The Philadelphia Museum of Art from “Rocky”

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The Philadelphia Museum of Art has been called the world’s second most famous filming location, falling only behind Grand Central Station in New York.  While the latter has been captured on celluloid copious times, the former is known mainly for one significant appearance.  It was there that Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) embodied triumph by scaling the site’s massive east entrance stairs, fists pumping in the air, in what is arguably one of cinema’s most iconic moments from the 1976 boxing classic Rocky.  Even though I have never seen the movie (I know, I know!), I was very familiar with the archetypal segment (which you can watch here), so there was no way I was going to miss stalking the museum to re-create it while vacationing in the City of Brotherly Love in 2016!

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The Philadelphia Museum of Art as we know it today opened to the public on March 26th, 1928, though its roots date all the way back to 1876 when the city hosted the Centennial Exhibition, the first official World’s Fair to take place in the United States.  One of the event’s most popular exhibits was the Art Gallery, situated inside the gorgeous Memorial Hall which still stands today at 4231 Avenue of the Republic.  It proved so beloved in fact, that following the fair’s closure, it continued to function, becoming a permanent part of Philadelphia’s cultural landscape.  By the 1890s, the need for a bigger space to house the museum’s growing collection had developed and city leaders began making plans to erect a larger gallery, though ground would not be broken on the new site until 1919 and construction would not be completed for another nine years after that.

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Towering atop Fairmount Hill, the city’s highest point, the grand structure was designed by the Zantzinger, Borie and Medary and the Horace Trumbauer architecture firms.

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  The massive facility houses more than 220,000 works in 200 different galleries and features large-scale installations including a ceremonial Japanese teahouse, a pillared hallway fashioned from the ruins of 3 Indian temples and the former main entrance to France’s Abbey Church of Saint-Laurent, as well as pieces by Vincent van Gogh, Edward Hicks, Thomas Eakins, Pablo Picasso, and Henri Matisse.

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Though the views of the city it boasts are just as picturesque as the art which hangs on its walls.

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Today, PMOA is one of the largest, most visited art museums in the country.  And thanks to Rocky, its east staircase is just as big a draw as the museum itself.

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The “Rocky Steps,” as they are colloquially known, pop up twice in the flick – first mid-film, in the scene in which the fledgling boxer, while training for a big fight, unsuccessfully attempts to scale them during a nighttime jog.

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Later in the movie, he finally makes it to the top and we see the museum . . .

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. . . and its views in all of their glory.  Rocky’s legendary run is actually immortalized with a set of footprints at the top of the stairs, but I was, unfortunately, unaware of that fact when I stalked the place, so I failed to get a photo of them.  You can see what they look like here, though.

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Several of the movie’s sequels have also made use of PMOA, including 1979’s Rocky II in which the Italian Stallion once again trains for a big fight by running up to the museum’s 72nd step.

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In 1982’s Rocky III, the now famous boxer is honored with a bronze statue of himself that is displayed atop the museum’s east staircase.  During the dedication ceremony early in the film, he is heckled by Clubber Lang (Mr. T).

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Later in the movie, Rocky goes to see the statue during a nighttime motorcycle ride.

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The A. Thomas Schomberg-designed piece, which stands 8’6” tall, was commissioned by Stallone for Rocky III and then left in place at the top of the steps when filming wrapped, a gift from the actor to the museum.  While City Commerce Director Dick Doran embraced the move, proclaiming that Sylvester had done “more for Philadelphia’s image than anyone since Ben Franklin,” not all locals were as enthused, especially PMOA executives who felt that the sculpture was nothing more than a movie prop.  In a rather contentious move, the work was eventually moved to the Wachovia Spectrum in South Philadelphia.

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Though it was temporarily brought back to the museum in 1990 for a brief scene in Rocky V, as soon as the shoot wrapped it was relegated to the Spectrum once again.

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Finally in 2006, the statue was given a new home just east of the base of the Rocky Steps where it still stands today.

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That same year, the museum was featured in the closing credits of Rocky Balboa in a montage showing fans running up the staircase, re-creating the famous moment from the first movie . . .

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. . . before flashing to an image of Rocky standing on the steps alone while snow falls around him.

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And at the end of the 2015 sequel Creed, Rocky takes Adonis Johnson (Michael B. Jordan) to the staircase.

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The Rocky franchise is hardly the only production to showcase the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

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Lisa Brandt (Janet Margolin) runs away to the museum in the 1962 drama David & Lisa.

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The interior masks as New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, where Kate Miller (Angie Dickinson) meets Warren Lockman (Ken Baker), in the 1980 thriller Dressed to Kill.

