March 2013 – IAMNOTASTALKER

March 27, 2013May 22, 2013

The O’Neill House from "Beverly Hills, 90210"

While perusing the article “The Ultimate Guide to Hidden L.A.” in the February 2013 issue of Los Angeles Magazine, I came across a blurb about the O’Neill House in Beverly Hills – one of Southern California’s most unique residences – and recognized the place immediately. I had seen the property featured in a production a year or so prior, became mesmerized by its whimsical architecture and immediately set about tracking it down, which I did fairly quickly. For the life of me, though, I now cannot remember what production it was. I am only 35 – aren’t I a little young for my memory to be failing? Winking smile My gut is saying that the house popped up in an episode of Californication because I distinctly remember first searching for it in the Venice area – Californication is filmed almost entirely in and around Venice Beach – but I scanned through the Grim Cheaper’s DVDs of the series yesterday and did not spot the abode anywhere. I also contacted fellow stalker Geoff, who chronicles Californication filming locales on his 90210Locations website, but he did not recognize the home at all. I am now starting to doubt that Californication is the correct show. At this point, who knows? I decided to stalk the O’Neill House, anyway, while visiting L.A. a few weeks back in the hopes that I would eventually remember what production had been filmed there, but I still have yet to do so. Randomly enough, though, while scanning through early episodes of Beverly Hills, 90210 to make screen captures for yesterday’s post on The Peach Pit, I spotted the property in a very brief scene and just about had a heart attack. It always comes back to 90210 for this stalker. Smile

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In 1978, an art dealer named Don O’Neill and his wife, Sandy, decided to remodel the guest home of their traditional residence in the Art Nouveau-style of Don’s favorite architect, Antoni Gaudi. That guest house is pictured below and is actually the most famous portion of the property.

As you can see below, the detailing on it is nothing short of spectacular.

No matter what one’s architectural style preferences may be, I can honestly say that the residence is amazing to see in person. I don’t know that I would ever want to live there, but I sure could not get enough of looking at the place’s exterior.

Check out the molded fish sculpture to the right of the doorway that conceals what I believe is either a camera or a light fixture. As I said before, the detailing is spectacular!

After construction of the guest house was complete, Don and Sandy decided to rebuild the main part of the house in the same style. Sadly though, Don passed away before the project was finished, but I believe that Sandy still owns the property to this day.

The dwelling, which was designed by architect Tom Oswalt, boasts five bedrooms, six baths, 5,181 square feet of living space, a 0.34-acre plot of land, a pool, a library, maid’s quarters, and a boatload of ornate tile work. As you can see below, the front of the home is much less adorned than the back. According to the fabulous book Los Angeles Attractions, all of the rooms were built in a round or oval shape. You can check out some fabulous interior photographs of the property here.

The O’Neill house is shown very briefly in the Season 1 episode of Beverly Hills, 90210 titled “The First Time”, in the scene in which Brandon Walsh (Jason Priestley) shows his former girlfriend, Sheryl (Paula Irvine), who is visiting from Minnesota, around Beverly Hills. As they drive through the city, Sheryl takes pictures of various ostentatious residences, one of which is the O’Neill House.

The O’Neill house was also where Jesse Lujack (Richard Gere) stole a baby blue Thunderbird convertible In the 1983 movie Breathless.

In the 1986 thriller 8 Million Ways to Die, the residence was where Angel Moldonado (Andy Garcia) lived. In the movie, Angel talks quite a bit about Antoni Gaudi and how he inspired the unusual home. Areas of the property that were shown in the flick include the guest house;

the breezeway between the guest house and the main house;

the living room of the main house;

and the kitchen.

I am still at a loss as to the other production I saw the O’Neill house featured in, so if any of my fellow stalkers recognize it, please let me know!

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.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The O’Neill House, from “The First Time” episode of Beverly Hills, 90210, is located at 507 North Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. The guest house is located behind the property and can be viewed from the alley that runs north off of Park Way in between North Rodeo Drive and North Camden Drive.

March 26, 2013March 26, 2013

The Apple Pan from “Beverly Hills, 90210”

While the Grim Cheaper and I were out and about doing some stalking in the West L.A. area two weekends ago, we happened to pass by The Apple Pan, the exterior of which masqueraded as the original Peach Pit on fave show Beverly Hills, 90210. Finding ourselves both hungry, we decided to pop in for a bite to eat, which turned out to be quite the magical experience for this stalker, let me tell you! So, even though I have stalked and blogged about The Apple Pan once before – very, very briefly, way back in May 2008 (you can read that post here) – because it was such a short write-up and because I did not venture inside during that particular visit, I figured the place was most-definitely worthy of a re-hash.

