Year: 2013

Mr. Y’s Apartment from "Behind the Candelabra"

Back in June, while doing research on the house where Liberace (Michael Douglas) lived in Behind the Candelabra (which I blogged about here), I came across a fabulous production slideshow about the movie on HBO.com. The slideshow featured behind-the-scenes images of several of the locations used in the biopic and one – the mid-century modern-style apartment where drug dealer Mr. Y (Nicky Katt) lived – had me absolutely drooling.

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The caption included with the image of the apartment (which is pictured below) stated, “Shot on location in Burbank, this penthouse was owned by Elvis Presley’s hairdresser and had been abandoned for years. Biomorphic plaster wall treatment was original to the unit.” Well, believe you me, I could NOT take my eyes off of that unique “biomorphic plaster wall treatment” and became bound and determined to track the place down and stalk it.

So I did a Google search for “penthouse” and “Burbank” and the first result to come back was a January 2013 Los Angeles Times article about a 1970s-era building with a penthouse located at 600 East Olive Avenue that had just been sold for $15.6 million to the Champion Real Estate Company. Unfortunately though, no photographs of the actual penthouse unit were posted online, so I was unable to verify if it was right location. Then, on a hunch, I did a Google search for “Behind the Candelabra” and “600 East Olive Avenue” and, sure enough, found this July 2012 posting on fave website OnLocationVacations in which a commenter named Steve shared that the flick was filming at that address. Thank you, Steve! So I ran right out to stalk the building while I was in L.A. two weekends ago.

The 62-unit building, which was formerly named “Villa 600”, but is now known as “Villa Olivia Apartments”, was originally constructed in 1973 by Burbank-area architect August Bacchetta and was still owned by the Bacchetta family up until the recent sale.

According to the L.A. Times article, the penthouse (pictured below in a real estate listing photo) boasts a whopping 8,000 square feet of living space, as well as a rooftop patio and pool. It was originally constructed to be used as an owner’s unit and, as stated in this article, was lived in by members of the Bacchetta family up until two years prior to the sale – which leads me to believe that it was never actually occupied by Elvis’ hairdresser (a man named Larry Geller) unless the family leased it out to him at some point in time. (It was most definitely never owned by Geller, though, as was stated in the Behind the Candelabra production notes.) Of the complex, real estate agent Tyler Stevens says, “It reflects an era gone by when builders constructed apartment buildings with an owner unit, and this particular owner unit was highly unusual.” Um, you can say that again!

The penthouse’s rooftop patio, which is absolutely massive, is semi-visible in the photographs below.

Sadly, the Champion Real Estate Company began renovating the building immediately upon purchasing it and plans are currently in the works to subdivide the penthouse (which is denoted with a pink arrow below) into two apartment units, as well as a common-area screening room and gym. Boo! You can see a rendering of what the site is going to look like post-remodel here.

Mr. Y’s apartment only appeared twice in Behind the Candelabra, in two very brief scenes. It first showed up in the scene in which Scott Thorson (Matt Damon) dropped by Mr. Y’s to score drugs after realizing that his longtime lover, Liberace, was most likely going to break up with him in the very near future.

It next popped up in the scene in which Scott, who has just been unceremoniously dumped by Liberace, is shown watching the pianist’s performance at the 54th Annual Academy Awards on TV. Unbelievably, very little of that amazing biomorphic plaster wall was shown in either scene. (According to a 2013 The New York Times article, the Mr. Y character was based on Scott Thorson’s real life drug dealer Eddie Nash, a nightclub owner who is said to have ordered the so-called Wonderland Murders.)

According to a super-nice construction worker that we happened to speak with while we were stalking the place, the penthouse (pictured below in an aerial view) is actually in fabulous condition, despite being vacant for several years. So I am guessing that the stained rug that appeared in Behind the Candelabra was set decoration and not the unit’s actual carpeting. Don’t quote me on that, though.

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Mr. Y’s apartment building from Behind the Candelabra is actually the Villa Olivia Apartments which are located at 600 East Olive Avenue in Burbank. You can visit the complex’s official website here.

August 9, 2013
Copley’s on Palm Canyon – Cary Grant’s Former Guesthouse

One location that I had been chomping at the bit to stalk for what seemed like ages was Copley’s on Palm Canyon – a restaurant created out of what is said to be Cary Grant’s former Palm Springs guest house. Because the eatery does not open until 6 p.m. each night, though (I am nothing if not an early bird), and because it is closed during the scorchingly hot summer months of July and August, I had never had the chance. Until this past May, that is, when the Grim Cheaper and I happened to find ourselves just down the street from Copley’s on a Sunday afternoon at around 5:45 p.m. Thankfully, it only took a little arm twisting to convince him to venture inside for a quick happy hour cocktail. And I am so glad that we did, because the place is simply fabulous!

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Copley’s, which is named after its England-born executive chef, Andrew Manion Copley, first opened its doors in December 2004. Andrew, accompanied by his wife, Juliana, landed in Palm Springs earlier that same year after culinary stints at numerous five-star sites including the Turtle Bay Resort in Oahu (where Forgetting Sarah Marshall was filmed), The Ritz-Carlton, San Francisco, The Park Lane Hotel and The Savoy in London, and The Lodge at Koele at the Four Seasons Resort Lana’i. Upon migrating to Palm Springs, the couple, along with business partner Greg Butterfield, purchased a recently-shuttered Persian restaurant named La Shank House located at what was once supposedly the guest house of Hollywood legend Cary Grant.

