The House from Rihanna’s “Take a Bow” Video

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Way back in April 2010, fellow stalker Virginie (who lives in Belgium!) contacted me to let me know that she had tracked down the Venice-area home featured in Rihanna’s 2008 “Take a Bow” music video.  And while I had never seen said video, nor am I a particularly big fan of Rihanna, I did absolutely love the Glee version of the song, so after receiving Virginie’s email, I decided to take a gander.  And, let me tell you, I fell head over heels in love with the gorgeous “Take a Bow” house on sight.  To be honest, I was practically foaming at the mouth!   So I immediately added the place to the very top of my To-Stalk list, but because I do not often find myself in the Venice area, the residence, sadly, remained un-stalked until two weeks ago.  I am very happy to report, though, that it was well worth the wait because the dwelling is nothing short of spectacular in person!

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The 7,456-square-foot property, which houses both a private loft-style residence and a 40-foot by 40-foot art gallery, was originally built in 2007 by du Architects for Steve Shaw, a prominent Los Angeles fashion photographer who drew up the floor plans himself.  The structure, which was constructed out of wood, concrete, glass, and steel, boasts five bedrooms (the master bedroom suite features an eight-foot movie screen!), five baths, a rooftop infinity pool (with a special sensor that drains excess water whenever it rains!), an atrium, a terrace, and a sunken living room with a built-in custom sofa, gas fire pit and 11-foot movie screen (yes, the place has not one, but TWO movie screens!).  Not bad for a house that sits on a miniscule 0.09-acre plot of land.

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In 2009, Shaw sold the abode (how anyone could ever bear to part with this house is beyond me!) for a cool $5.6 million to none other than Robert Downey Jr. and his wife, Susan, who are now using the property as their production offices.  You can check out some interior photographs of the spectacular pad here, here, here, and here.  Warning – have a drool cloth ready!  Winking smile

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The interior of the house was used extensively in “Take a Bow”.  (See what I mean?  Definitely drool-worthy!  Sigh.)

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The front entrance also made a brief appearance.

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As did the three-car garage area.

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The video’s driving sequence was shot just one block south of the home, in front of the residence located at 1309 Cabrillo Avenue . . .

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. . . which was apparently for rent at the time of the filming.

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You can watch Rihanna’s “Take a Bow” video by clicking below.

While doing research on the property, I was absolutely FLOORED to discover that the interior had been used as the supposed San Francisco-area residence where Brad (Vince Vaughn) and Kate (Reese Witherspoon) lived in the 2008 flick Four Christmases.  I am ashamed to admit that I had been trying to track down this particular locale for years, but because the place was so much brighter in Four Christmases than it appeared to be in “Take a Bow”, I failed to recognize it!  D’oh!  (I am still on the hunt for the exterior of Brad and Kate’s house, which is apparently located somewhere in San Francisco’s Twin Peaks.)

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You can see the home’s movie screen (complete with curtain!) in the background behind Vince Vaughn below.  So incredibly cool!

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The red-tiled bathroom that appeared in the flick, which you can see a real life photograph of here, is absolutely amazeballs!

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The video for Usher’s 2008 song “Trading Places” was also filmed at the abode.

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You can watch that (NSFW!) video by clicking below.

Thanks to fellow stalker Geoff, from the 90210Locations website, I learned that the dwelling was also used as the office of celebrity psychiatrist Dr. Henry Carter (Kevin Spacey) in the 2009 flick Shrink.  Both the exterior . . .

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. . . and the interior of the property were used extensively throughout the flick.

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And, when he owned the place, Steve Shaw conducted a photo shoot on the premises with actress Evan Rachel Wood (which you can check out some pictures from here).

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Speaking of music videos, have y’all seen the John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John jewel “I Think You Might Like It”?  The thing actually rendered me speechless!  All I can say is “LOL!”

You can find me on Facebook here and on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER.  And be sure to check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic.

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Virginie for finding this location!  Smile

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Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: The house from Rihanna’s “Take a Bow” music video is located at 1311 Abbot Kinney Boulevard in Venice.  The garage area that appeared in the video can be viewed from the opposite side of the residence on the 1300 block of Electric Avenue.  And the driving scene was filmed just around the corner, in front of the home located at 1309 Cabrillo Avenue.

Farralone – Frank Sinatra’s Former House

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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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).

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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.

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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.

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

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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

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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).

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

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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.

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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.

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

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

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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.

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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.