Wayne Manor From the “Batman” Television Series

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Just up the street from the Just Married mansion which I blogged about yesterday is the residence which stood in for Wayne Manor, aka Batman’s abode, in the 1966 television series and movie of the same name.  As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, the Batman mansion and the Just Married mansion are quite often mistaken for each other due to a myriad of reasons.  So, to set the record straight – and since we already were in the area a couple of weeks ago doing some Just Married stalking- I decided to drag my fiancé a few hundreds yards up the road to also stalk Bruce Wayne’s pad.  Sadly, though, not very much of it is visible from the street.

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According to Zillow, the residence, which was built in 1928, boasts ten bedrooms, six bathrooms, a whopping 16,599 square feet of living space, and sits on over five acres of land!  And if you look at the above photographs, it is very easy to see why the property is often confused with the Just Married mansion that burned down in October of 2005.  Not only are both houses gargantuan, set far back from the road, and Tudor/Gothic Revival in style, but both were constructed almost entirely out of brick by the very same architect, Paul Revere Williams, and bear a striking resemblance to each other.  Further adding to the confusion between the properties is the fact that they are located within blocks of each other on the very same street, San Rafael Avenue, in Pasadena and have both been featured in countless productions over the years.

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Because the location rumors about the two mansions have been running rampant for so very long, this weekend I decided to try to get my hands on as many of the productions filmed on the premises as I could to try to set the record straight once and for all.  And I didn’t do too bad – the only movies I wasn’t able to track down were Topper, Three Men and a Little Lady, Executive Action, The Gumball Rally, The Bells of St. Mary’s, Sweet Bird of Youth, and True Confessions.  If anyone has those movies or has seen them in the past, can you let me know which, if either, of the San Rafael mansions was featured in them?

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As I mentioned above, the mansion’s most famous appearance was as Wayne Manor in the 1966 television series Batman and the subsequent movie of the same name that was made that very same year.  But its resume hardly ends there.

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The residence was also used as both the St. Audrey’s Home for Boys where Grace (aka Emma Thompson) was taken in by a nun . . .

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. . . and as Roman Strauss’ (aka Kenneth Branagh’s) home in 1991’s Dead Again.

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In the first Rush Hour movie, the mansion stood in for Los Angeles’ Chinese Consulate.

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As you can see in the above photograph and screen capture, though, the exterior gate which appears in that movie is not the home’s real life gate.

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In 1999’s Bowfinger, the mansion was used as the residence of action star Kit Ramsey (aka Eddie Murphy).

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And in that flick the home’s real life gate does actually appear and was the site of one of the movie’s funniest scenes.

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In Scary Movie 2, the mansion stood in for Hell House/Kane Manor where most of the film’s action takes place.

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In X-Files: Fight The Future, it was used as the Somerset, England home of the Well-Manicured Man (aka John Neville).

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According to some reports that I found online, the mansion was also featured in 1986’s Stand By Me, which seemed a bit odd being that I had always heard that Stand By Me was filmed almost in its entirety in the state of Oregon.  After re-watching the flick earlier today, though, I believe that the mansion did appear once at the very end of the movie as the residence of “The Writer” (aka Richard Dreyfuss).  As you can see in the above screen captures, the front driveway area does match that of the Batman  mansion. Why would they come all the way to Pasadena to film this one brief scene, though, when the rest of the movie was filmed hundreds of miles away in Oregon, you ask?  Well, according to IMDB’s Stand By Me trivia page, an actor named David Dukes was originally cast in the role of “The Writer”.  After his scenes were shot, though, and filming had wrapped, they re-cast the role with actor Richard Dreyfuss and re-shot all of his character’s scenes.  So, since the Richard Dreyfuss scenes were filmed at a later date – I am guessing after principal photography in Oregon had already wrapped – it makes sense that they would have been shot somewhere in the L.A. area, closer to where the film was being edited.