As the story goes (and I have, unfortunately, not been able to verify it), Cary purchased the property sometime during the 1940s and proceeded to use it as off-site guest quarters for visiting family and friends, many of whom were Hollywood royalty, through the 1950s. I am not quite sure where in Palm Springs Cary lived during that time period, but I do not believe it was at the so-called “Cary Grant Estate” that I blogged about in July 2011. (He owned that particular home from 1954 to 1972 and it had its own on-site guest quarters.) I did find an article on the CaryGrant.net website that stated that in 1949 Cary and his third wife, Betsy Drake, “spent some time at a tiny place in Palm Springs which Cary used to refer to as ‘The Dump.’” Because the abode was described as “tiny” and therefore most likely did not have room for guests, I am guessing that might be where he lived when he purchased the Copley’s site. Unfortunately though, the website makes no mention of “The Dump’s” exact location. So you know what that means! I’ve got another locale to track down! Is my work here never done?

After purchasing the site, Andrew and Juliana immediately began renovating and restoring the 3,500-square-foot property, which was originally built sometime during the 1920s. During the renovation, which took 64 days to complete, the couple refurbished the estate’s original hardwood flooring, replanted every bit of foliage on the 0.50-acre grounds and transformed the former garden into an outdoor dining area. The result is nothing short of spectacular!

Because we showed up 15 minutes before Copley’s actually opened and they were nice enough to allow us in, we had the place entirely to ourselves. And the super-nice bartender even went so far as to take me on a little tour to explain how the structure was set up when Grant owned it. As you can see below, the indoor dining area is divided by cut-out arched walls. During the Cary Grant days, those walls were filled in, sectioning off the building into several neighboring suites (I think there were a total of five separate suites), all of which opened out to the garden/patio. So the property was essentially like a private mini-hotel. How great would it be to have a place like that to stash visiting family and friends? Love it!

One of the former suite areas is pictured below.

Copley’s definitely does not have the typical restaurant feel to it. Being there is like hanging out at a good friend’s house – well, a rich good friend’s house. And whether or not Cary Grant ever actually owned the place, it was still insanely fun to sit on the patio and sip champagne while imaging that the iconic actor had once done the exact same thing in the exact same spot.

And, bonus! The Grim Cheaper was especially excited to learn that Copley’s offers $5 champagne on its happy hour menu – something that is not at all typical. You can check out the full happy hour menu here.

And while we did not partake of any food while we were there, the dinner menu does look pretty darn uh-ma-zing (the Sesame Seared Tofu has my name written all over it!) and we are looking forward to going back there for a special occasion meal.

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Copley’s on Palm Canyon is located at 621 North Palm Canyon Drive in Palm Springs. You can visit the restaurant’s official website here. The eatery only serves dinner and is open each night starting at 6 p.m. The property is closed on Mondays during the month of June and is closed completely from July through August each year.

August 8, 2013
Hotel Shangri-La from “The Bachelor”

This past Sunday morning (which was particularly cloudy, as you can see above), the Grim Cheaper and I headed out to Santa Monica to run a couple of errands and while there we happened to walk by the Hotel Shangri-La – a historic Art Deco masterpiece that I have wanted to stalk ever since early 2010 when it was featured in an episode of fave reality series The Bachelor. So the two of us decided to pop in to take some quick pictures – and we were not disappointed. Hotel Shangri-La is quite spectacular.

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The seven-story, reinforced concrete property, which was originally named the Shangri-La Apartment Hotel, was constructed beginning in 1939 at a cost of $400,000. The L-shaped site was designed by Beverly Hills-based architect William E. Foster and was owned by oilman Frank A. Gillespie. The structure, which at the time housed 61 individual apartment units, was the first Class A apartment building built in Los Angeles County following the stock market crash of 1929. Its doors were opened to the public on May 1, 1940. You can see a great photograph of the location from that time period here.

During World War II, the building, which is a Santa Monica Historic Landmark, was used as a rehabilitation center by the United States Army Air Forces.

In 1983, Hotel Shangri-La, which is of no relation to the Asian Shangri-La hotel chain, was purchased by an India-born real estate maven named Ahmad Adaya. The property is still owned by his family to this day.

According to the book Hollywood & the Best of Los Angeles Alive!, in 2002 the site was seriously lacking in amenities and, for whatever reason, did not feature a pool, a restaurant, a bar, room service, or valet parking. All of that has since changed, though, thanks to a $35 million renovation in 2008.

Today the Streamline Moderne-style property, which is currently owned and operated by Ahmad’s daughter, Tehmina Adaya, boasts 71 rooms and suites (almost all of which have views of the Pacific Ocean), an upscale restaurant named the Dining Room (where each entrée features ingredients from the famous Santa Monica Farmers Market), an open-air rooftop bar and lounge known as Suite 700 (which was voted one of L.A.’s top 5 rooftop bars in a 2013 The New Zealand Herald article), a pop-up spa known as the Sybaris Rejuvenation Lounge, custom-designed furniture, a solar-powered pool, valet parking, 24-hour in-room dining, and an indoor gym.

Hotel Shangri-La has been popular with the Hollywood set ever since its inception. Just a few of the stars who have been spotted there over the years include Drew Barrymore, Cyndi Lauper, Diane Keaton, Bill Murray, Matthew Broderick, Bill Clinton, Madonna, Tom Cruise, John F. Kennedy, Jr., the Dalai Lama, Sean Penn, Rashida Jones, and Andy Samberg. Supposedly, even my girl Marilyn Monroe once spent some time there.

