Farralone – Frank Sinatra’s Former House

P1020204

While doing research on the Chaplin Court apartment complex, which I blogged about last Thursday, I came across some information about an oft-filmed-at Chatsworth-area estate formerly owned by Old Blue Eyes himself, Frank Sinatra, that, for some inexplicable reason, I had somehow not previously known about.  The mansion, which in most circles is known simply as Farralone, is a marvel of modern design that just came on the public market for the very first time in history a couple of weeks ago.  And, let me tell you, I took one look at the photographs featured on the real estate listing and became just a wee-bit obsessed with stalking the place.  So I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out there last weekend to do just that.

P1020206 P1020205

P1020201 P1020200

Farralone, or the “Great Glass Mansion” or the “Sinatra Compound” as it is also sometimes called, was commissioned by Chase-Manhattan-Bank-heiress Dora Hutchison in 1951 and was designed by Pereira & Luckman, the architecture firm who also gave us the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco, the Theme Building (aka The Encounter Restaurant & Bar) at the Los Angeles International Airport, and, my personal favorite, the Disneyland Hotel.  Dora built the house to be used as a party pad and regularly hosted rousing soirees where she counted Ava Gardner, Lucille Ball, Judy Garland, and Vincent Minnelli as guests.  When Dora moved back to her native New York, she leased the property to none other than Frank Sinatra, who remained there for almost ten years.  Sadly though, as you can see above, not much of the property is visible from the street.

ScreenShot2443 ScreenShot2446

ScreenShot2447 ScreenShot2448

But that’s why God created real estate listings!  The estate, which was just put on the market earlier this month for a cool $12 million, boasts sweeping views, parking for over 200 cars, 10,000 square feet of living space, 4 bedrooms, 6 baths, 3 private offices, a conference room, a detached gym, a 50-foot swimming pool, 14 acres of land, a vineyard, a production studio, 16-foot ceilings, glass walls, and a 1,000-square-foot, 1-bedroom, 2-bath guest house (with its own separate pool) where my girl Miss Marilyn Monroe supposedly lived in for a time.

P1020202

Farralone has seen so much filming over the years that, according to a December 2nd, 2011 Forbes article, it not only nets up to $2 million a year in location fees, but also “comes with a property manager who acts as a liaison with the studios, paid for by the studios.”  The article further states that the “main house also boasts a lower level production studio equipped with conference room, edit bays, private office and a separate entrance, all paid for and maintained by the studios.”  Ironically enough, when we showed up to stalk the property some filming was actually taking place.  The super-nice security guard on duty informed us the the shoot was for a reality dating show of some sort, but she was unsure of the name.

[ad]

ScreenShot2399 ScreenShot2398

ScreenShot2401 ScreenShot2402

In the Season 4 episode of Californication titled “Lawyers, Guns, and Money”, Farralone showed up as the residence belonging to Stu Beggs (aka Stephen Tobolowsky), where Marcy Ellen Runkle (aka Pamela Adlon) made a house call to give Stu a “full Kardashian” body wax.

ScreenShot2403 ScreenShot2405

ScreenShot2407 ScreenShot2409

In the 2001 thriller Swordfish, Farralone was the house where Gabriel Shear (aka John Travolta) lived and where Halle Berry famously shed her top for the very first time onscreen – an act for which she was supposedly paid a whopping $500,000.  Thanks to some crafty CGI, the Sinatra compound was made to appear as if it was located in the heart of Downtown Los Angeles for the film, instead of Chatsworth.

ScreenShot2416 ScreenShot2417

ScreenShot2413 ScreenShot2415

Farralone was also the home where Jack Wyatt (aka Will Ferrell) lived and threw his post-divorce party in the 2005 romantic comedy Bewitched.

ScreenShot2424 ScreenShot2425

ScreenShot2426 ScreenShot2428

In 2006’s Dreamgirls, Farralone stood in for the residence belonging to pop star Deena Jones (aka Beyonce Knowles) and her music-producer husband, Curtis Taylor Jr. (aka Jamie Foxx).

ScreenShot2454 ScreenShot2455

ScreenShot2456 ScreenShot2457

In the Season 2 episode of Mad Men titled “The Jet Set”, Farralone was used as the supposed-Palm-Springs-area home where Joy (aka Laura Ramsey) took Don Draper (aka Jon Hamm) while he was visiting California.

ScreenShot2458 ScreenShot2459

ScreenShot2460 ScreenShot2461

In the 2002 flick The Salton Sea, Farralone was the home where Nancy Plummer (aka Shirley Knight) and Verne Plummer (aka R. Lee Ermey) lived.