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The Apple Pan was first established by Alan and Ellen Baker on April 11th, 1947 and, amazingly enough, still currently stands in the exact same spot that it did on that opening day. Even more astounding is the fact that the eatery is still owned and operated by the Baker family over six decades later! Alan and Ellen made the fortuitous decision to purchase the land on which The Apple Pan now stands (long before they ever built the restaurant, in fact), and, thankfully, despite countless – and very large – offers from developers to sell, held onto it, which is a big part of how it has managed to survive for so long.

Nothing, and I do mean NOTHING, about the eatery has been altered since its inception – not the menu (which consists of age-old family recipes), not the seating, not the décor, not even the employees, most of whom have worked there for well over thirty years! Such a refreshing thing to see in a city where change seems to be the norm.

The Apple Pan menu, which you can take a look at here, consists of a scant 11 items – two burgers (the Steakburger and the Hickoryburger), five sandwiches [Southern Baked Ham, Swiss Cheese, Combination (a ham and cheese combo), Tuna Salad, and Egg Salad], three pies (Pecan Pie, Fresh Apple Pie and Cream Pie), and French Fries, which are simply uh-ma-zing! According to a 2007 Los Angeles Times article, of the stalwart menu, owner Martha Gamble (Alan and Ellen’s daughter) said, “My dad was a perfectionist. He tried recipes out at home until it was the way he wanted it.” Alan is my kinda guy – why mess with something that is obviously working? There are also a few “secret” menu items available to those in the know, including Grilled Cheese, Tuna Melts, and Pickled Peppers.

I opted for the Steakburger with cheese and, even though I am not AT ALL a meat person, absolutely LOVED it. As you can see below, The Apple Pan serves its burgers standing up and wrapped in paper, utilizing much the same method as Johnny Rockets restaurants. Apparently, Johnny Rockets founder Ronn Teitelbaum used the The Apple Pan as the model for his popular diner chain. There are other similarities, as well, including the use of small cardboard plates to serve French Fries and ketchup, as you can see above.

The Apple Pan serves its sodas (Coca-Cola, Root Beer, Orange, and Dr Pepper) in paper cones that sit inside of stainless steel cup-holders, which apparently used to be commonplace back in the 1940s. This stalker had never seen anything like it before, though, and thought it was so incredibly cool!

The tiny, 26-stool, Zagat-rated eatery is so immensely popular that it is pretty much standing-room only every single day of the week (except for Monday, when it is closed). Even celebs have been known to frequent the place. Such stars as the Jonas Brothers, Tori Amos, Michael Kors, Emma Stone, Rob Lowe, Rob Reiner, Rodney Dangerfield, Sammy Davis Jr., Joel Siegel, Lee Iacocca, and Magic Johnson have all been spotted there at one time or another. Drew Barrymore and then fiancé/now husband Will Kopelman even ate Valentine’s Day dinner there in 2012. Of the eatery, Drew told the JustJared website, “It’s an institution basically and you HAVE to try it. You’ll love it.”

The exterior of the Apple Pan showed up only twice on Beverly Hills, 90210. It first appeared at the very end of the Season 1 episode titled “Every Dream Has Its Price (Tag)”, in the scene in which Dylan McKay (Luke Perry) took Brandon Walsh (Jason Priestley) out for a piece of “the best pie in L.A.”

It then showed up again in the episode titled “One on One”, in the scene in which Brandon stopped by his workplace to ask Nat Bussichio (Joe E. Tata) for his paycheck and, while waiting, ran into James Townsend (Tico Wells), his rival for a spot on the West Beverly High basketball team. Ironically, in the scene’s establishing shot of The Peach Pit, The Apple Pan sign was visible, as you can see below! LOL Oddly enough, in the very next episode, which was titled “Higher Education”, The Apple Pan had been replaced with a different exterior – one at 1027 Abbot Kinney Boulevard in Venice, which I blogged about here. That location was used throughout the end of Season 1, until it, too, was replaced by a third exterior in the Season 2 episode titled “Pass, Not Pass.” That third and final exterior, which I blogged about here, can be found at 45 South Fair Oaks Avenue in Pasadena.

While I knew (thanks to Darren Star’s DVD commentary for the Season 1 episode of Beverly Hills, 90210 titled “Spring Dance”) that The Apple Pan had served as the model for The Peach Pit’s interior set, I was not at all prepared for how closely the real life restaurant would resemble its onscreen counterpart. When I walked through The Apple Pan’s front doors, I honestly felt like I had stepped right inside The Pit! For a die-hard 90210 fan like myself, the experience was nothing short of exhilarating! Not only is The Apple Pan set up exactly like The Peach Pit, with a small U-shaped counter surrounding an open kitchen . . .