Thanks to its striking architecture, Hotel Shangri-La has been featured in numerous productions over the years. In the Season 14 episode of The Bachelor titled “Week 2”, Jake Pavelka hosted a group date at the Shangri-La where the female contestants took part in a rooftop photo shoot for InStyle magazine.

After the shoot, the group headed down to the pool area for the remainder of the date, during which Rozlyn Papa was given the coveted rose.

The Hotel Shangri-La rooftop was also featured in the music video for Randy Newman’s 1983 song “I Love L.A.”

You can watch that video by clicking below.

In 1992’s White Men Can’t Jump, Hotel Shangri-La was where Gloria Clemente (Rosie Perez) celebrated her Jeopardy! win with boyfriend Billy Hoyle (Woody Harrelson).

The interior of one of the suites was also featured in the movie.

In 1995’s The Net, the Shangri-La was where Dr. Alan Champion (Dennis Miller) got his former patient Angela Bennett (Sandra Bullock) a hotel room shortly after her identity was stolen.

I am fairly certain that one of the hotel’s actual rooms was used in the filming, although the Shangri-La rooms look significantly different since the remodel, as you can see here.

An exterior view of the hotel’s central stairwell was also shown.

Thanks to Geoff, from the 90210Locations website, I learned that the hotel was where Valerie Malone (Tiffani Amber Thiessen) stayed in the Season 7 episode of Beverly Hills, 90210 titled “Graduation Day: Part II”, which aired in 1997.

The interior of the Shangri-La was also shown in the episode. (Big THANK YOU to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for making the 90210 screen captures that appear here.)

Ella Simms (Katie Cassidy) and Jonah Miller (Michael Rady) walked by the Hotel Shangri-La after a business lunch with famed German film director Franz Keppler (Craig Robert Young) in the Season 1 episode of the new Melrose Place titled “Ocean.”

Channing Tatum did a photo shoot with Mario Testino at the hotel for the August 2009 issue of GQ Magazine, which you can see photographs of here. According to the book Hollywood & the Best of Los Angeles Alive!, the hotel was also featured in an episode of the 1992 television series Bodies of Evidence and the 1988 Bruce Weber documentary Let’s Get Lost, but I was unable to verify that information. And while Wikipedia states that the Shangri-La appeared in the 2004 rockumentary DiG!, I was unable to verify that information, either.

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Hotel Shangri-La, from Jake Pavelka’s season of The Bachelor, is located at 1301 Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica. You can visit the hotel’s official website here.

August 7, 2013
The “L.A. Story” Brunch Restaurant

One L.A. Story location that I never in a million years thought I would be able to stalk was the exterior of the fictional Dr. Dalmar’s eatery (said to be located on the corner of Sunset and Crescent), where Harris K. Telemacher (Steve Martin) and his girlfriend Trudi (Marilu Henner) brunched with some friends towards the very beginning of the 1991 flick. I had long known that a patio at the now-defunct Ambassador Hotel had been used as the actual brunch site and consequently assumed that some other portion of the property had been featured as the restaurant’s entrance. Because the Ambassador was demolished in early 2006, though, this was one locale that I just did not put a whole lot of thought into.

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It was not until I was scanning through L.A. Story to make screen captures for my post on the apartment building where Trudi lived in the movie, that I came across the brunch scene and spotted two street signs – one reading “4th St” and the other reading “3rd St” – visible in the background. Because the Ambassador Hotel was located near 7th and 8th Streets, I realized that the entrance to Dalmar’s had to be elsewhere. I also realized, due to the placement of said street signs, that the Dalmar’s exterior was in between 4th and 5th Street.

I also noticed that the Dalmar’s entrance was situated near the end of a T-shaped intersection, as you can see below. So I started searching for a T-shaped intersection on 5th Street in the vicinity of the Ambassador Hotel and, voila, I found the right spot after just a few minutes of searching.

As it turns out, the exterior of the L.A. Story brunch restaurant is actually the entrance to a mid-Wilshire area apartment complex named Regent Place.

In the beginning of the L.A. Story brunch scene, Harris and Trudy are shown walking on a brown trellised deck.

Well, let me tell you, I could NOT have been more excited to see that deck in person, especially being that I had for so long been under the incorrect assumption that it was no longer standing.

Harris and Trudi are also shown walking on that deck after finishing brunch . . .

. . . and then out to the valet stand in front of Dalmar’s, where Harris accidentally drives off, leaving Trudi standing on the curb alone. “Yeah, I know what you were concentrating on!” I LOVE that line. (For those who have no idea what I am referring to, you need to rent the movie immediately! )

In 2005, L.A. Story production designer Lawrence Miller filmed a featurette titled “The L.A. of L.A. Story” that detailed several of the locations used in the movie for the 15th Anniversary Edition DVD. One of the places that he chronicled was the brunch site and he actually ventured out to then soon-to-be demolished Ambassador Hotel for the segment. During the spot, he mentioned that the featurette was the very last production that would be shot on the premises prior to the demolition, which took place on January 16, 2006. (I am still bitter that the hotel was torn down. Such an incredible shame!) Lawrence also spoke about the fact that Dr. Dalmar’s was modeled after the Hotel Bel-Air’s Terrace restaurant. Producers had actually originally wanted to film the brunch scene at the Bel-Air, but, for whatever reason, the hotel would not allow it. Lawrence did a fabulous job with the set design, though, because Dalmar’s did end up looking very much look like the Terrace (or at least what the eatery used to look like prior to the Bel-Air’s 2011 remodel).

