Your definitive source to filming locations and all things Hollywood!
Don’t forget to check out my latest Los Angeles magazine post today – about the Walsh house from Beverly Hills, 90210, Jason Priestley’s new book and how I got started stalking – on LAMag.com. (My columns typically get published in the late morning/early afternoon hours.)
Like Mike, from MovieShotsLA said yesterday, it’s officially the end of an era. While the two of us were out doing some Pasadena area stalking on Sunday, we made our regular pilgrimage to the Walsh House from Beverly Hills, 90210 and saw a very sad sight, indeed. In fact, Mike was so out of sorts over the whole thing that he almost crashed the car upon viewing it. Not kidding! Apparently, just last week, Jack, the real life owner of Casa Walsh, tore down the Walsh garage – the hallowed spot where Brandon and Jim’s famous basketball hoop used to hang. 🙁 Mike and I actually knew this was coming, as Jack had mentioned he had plans to install a new garage on the property last December during our interior tour of the home, but it was still sad to see nonetheless. I am not a person that handles change very well anyway, and being that my parents just last week decided to sell the house we’ve lived in ever since moving to Southern California a decade ago, I’ve been having to deal with a lot of it lately. Granted I moved out of that house a year and a half ago, but that’s entirely beside the point. 😉 So, when I saw that my beloved 90210 house had also been altered, it was almost too much to bear. And while Jack says that some change can actually be for the better, I’ll take the status quo over something new any day. 🙂
Pictured above is what’s currently left of the Walsh garage. I told Jack he should seriously consider selling pieces of the rubble on eBay, like the pieces of the Berlin Wall that were sold back in the 90s, but I don’t think he took me seriously. 😉
And here is the empty footprint where the Walsh garage – and basketball hoop – used to stand.
Pictured above is the garage area as it appeared in December of 2008.
And what it looks like today. So sad. See what I mean? It truly is the end of an era!
Jack also removed the little patio area that used to be located just outside of the Walsh’s backdoor – an area which the producers of 90210 had built especially for the filming of the show. 🙁
Pictured above is what that patio area used to look like.
Our visit to the Walsh house wasn’t an entirely sad event, though. As always, Jack regaled us with some fabulous tales from the days when the show was filmed on his property. And, let me tell you, I just cannot get enough of those stories! I could literally listen to Jack talk all day long! Which Mike and I pretty much did – we were there for close to two hours! Not kidding! Jack has to be one of THE nicest guys on the planet, I swear! One story he told us had us absolutely cracking up. Apparently, a few months back, a fan from Belgium came to the house and asked to see the inside. Jack’s wife was hesitant about doing so, but the girl was very persistent, so she eventually showed her the area just inside the front door. Well, the girl took one look at the inside and completely burst into tears. Apparently, she thought the show was actually filmed inside of the real life house and expected it to look exactly the same in person as it does on TV and she became terribly upset when that was not the case. If only she had read my blog before stalking the house, she would have been saved some heartache. 😉 One interesting little tidbit of information that Jack shared with us that I found fascinating was that there were actually three houses being considered for the Walsh residence once the series got picked up by Fox. The three residences were Jack’s house, which ended up being chosen, Jack’s neighbor’s house directly to the east (pictured above) . . .
. . . and the house located across the street (pictured above). I think they made the right choice, don’t you think? How different the show would have been – at least to me – if one of the other houses had been chosen. The house across the street from Jack’s was eventually used as both the residence of Melissa, aka 90210’s Baby Mama, in the Season One episode entitled “One Man and a Baby” and the backyard area was used as Tiffany Morgan’s backyard in the Season One episode entitled “Every Dream Has Its Price”, both of which I blogged about here.
Ironically enough, Jack also told us that the very same backyard also stood in for Steve Sander’s backyard in the Season One episode entitled “Higher Education”.
Another little bit of 90210 trivia that Jack clued us into was the fact that the front yard of the house located directly west of Jack’s masqueraded as the backyard of Steve and Janet’s neighbor’s home in the Season 10 episode entitled “The Easter Bunny”.
