The “Beaches” Mansion

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One location that I have been asked about repeatedly ever since I first started my blog almost four years ago (and I CANNOT even believe that it has been that long!!!) is the large Tudor-style mansion where Hillary Whitney Essex (aka Barbara Hershey) lived in the 1988 tearjerker Beaches.  And while it had long been noted on various websites that the property was located somewhere in the Pasadena area, try as I might, I just could not seem to track the place down.  Then this past January a fellow stalker named Alain who lives in France emailed me to ask about a mansion that had appeared in the Season 7 episode of Columbo titled “Try and Catch Me”.  He mentioned that the same estate had also been used in Beaches.  I explained to Alain that I had been trying to find that particular home for years, but had had absolutely no luck.  Flash forward 9 months to this past Tuesday afternoon when I received another email from Alain, this one announcing that he had found the property!  Whoo-hoo!  How he managed to locate it while living thousands of miles away in France, when I failed to do so while living right here in Pasadena, is absolutely beyond me!  My hat is most-definitely off to you, Alain!

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So I, of course, ran right out to stalk the place early Wednesday morning.  Sadly though, as you can see above, hardly any of the property is visible from the street.

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But, as I have said before, that is why God created aerial views.  In real life, the 7,479-square-foot, 8-bedroom, 4-bath home, which was built in 1916 by the noted Pasadena architecture firm Marston & Van Pelt (who also designed the Twins mansion), is known as the S. S. Hinds Estate.  The property was named for one of its original owners, actor Samuel S. Hinds, who is best known for playing Peter Bailey, George Bailey’s (aka James Stewart’s) father, in the 1946 classic It’s A Wonderful LifeAccording to my buddy E.J. over at The Movieland Directory, Hinds lived in the home from the 1920s until the 1940s. Ironically enough, Hinds was originally a very prominent attorney who lost his fortune in the stock market crash of 1929.  He was able to keep his Pasadena manse during that difficult time by renting it out to various boarders.  Finding himself destitute at the age of 54, he decided to abandon law and try his hand at acting and it was not long before Hollywood came a’callin’.  Hinds went on to star in over 200 films before his death in 1948.

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In Beaches, the S.S Hinds Estate stood in for the supposed Atherton-area residence where Hillary lived both as a child and an adult.

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The house’s front gate was used quite prominently in the movie in the scenes in which Hillary checked her mailbox in anticipation of receiving letters from her lifelong best friend, Cecilia “CC” Carol Bloom (aka Bette Midler).

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And while the gate is thankfully visible from the street and still looks EXACTLY the same today as it did in 1988 when Beaches was filmed, sadly, as you can see above, Hillary’s mailbox is not there in real life.  I am guessing that it was just a set piece that was brought in solely for the filming.

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The real life interior of the property was also used in the flick.

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Thanks to fave website OnLocationVacations, I learned that the Season 3 episode of Mad Men titled “My Old Kentucky Home” was also filmed at the S.S. Hinds Estate.  In the episode, the property stood in for the country club where Roger Sterling (aka John Slattery) and Jane Siegel (aka Peyton List) hosted their Kentucky Derby party.

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As you can see in the screen captures above, one of the hallways that appeared in Beaches was also used in Mad Men as the spot where Betty Draper (aka January Jones) first met Henry Francis (aka Christopher Stanley).

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I am fairly certain, though, that the club’s bar, where Don Draper (aka Jon Hamm) spent most of his evening, is not actually located inside of the Hinds Estate, but is a real life bar somewhere in Los Angeles.

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And again thanks to OnLocationVacations, I also learned that the estate was used as the Turnbill Mansion, which Leslie Knope (aka Amy Poehler) fought to save, in the Season 2 episode of Parks & Recreation titled “94 Meetings”.

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Amazingly, the very same hallway that appeared in both Mad Men and Beaches was also featured in Parks and Recreation.

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As was the stairway from Beaches.

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And the front gate, which Leslie Knopes barricaded herself to, thinking it opened in the middle, on Parks and Recreation.  LOL

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A large painting of the mansion was created for the filming of Parks and Recreation, as well.  Being that I doubt the painting would ever be used again on the series, I am wondering if the owners of the Hinds Estate got to keep it.  So cool if they did!

Unfortunately, I was not able to find a copy of the Columbo “Try and Catch Me” episode anywhere, so I could not make screen captures of the Hinds Estate’s appearance in it for this post.

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Alain for telling me about this location!  Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: The Beaches mansion is located at 880 La Loma Road in Pasadena.

Aunt Mitsy’s House from “Rumor Has It”

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One location that I have been on the lookout for for what seems like ages now is the home where Aunt Mitsy (aka Kathy Bates) lived in the 2005 movie Rumor Has It.  Even though I was never a particularly big fan of the flick, I pretty much fell in love with Aunt Mitsy’s adorable little bungalow – and her huge front porch – at first sight and have wanted to stalk it ever since.  Especially being that my girl Jen Aniston had filmed a scene on the premises.  Because no apartment number, street sign, or even a full view of the exterior of the property was visible at any point during the movie, though, I figured this was one locale that would be virtually impossible to track down.

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Enter fellow stalker Geoff, from the 90210Locations website, who emailed me last week to ask for some help in locating the home where Grandma Bunny (aka Betty White) lived in the 2010 romantic comedy You Again.  Well, I took one look at the screencap he sent me (pictured above) and realized that, while it was not the same house featured in Rumor Has It, the two properties looked amazingly similar – which got me to thinking that they might just be located in close proximity to each other, quite possibly even on the same street.  So I immediately began searching for the You Again house and also got fellow stalkers Chas, from the It’sFilmedThere website, Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and Owen on the case.