The spot that was used as the brunch site was located on the south side of the Ambassador Hotel near the swimming pool. Pictured below is what that area looked like in 2005 when Lawrence returned to film “The L.A. of L.A. Story.” You can check out a picture of that portion of the hotel during the Ambassador’s heyday here.

For the shoot, Lawrence built a large trellis overhang that matched one of the Ambassador’s actual trellises (that actual trellis is pictured below) and he also brought in hundreds of trees.

Pictured below are some behind-the-scenes images of the brunch scene shoot, in which you can get a better look at the set-up.

The Ambassador Hotel was also featured in two other scenes in L.A. Story. The infamous Embassy Ballroom (where Bobby Kennedy spoke just prior to being assassinated on June 5, 1968) was used as a soundstage during the filming and was where the two El Pollo Del Mar hotel rooms were constructed. According to Lawrence, “The window wall was used in both hotel rooms and was moved back and forth depending on which part of the scene we were shooting.” He goes on to say, “The large furniture in the suite was used in both hotel suites. That was our little trick to make it appear a little more glamorous than it was.”

The ballroom in its 2005 state when Lawrence filmed “The L.A. of L.A. Story” is pictured below.

And finally, the scenes that took place at the fictional hot spot L’Idiot, where Harris dined with his new love interest, Sara McDowel (Victoria Tennant), and her ex-husband, Roland Mackey (Richard E. Grant), were filmed at the Ambassador Hotel’s coffee shop. Both the exterior of the coffee shop . . .

. . . and the interior were used in the shoot.

According to Lawrence, the coffee shop’s walls and columns were covered over with white corrugated fiber glass during the filming and neon lights were also installed to make the site appear less “tropical.”

As you can see below, though, the booths were left intact during the filming. Man, how I wish that place was still around!

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The exterior of Dr. Dalmar’s, the L.A. Story brunch restaurant, is actually the entrance to the Regent Place apartment complex, which is located at 426 South Norton Avenue, just south of Hancock Park, in Los Angeles. The interior of the brunch scene was filmed at the former Ambassador Hotel, which used to stand at 3400 Wilshire Boulevard in the Wilshire District of Los Angeles.

August 6, 2013
The “Little Miss Sunshine” Motel

Another Little Miss Sunshine locale that I desperately wanted to stalk was the supposed Arizona motel where the Hoover family – Olive (Abigail Breslin), Richard (Greg Kinnear), Sheryl (Toni Collette), Dwayne (Paul Dano), Grandpa Edwin (Alan Arkin), and Frank Ginsberg (Steve Carell) – stayed mid-way through their road trip from Albuquerque to Redondo Beach in the 2006 flick. Thankfully, smbstressfest had visited the site during the filming of his fabulous YouTube video, which chronicles most of the locations that appeared in LMS, so I posted a comment on his page asking for the address. I was not sure if he would get back to me, though, so I also sent screen captures of the motel to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, in case he recognized it. And, amazingly enough, he did! At the very same time that I received an email notification alerting me that smbstressfest had replied to my comment with an address, I was also sent an email from Mike letting me know that the Little Miss Sunshine motel was actually the Budget Inn of North Hills located at 9151 Sepulveda Boulevard. As it turns out, Mike drives by the place almost daily on his way to work. So I ran right out to stalk it while the Grim Cheaper and I were in L.A. two weekends ago.

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As you can see below, the Budget Inn of North Hills has, unfortunately, been remodeled slightly since filming took place in the summer of 2005. The motel was still in its Little Miss Sunshine state back in May 2007 when smbstressfest stalked it (as you can see in his video), but it seems that I, sadly, missed the boat on this one. Boo! At least the basic structure of the property remains unchanged.

Despite the alterations being fairly minor, I had an extremely hard time getting my bearings while I was stalking the motel and could not get a grasp on what part of the property appeared in Little Miss Sunshine. I am directionally-challenged anyway (my mom likes to say that I could not find my way out of a paper bag), and because of the way the Budget Inn of North Hills is set up with four practically identical corners, I just could not figure which area had been used in the filming. So, unfortunately, my photographs of this particular locale are not the greatest.

Add to that the fact that the motel is kind of an odd place and, even though I had talked to the management prior to taking photographs, I did not feel entirely comfortable being there and therefore did not do much exploring.

Had I stuck around, I would have loved to have ventured upstairs to take photographs of Room 208, where Olive and Grandpa Edwin spent the night in Little Miss Sunshine. (Dwayne and Frank and Sheryl and Richard stayed in the two rooms located just east of 208.)

And while I am 99.9% certain that the real life interior of three of the Budget Inn’s rooms were used during the filming, unfortunately, due to the remodel, the rooms (which you can see photographs of here) no longer look anything like they did onscreen. Again, boo!

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalkers Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and smbstressfest for finding this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Budget Inn of North Hills, aka the Little Miss Sunshine motel, is located at 9151 Sepulveda Boulevard in North Hills. You can visit the Booking.com page for the hotel here. The Hometown Inn from the 2002 Britney Spears’ movie Crossroads is located just down the street at 9401 Sepulveda Boulevard.