. . . but, as you can see below, the doors and windows are also an exact match.

As is the wood wall paneling . . .

. . . and the vintage cash register! Love it, love it, love it!

In a 2008 interview with the Zap2It website, Jason Priestley mentioned The Apple Pan, saying, “That’s what the Peach Pit was modeled after. If you watch the early episodes of 90210, the Peach Pit is laid out almost exactly like The Apple Pan. Whenever I’d have dinner with Charles Rosin, the show runner, we’d go there. “ He also calls the burgers “amazing.” Smile

The Apple Pan was also featured in THREE different Huell Howser specials over the years – one in 1992, one in 1996, and one in 2009.

You can watch one of those specials by clicking below.

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.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Apple Pan, aka The Peach Pit from Beverly Hills, 90210, is located at 10801 West Pico Boulevard in West Los Angeles.

March 25, 2013March 24, 2013

A Breather

This past week was a particularly trying one for me, during which both of my parents wound up in the hospital – my dad expectedly for a scheduled surgery and my mom completely unexpectedly (and rather scarily, I might add) when she fainted in the pre-operating room while my dad was being prepped. They are both doing well now (thank God!), but after spending the majority of the week caring for them, I needed a couple of days “off” to regroup, which is why I only posted two new columns last week.

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The Grim Cheaper and I did get to spend yesterday (his birthday) at The Living Desert, though, which cheered me up to no end. I even got to ride a camel – and finally try out the new telephoto lens that he gifted me for Christmas (it’s amazing!). Anyway, I will be back tomorrow – relaxed and refreshed – with a whole new post.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

March 21, 2013March 20, 2013

Loretta Young’s Former West Hollywood House

Once I discovered that Loretta Young’s Palm Springs house (which I blogged about on Tuesday) was not, in fact, the place where Judy Lewis (the legendary actress’ secret love child with Clark Gable) learned the truth about her birth, I set out to track down the location where the encounter actually did take place. And thanks to Judy’s fascinating 1994 biography, Uncommon Knowledge, that endeavor was a snap.

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A woman obviously after my own heart, Judy named each chapter of her book after the street she lived on during the corresponding time period of her life. Um, LOVE it! The chapter chronicling the years 1955 to 1958 is titled “The Flores House” and, thankfully, featured a photograph (pictured below) of the front of Judy’s former abode in which an address number of 1308 was visible. From there I looked at the Google Street View image of the residence located at 1308 North Flores Street and, voila, it was the same residence pictured in Uncommon Knowledge. Thank you, Judy! So I ran right out to stalk the place while the Grim Cheaper and I were visiting L.A. this past weekend. (As you can see below, the exterior of the property still looks almost exactly the same today as it did when Judy lived there almost six decades ago.)

There seems to be quite a bit of misinformation about the dwelling floating around online, most of which states that it was specifically built for Loretta in 1927. While the original construction does indeed date back to 1927, it was not until 1952 that Loretta and her then husband, Tom Lewis, purchased the site, which at the time was actually an upscale apartment complex consisting of “two-storied maisonettes with individual private gardens”, from millionaire Huntington Hartford. The couple planned on using part of the property as a family home while renting out the remaining units for income. Loretta’s mother, Gladys Belzer, who was one of the most sought-after interior decorators in all of Los Angeles at the time, and famed architect John Elgin Woolf immediately began an extensive renovation of the site and the family moved into a leased beach house in Santa Monica (one that had formerly belonged to Harry Warner at 605 Pacific Coast Highway) while waiting for their new home to be completed.

The family finally moved into the Flores house sometime in 1955. Of the residence, Judy said, “Grandma had done a superb job of redesigning and redecorating. Our house had white-marble floors in the entry and black marble in the atrium; the ceilings were high and the rooms flooded in sunlight. Word spread rapidly and the maisonettes were occupied by members of the movie community, Joan Crawford and Rod Steiger among the first tenants.” Rock Hudson also supposedly lived on the premises at one point in time. The Flores residence boasted five bedrooms, four baths, 6,000 square feet of living space, several fireplaces, a formal dining room, high ceilings, hardwood flooring, separate maid’s quarters (natch!), a pool, and a pool house. According to fave book Hollywood: The Movie Lover’s Guide, Loretta sold the property sometime during the 1970s to actress Alexis Smith and her husband Craig Stevens.