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As fate would have it, Mike happened to recognize the yellow Victorian-style home located in the background of the Rumor Has It scene and when he looked at that property on Google Street View, sure enough, there was Mitsy’s house right across the street.  Yay!

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Aunt Mitsy’s house was only featured in one very brief scene in Rumor Has It, in which Sarah Huttinger (aka Jennifer Aniston) asks Mitsy for information about her deceased mother.  It is there that Mitsy first tells Sarah about her mother’s affair with Beau Burroughs (aka Kevin Costner), at which point Sarah realizes that her family served as the inspiration for the movie The Graduate.  (Yeah, yeah – lame plot for a movie, I know.)  From its appearance in Rumor Has It, I had assumed that the home was an extremely small, one-story dwelling and searched for it as such.  As it turns out, I could not have been more wrong.

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In real life the house looks nothing at all like how I had envisioned it to look in my mind.  Not only is the place two levels, but it is also pretty darn huge!

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And furthermore, the property is actually an apartment building – not a private residence as I had originally thought!  As you can see above, the dwelling has several front doors and consists of at least three separate units.  This is one location that I can honestly say I NEVER would have found on my own.  Not in a million years.

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Thankfully, the front porch area looks pretty much the same today as it did back in 2005 when Rumor Has It was filmed.  There is currently much less foliage in place and the house is now painted blue instead of yellow, but otherwise little else has changed in that section of the property over the years and it still looks just as cute in person as it did onscreen.  Oh, what I wouldn’t give to sit on that porch in the same spot that Jen sat to pose for a pic!  Smile

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The other houses on the street that appeared in the background of the scene look exactly the same as they did in the movie, as well.  And, yes, we did also end up finding Grandma Bunny’s house from You Again – well, fellow stalker Chas found it – and I will be blogging about it soonSmile

Big THANK YOU to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for finding this location and to fellow stalkers Chas, from the It’sFilmedThere website, Geoff, from the 90210Locations website, and Owen for all of the time and effort they put into this search.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: Aunt Mitsy’s house from Rumor Has It is located at 485 Ellis Street in Pasadena.

Mary See’s Former House

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Another location that I was reminded of while taking the Scott’s L.A. Audio Driving Tour of Pasadena this past week was the Craftsman-style residence where Mary See and her son Charles, founders of See’s Famous Old Time Candies, lived in the 1920s during the time when the legendary chocolate company was first established.  Because I practically grew up on See’s Candies – I can still remember my parents and grandparents taking me to the chain’s Hillsdale Mall outpost for a treat on an almost weekly occasion – I was absolutely FLOORED to discover that the See family had once lived practically right in my own backyard.

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Mary Wiseman See, who was born and raised in Ontario, Canada, first started making candy while living on Tremont Park Island where her husband, Alexander, managed a resort.  When Alexander passed away in 1919, Mary decided to start anew by moving with her son Charles, his wife Florence, and their three children to Southern California, where Charles was seeking work as a pharmacist.  The family settled into a Craftsman-style bungalow located at 462 South Marengo Avenue shortly after arriving in the area and sometime thereafter Charles decided to try his hand at selling Mary’s homemade chocolates to the public.

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In November of 1921, the family set up their first See’s Candies store in a building located at 135 North Western Avenue in Los Angeles.  That original store is pictured above and, amazingly enough, the building which once housed it is still standing to this day!  You can see a picture of how the building appeared circa April of 2011 here.  Charles designed the shop with a black and white motif and checkered floor to resemble Mary’s actual kitchen at home where her now-famous candy was first baked.  That ascetic model is still used to this day, over nine decades later, for all See’s locations, as is the company’s original logo, which consists of a black and white photograph of Mary See.  See’s Famous Old Time Candies became an instant success and by the mid-1920s, eleven more storefronts had opened.  The chain’s second store was located at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood and the third was at 356 East Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena.  Sadly, the Pasadena building that once housed that location was torn down in the 1970s to make way for the now-defunct Plaza Pasadena Shopping Center.  (In an interesting bit of trivia, according to the History, Los Angeles County blog, during the 1920s the company used custom-built Harley-Davidson motorcycles, painted with the black and white See’s insignia and fitted with a side-car, to make deliveries throughout the Los Angeles area.  One of those motorcycles is pictured above.)

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According to the Scott’s L.A. Audio Driving Tour, the kitchen of the See’s family bungalow was located toward the rear of the property, in what I believe is the area pictured above.  I am not sure if it is this kitchen that Charles modeled the design of his stores after or if it was the kitchen at the home in Canada where he grew up, but oh, what I wouldn’t give to go inside and find out.  Winking smile

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Mary See sadly passed away on July 31st, 1939 at the age of 85.  Charles continued to run See’s Candies until his death in 1949, at which point his son Laurance took over the reins.  In 1972, Laurance sold the company to none other than Warren Buffett, who acquired it as part of his Berkshire Hathaway Corporation.  See’s Famous Old Time Candies is still going strong to this day and now boasts over 200 stores in 11 different states, as well as locations in Hong Kong, Japan, and Macau.  It was all started right here, though, in a little bungalow in Pasadena.  The See home, which was originally built in 1903, is no longer a private residence, but now houses offices for various area professionals.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: Mary See’s former house is located at 462 South Marengo Avenue in Pasadena.