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Will Smith (Will Smith), imitating Rocky, runs up the staircase while training for a fight in the Season 4 episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air titled “The Philadelphia Story,” which aired in 1994.

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Rose (Toni Collette) also pays homage to Rocky by running up the museum steps a couple of times in the 2005 drama In Her Shoes.

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Kate (Tina Fey) and Rob (Greg Kinnear) kiss in front of the museum in the 2008 comedy Baby Mama.

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Dr. Karen Fletcher (Betty Buckley) is briefly seen looking at Paul Cézanne’s The Bathers there in the 2016 thriller Split.

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Shazam (Zachary Levi) heads to the Philadelphia Museum of Art with Freddy Freeman (Jack Dylan Grazer) shortly after discovering his superhero alter ego in 2019’s Shazam!

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He also perfects his laser abilities on the museum steps (with “Eye of the Tiger” from Rocky III playing in the background) later in the movie.

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

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Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: The Philadelphia Museum of Art, from Rocky, is located at 2600 Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park.  The steps featured in the movie can be found on the eastern side of the property.  You can visit the museum’s official website here.

The “Sylvester Stallone” House from “Pretty Woman”

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A couple of weeks ago, while trying to figure out in what movie I had spotted L’Orangerie, aka Chez Quis restaurant from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (which, maddeningly, I still have yet to determine, by the way!), I started scanning through the 1990 romantic comedy Pretty Woman and found myself wondering why I had never stalked the house jokingly referred to as being Sylvester Stallone’s in the flick.  Fellow stalker Chas, of the It’sFilmedThere website, had tracked down the Hollywood-area residence quite some time ago and, while the address had been on my “To Stalk” list ever since, for whatever reason, I had never made it out there.  So I quickly decided to remedy the situation and dragged the Grim Cheaper right on over there just a few days later.

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At the very beginning of Pretty Woman, Edward Lewis (Richard Gere), while lost in Hollywood, spots a hobo on the sidewalk digging through some trash and pulls over to ask him the way to Beverly Hills.  The hobo replies, “You’re here!  That’s Sylvester Stallone’s house right there!”  LOL LOL LOL  I swear, I have seen Pretty Woman about one hundred times and that scene never fails to make me laugh!

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To find “Sylvester Stallone’s house”, Chas tracked down a helpful crew member who told him the general vicinity in which it was located.  From there, he simply scanned aerial views and it was not long until he found the right place.  And, amazingly enough, despite the fact that over two decades have since passed, the property still looks almost exactly the same today as it did when Pretty Woman was filmed!  The small front door/front porch area was at some point enclosed, but otherwise the place appears to have been untouched by time.  So incredibly cool!  In real life, the tiny home, which was originally built in 1902, measures 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, and 1,201 square feet.

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On a Pretty Woman side-note – While scanning through the flick a couple of weeks back, I was knock-me-over-with-a-feather-shocked to discover that the lobby scenes were not filmed inside of the Regent Beverly Wilshire hotel in Beverly Hills (pictured above) or on a soundstage at Disney Studios, as countless websites and books have suggested over the years.

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Amazingly enough, the lobby scenes from Pretty Woman were actually shot at the since-demolished Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.

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What tipped me off to this fact was the famous Ambassador lobby fountain, the base of which is visible in the background of almost all of the hotel scenes.  You can see a photograph of that fountain here.

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Upon closer inspection, I spotted several other elements of the interior of the Ambassador lobby that matched perfectly with what appeared in Pretty Woman, including the curved, check-in desk, which you can see a photograph of here (credit).

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and the gold-detailed ceilings and wood-paneled columns, which you can see a photograph of here (credit).

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I also realized that the lobby lounge where Vivian Ward (Julia Roberts) waited for Edward was actually the Ambassador’s famed The Palm Bar, which you can see photographs of here, here, and here.

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And it has long been known that the ballroom where Vivian (aka Julia Roberts) learned the proper use of flatware and where Edward played the piano was the Ambassador’s Embassy ballroom, which you can see a photograph of here.  So it now seems as if the vast majority of Pretty Woman was actually filmed inside of the Ambassador Hotel, which makes the fact that the structure no longer stands even more heartbreaking than it already was.  Oh, how I wish I had seen that place in person!  Sigh.

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Big THANK YOU to Chas, from the It’sFilmedThere website, for finding this location.  You can check out Chas’ extensive Pretty Woman filming locations page here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: The “Sylvester Stallone” house from Pretty Woman is located at 1735 North Hudson Avenue in Hollywood.