ScreenShot2467 ScreenShot2474

ScreenShot2469 ScreenShot2471

In 2001’s Tomcats, the Sinatra Compound was where Kyle Brenner (aka Jake Busey) lived.

ScreenShot2433 ScreenShot2434

ScreenShot2436 ScreenShot2438

The real estate listing mentioned that Farralone had been featured in an episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and I really have to pat myself on the back for this one because as soon as I read those words I knew immediately that the episode in question was Season 9’s “Kill Me If You Can”.  I was not even watching CSI regularly back in 2008 when the “Kill Me If You Can” episode aired, but I had caught it on TV at some point and when I saw CSI mentioned in the listing, my mind immediately flashed to an image of Lawrence Fishburne standing by the Farralone pool while investigating the death of an art dealer.  Why these random, useless bits of location information remain stored in my head is beyond me, but they do.  Smile

ScreenShot2449 ScreenShot2451

ScreenShot2450 ScreenShot2453

Thanks to commenter Becky on the Design Public blog, I learned that in the Season 1 episode of Six Feet Under titled “An Open Book”, Farralone stood in for the home belonging to the parents of Brenda Chenowith (aka Rachel Griffiths).

ScreenShot2462 ScreenShot2463

ScreenShot2464 ScreenShot2466

And thanks to the HGTV website, I learned that Farralone was where the Design Star contestants lived during Season 4 of the reality series.

ScreenShot2475 ScreenShot2476

ScreenShot2480 ScreenShot2481

Location manager Scott Trimble also let me know that Farralone was where Optimus Prime came out of the swimming pool in the first Transformers movie.

ScreenShot2482 ScreenShot2483

ScreenShot2484 ScreenShot2485

Fellow stalker Jason informed me that the estate also showed up as the party location at the very beginning of 2005’s Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.

ScreenShot2442 ScreenShot2440

ScreenShot2439 ScreenShot2441

Farralone also popped up in the 2004 music video for Usher’s hit song “Burn”.

Usher–Burn–filmed at Farralone in Chatsworth

You can watch the “Burn” video by clicking above.

ScreenShot2410

Several articles have also claimed that the home appeared in the 2001 biopic Ali, but I scanned through that movie yesterday and did not seen anything resembling it pop up onscreen, so I am fairly certain that information is incorrect.  I am thinking that the house might have instead been featured in the similarly-named television movie Ali: An American Hero, but because I have never seen it and was unable to find it anywhere online,  I cannot verify that hunch.  One rumor that I can put to rest is that the Farralone pool was not actually the site of Marilyn Monroe’s second-to-last photo shoot, as the real estate listing and several articles about the property have claimed.  Truth be told, that photo shoot was not really a photo shoot at all, but simply consisted of photographer Lawrence Schiller snapping some stills of the starlet while she filmed scenes for her very last movie, Something’s Gotta Give.  The shoot, which took place a few days before Marilyn’s death and featured her skinny-dipping while talking to co-star Dean Martin, was not actually shot on location, but on a set that was built inside of Stage 14 on the Fox Studios lot in Century City.

ScreenShot2423 ScreenShot2420

ScreenShot2421 ScreenShot2422

As you can see above, the pool from Something’s Gotta Give does not match the real estate listing photographs of the Farralone pool.

You can watch a YouTube video of the Something’s Gotta Give pool scene being shot, during which it is stated that filming took place on Stage 14 of the Fox lot, by clicking above.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: Farralone, the former Frank Sinatra estate, is located at 9361 Farralone Avenue in Chatsworth.  You can visit the home’s official real estate listing here and you can check out some fabulous interior pics of the property here.

The Cravens Estate from “Commander in Chief”

P1050767

As I mentioned a few weeks back, because of my love for Matt Lanter, the Grim Cheaper and I recently purchased and sat down to watch the first – and only – season of the short-lived television series Commander in Chief, on which the cutie actor portrayed the role of First Son Horace Calloway. I absolutely fell in love with the show and immediately started creating a list of locations to stalk from it, the most important being Pasadena’s former Cravens Estate, now the American Red Cross’ San Gabriel Pomona Valley Headquarters, which was used several times to stand in for the White House on the series. And as soon as the GC and I finished watching the final episode, I dragged my dad right on out to stalk the place. I have actually written about the Cravens Estate once before, back in July of 2008 just a few months after I first started my blog, but it was a very brief post and did not include any photographs of the interior of the property. So, I figured the place was definitely worthy of a re-post.