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And if you’ll notice in the above screen captures, which were taken from the movie Dead Again, the mansion’s front window and the view from it does sort of match that which appeared in Stand By Me, which makes me think that the property was actually used in the movie, although I don’t have any concrete proof to back that up.

Fellow stalker Ivan just sent me the above screen captures from the television series Land of Giants, in which Wayne Manor stood in for the residence belonging to Uncle Trojar in the episode entitled “Collector’s Item”.  And, yes, the mansion was blown up t the end of that episode.  Thank you, Ivan!  🙂

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According to fave website OnLocationVacations, the mansion was also the site of some filming from the upcoming Dinner For Schmucks movie starring Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, and Zach Galifianikis.   Besides being a filming location, the mansion was also the Pasadena Showcase House of Design in 1997.  So, I hope that at least partially puts to rest some of the locations rumors about the two landmark San Rafael Avenue mansions.  If I come across any further information, I will post it here!  And please let me know, dear readers, if you come across any information yourselves! 

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  🙂

Stalk It: Wayne Manor from the Batman television series is located at 380 South San Rafael Avenue in Pasadena.  Unfortunately, the residence is not very visible from the street.  To see the best views of the home, drive just a bit north of where the main gates are located.

The “Just Married” Mansion

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Since we are currently knee-deep in the middle of wedding planning, a few weeks ago my fiancé and I decided to sit down and finally watch the 2003 movie Just Married for the very first time.  And I have to say that I absolutely LOVED it!  While watching it, though, I became obsessed with finding the gargantuan, red brick, Tudor-style mansion where Sarah (aka Brittany Murphy) and her family lived in the flick, which as luck would have it, wasn’t too hard to track down.   Thanks to IMDB’s Just Married filming locations page, I discovered that the mansion was located at 160 South San Rafael Avenue right here in Pasadena.  So, I immediately dragged my fiancé right over there the following morning.  We had a sad surprise awaiting us when we arrived at the front gates, though – the mansion was no longer there.  It had completely burned to the ground in a massive fire back in October of 2005.  SO SAD.

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All that currently remains of the once massive mansion are its front gate, guard house, and red brick retaining wall.  I can’t tell you how depressing this was to discover, being that the now-fallen house was something of a historic landmark in Pasadena.  The residence which once stood on the property was originally built in 1929 for British thoroughbred horse breeder Jack Pease Atkin for $500,000.  The home was designed by famed celebrity architect Paul Revere Williams, who is best known for being the very first African American member of the American Institute of Architects and for designing the Beverly Hills Hotel and the Jet-Age Theme Building, aka Encounter Restaurant, at LAX.  He also built Jennie Garth and Peter Facinelli’s house, but I digress.  The three-story mansion boasted 21 rooms, three stories, a 1,200 square foot gate house, over 12,000 square feet of living space, and sat on a lot measuring 3.3 acres.  The house’s love affair with the movies began early on, in the 1930s, when Atkins decided to rent his property out to film crews in order to raise money to fund soup kitchens for the downtrodden in Depression-era L.A.  And the filming never stopped.  In 2004, the home was purchased by Michael Armand Hammer, the grandson of oil tycoon Armand Hammer, who also founded the famed Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Culture in Westwood. Hammer immediately set about completely restoring the entire property.  Sadly, though, a massive fire broke out at approximately 9:20 p.m. on the night of October 5, 2005, one month before he was set to move in.  Over 80 firefighters were called in from neighboring cities to fight the blaze and it took them over three hours to even contain it.   Flames were still burning the following morning and ended up causing over $20 million worth of damage and completely gutting the property.  According to some neighbors that I spoke with while stalking the place, rumor has it that the fire was started due to a dispute between contractors.  What a complete and total shame!  No charges were ever filed in the case and the 3.3 acre vacant lot is currently for sale for a whopping $10 million.  You can see some great aerial views of the mansion before and after it was burned on Zillow

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Hollywood rumors about the mansion have been circling around Pasadena pretty much since the time the house was built, the two most prevalent of which being that it was owned at one time by former Beatle Paul McCartney and that it was used as Bruce Wayne’s manor in the 1960s television series Batman.  Both of those rumors are completely false.  And while I am not sure how the Paul McCartney story came to be, the Batman rumor is easy enough to figure out.  The real Wayne Manor is located just a few houses up the road at 380 S. San Rafael Avenue and looks extremely similar in appearance to the Just Married mansion. Batman and Paul McCartney aside, though, the Atkin’s house has a Hollywood resume any actor would envy.