In the episode, Steve and Janet erroneously believe that her parent’s dog, whom they are pet-sitting at the time, killed their neighbor’s pet rabbit, so the two of them concoct a plan to replace it with a new rabbit. Because Jack’s neighbor’s house doesn’t have a backyard with much open space, producers dressed the front yard area – just to the west of the home’s front door – and added a fence and a gate to make it appear as if it was really the home’s backyard. So interesting!
One thing I noticed while in Jack’s backyard was that the Walsh house actually has two small upstairs balconies, not just one as I had previously believed. I recognized the smaller of the two balconies from the Season One episode entitled “Isn’t It Romantic” the last time I stalked the house. And this time, I immediately recognized the other balcony from the Season One episode entitled “Seventeen Year Itch”, which I had randomly watched the night beforehand. 🙂 In the episode, Cindy Walsh is shown pining over her former fling Glen Evans while standing out on the balcony looking up at the stars. And while the balcony looks a bit different today than it did when it appeared on 90210 – a cement awning has since been added – it was still very cool to see it in person nonetheless. 🙂
And another little bit of trivia – according to Jack, the exterior light located just to the left of the balcony door is the very light that used to be located on his front porch during the 90210 years. It was purchased by producers to match the light located on the front porch set that had been built at the studio.
The highlight of the day, though, had to be when – are you sitting down for this????? – Mike asked Jack if the two of us could each possibly have one of the roof tiles from his former garage. Jack thought we were incredibly silly to want such a thing, but he happily obliged. Thank goodness we stalked the place before all of the rubble had been removed! And, to top it all off, he even signed the tiles for us! Can you believe it????? I was absolutely DYING! I mean now I can actually say that I OWN A PIECE OF THE 90210 HOUSE!! I OWN A PIECE OF THE 90210 HOUSE!!!!!!!! How incredibly cool is that??? I was literally pinching myself the whole drive home and I almost still can’t believe it happened!!!!! 🙂 So, I guess what Jack said is actually true – some change can be for the better, because had he not dismantled his garage, we never would have been given a part of it. And while I, of course, would prefer that the Walsh garage was still standing, being given a real piece of the show isn’t such a bad consolation. 🙂 And I will of course take photographs and report back to my fellow stalkers once the new Walsh garage has been completed – it’s going to look totally different, by the way – but according to Jack, that won’t be for about six months.
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Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂
Stalk It: Casa Walsh is located at 1675 East Altadena Drive in Altadena. Please keep in mind that this is a private residence and please do not disturb the owners. It was a fluke that Mike and I were lucky enough to have been given a tour of the home, but this is not a regular occurrence. I’d hate to have people bothering Jack for tours due to the fact that I put this information on the internet, so please be respectful of his privacy. 🙂 The two houses which producers also considered using as the Walsh house can be found at 1689 and 1690 East Altadena Drive. 1690 East Altadena was also used as 90210’s Baby Mama’s house and its backyard was used as both Steve Sander’s backyard and Marianne Moore’s backyard during Season One. The house which stood in for Steve and Janet’s neighbor’s house in “The Easter Bunny” episode can be found at 1665 East Altadena Drive.
One filming location that has pretty much been the bane of Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and my existence for quite some time now is the home that the Walsh family lived in during the very first of episode of Beverly Hills, 90210. Mike and I fondly, and sometimes not so fondly – LOL – refer to this location as “The Pilot House” since it was used in one episode and one episode only of our favorite 90’s series – the pilot episode. The home was never seen again on the series and the question as to why the Walshes lived in a different house when the show began than in later episodes has remained a location mystery for the past twenty years. It’s actually quite common, though, for certain elements of a television series, i.e. locations or actors, to be changed after a pilot episode is filmed. Pilots are usually filmed with extremely small budgets months before regular series filming begins. After a pilot is filmed, it is then shopped around to different networks in the hopes of being sold. The sad truth is that less than twenty five percent of the television pilots that are filmed ever get picked up by the networks, so producers aren’t usually willing to spend a boatload of money to shoot them. But even so the questions as to where the original Walsh home was located and as to why the Walsh home changed from the traditional style home pictured above to the famous Spanish style home that we all know and love have never been answered. Until now! 🙂
A few weeks ago while Mike was watching the pilot episode of 90210 he noticed the number 130 located above the front door of the Walsh home – a little location clue neither of us had picked up on before. (Pictured above). So pretty much immediately the two of us started searching 100 blocks in Los Angeles and its surrounding areas. We must have scrutinized almost every single square inch of L.A. looking for this house! With no luck, I might add. Mike’s instincts kept telling him that the house was located in a gated community due to the fact that the street in front of the home appeared extremely narrow on TV. But, knowing that the shooting budget for the pilot was most likely meager and that filming on a private road is usually a whole lot more costly than filming on your average city street, I disagreed with him. Until last week, that is.