August 5, 2013
The “Little Miss Sunshine” Restaurant

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, while doing research on the former Abiquiu eatery (now Wokcano) from Get Shorty (which I blogged about here), I came across a Chowhound message board on which a commenter named Kevin stated that Pann’s restaurant in Ladera Heights was the spot where the Hoover clan – Olive (Abigail Breslin), Richard (Greg Kinnear), Dwayne (Paul Dano), Grandpa Edwin (Alan Arkin), Sheryl (Toni Collette), and Frank Ginsberg (Steve Carell) – stopped for a mid-road-trip breakfast in fave movie Little Miss Sunshine. Because the breakfast scene was one of my favorites in the entire flick, I was extremely excited to learn this information. Unfortunately though, as is so often the case with locales that are posted online, this one turned out to be wrong.

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While Pann’s menus were visible in the scene, as you can see below, one look at online images of the interior of the restaurant and I knew that it was not the right place. Convincing me further was the fact that Pann’s is not located directly below a freeway overpass, as the Little Miss Sunshine café was shown to be (which you can also see below).

So I got to cyberstalking and fairly quickly came across an absolutely amazing YouTube video (that you can watch by clicking below) in which a fellow stalker named smbstressfest chronicled pretty much every single locale that appeared in the movie. And while he did not state the addresses of any of the places, in response to a commenter named starbucksmunkey (love it!), he did give the Google Earth coordinates of the restaurant. Woot woot! And even though smbstressfest had mentioned that the eatery was no longer in operation, I was still chomping at the bit to stalk it and dragged the Grim Cheaper right on over there this past weekend while the two of us were in L.A.

The Little Miss Sunshine production notes state that the flick was lensed over a thirty-day period during the “hot” summer of 2005, at which time, according to the mmm-yoso!!! website, the space housed an eatery named Rutt’s Hawaiian Café. Rutt’s was shuttered by the time smbstressfest stalked it in 2007 (the chain still boasts an outpost in Culver City, though) and at some point thereafter a Mexican steakhouse named Don Carlos was opened on the site, but it, too, has since been closed. According the property’s LoopNet listing, the 5,130-square-foot building also once housed a Denny’s.

Which makes sense because the property does look very much like a Denny’s location – to me, at least.

And while a sign in the window states that Maly’s Pizza Buffet is “coming soon”, I do not know how accurate that is.

In Little Miss Sunshine, the Hoover family stops at the café towards the beginning of their road trip from Albuquerque to Redondo Beach. It is there that Olive orders waffles “alamodie” and is lambasted by her father for choosing to eat something so high in fat.

The interior of Rutt’s was used quite extensively in the filming. Oh, what I wouldn’t have given to have been able to go inside that restaurant!

Thankfully, I was able to snap a few photographs of the interior through the front window, although they are not of the section of the restaurant that appeared in the movie. In Little Miss Sunshine, Olive and her family dined in the southeast portion of the building, but the only area in which the blinds were not drawn was the northern part, unfortunately. Boo!

The exterior of Rutt’s was also shown in the scene.

You can watch the Little Miss Sunshine restaurant scene by clicking below.

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Big THANK YOU to smbstressfest for finding this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The supposed Pann’s restaurant from Little Miss Sunshine is actually the former Rutt’s Hawaiian Café located at 17371 East Valley Boulevard in La Puente. Unfortunately, the eatery is currently closed.

August 2, 2013
The “Little Miss Sunshine” Gas Station

A few months back, while doing research on Wokcano from Get Shorty (which I blogged about here), I came across a Chowhound message board titled “Restaurants Seen in the Movies.” One of the eateries mentioned on the page was Pann’s restaurant at 6710 La Tijera Boulevard in Ladera Heights, which a commenter named Kevin said was used in 2006’s Little Miss Sunshine – a film that I absolutely LOVED. (That information actually turned out to be incorrect – Pann’s did not appear in Little Miss Sunshine, but that’s a different story for a different post.) Prior to visiting the message board, I had no idea whatsoever that LMS had done any filming in the L.A. area (outside of a very brief driving scene near Vasquez Rocks). So that night I popped in our Little Miss Sunshine DVD to re-watch it and hopefully track down some of its locales. And track some down, I did, the first of which was the supposed HartCo gas station that the Hoover family – Richard (Greg Kinnear), Sheryl (Toni Collette), Dwayne (Paul Dano), Olive (Abigail Breslin), Grandpa Edwin (Alan Arkin), and Frank Ginsberg (Steve Carell) – stopped at during their road trip from Albuquerque to Redondo Beach.

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This location was actually quite an easy find. While watching the movie, I spotted the back of an address number through the gas station’s front window that I was fairly certain read “24518”.

Thanks to the station’s red, blue and gray color scheme (which you can see below), I was fairly certain that it was a Chevron. So I did a Google search for “Chevron”, “Los Angeles” and “24518” and, sure enough, the first result returned was for a station located at 24518 Lyons Avenue in Newhall, which turned out to be the right place. Yay! So I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out there to stalk it this past weekend while we were in L.A.

The gas station pit stop is a bad (but absolutely hilarious) experience for the Hoover family in Little Miss Sunshine. While there, Frank, who has just recently been released from the hospital after trying to kill himself, runs into his ex-boyfriend, Josh (Justin Shilton), and Josh’s new uber-successful boyfriend, Larry Sugarman (Gordon Thomson); Richard learns via a phone call that his new business venture has fallen through; and Olive, who has been practicing a dance routine on the side of the property, gets accidentally left behind when her distracted family later drives away.

Because the clutch on the Hoover’s Volkswagen bus is broken, when they return to the station to retrieve Olive a few minutes later, they are unable to stop and Olive has to run alongside the car and hop inside while it is still moving! I swear, the scene never fails to make me laugh (like hysterically laugh!), even though I have seen it about 25 times!