P1050771 P1050770

P1050772 P1050769

The Cravens Estate was originally built in 1930 for Mr. John S. Cravens and his wife Mildred and was designed by San Francisco-area architect Lewis P. Hobart, who was also responsible for constructing the City by the Bay’s Grace Episcopal Cathedral and the Crocker Building on Market Street. After migrating to Pasadena in 1900, the Cravens first commissioned an English-style mansion to be built on a 16-acre plot of land on what was then known as “Millionaires’ Row”. Three decades later, after vacationing in France, the couple decided to tear down their existing abode and build a new one based upon the design of the the Chateau Vaux-le-Vicomte, located just south of Paris. That new manse became known as the Cravens Estate and it cost a whopping $310,000 to construct, making it one of Pasadena’s most expensive homes at the time. After the Cravens, who had no children, passed away in the 1940s, the property went through a succession of owners until finally being donated to the American Red Cross in 1962, whereupon it became their San Gabriel Pomona Valley Headquarters. The mansion is both a Pasadena Cultural Landmark and a Landmark of Historical Significance. In 2010, it was chosen to be used as the Pasadena Showcase House of Design, whereupon numerous designers came in and completely restored the property, which had lost a bit of its luster over the years, back to its original grandeur.

P1050671 P1050672

P1050674 P1050680

When I originally dragged my dad out to stalk the estate, I was hoping that we might be allowed to take a quick peek at the interior of the property and snap a few pictures. Well, imagine my surprise when the SUPER-nice receptionist said that if we were interested we could schedule a full-blown tour of the building. If we were interested? IF WE WERE INTERESTED??? Um, heck yes, we were interested!!! So I immediately scheduled a tour and dragged my dad back out to the estate once again just a few days later. What we ended up being given, though, was not what I had expected at all. Our SUPER-nice tour guide was extremely excited over how much I already knew about the estate and my enthusiasm for its filming history, so she wound up taking us on a TWO-AND-A-HALF-HOUR excursion through the property during which she showed us its every nook and cranny, including the attic area, the servants’ quarters and the basement. I can honestly say that it was one of the best stalking experiences of my life! Even my dad enjoyed it! The estate, which boasts four levels, 50 rooms, and just under 20,000 square feet of living space, is an absolutely remarkable piece of property! Pictured above is the entryway, which features hand-painted murals depicting the grounds of the Chateau Vaux-le-Vicomte.

P1050692 P1050696

P1050690 P1050700

Our tour included the Cravens Estate’s reception room;

P1050701

P1050702 P1050703

dining room;

P1050682 P1050684

Mrs. Cravens’ former sitting room;

P1050698 P1050699

a sun room;

P1050713 P1050715

P1050716 P1050717

the media room;

P1050756 P1050757

one of the original bathrooms;

P1050759 P1050758

the upstairs balcony;

P1050733 P1050734

the bridal room;

P1050745

Mrs. Cravens’ original closet;

P1050779 P1050780

P1050777 P1050781

and the back side of the estate.

ScreenCap1857 ScreenCap1858

ScreenCap1859 ScreenCap1861

The area of the home that I was most excited about seeing, though, was the kitchen, which stood in for the White House Residence’s kitchen on the first few episodes of Commander in Chief.

P1050708 P1050710

P1050766 P1050707

The Cravens Estate kitchen was actually remodeled in 2010 for the Pasadena Showcase House of Design, but thankfully, as you can see above, it still looks very much the same as it did on the series.

P1050751

P1050748 P1050750

We also got to see one of the property’s upstairs rooms . . .

ScreenCap1855 ScreenCap1856

ScreenCap1862 ScreenCap1863

. . . which was featured on Commander in Chief as the office of First Gentleman Rod Calloway (aka Kyle Secor).

P1050673 P1050731

P1050744 P1050739

And we were shown the central stairwell and glass-plated dome area . . .

ScreenCap1866 ScreenCap1867

ScreenCap1868 ScreenCap1869

. . . which popped up in the series as a White House stairwell in the episode titled “The Price You Pay”.

P1050738

I just about died when our tour guide said I could pose for a picture on that very same stairwell. LOVE IT!

ScreenCap1864 ScreenCap1865

The exterior of the Cravens Estate also appeared in “The Price You Pay” episode as a supposed Washington, D.C.-area restaurant where President Mackenzie Calloway (aka Geena Davis) and her husband, Rod, take Attorney General nominee Carl Brantley (aka Alan Arkin) and his wife, Sue (aka Elizabeth Dennehy), out for dinner.