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In Just Married, the mansion, which was supposedly located in Beverly Hills, belonged to Sarah’s extremely wealthy father, who co-owned both the Dodgers and the Lakers in the flick.  For whatever reason, though, the exterior of the house was never shown in its entirety, but the front gate area did appear quite a bit.

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As did the front door/front porch . . .

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. . . and the intercom outside of the main gate, which was used as a running joke throughout the movie.  And, even though it wasn’t the same exact intercom which appeared in Just Married, I just had to pose for a pic with it.  😉

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Thankfully, the area where Sam (aka Ashton Kutcher) played flag football with Sarah’s family is still intact and is visible through the front gate. 

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The mansion also stood in for the Carlton Hotel in several episodes of TV’s Dynasty.

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The residence was also featured in the 1985 movie Clue, but as you can see in the above screen capture, some movie magic was definitely employed in the production.

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  According to some reports that I read online, while the real life driveway, retaining wall, front porch and bottom half of the mansion’s exterior were used in Clue . . .

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. . . producers had a matte painting added to the top portion of the house to make it appear larger and more sinister than it actually was.   

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In the 1991 movie Mobsters, the mansion belonged to Arnold Rothstein (aka F. Murray Abraham), but only the interior of it was ever shown.

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In 2003’s Hollywood Homicide, it belonged to Jerry Duran (aka Martin Landau) who gave part time real estate agent Sergeant Joe Gavilan (aka Harrison Ford) 72 hours to sell it.

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I am fairly certain that the real inside of the home was used in the movie, as well.

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According to several books, the mansion also stood in for the home of Rocky Balboa in Rocky V, but as you can see in the above screen captures, while the two properties resemble each other, they are not in fact the same.  There are also reports which state that the mansion was featured in the 1979 Peter Sellers’ movie Being There, but I just re-watched that film last night and did not see it anywhere.  I am guessing that it was either not in fact used in the movie or that it was used solely for interior shots.

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The mansion also supposedly appeared in The Bells of St. Mary’s, Sweet Bird of Youth, Three Men and a Little Lady, True Confessions, an episode of Murder, She Wrote, and in both the movie Topper and the subsequent television series of the same name, but because I don’t own any of those productions I have not been able to verify that information. 

UPDATE – Fellow blogger Petrea from the Pasadena Daily Photo website just sent me this amazing photograph that a friend of hers named Dave Thompson took of the Just Married mansion shortly after it was destroyed in the 2005 fire.  Thanks, Petrea!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Just Married mansion was formerly located at 160 South San Rafael Avenue in Pasadena.  Sadly, the area is currently just a vacant lot.

Bullocks Wilshire – The Department Store from “Christmas Vacation”

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One location that I have been dying to stalk for months now is the former Bullocks Wilshire department store located just outside of Downtown Los Angeles  – a spot which has been featured in countless productions since its grand opening way back in 1929.  And, even though I am usually a big fan of immediate gratification, I waited to stalk this location until just recently as I wanted to blog about it in December, along with my other Christmas movie posts.  So, what holiday movie was the building featured in, you ask?  One of my very favorite Christmas flicks of all time – the 1989 holiday classic Christmas Vacation.   In the movie, Bullocks Wilshire stood in for the Chicago area department store where Clark Griswold (aka Chevy Chase), accompanied by his son, Rusty (aka The Big Bang Theory’s Johnny Galecki), shopped for lingerie.  I found this location thanks to fellow stalker Mike, from MovieShotsLA, who, as luck would have it, just happened to be driving right by the department store on the day filming took place way back in 1989.  Once Mike noticed the production trucks, he, of course, immediately pulled over to inquire about what was being filmed and to watch some of the action.  And, let me tell you, when Mike told me about the location a few months back, I just about passed out from excitement as I had always wanted to know where that scene had taken place!  Thank you, Mike!  🙂