As you can see in the below photographs from Uncommon Knowledge as compared to photographs from the property’s 2008 MLS listing, the living room area, with its built-it bookshelves, still looks much the same today as it did when Judy lived there.

The doors that Loretta famously twirled through each week on her wildly popular television series The Loretta Young Show were based upon the actual living room doors of the Flores Street house. So incredibly cool!

Judy learned of her secret heritage while visiting her mother at the Flores house during Labor Weekend 1966, six years after Clark Gable’s death. She confronted Loretta late one night in the actress’ opulent bedroom and before begrudgingly admitting the truth – that Judy was in fact her biological daughter with the “King of Hollywood” – Loretta went into the bathroom and threw up. After finally learning the real story, Judy said, “A feeling of utter relief went through me. It was as if I had been holding my breath for the past several hours and suddenly I could breathe again. Finally all doubts were gone, I had a name and a face and an identity to the other missing half of myself. I had known that my mother was my birth mother for years, even though we had never discussed it, but the mystery of my father was finally solved. Now I knew definitively once and for all that I was really Clark Gable’s daughter. I almost laughed with relief. It had been such a long and difficult journey to get to this moment. And now, finally, after all these years, I was past it, on the other side – a whole person.” When Judy published Uncommon Knowledge in 1994, Loretta publicly denied her daughter’s claims and it was not until three months after her own death in August 2000, when her authorized biography, Forever Young, was released, that Loretta finally admitted the truth – from beyond the grave. It is a heartbreaking story from beginning to end and I cannot even imagine the pain that Judy endured throughout her lifetime.

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.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Loretta Young’s longtime former home is located at 1308 North Flores Street in West Hollywood. Note – Loretta’s former address is also sometimes listed as 8313 Fountain Avenue in West Hollywood.

March 19, 2013March 19, 2013

Loretta Young’s Palm Springs House

While doing research on the Playa del Rey house where Judy Lewis (secret love child of Loretta Young and Clark Gable) was born (which I blogged about here), I came across a November 2011 The New York Times article about Lewis’ recent death which stated that the actress/psychotherapist was finally told the true story of her birth in 1966 while at her mother’s home in Palm Springs. Well, I, of course, immediately set about doing some cyber-stalking in order to track down the address of the Desert property and found it fairly quickly (thanks to The Movieland Directory website), and then dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out to stalk it just a few days later. In the meantime, I picked up Judy’s autobiography, Uncommon Knowledge, at my local library and started reading. (It is fabulous, by the way!) I had not yet gotten to the chapter that covered Loretta’s strained confession when I stalked her Palm Springs abode but, come to find out, not only was it NOT where the incident took place, but the actress did not even own the residence at the time! Think it’s too late for The Times to print a retraction?

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In The New York Times article, it is stated, “Ms. Lewis, a former actress who died on Friday at the age of 76, was 31 before she discerned the scope of the falsehoods that cast her, a daughter of Hollywood royalty, into what she later described as a Cinderella-like childhood. Confronted by Ms. Lewis, Young finally made a tearful confession in 1966 at her sprawling home in Palm Springs, Calif.” As it turns out, though, that confrontation actually took place at Loretta’s longtime house in West Hollywood, which I stalked this past weekend and will be blogging about soon. Being that Judy wrote a book that described Loretta’s confession in great detail, I am unsure of how such misinformation ever got printed. Especially considering the fact that Judy also stated in her book, which was published in 1994, that the last time she was ever in her mom’s home was on Mother’s Day 1986, seven long years before Loretta purchased a residence in Palm Springs.

It was not until 1993 that Loretta and her third husband, Jean Lewis (the famed Oscar-winning costume designer who created the dress my girl Marilyn Monroe wore when she famously sang “Happy Birthday” to President John Kennedy in 1962) purchased the Deepwell Estates home. At the time, the three-bedroom, three-and-a-half bath property, which was originally built in 1964, boasted fourteen-foot ceilings, indirect lighting, a pool, a suspended fireplace, and a circular living room that was decorated all in white. According to a September 2010 Palm Springs Life article, Loretta tended to the home’s exterior hedges herself, using a pair of scissors, and also decorated the site with a myriad of angels each Christmas. What I wouldn’t give to have been able to see that!

Sadly, Jean Louis passed away on April 20th, 1997 while sitting on the residence’s back patio. Loretta continued to live on the premises until her death at the age of 87 on August 12, 2000. The house was then sold by her estate in 2001 for $630,000, which, according to the fabulous book Palm Springs Confidential, was almost twice what she and Jean had paid for it in 1993.