While this location is technically “just a gas station”, I could NOT have been more excited to stalk it. I was literally jumping up and down when we arrived. Looking back, though, I really think the GC and I should have rented a yellow VW bus for the occasion.

Adding to my excitement was the fact that the station looks pretty much EXACTLY the same in person as it did onscreen in Little Miss Sunshine!

The payphone that Richard used in the scene was just a prop, though, that was brought in for the filming and is not actually there in real life.

Which is odd because the property does have two working payphones that could have been utilized in the scene.

The interior of the Chevron station also appeared in the movie and the manager who was on duty when we stalked the place was nice enough to let me snap a picture of it. As you can see, it was altered significantly for the filming, with the cigarette and chewing tobacco racks taken out to make room for the pornographic magazine display that played a significant role in the scene.

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The HartCo gas station from Little Miss Sunshine is actually the Chevron station located at 24518 Lyons Avenue in Newhall.

August 1, 2013
The “Pretty Woman” Opera House

Today’s locale is one that I have been trying to track down for over a year and a half now – ever since discovering that pretty much every other location website out there had gotten it wrong. I am talking about the exterior of the supposed San Francisco opera house featured in the 1990 classic romantic comedy Pretty Woman. Last January, while on a Pretty Woman kick, I dragged the Grim Cheaper out to the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, where filming of the opera scene is said by several websites to have taken place. And while the interior of the museum did, in fact, appear in the movie, I took one look at the exterior and knew without a doubt that it was not the exterior shown in Pretty Woman.

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As you can see below, the Pretty Woman opera house and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, while somewhat similar, are most definitely NOT one and the same. Which begs the question – how does erroneous information like this get published? Yet again, the answer is shoddy research and lazy reporting. Once upon a time, someone made the claim that the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles was used as the exterior of the Pretty Woman opera house and everyone else just jumped on the bandwagon without doing any of their own investigating. I call that “spaghetti-style stalking” – let’s just throw some locations out there and see what sticks – and it is maddening! Anyway, while I knew that the Natural History Museum did not stand in for the exterior of the Pretty Woman opera house, I had no idea what location actually was used and spent the next year and a half trying to figure it out. Then on Monday afternoon, I got a text from my good friend Nat letting me know that she had found the site – in Pittsburgh of all places! (I should mention here that Nat is not AT ALL into stalking, so this truly was a feat!)

I originally got Nat, who is a native San Franciscan, involved in the hunt because I had assumed that the building used in Pretty Woman was located somewhere in the City by the Bay. In a bad twist of fate, while the scene was originally set to be lensed at S.F.’s iconic War Memorial Opera House, a few days before the shoot date, the Loma Prieta earthquake struck, rendering the city, and War Memorial, unfilmable. So director Garry Marshall and his team had to scramble to find a different last-minute location at which to film. They wound up using three different locales to stand in for the opera house. The Natural History of Museum of Los Angeles was used as the interior of the concert hall’s lobby area.

In the scene, Edward Lewis (Richard Gere) and Vivian Ward (Julia Roberts) walk through the main entrance of the Natural History Museum and head to the right.

I am fairly certain that the curved wall panel pictured below was a set piece that was added for the filming, as the actual walls of the museum are not rounded.

As you can see in the screen capture below, the tiled floor pattern also seems to be cut off by that rounded panel, further leading me to believe that it was a set piece.

Edward and Vivian then walk past an usher handing out programs . . .

. . . and up a flight of stairs.

Had the camera panned just slightly farther to the right in the scene, the museum’s famous dinosaurs would have been visible.

For the interior of the actual theatre, production designer Albert Brenner constructed a set at The Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, where Pretty Woman was lensed. In Garry Marshall’s DVD commentary featured on the Pretty Woman (15th Anniversary Special Edition) DVD, he states that the set was built against a soundstage wall and that the cast and crew had to climb a ladder to gain access to the balcony area.

While the lobby and theatre areas were easy finds, it was the exterior of the opera house that had me in the dark. Because the building shown in Pretty Woman did bear a striking resemblance to the War Memorial Opera House (which you can see a picture of here), I figured that it was also most likely located somewhere in San Francisco. So after asking fellow stalkers Mike, from MovieShotsLA, Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong blog, and John, from the Silent Locations blog, for their help in tracking the place down, I emailed a screen capture of the building to Nat to see if she recognized it at all. She did not, but kept the picture on hand in case she ever came across it in her daily travels. Then yesterday, Nat’s boyfriend headed out to the San Francisco Natural History Museum, which reminded her of my quest, so she started doing some cyber-stalking and, lo and behold, found the place! As it turns out, the Pretty Woman opera house is actually Carnegie Music Hall (which is a part of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, oddly enough!) at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh. My hat is DEFINITELY off to her being that she did what we “professional” stalkers could not. And had she not found the locale, it would have remained a mystery because never in a million years would I have EVER thought to search for it in Pennsylvania! (Please pardon the rather poor-quality Google Street View image pictured below.)

Nat also informed me that Carnegie Music Hall was used in the 1983 classic Flashdance, where it masqueraded as the prestigious Pittsburgh Dance and Repertory Company that welder Alex Owens (Jennifer Beals) dreamed of attending. The building shows up several times throughout the movie, most notably in the scene in which Alex chickened out of auditioning for the school’s ballet program.

The interior of Carnegie Music Hall and Carnegie Museum of Natural History were also utilized in the filming.