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The Bullocks Wilshire building was originally built in 1929 by the father and son architecture firm of John and Donald Parkinson, a team who was also responsible for designing the Continental Building, which is better known as Los Angeles’ first skyscraper, Union Station, L.A.’s City Hall and the Memorial Coliseum.  Department store magnate John G. Bullock commissioned the building in the hopes of creating the most luxurious and upscale shopping experience Angelinos had ever seen. The interior, which was designed by Eleanor Lemaire and Jock Peters, was the utmost in splendor, featuring travertine flooring, marble walls, ornate elevators, and rosewood display cases.  

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For the design of the relief located above the department store’s Wilshire Boulevard entrance, which reads, “To build a business that will never known completion”, Bullock looked to MGM art director Cedric Gibbons, who is best known for designing the first ever Oscar statue.

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Because Bullock wanted to cater to the growing number of motorists in the L.A. area, the department store was the first in Los Angeles ever to feature a porte cochere, aka a covered driveway under which shoppers could hand over their vehicles to waiting valets.

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  The building’s most remarkable feature – in my mind, at least – has to be the highly elaborate mural painted on the ceiling of the porte cochere.  Romanian painter Herman Sachs designed the brightly colored fresco secco as a tribute to Mercury, the god of travel.  The painting features renderings of different forms of modern-day transportation, including airplanes, trains, and ships. 

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Upon its opening on September 26, 1929, the 241 foot tall Bullocks Wilshire encompassed over 230,000 square feet of retail space which included a perfume hall, a penthouse tea room, a “doggery” which sold trinkets for shoppers’ furry companions, a saddle shop, a Louis XVI room, a furrier, live mannequins, a salon, and a private suite where the truly elite could shop in complete privacy, all the while sipping martinis and snacking on the finest hors d’oeuvres.  Years later, Bullock added a Chanel Room, a photography studio operated by celebrity photographer Neil Gittings, and a Ladies Custom Salon, run by future Hollywood costume designer Irene Lentz.  Thanks to Bullock’s incredible attention to detail, the department store quickly became the place to see and be seen in Los Angeles.  Such stars as Mae West, Clark Gable, Greta Garbo, Alfred Hitchcock, John Wayne, and Marlene Dietrich all visited Bullocks Wilshire at one time or another.  And actresses June Lockhart and Angela Lansbury and former First Lady Patricia Nixon even worked there in their early years.  Thanks to the building’s architectural detail and rich history, Bullocks Wilshire was added to the National Registry of Historic Places on May 25, 1978.  Sadly, in the late 80s, the store began a precipitous decline, eventually being sold to the Macy’s chain.  A few years later, the historic building was heavily vandalized both inside and out during the riots of 1992, with looters destroying display cases, prized artifacts, and even setting fire to the property.  Bullocks Wilshire ended up closing its doors for the last time in 1993.  But its story doesn’t end there.    About a year later, the property was purchased by Southwestern Law School, which had long occupied a neighboring building.  The school then set out on a ten year, $29 million restoration project which completely restored the historic building back to its original state.  For this endeavor, Southwestern Law School received a National Preservation Award from the National Trust for Historic Preservation.   Today, Bullocks Wilshire is used as a part of the Southwestern Law School campus, where, coincidentally, actor Jerry O’Connell (husband of Rebecca Romijn) is currently a student.  🙂