While doing research for today’s post, I learned that one significant event between Loretta and Judy did actually take place at the Palm Springs property. In 2001, Judy appeared on Larry King Live and stated that Loretta had invited her to the Desert home shortly after Jean’s death in the hopes of mending their relationship, which they eventually did.

The couple who now own the property were nice enough to open it up to the public in 2011 for a party to raise the money needed to posthumously honor Loretta with a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs Walk of Stars. The star was dedicated on May 19th, 2011 and is located at 121 South Palm Canyon Drive.

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 E.J., from The Movieland Directory, for finding this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Loretta Young’s Palm Springs house is located at 1075 Manzanita Avenue in the Deepwell Estates area of Palm Springs.

March 15, 2013April 26, 2018

The Safari Inn from “True Romance”

One oft-filmed-at locale that I had known about for ages, but had never gotten around to stalking was the historic Safari Inn on West Olive Avenue in Burbank. I had driven by the motel countless times over the years – I get my hair done right across the street, in fact – and, even though I knew of the site’s prestigious filming pedigree, for some odd reason, I never thought to stalk it. Then, a couple of weeks ago, my hair stylist happened to be running late, so I decided to pop on over to the decades-old inn to finally do some proper stalking of the place.

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The Safari Inn was originally constructed in 1955 and, amazingly enough, still looks almost exactly the same today as it did then.

The site is most famous for its iconic neon sign, which has stood as a beacon on Olive Avenue, beckoning passersby and road-trippers alike, since the day the motel was founded.

Today, the boutique hotel, which was just recently renovated, boasts 55 rooms and suites, most with their own kitchen or kitchenette, a fitness center, laundry facilities, free parking, and complimentary shuttle service to and from the Burbank Airport. Not bad for around $100 a night. And the traveler reviews on TripAdvisor all look to be pretty favorable, to boot.

The Safari Inn also features a large, second-story patio deck . . .

. . . which overlooks a pool.

I absolutely love the pool’s feather-shaped cut-out, which you can see in the bottom left of the photograph below and which matches the feather on the inn’s famous signage. So cute!

The Safari Inn’s most notable onscreen appearance was in 1993’s True Romance, where it masqueraded as the supposed Hollywood-area motel where Clarence Worley (Christian Slater) and Alabama Whitman (Patricia Arquette) stayed while visiting L.A. Some camera trickery and crafty editing was used to make the hotel appear as if it was located on Sunset Boulevard in the movie, though, and not in the heart of suburban Burbank.

The interior of Clarence and Alabama’s room was just a set and not an actual Safari Inn room. You can see what one of the hotel’s real life rooms looks like here. Despite this fact, a girl in one of my former acting classes booked the “True Romance room” for her True Romance-loving boyfriend’s birthday one year.

Because Clarence and Alabama’s door is never actually shown in the movie, I was not able to figure out what room was used for the exterior shots.

All I was able to ascertain was that it was a second floor room, located in the northwest corner of the property, in the vicinity of the area denoted with a pink arrow in the photograph below.

True Romance is hardly the first production to utilize the Safari Inn, though. Thanks to the L.A. Bizarro website, I learned that way back in 1970 the property masqueraded as the Sunshine Motor Inn where Shirley Renfrew Partridge (Shirley Jones) and her family stopped to take a shower after being sprayed by a skunk in the Season 1 episode of The Partridge Family titled “But the Memory Lingers On.”

In 1995’s Apollo 13, the Safari Inn stood in for the supposed Florida-area motel where Marilyn Lovell (Kathleen Quinlan) stayed the night before her husband, Jim Lovell (Tom Hanks), embarked on his mission to the moon.

In 2000, the motel was featured on the The Wallflowers’ sampler CD for (Breach).

In the Season 4 episode of Six Feet Under titled “Can I Come Up Now?”, which aired in 2004, the Safari Inn was where George Sibley (James Cromwell) and Ruth Fisher (Frances Conroy) visited George’s estranged son, Kyle, (James Waterston). In the episode, the exterior of the hotel is shown only very briefly.,

The interior of one of the Safari rooms was also used in the filming. It is while there that Kyle, who is somewhat agoraphobic, announces that he has purchased a $7,500 espresso machine so that he never has to leave his motel room. Now that’s an idea I can get behind! Winking smile

Thanks to fellow stalker Dal, I learned that the Safari Inn served as the finishing point for The Law Enforcement Desert Relay in the Season 4 episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation titled “Dead Ringer,” which also aired in 2004.