In a very ironic twist, I was SHOCKED to discover that the establishing shot shown in Pretty Woman was actually a still from Flashdance! Towards the middle of Flashdance, Alex attended a black-tie dance recital with her mentor, Hanna Long (Lilia Skala), at the Pittsburgh Dance and Repertory Company. The exterior of Carnegie Music Hall was shown several times throughout that scene, with tuxedo-clad men and cocktail gown-clad women milling about on the stairs outside. Garry Marshall simply used a shot from that scene for Pretty Woman.

The first screen capture pictured below is from Flashdance, while the second is from Pretty Woman. As you can see, the gala sign pictured on the bottom left-hand side of both of the images is a perfect match, as are the man and woman standing just to the right of it. Several of the other people in the screen captures match up, as well, including the man standing with his back against the wall of the middle archway and the white-haired woman in the bottom right-hand corner. Too bad I have never seen Flashdance, otherwise this would have been a much easier find!

The interior of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History was also used in The Silence of the Lambs, as the spot where Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) met up with an entomologist.

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Big, HUGE THANK YOU to my good friend Nat for finding this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Carnegie Music Hall, aka the exterior of the opera house from Pretty Woman, can be found at the Carnegie Institute, which is located at 4400 Forbes Avenue in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The area used in the scene is denoted with a pink arrow below. You can visit the Carnegie Institute’s official website here. The interior of the Pretty Woman opera house is the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, which is located at 900 Exposition Boulevard in the Exposition Park area of Los Angeles. You can visit the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles’ official website here.

July 31, 2013
The “Punky Brewster” Building

Back in early July, a fellow stalker named Charles posted a comment on my Challenge Lindsay page asking me to track down the building where Punky Brewster (Soleil Moon Frye) lived with her adoptive father, curmudgeon Henry Warnimont (George Gaynes), in the 1980s television series Punky Brewster. Now this stalker absolutely LOVED herself some Punky B! Like loved, loved, loved it! Yes, I wore different colored high-tops in the third and fourth grade. Yes, I donned a skate key around my neck. And yes, I had a Punky Brewster doll. Still do, in fact. It was one of my most prized possessions! So when I received Charles’ challenge I couldn’t help but wonder why I had never thought to track the place down myself! I immediately got on the case, though, and, thankfully, found the building quite quickly. Once I had the address, I was absolutely chomping at the bit to stalk it, but, unfortunately, had to wait until the Grim Cheaper and I were in L.A. this past weekend. Good things come to those who wait, though.

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I found this locale thanks to the fact that in the Season 1 opening credits of Punky Brewster an address number of 2520 was visible on the front door of the apartment building, as you can see below. And while the series was set in Chicago and Henry and Punky were said to live at 2520 Pierce Street in the Windy City (a location which doesn’t actually exist), I had a feeling that their building was actually located somewhere in Los Angeles, most likely in the downtown area. So I did a Google search for “2520”, “Los Angeles” and “apartments” and, sure enough, one of the results turned out to be Henry and Punky’s building! Yay!

I literally could NOT have been more excited to see the building in person, especially being that it still looks EXACTLY the same as it did in 1984 when it first appeared on Punky Brewster – in the pilot episode which was titled “Punky Finds a Home: Part 1.”

Even the “2520” address marker has not been altered since filming took place. LOVE IT!

As soon as we pulled up to the building, I couldn’t help but belt out the Punky Brewster theme song, much to the GC’s chagrin. (Actually he’s lucky I didn’t make him lie down in the street so that I could walk over him a la Henry in the opening credits. ;)) And yes, I still know the whole thing by heart. “Maybe the world is blind . . . or just a little unkind. Don’t know. Seems you can’t be sure . . . of anything anymore . . . although, you may be lonely and then, one day you’re smiling again. Every time I turn around . . . I see the girl who turns my world around, standing there . . . every time I turn around . . . her spirit’s lifting me right off the ground. What’s gonna be? Guess we’ll just wait and see.”

In real life, the building is named the Trebor Apartments and it was originally built in 1909.

In the opening scene of “Punky Finds a Home: Part 1”, Punky is shown putting her dog, Brandon, in a bag and pulling him up onto the apartment’s fire escape using a rope pulley.

And while I had assumed that the scene was most likely shot elsewhere – quite possibly on a studio lot – as it turns out, I was wrong. While I was stalking the place, I decided to venture around to the side of the building to see if there was a fire escape there. Sure enough, there was – and it still bears the same ornate ironwork that appeared in the episode, which I could NOT have been happier to see! (And believe me, if I could have figured out a way to get up on that fire escape to pose for a picture, I so would have! ;))

The interior of Henry and Punky’s building was, of course, just a set built on a soundstage – first at NBC Studios (now The Burbank Studios) in Burbank and then later at the now defunct Metromedia Square in Hollywood. (Metromedia Square, which later became Fox Television Center, was demolished in 2003 and is now the site of Helen Bernstein High School, aka William McKinley High School from Glee, which I blogged about here.)

The interior of Henry and Punky’s apartment was also just a set. LOVE the Michael Jackson poster in the second screen capture below. 🙂

You can watch the Punky Brewster opening theme, in which the Trebor Apartments are featured quite extensively, by clicking below.

Thanks to the Silent Locations blog, I also learned that the Trebor Apartments appeared briefly in the 1926 silent film The Strong Man, as the spot where ‘Lily’ of Broadway (Gertrude Astor) hailed a cab with Paul Bergot (Harry Langdon).

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Charles for challenging me to find this location! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Punky Brewster apartment building is located at 2520 West 7th Street, just west of MacArthur Park, in Los Angeles.