ScreenCap1886 ScreenCap1887

ScreenCap1888 ScreenCap1889

The Cravens Estate was also used extensively as Dalton Academy during this past season of Glee – a show which has gotten so bad that I can hardly bear to watch it anymore. Anyway, it first showed up in the Season 2 episode titled “Never Been Kissed” in the scene in which Kurt Hummel (aka Chris Colfer) spies on a rival Glee club known as the Warblers. Kurt later transfers to Dalton and joins the Warblers, after which time the estate was featured regularly on the series. Areas of the estate which appeared on the show include the central staircase;

ScreenCap1890 ScreenCap1892

ScreenCap1905 ScreenCap1911

the entryway;

ScreenCap1893 ScreenCap1898

ScreenCap1906 ScreenCap1908

the reception room;

ScreenCap1904 ScreenCap1901

ScreenCap1902 ScreenCap1903

and the dining room.

ScreenCap1912

The Cravens Estate was also featured weekly as the supposed Falls Church, Virginia-area JAG headquarters on the television series of the same name. According to the official Cravens Estate website, JAG producer Donald P. Bellisario used to regularly receive letters from fans stating that they had searched high and low for the property while on stalking expeditions in Falls Church, Virginia, not realizing that it was actually located right here in Pasadena.

[ad]

ScreenCap1824 ScreenCap1831

The Cravens Estate was also used extensively as the Silverberg & Blake law firm where Robert Clayton Dean (aka Will Smith) worked in the 1998 thriller Enemy of the State. Areas which appeared in the movie include the exterior;

ScreenCap1830 ScreenCap1837

the dining room;

ScreenCap1832 ScreenCap1833

the central stairway;

ScreenCap1834 ScreenCap1836

and the same upstairs room that was used as Rod Calloway’s office on Commander in Chief.

ScreenCap1838 ScreenCap1839

ScreenCap1841 ScreenCap1842

In the 2001 movie Swordfish, the estate was where Stanley Jobson’s (aka Hugh Jackman’s) daughter, Holly (aka Camryn Grimes), went to school.

ScreenCap1843 ScreenCap1844

ScreenCap1848 ScreenCap1847

The back of the estate stood in for the French Consulate where a limo was bombed towards the beginning of the 2007 flick Rush Hour 3.

ScreenCap1849 ScreenCap1851

The estate’s reception room also appeared in Rush Hour 3.

ScreenCap1852 ScreenCap1853

According to the book The Worldwide Guide to Movie Locations, the above-pictured scene from the 2001 movie Traffic, in which Robert Wakefield (aka Michael Douglas) is briefed by the White House Chief of Staff (aka Albert Finney), was filmed in a room at the Cravens Estate, although because only a tight shot of it was shown, I am not able to verify this or make a guess as to the exact room where filming took place.

ScreenCap1931 ScreenCap1932

ScreenCap1935 ScreenCap1933

The estate was also where Chauncey Gardiner (aka Peter Sellers) and Eve Rand (aka Shirley MacLaine) attended a cocktail party in the 1979 movie Being There.

ScreenCap1876 ScreenCap1874

ScreenCap1870 ScreenCap1871

The estate also stood in for the University of Minnesota dorm where Brenda Walsh (aka Shannen Doherty) briefly lived in the Season 4 episodes of Beverly Hills, 90210 titled “So Long, Auf Wiedersehen” and “The Girl from New York”.

ScreenCap1878 ScreenCap1879

ScreenCap1880 ScreenCap1881

In the Season 5 episode of Desperate Housewives titled “Look Into Their Eyes and You See What They Know”, the estate stood in for Beecher Academy, where Edie Britt’s (aka Nicolette Sheridan’s) son Travers (aka Stephen Lunsford) attended school. After Edie’s death, the women of Wisteria Lane – Bree Hodge (aka Marcia Cross), Lynette Scavo (aka Felicity Huffman), Gabrielle Solis (aka Eva Longoria), Susan Mayer (aka Teri Hatcher), and Karen McCluskey (aka Kathryn Joosten) – travel to the school in order to bring Edie’s ashes to Travers.

ScreenCap1882 ScreenCap1883

ScreenCap1884ScreenCap1885

The entryway of the Cravens Estate was transformed into a restaurant in the Season 3 episode of Mad Men titled “The Gypsy and the Hobo” for the scene in which Roger Sterling (aka John Slattery) takes Annabelle Mathis (aka Mary Page Keller, who, ironically enough, also had a recurring role on Commander in Chief) out for dinner.

ScreenCap1913 ScreenCap1914

ScreenCap1915 ScreenCap1917

Fellow stalker/Jennifer Love Hewitt-aficionado Owen also let me know that the estate appeared as Parkdale Academy in the Season 4 episode of Ghost Whisperer titled “Delusions of Grandview”.