While driving through Brentwood with my boyfriend last week I saw a gated community that I had never noticed before. I could tell just by driving by that it bore a striking resemblance to the 90210 pilot neighborhood. So when I got home that night I did some cyberstalking and quickly found a house in the community with a 130 address that looked a whole lot like the Walsh’s first Beverly Hills home. But I couldn’t be certain it was the Pilot House until I saw the property with my own two eyes. And I was really worried that, being that the home is located in a gated community, I would never get that chance. Well, I must have a guardian angel watching over me, because on a whim, last weekend, I asked my boyfriend to drive by the neighborhood. I knew there was a house for sale just up the road from the pilot house and I had a bit of a hunch. Sure enough – right as we drove up to the community, there on a sign in big red letters were the words I was hoping beyond all hope to see – OPEN HOUSE! 🙂 YAY! And that was my ticket in!
Let me tell you, as we came around the corner and the Pilot House came into view, I was so excited I thought my heart was going to beat right out of my chest!!!! 🙂 I was pinching myself the whole time! It was so surreal to finally be standing there in front of a filming location I had wondered about for almost twenty years! I almost felt as if any second I would wake up at home in bed only to realize that none of it was real. LOL The Pilot House is a lot smaller in person than it appeared on the show, but otherwise, even twenty years later, it looks EXACTLY the same as it did on 90210! And I could not have been more ecstatic to finally be seeing it with my own two eyes!!!!! The neighborhood where the Pilot House is located is really beautiful, too, with towering trees, huge lawns, and hilly, winding roads. The house for sale wasn’t too shabby, either – yes, of course, we went to go see it! 🙂
And once I determined that the home was located in a gated community, the other part of the 90210 pilot house mystery was solved, too. Upon entering, I just happened to ask the guard on duty at the guard shack if the community allowed filming of any sort to take place on the premises. He told me that in fact filming is not allowed and he laughed as if he gets asked that question all the time. I am sure location scouts come a-knockin’ at the guard shack door all too often. My best guess is that back in 1990, when the pilot episode was filmed, there was no ban on filming in the neighborhood. The pilot house was probably the first home on the premises ever used for filming of any sort. And I am pretty sure it must have belonged to someone on the production team – ie. the director, producer, art director, etc. It actually happens more often than you’d think that someone involved with a lower budget production will offer up their home for filming to keep costs down. Because the Pilot House is a beautiful home located in an upscale community, and since the 90210 pilot budget was most likely quite small, I think that is exactly what happened. Otherwise I just don’t see how they could have afforded to film there. If you’ve seen the pilot episode as many times as I have, you’ll remember that most of the location shooting at the Walsh house took place at night, which I am sure angered quite a few neighbors. Night shoots usually last from sunset to sunrise and can be loud, messy, and annoying to anyone whose house is nearby. So I am gonna go out on a limb and say that during the production of 90210, a few of the neighbors probably got a little miffed about the filming and as soon as the pilot wrapped, members of the small community (there are only 67 houses on the property) made certain nothing like that would ever happen again. So when Beverly Hills, 90210 got picked up as a series three to six months later, the producers were left without a home to use for filming. And that’s how we ended up with Casa Walsh. 🙂
Now we can FINALLY put to bed one of the greatest filming location mysteries of all time. Now if only I could find that darn Girls Just Want To Have Fun apartment! 🙂
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂
Stalk It: The 90210 Pilot House is located at 130 North Gunston Drive in the Brentwood Circle community. Please remember that this home is located in a private, gated community, and unless they open their gates for a reason (ie. an open house), you should not be on the property.