July 30, 2013
Bing Crosby’s Palm Desert House – Where JFK Trysted with Marilyn Monroe

Last month, shortly before I headed off to Switzerland, my dad loaned me the book Killing Kennedy, which he had just finished reading. Because there was a chapter devoted to my girl Miss Marilyn Monroe, he thought I might enjoy it. And enjoy it, I did. I could hardly put it down! The chapter about Marilyn focused on the starlet’s first – and most likely only – tryst with the president, which, according to the book, took place the weekend of March 24th, 1962 at the “Spanish-style home of show business legend Bing Crosby” in Palm Springs. Well, believe you me, once I read the words “Marilyn Monroe” and “Palm Springs”, I became hell-bent on tracking down and stalking that house. Unfortunately though, it proved to be quite the difficult find.

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It seems that every book and website that mentions Marilyn’s encounter with JFK sets it at a different Palm Springs-area home of Bing Crosby’s (the crooner owned several desert houses over the course of his lifetime). Most claims state that the tryst took place at Bing’s Thunderbird Country Club residence, which is located at 70375 Calico Road in Rancho Mirage. A December 2012 NBC News article about the then for-sale property even stated, “If the Crosby angle isn’t enough of a celebrity real estate draw, one of the wings of the home is named the Kennedy wing for the presidential visitor that reportedly stayed for a weekend. ‘Robert Kennedy said that Marilyn Monroe and John F. Kennedy stayed a weekend here, so our party named the wing after him,’ [real estate agent Carl] Mitrak explained.” After looking at aerial views of the home, though, and seeing that it was not at all Spanish in style, I became certain that, despite Mitrak’s claims, it was not the right place.

So I started digging further and came across a message board on the Crosby Fan World website on which Crosby biographer Malcolm MacFarlane commented that the Thunderbird Country Club house was, indeed, NOT the spot where Marilyn spent the weekend with JFK. Unfortunately though, no further information was given, so I was still uncertain as to where their encounter actually did take place. And, after stalking Bing’s first desert home at 1011 East El Alameda in Palm Springs (pictured below) and seeing how close it was to the street and neighboring properties and therefore difficult to secure, I quickly ruled it out, as well.

Then fate stepped in. This past Saturday, I happened to mention my quest to the Grim Cheaper’s boss and, amazingly enough, she had the answer for me! She informed me that Marilyn and JFK trysted at Bing Crosby’s Palm Desert estate in Ironwood Country Club. And, as luck would have it, she owns a home inside of the community, which is gated, and granted me access that very afternoon. As you can imagine, I was beyond floored! Unfortunately though, not much of the place, outside of its front gate, is visible from the street.

When I returned home later that day, I did further research and was able to verify that the Ironwood house was indeed the correct spot. As you can see below, the sprawling residence is definitely Spanish in style. You can check out a postcard of what the property looked like back in Bing’s day here.

In the biography Marilyn Monroe: The Final Years, author Keith Badman states “The fact is that Marilyn was intimate with John F. Kennedy only once, during the evening of Saturday 24 March 1962, when both he and the screen actress were guests at singer Bing Crosby’s three-bedroom house in Palm Springs and the adjoining, remote conclave home belonging to songwriter Jimmy Van Heusen and writer Bill Morrow. The houses, situated in a tiny community 100 miles southeast of Los Angeles, stood against a mountain in Palm Desert at a place called Silver Spur and were situated up a single dirt thoroughfare named Van Heusen Road. They had been a favourite of former US President Dwight D. Eisenhower and his men during his tenure.”

To further verify Badman’s claims, according to Peter Lawford (as quoted in the Sinatra biography His Way by Kitty Kelley), while JFK and Marilyn stayed at Bing’s pad, the secret service stayed next door at Jimmy Van Heusen’s abode. That house is located at 49300 Della Robbia Lane and is denoted with a pink arrow below. You can check out a 1960s-era photograph of both Bing and Van Heusen’s properties here.

The Silver Spur area was later absorbed by Ironwood Country Club. A 2012 MyDesert.com article states, “Bing Crosby’s estate that was initially part of neighboring Silver Spur Ranch is now part of Ironwood.”

Today, the property, which was recently remodeled and is currently available as a vacation rental, boasts a three-bedroom main house, two guest casitas with two bedrooms each, 2.5 acres of land, a saltwater pool, a Jacuzzi, a fully-lit tennis court, mountain views, and original Bing Crosby decor.

My favorite aspect of the property, though, has the be the sign outside which reads “The Crosby Estate.” LOVE IT!

I also love the fact that Ironwood embraced its celebrity history by naming two of the community’s streets “JFK Trail” and “Crosby Lane.” So incredibly cool!

And I was extremely excited to discover that the residence is also a filming location! In Season 1, Episode 7 of the reality series Hollywood Exes, the women spend the weekend at The Crosby Estate and discuss the fact that JFK and MM trysted there. Hollywood Exes is terrible by the way! I feel significantly dumber just from having scanned through it to make screen captures for this post!

The interior of the house was also shown in the episode.

As was the pool area.

And the property’s front gates.

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Bing Crosby’s former home, where Marilyn Monroe is said to have trysted with President Kennedy, is located at 49400 Della Robbia Lane in Palm Desert. The estate is located inside of Ironwood Country Club, a gated community, and is only accessible to residents and guests of residents, unfortunately. You can check out the property’s vacation rental website – with fabulous interior photographs – here.

July 25, 2013