In the 2005 movie Coach Carter, the Safari Inn was where the Richmond High School basketball team stayed – and snuck out to go party – during the Bayhill Tournament Championship.

The real life interior of two of the Safari’s room were also used in the filming.

The Safari Inn also popped up in the Season 4 episode of Prison Break titled “The Price”, which aired in 2008, as the motel where Dr. Sara Tancredi (Sarah Wayne Callies) had a run in with Gretchen Morgan (Jodi Lyn O’Keefe – whom I did not even recognize in the role!).

One of the hotel’s real life rooms also appeared in the episode.

In 2009, the Safari Inn was where former child star Christine Rapp (Elizabeth Perkins) tried to hide out and wound up killing someone in the Season 8 episode of Monk titled “Mr. Monk’s Favorite Show.”

In the Season 7 episode of Desperate Housewives titled “Pleasant Little Kingdom”, which aired in 2010, the Safari Inn was where Gabrielle Solis (Eva Longoria) said goodbye to her switched-at-birth daughter, Grace Sanchez (Cecilia Balagot).

In 2012, the Safari Inn stood in for Sunset Boulevard’s Crystal Motel, where Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson (Kyra Sedgwick) discovered the body of Gwyneth Adler in the Season 7 episode of The Closer titled “Hostile Witness.” Only the interior of one of the Safari’s rooms appeared in the episode.

According to IMDB, both the Season 3 episode of T.J. Hooker titled “Undercover Affair” and the Season 7 episode of Falcon Crest titled “Legacies” were filmed at the Safari Inn, but I could not find copies of either with which to verify that information.

And while IMDB also states that the Season 1 episode of Southland titled “Mozambique” was filmed at the Safari Inn, that information is incorrect. “Mozambique” was actually filmed at the Saharan Motor Hotel located at 7212 Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood – a site I am going to have to stalk in the near future as it is where Patrick Swayze and his wife, Lisa Nieme, lived upon first moving to Los Angeles.

You can find me on Facebook here and on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And be sure to check out my latest post – I FINALLY wrote a new one – about mozzarella-stuffed meatballs on my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Safari Inn, from True Romance, is located at 1911 West Olive Avenue in Burbank. You can visit the motel’s official website here.

March 14, 2013March 13, 2013

The “Easy A” House

The Easy A location that I was most excited about stalking while in the Ojai area almost two years ago was, not surprisingly, the charming clapboard residence where Olive Penderghast (Emma Stone) lived with her unique family (notice they are all named after a food of some sort) – dad Dill (Stanley Tucci), mom Rosemary (Patricia Clarkson) and brother Chip (Bryce Clyde Jenkins). So imagine my disappointment when we arrived there only to discover that the home was located inside of Persimmon Hill, which the sign outside the entrance stated was “a private community”. And while there was no gate restricting access to the neighborhood, nor any “No Trespassing” signs posted, I have always been a by-the-book kind of girl, so I decided to pose for a picture by the Persimmon Hill sign instead of venturing past. Well, as luck would have it, a community resident happened to drive by while I was posing for the photo and asked what I was doing. When I explained that I was a huge fan of Easy A and had come to see Olive’s house, he told me that it would be absolutely fine to head on over there and snap some pics. WAHOO!

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Many months prior to my and the GC’s visit to Ojai, fellow stalker Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, had spent copious hours trying to track down Olive’s residence, all to no avail. Then, one day, he happened to notice the number 300 painted on the curb outside of the home in the scene in which Lobster Todd (Penn Badgley) dropped Olive off after her disastrous date with Anson (Jake Sandvig) at the local Lobster Shack (which I blogged about here). And voila! Once he had a house number, finding the location was a snap.

As you can see below, Olive’s house was absolutely idyllic onscreen in Easy A.

And I am very happy to report that in person it did NOT disappoint. I love, love, love this residence. It reminds me a bit of the house where the Newton family lived in the 1992 comedy Beethoven, which I blogged about here.

And while I am fairly certain that the real life interior of the home was also used in the flick, I could not find any interior photographs with which to verify that hunch.

According to fave website Zillow, in real life, the residence, which was originally built in 1986, boasts four bedrooms, four baths, 2,894 square feet of living space, and sits on a huge 2.11-acre plot of land.

The property was last sold in 1998 (for $700,000) – and it’s not very hard to see why. If I owned that place, I would never let go of it either!

Best closing shot ever, by the way. I am a sucker for any ’80s movie reference. Smile

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 Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong blog, for finding this location! Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Olive’s house from Easy A is located at 300 Longhorn Lane in Ojai. Please remember that this home is inside of a private community and that permission is needed to enter.