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And, while the building is not actually opened to the public, while stalking the place, I ventured inside and asked the security guard on duty if I might be allowed to take a quick peek.  The guard truly could NOT have been nicer and allowed my fiancé and me to walk around the school.  Unfortunately, though, photography is not allowed indoors, so I couldn’t take any pictures, other than the two pictured above, which I snapped through the building’s front window.  But, take my word for it, the interior – which you can see photographs of here – is nothing short of magnificent.  Walking into Bullocks Wilshire is like stepping back in time to a more glamorous era.  The cafe, the lounge area, even the bathrooms have all been restored to their original state and I couldn’t have been more excited to be seeing it all with my own two eyes.  And, even though the building is now technically a college campus, the interior still looks much as it did when it operated as an upscale department store.  I was so mesmerized with the place, in fact, that I am just dying to get my hands on a copy of this book to learn more about the building’s rich history!

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Bullocks Wilshire shows up just briefly in Christmas Vacation in the very memorable scene in which, while out shopping with his son Rusty, Clark Griswold meets and flirts with a lingerie saleswoman named Mary and utters that famous line, “It’s a bit nipply out”.  LOL LOL LOL When I was a Senior in high school – and I should mention here that I went to a Catholic high school – one of my classmates, Marcus, came up with the inspired idea of reading a surf report to the entire school each morning during our daily announcements.  Marcus’ little experiment was going well, too, until one particularly cold morning, when he announced to the student body that the ocean “was a bit nipply” that day.  Needless to say, that was the end of that morning’s announcements – and our daily surf report.  But, ever since that fateful day, even all these years later, I can’t help but think of Marcus and laugh every time I watch the Christmas Vacation shopping scene.  🙂

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Bullocks Wilshire was also the store where Benjamin Siegel shopped at the beginning of the movie Bugsy;

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its La Directoire room was the site of the ”Romantic Dinner” Taco Bell commercial featuring Gidget, the talking Chihuahua;

it was where Angela Chase (aka Claire Danes) shopped with her mother Patty (aka Bess Armstrong) in the Season 1 episode of My So-Called Life titled “The Zit”;

and the Louis XVI Room was where the Mother/Daughter Fashion Show was filmed in that same episode.

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it was the location of the eponymous elevator in Aerosmith’s “Love in an Elevator” music video

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the exterior was featured briefly in Public Enemy’s “By The Time I Get to Arizona” music video;

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and in The Aviator, it stood in for the nightclub where Howard Hughes and Ava Gardner got attacked by Hughes’ former girlfriend.

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Supposedly, the final scene in Ghostbusters was filmed on the roof of Bullocks Wilshire, but as you can see in the above screen captures and photograph, the Ghostbusters roof and the Bullocks Wilshire roof look nothing alike.  And, while it’s entirely possible that some close-up filming for that scene did take place on top of the Bullocks Wilshire tower, my best guess is that the entire scene was filmed on a studio soundstage somewhere in Hollywood.  Bullocks Wilshire has also been featured in the movies Topper (where it stood in for the luxurious Connecticut area Seabreeze Hotel), Tarzan’s New York Adventure (where it was used as a New York hotel), Dunston Checks In (where it again stood in for a New York hotel), Fist of the North Star, On Deadly Ground, Family Plot, The Tie That Binds, Rough Magic, and in episodes of Murder, She Wrote, Judging Amy, and The Agency.

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Big THANK YOU to Mike for finding this location!  🙂

On a very sad side note – My thoughts and prayers go out to Brittany Murphy’s friends and loved ones today.  I can’t even imagine losing someone so young, especially this close to the holidays.  🙁    Rest in peace, Brittany.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  🙂

Stalk It: Bullocks Wilshire is located at 3050 Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles.  You can visit the building’s official website and see interior photographs of it here.  Because Bullocks Wilshire is part of the Southwestern Law School campus, it is not open to the public. Once a year, though, tours of the property are given.  You can check the Southwestern Law School website for further tour information.