Interested in living eternally next to Marilyn Monroe? Head over to Dirt to read about a crypt neighboring hers currently for sale for $2 million.
The Actors Studio – Marilyn Monroe’s Former Acting School
There is pretty much nothing I love more than re-creating famous movie/television scenes and iconic photographs – as most of you well know! Though I had long been obsessed with the notable series of images of Marilyn Monroe taken in front of The Actors Studio in New York in the ‘50s, due to the fact that the legendary school moved no less than five times during its early days, I could never figure out exactly where the shoot had occurred. I poked around the facility’s longtime 44th Street location on Google Street View a few times over the years, but never saw anything that matched up. Then, in preparation for our April trip to the Big Apple, I decided to do some more digging on the subject and discovered, thanks to this YouTube clip, that the photos had indeed been taken at the 44th Street site. Floored, I added the address to my NYC To-Stalk List and headed right on over there our second day in the city, with the Grim Cheaper and our friend Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong blog, in tow.
[ad]
The Actors Studio was originally established on October 5th, 1947 by theatre director Cheryl Crawford and actor Elia Kazan. The two hatched the idea for the organization over lunch one day. In a 1956 Sarasota Journal article, Crawford said, “Kazan and I both felt lucky. We were both associated with hits. So we started talking about actors and the fact that they had no place to practice. If they were in a hit, they were stuck with the same part; if they were in a flop, they were soon out on the street. But they never had a chance to try new things any more.” The studio was not actually set up as a school, but as a private institution for working thespians. Of the purpose of the group, writer Dick Kleiner stated in the same article, “It isn’t a school, as such. It’s a place where professional actors can go to practice. They get criticism, mostly from fellow members, but there are no classes, no lessons, no set exercises. And there are no students. The people who belong – there are about 125 of them – are members. They pay no fees of any sort; all funds come from voluntary contributions. To belong, an actor has to go through a series of auditions, before hypercritical judges.” Lee Strasberg was brought in to help run the facility with Crawford and Kazan in 1948. By 1951, he was serving as its artistic director, a position he held until his death in 1982.
Elite artists flocked to The Actors Studio like moths to a flame. Inaugural members included Montgomery Clift, Marlon Brando, Ray Walston, Tom Ewell, Karl Malden, Eli Wallach, and John Forsythe. Since that time, such luminaries as James Dean, Paul Newman, Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Anthony Hopkins have all gone on to become members.
In 1955, after moving several times, the organization purchased the former West Forty-fourth Street United Presbyterian Church located at 432 West 44th Street in Hell’s Kitchen. The Greek Revival-style structure was originally built in 1859 as the Seventh Associate Presbyterian Church. The Actors Studio still calls the building home to this day.
Though not initially set up as such, The Actors Studio began offering schooling in 1994. That year, the facility was recruited by New School University to run its acting department which was dubbed the “Actors Studio Drama School”, aka ASDS. Out of the program came the infamous Bravo television series Inside the Actors Studio, hosted by James Lipton. The Actors Studio/New School University partnership was severed in 2005, after almost eleven years, and today ASDS is run though Pace University.
Though never a member, Marilyn started visiting The Actors Studio in 1955. Unhappy with the roles being offered to her by 20th Century Fox at that time, the starlet decided to go on a virtual strike against the studio, move to New York, and start her own production company with photographer Milton Greene. Upon arriving in the Big Apple, she began taking private lessons from Strasberg, as well as attending sessions at The Actors Studio, where she observed the work of other students for months before setting foot on stage herself. Her first exercise, according to Donald H. Wolfe in his book The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe, was to sing “I’ll Get By.” Of the exercise, Wolfe explained that the ballad was to be sung “without gestures, so that the emotion and context would be projected solely by voice.” Apparently, Marilyn hit it out of the park, thoroughly impressing the skeptical Actors Studio members in attendance. She later performed a scene from Anna Christie with Maureen Stapleton, which again was lauded. Though Marilyn’s tenure in New York was not long (20th Century Fox relented within the year, giving Monroe a new contract which had her headed to Hollywood to shoot Bus Stop), Lee Strasberg and his wife, Paula, would remain powerful presences throughout the rest of the actress’ life. MM even left the vast majority of her estate to the couple.
While I originally thought that the photographs taken of Marilyn in front of The Actors Studio were lensed during a random day the movie star was attending a session on the premises, as I just discovered today the shoot was actually part of a benefit for the 1956 film Baby Doll. As you can see, most of the images were tight shots showing the starlet standing on a downward-facing staircase.
Via Google Street View, I could find no such staircase at The Actors Studio’s 44th Street location.
Thankfully, a deeper search yielded the YouTube clip I mentioned earlier which featured several images of Marilyn arriving at the studio that day. In one of the pictures, the buildings across the street were visible and I was able to match them up to the structures located across from 432 West 44th.
Once I knew I had the right spot, I did some further scrutinizing of Street View and spotted a staircase on the east side of The Actors Studio (largely obscured by a street light, a fence, and a much larger staircase situated above it) that matched the one Monroe had posed on! Eureka!
Marilyn’s staircase is located to the east and underneath the building’s main staircase, next to the window marked “432,” in the area pictured below.
Below is a comparison image of Marilyn walking out of that same spot on a different day (the picture was taken by James Haspiel and featured in his fabulous book Marilyn: The Ultimate Look at the Legend) next to a shot I took in April. As you can see, aside from the addition of a second railing, some window alterations, and the removal of the paint covering the bricks, very little of the building has been changed since Monroe attended sessions there. If only the bench, chair, and portable shed had not been blocking my frame!