March 12, 2013March 11, 2013

The Lobster Shack from “Easy A”

Another location from fave movie Easy A that fellow stalker Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong blog, informed me of while the Grim Cheaper and I were out and about doing some stalking in the Ojai area almost two years ago was the Carrows Restaurant that masqueraded as the Lobster Shack where Woodchuck Todd (Penn Badgley) worked in the flick. So we drove right on over there shortly before heading home that afternoon. And while the Carrows chain serves up some of the best chicken strips and ranch dressing that this stalker has ever sampled, unfortunately, because it was getting late and we had a long drive home ahead of us, we did not wind up eating on the premises that particular evening.

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Even though we were not dining onsite, the staff at Carrows could NOT have been nicer and answered all of my silly little questions about the filming. The hostess informed me that the Easy A shoot had taken place not in the main section of the restaurant, but in an auxiliary room that is only used during the eatery’s busiest hours. And she was even nice enough to open up the room for us and turn on the lights so that I could snap some photographs of it. LOVE it!

The Lobster Shack popped up only once in Easy A, in the scene in which Anson (Jake Sandvig) took Olive Penderghast (Emma Stone) – in a clever twist, Penderghast is an anagram for “pretend shag” – out on a less-than-stellar first date. Interestingly, according to a September 2010 Ojai Valley News Blog article, Easy A director Will Gluck, who is a long-time resident of the “Shangri-La of Southern California,” decided to film in the city he calls home “because I wanted the town to be one of my ‘characters’ in the script. Ojai was the perfect place to capture this. It’s also the most beautiful town in the world, and I tried to make it look as good as we all know it to be.”

As you can see below, Carrows Restaurant was dressed heavily with marine-themed décor and white twinkle lights for the shoot.

A lobster tank was even brought in and positioned on the front side of one of the restaurant’s real life planters for the scene.

In what turned out to be a massive stroke of good luck, while I did not have any Easy A screen captures on hand for reference, I somehow managed to pose for a picture in the exact same spot where Olive sat in the scene. Why I chose that particular booth to pose, I will never know, but something in my memory clicked when I saw it and I had a hunch it was where filming had taken place. For whatever reason, my brain holds onto the oddest filming factoids, but, hey, I’ll take it! Winking smile

Olive’s booth is the second booth in from the back side of the room and is denoted with a pink arrow in the photographs below.

The Carrows parking lot also appeared in Easy A, although I accidentally took photographs from the opposite angle of what was shown onscreen.

As you can see below, all of the Carrows signage was swapped out for Lobster Shack signage during the shoot. What I wouldn’t give to have been there to see all of that in person!

In the scene, Anson’s car was parked in the space denoted with a pink X in the aerial view pictured below.

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 Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong blog, for finding this location! Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Carrows Restaurant, aka the Lobster Shack from Easy A, is located at 211 West Ojai Avenue in Ojai. Olive’s date scene was filmed in the restaurant’s auxiliary room, which is situated just to left (east) of the front entrance.

March 11, 2013March 8, 2013

The “Easy A” Coffee Shop

Last Friday, while reading the latest post on Emily Schuman’s fabulous Cupcakes and Cashmere blog, in which she mentioned a recent overnight trip she had taken to Ojai, I was reminded of a stalking adventure along Highway 126 that the Grim Cheaper and I had embarked upon almost two full years ago. We had originally headed up that way to stalk Georgia Rule locations in Santa Paula (which I have yet to blog about), but wound up in Ojai, aka the “Shangri-La of Southern California”, in the late afternoon hours and both absolutely fell in love with the place. While we were there, I happened to text fellow stalker Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, to see if he knew of anything that had been filmed in the area and, as luck would have it, he did! He texted me right back with a list of pretty much every locale featured in fave movie Easy A, one of which was the Ojai Coffee Roasting Company. Well, as you can imagine, once I read the word “coffee”, I immediately told the GC to head on over there.

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Ojai, the name of which was taken from the Chumash Indian word for “moon” and is pronounced “oh-high”, is an absolutely idyllic little community nestled about 12 miles inland from Ventura. The quaint town (it is the smallest city in Ventura County) is known for its picturesque geography, health-minded resorts and charming downtown area. Thanks to a city ordinance, chain stores are, for the most part, restricted from setting up shop (there is no Starbucks within the city limits – egad!), which makes for a unique collection of family-owned and operated specialty stores and restaurants that attract thousands upon thousands of tourists each year. And while I badly wanted to nab a room for a spontaneous little staycation while we were there, because Ojai hotel rates are pretty astronomical, the GC was having none of that.