ScreenCap1926 ScreenCap1927

ScreenCap1929 ScreenCap1916

Both the exterior . . .

ScreenCap1918 ScreenCap1919

ScreenCap1925 ScreenCap1930

. . . and the interior of the property were used quite extensively in the episode.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The American Red Cross’ San Gabriel Pomona Valley Headquarters, aka the Cravens Estate from Commander in Chief, is located at 430 Madeline Drive in Pasadena. Here is a map link to the location. You can visit the property’s official website here. If you would like a tour of the estate, please call to schedule an appointment first.

The Swordfish Hostage Scene

swordfish-hostage-shoot-out-ventura-1398

This past weekend, my parents, my fiance and I drove up to Ventura for a little weekend vacay.  And I was absolutely floored to discover – thanks to my new favorite stalking book – that the hostage scene gone wrong from the 2001 movie Swordfish  had been filmed in the coastal town!  But, while my stalking book stated that all of the filming took place on Main Street in Downtown Ventura, it unfortunately didn’t specify exactly which stores were used in the production.  So, me being me, I just had to stalk pretty much every shop and ask around until I found the right ones.  🙂    Filming of Swordfish  took place back in October of 2000 and, all in all, three main stores were used.  Come to find out, though, every single storefront featured in the movie was drastically remodeled for the filming and today they are all virtually unrecognizable.  Such a bummer!!!!!  

screenshot1187

screenshot1189

screenshot1190

All of the filming took place on one of Downtown Ventura’s main street corners, where producers were lucky enough to find two vacant storefronts that faced each other.    The first storefront, which was formerly the location of a used bookstore named Second Time Around, was where producers built the set of John Travolta’s favorite coffee shop, Traveler’s Coffee Company.  Yep, that’s right – the ENTIRE coffee shop was just a set built solely for the filming!

swordfish-hostage-shoot-out-ventura-1405

swordfish-hostage-shoot-out-ventura-1414

swordfish-hostage-shoot-out-ventura-1406

Today, that storefront houses an American Apparel store, which looks nothing like the coffee shop in Swordfish.  🙁    Being the coffee fiend that I am, I was actually pretty bummed out when I learned that the coffee shop was a fake!   I was really hoping to grab an iced latte there.  LOL  Thank goodness there was a Starbucks located just a few blocks away.  🙂  You can see some pics of the Traveler’s Coffee Company set being built here.

screenshot1193

screenshot1194

screenshot1181

Directly across the street from “Traveler’s Coffee Company”, is the bank that John Travolta set out to rob.  The interior and the facade of the building, which housed a restaurant named O’Brien’s up until a few months before filming began, were changed significantly for the filming. 

swordfish-hostage-shoot-out-ventura-1412

swordfish-hostage-shoot-out-ventura-1401

Today, an upscale clothing store named Parts Unknown and a restaurant named Riviera Bistro call that space home. You can see some great photographs of the bank set being built here.

screenshot1197 

The final storefront used in Swordfish  was that of Nicholby’s Nightclub, which popped up in the background of the hostage scene quite a few times.  Producers built a fake newsstand on the side of the Nicholby’s building for the filming. 

swordfish-hostage-shoot-out-ventura-1408

As you can see in the above photograph, that newsstand does not exist in real life.  You can see pics of the fake newsstand being built here.

screenshot1195

screenshot1186

screenshot1185

It is actually very surprising to me that producers used a real life street corner and real life storefronts to shoot Swordfish’s  hostage scene. For action sequences of that magnitude, producers usually opt to film inside of studio soundstages.  But because Ventura is a somewhat sleepy town, I am guessing it was fairly easy for them to take over a few vacant storefronts and close down a street corner.  According to one of the business owners I talked to, production of the hostage scene took over two months to complete!!!!   While the actual filming only took about three weeks, a significant amount of time was needed to both construct and dismantle the extensive sets.  I can’t even imagine being able to watch all of that take place!  It must have been an amazing experience for the Ventura locals.  🙂    Oh, how I wish I had been there! 

 Until next time, Happy Stalking!  🙂

Stalk It: The hostage scene from Swordfish  was filmed on the corner of East Main and South Oak Streets in Downtown Ventura.  Traveler’s Coffee Company is really the American Apparel store located at 391 East Main Street.  World Banc is the clothing store named Parts Unknown, which is located at 394 East Main Street #A.  Nicholby’s Nightclub, which can be found at 404 East Main Street, was the newsstand that showed up in the background of the scene.