest lodging.

In 1954, the hotel was sold to the Sheraton Corporation and renamed The Huntington Sheraton. Despite being later purchased by the Kiekyu USA company in 1974, the site continued to operate as a Sheraton through 1985. That year, Kiekyu had seismic testing done on the property and the results showed that it was not structurally sound enough to withstand a major earthquake. The doors of The Huntington Sheraton were shut in October, its future unclear. In December 1987, Huntington Hotel Associates purchased the site and set about plans to demolish it. Despite some major resistance from preservationists, the wrecking ball descended on the structure in March 1989. Miraculously, two portions of the original hotel were left intact, the Viennese Ballroom and, you guessed it, the Georgian Ballroom – which means that the very spot that appeared in Girls Just Want to Have Fun is still standing today! But more on that in a minute.

The new property opened in 1991 as the Ritz-Carlton Huntington Hotel. The exterior was constructed as an almost exact replica of the original. As you can see in the screen capture (which was taken from Disneyland Dream – a 1956 movie that I will talk about later in this post) as compared to a photograph that I took in 2008, while there are some minor differences between the new and old buildings, they are virtually imperceptible.

The hotel sold a couple of times after its reconstruction and, in 2007, was purchased by the Hong Kong-based Great Eagle Holdings and renamed The Langham Huntington.

While the hotel was being reconstructed in 1989, the Georgian Ballroom underwent a restoration. During the process, ten stained glass windows lining the ceiling of the room were discovered behind plaster. They had been covered over at some point in the 1940s. (This explains why there were not visible in Girls Just Want to Have Fun.) Developers removed the plaster and restored the windows to their original glory and they once again line the perimeter of the grand room.

I have stayed at The Langham countless times over the years and thought I had ventured throughout every square inch of the property, but that was obviously not the case as I had never before seen or heard of the Georgian Ballroom. As soon as I made the discovery about the room’s appearance in Girls Just Want to Have Fun, I was tempted to drive right on out to Pasadena to remedy the situation. In a timely stroke of luck, though, I remembered that my mom had a doctor’s appointment in the Crown City on Thursday, so she headed over to The Langham beforehand to snap some pictures for me. My mom currently has a broken foot and is on crutches, but she still managed to go out stalking on my behalf! She is a rock star!

The Georgian Ballroom appeared in one of Girls Just Want to Have Fun’s more memorable scenes in which Janey Glenn (Sarah Jessica Parker), Lynne Stone (Helen Hunt) and Maggie Malene (Shannen Doherty) sabotaged the debutante ball of mean girl Natalie by inviting 150 unwanted (and rather wild) guests to her upscale soiree.

The Georgian Ballroom looks quite a bit different today than it did onscreen in 1985.

As you can see below, though, aside from the addition of the stained glass windows, the ceiling remains unchanged.

At the time of the filming, the Georgian Ballroom had windows and doors that led to the outside of the hotel.

That is no longer the case, though.

I am fairly certain that the exterior of The Huntington Sheraton was used as the exterior of the Lakeview Country Club in the scene, as well. While I have scoured the internet looking for 1980’s images of the hotel’s main entrance taken from the same angle as GJWTHF to use for comparison, I came up empty-handed.

But as you can see below, in the screen capture from Disneyland Dream the exterior of The Huntington Sheraton was covered in vines, as was the building pictured behind J.P. Sands (Morgan Woodward) in Girls Just Want to Have Fun.

The exterior of The Huntington Sheraton was also featured briefly in the 1982 pilot episode of Remington Steele (more on that later) and as you can see in the screen capture below, the front of the hotel was painted white at the time, matching what appeared in GJWHF. You can also check out a photograph of the what the hotel’s entrance looked like in 1989 here. Though not taken from the same angle shown in Girls Just Want to Have Fun, you can see that it does bear a resemblance to the exterior shown in the movie.

During its tenure as The Huntington Sheraton, the hotel popped up quite a few times onscreen. As I mentioned, it was featured in Disneyland Dream, a home movie made by Robbins Barstow who won a trip to The Happiest Place on Earth in 1956 via a contest sponsored by Scotch Tape. During the seven-night vacation, he and his family stayed at The Huntington Sheraton.

You can watch Disneyland Dream by clicking below. The Barstows seem like such a fun family!

As I also previously mentioned, the hotel was used extensively throughout the pilot episode of Remington Steele, which was titled “License to Steele.”

I could not get over seeing the interior of the property in the episode. With its arched openings, beamed ceilings and wrought-iron glass doors, the place bears absolutely no resemblance whatsoever to The Langham.

I honestly cannot believe how much it has changed!

I was able to spot a few things from Remington Steele that matched up to what appeared in Girls Just Want to Have Fun, which thrilled me to no end. As you can see below, unique fan-shaped lights were visible in both productions.

The carpeting in both is also a direct match.

The hotel stood in for Club Meade in the Season 2 episode of Simon & Simon titled “The Club Murder Vacation” in 1983.

In the episode, a large tree located in front of the hotel is visible. That tree is a match to one that appeared in Girls Just Want to Have Fun. The placement of the lawn-covered center island in Simon & Simon is also a match to what was shown in GJWTHF, further leading me to believe that the exterior of The Huntington Sheraton was used as the exterior of the Lakeview Country Club in the flick.

In the 1985 made-for-TV movie Promises to Keep, The Huntington Sheraton masked as the Westwind Hotel where Jack Palmer (Robert Mitchum) stayed while trying to make amends with the family he abandoned thirty years prior.

The property stood in for the abandoned Cumberland Grand hotel in the Season 3 episode of Scarecrow and Mrs. King titled “The Triumvirate,” which aired in 1986.

The interior of the hotel was also used in the episode.

There are those fan-shaped lights again!

In 1987, the Scarecrow and Mrs. King crew returned to The Huntington Sheraton to film Season 4’s “One Flew East.” In the episode, the hotel masked as the Hospimerica Briarwood Sanitarium.

The renovated Georgian Ballroom also made an appearance in the 2007 film Charlie Wilson’s War.

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Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Langham Huntington Hotel is located at 1401 South Oak Knoll Avenue in Pasadena. You can visit the property’s official website here. Girls Just Want to Have Fun was filmed in the Georgian Ballroom.