I was able to sample a latte from the Ojai Coffee Roasting Company, though, so there’s that. Winking smile The small java shop was originally founded in 1995 by Stacey Jones and I am very happy to report that it serves up some great coffee and tea. The baristas were also incredibly nice and answered all of my silly little questions about the filming. And the place is even something of a celebrity hot-spot! Reese Witherspoon apparently gets her java on at Ojai Coffee Roasting Company wherever she is in town and her friend Renee Zellweger stopped by while visiting Ojai for Reese’s wedding to Jim Toth.

Ojai Coffee Roasting Company popped up only once in Easy A, in the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it scene in which Olive Penderghast (Emma Stone) learns that her friend Brandon (Dan Byrd) has run off with a “big, hulking black guy.”

The baristas were even nice enough to tell me where Emma Stone stood in the scene so that I could pose for a picture there, although my positioning was a little too far forward. As you can see below, the blue and white ceramic water dispenser that was visible behind Emma in the scene was there in real life, too. Love it!

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 Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong blog, for finding this location! Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Ojai Coffee Roasting Company from Easy A is located at 337 East Ojai Avenue in Ojai. You can visit the shop’s official website here.

March 7, 2013March 6, 2013

Clark Gable’s Former House

Speaking of Clark Gable . . . another location that I stalked recently was the Encino-area ranch where the “King of Hollywood” lived for over two decades. I first read about this locale, as I did yesterday’s (the Playa del Rey house where Judy Lewis, Gable and Loretta Young’s secret love child, was born), in fellow stalker E.J.’s book Hollywood Death and Scandal Sites. So, while doing some solo San Fernando Valley stalking a few days before my and the Grim Cheaper’s big move to the desert, I figured I might as well stop by the residence to check it out.

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Clark Gable’s ranch was originally built in 1933 for director and founding member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Raoul Walsh. Gable and his then girlfriend, soon-to-be wife, Carole Lombard visited Walsh at his 20-acre property, which featured a nine-bedroom main house, a detached garage, citrus groves, alfalfa fields, a barn, a pigsty, a henhouse, and horse stables, and absolutely fell in love with it. When they heard that he was planning on selling the site, they jumped at the chance to purchase it, which they did in 1939, shortly after their nuptials, for a cool $50,000. According to E.J., at the time, the home’s entrance was located on Petit Drive (as you can see in this 1940 census, the original address was 4525 Petit Drive; it is now 4543 Tara Drive) and the property was surrounded by acres upon acres of orchards and fields. Tabloids quickly labeled the two-story clapboard residence “The House of Two Gables”.

Lombard tragically passed away in a plane crash just two years later, on January 16th, 1942, and it is said that Gable never recovered from his grief. Shortly after her death, he enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps and was sent to Europe to fight in World War II. Upon his return to America in 1944, he thought about selling the ranch, but ultimately decided to keep it and wound up living there with his fourth and fifth wives, Lady Sylvia Ashley and Kay Williams Spreckles, respectively.

Sadly, on November 5th, 1960, while changing a tractor tire in the ranch’s driveway, Gable suffered a heart attack. The following morning, he was taken to Hollywood Presbyterian hospital, where he passed away ten days later, on November 16th, 1960. Despite being married to Kay at the time, the actor was interred next to Carole Lombard at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale. Spreckles and John Clark Gable (Kay and Clark’s son and Clark’s only legitimate child, who was born four months after the actor’s death) continued to live at the ranch until 1973, at which point it was sold to developers. Financier Michael Milken later bought the place in October 1977 for $587,500 and it appears that he still owns it to this day. According to Zillow, the dwelling currently boasts seven bedrooms, nine baths, 7,093 square feet of living space, and a 1.17-acre lot.

As you can see below, the home’s wooden exterior archway . . .

. . . and crookedly-placed white picket fence still look exactly the same today as they did when Gable lived there. Sadly though, little else of the place is visible from the street. And while the house still stands in much the same form as it did during Gable’s time, the twenty acres that once surrounded it were subdivided during the 1980s and transformed into a housing tract named the Clark Gable Estates. The streets in the neighborhood, Tara Drive and Ashley Oaks, were named in honor of Gable’s most famous movie, Gone with the Wind, which I think is so incredibly cool. I wonder if someday a community will be named after my man Matt Lanter. One of the streets could even be dubbed “Liam Court”!

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 E.J., from The Movieland Directory website, for finding this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Clark Gable’s former house is located at 4543 Tara Drive in Encino.