The spot where Marilyn posed for the photos is actually located behind a locked gate, but we were lucky enough to encounter someone associated with The Actors Studio while we were there who invited me to snap a few pictures on the staircase as long as I did not disturb the classes taking place on the premises.
As such, I got to re-create a few of Marilyn’s poses.
The photo I most wanted to re-create was the one in which the world’s most famous blonde was walking down the stairs to enter the school.
For some reason, though, I thought she had her head facing downward in the image, not up. #fail
Though the “Actors Studio” sign and light fixture that was situated above it are no longer in place, I was floored to see that the drain visible behind Marilyn in the photographs had survived. I cannot express how much I loved finding little remnants of the past still intact like that.
You can watch a video clip about Marilyn’s time at The Actors Studio below and another one by clicking here.
The Actors Studio is also a filming location! In the Season 7 episode of Seinfeld titled “The Wait Out,” Mickey (Danny Woodburn) auditioned for the school – accompanied by Kramer (Michael Richards) – and an establishing shot of the building was shown. All actual filming took place at CBS Studio Center in Studio City, though, where the series was lensed.
For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 
Stalk It: The Actors Studio, Marilyn Monroe’s former acting school, is located at 432 West 44th Street in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen. Please keep in mind that the area where Marilyn posed for the pictures is gated and not open to the public and that The Actors Studio is a working school with sessions regularly held on the premises. As such, members and classes should not be disturbed.
The Racquet Club of Palm Springs
On July 24th, while waiting in line for my morning coffee, my eyes wandered over to a nearby newspaper stand and landed on the headline Historic Racquet Club Hotel Destroyed in Fire. My heart immediately sank as the now vacant Racquet Club of Palm Springs is not only steeped in Hollywood history, but is rumored to be the spot where Marilyn Monroe was discovered in 1949. The thought that it had been decimated was devastating. My mom and I finally made it over there to survey the damage while we were in the area last week and found that the headline had been a bit exaggerated. Thankfully, the destruction was not nearly as bad as had been reported.
[ad]
I first stalked the Racquet Club in October 2008 (you can read that post here) and, despite the fire which gutted one structure and harmed three others, it looks much the same today as it did back then. In fact, while I was there with my mom, I could not figure out which of the buildings had been lost in the blaze. It was not until I got home and compared aerial views to news photographs that I was able to pinpoint it. The edifice destroyed was a two-story structure comprised of hotel rooms that had been built years after the Racquet Club initially opened. It is denoted with a pink arrow below. Thankfully, the property’s pool, its infamous Bamboo Room restaurant (where the Bloody Mary was invented), the bungalows and the Albert Frey-designed Schiff House remain intact.
That being said, the structures that do still stand are not in great shape and haven’t been for years.
The members-only Racquet Club of Palm Springs was founded by actors Charlie Farrell and Ralph Bellamy (who played James Morse in Pretty Woman) in 1934. At the time, the 53-acre site consisted of two tennis courts and a snack bar. Bellamy and Farrell sold off a majority of the land shortly after the club’s opening, leaving behind 11 acres. A pool was added to the property in 1935, the Bamboo Room in 1937 and 35 guest cottages in 1946.
Due to the fact that the public was kept out, the Racquet Club became an instant celebrity hot spot. Such stars as Audrey Hepburn, Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, John Barrymore, Natalie Wood, Robert Wagner, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Debbie Reynolds, Eddie Fisher, Elizabeth Taylor, Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Carole Lombard, Clark Gable, Rita Hayworth, Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh all spent time there. Their goings-on were reportedly quite raucous – so much so that The Charles Farrell Show, a television program based upon the club’s revelries, soon hit the airwaves. (The pictures below were taken during my 2008 visit.)
Legend has it that my girl Miss Marilyn Monroe was discovered by the Racquet Club of Palm Springs’ pool. (You can see the pool in the pictures below, which were also taken during my 2008 stalk.) As the story goes, photographer Bruno Bernard brought a blue bikini-clad Marilyn to the club as his guest and snapped images of her standing in heels on the property’s diving board. It did not take long for William Morris agent Johnny Hyde to sit up and take notice. He became enamored with the young starlet and quickly took her under his wing. The rest is history. You can read a story about the Racquet Club encounter, told by Bernard’s daughter, here.
The Racquet Club went through a succession of different owners in its later years and, though its popularity had waned, it continued to be successful for the most part. In 1977, the site was purchased by M. Larry Lawrence, the same real estate developer who in 1973 restored San Diego’s Hotel Del Coronado (another Marilyn Monroe locale) and turned it into a premiere destination. Lawrence did not have the same luck with his Palm Springs acquisition. In 1986, he decided to open the property to the public. The club’s heyday had long since passed, but its loss of exclusivity delivered the final blow. The bungalows were eventually auctioned off to individual buyers. The public areas were then sold in 1999 to developer Bernard Rosenson who planned to turn the premises into a gay and lesbian retirement community. Rosenson spent three years and millions of dollars restoring the historic club, but his idea never took off and the site was shuttered in 2003. At some point thereafter, it went into foreclosure and was taken over by the bank.
New owners purchased the club from the bank in 2011 and, while there were talks of restoring it, it has been left untouched ever since, sitting vacant and dilapidated with no sign as to what its future holds. I sincerely hope someone steps in soon to rehabilitate the historic property. I, for one, would love to sip a Bloody Mary in the very room where the drink was created and jump off the very diving board on which Marilyn Monroe was discovered.
For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 
Stalk It: The Racquet Club of Palm Springs is located at 2743 North Indian Canyon Drive in Palm Springs.
The Wrong-Door Raid Apartments
One of the most infamous (and humorous) scandals to ever rock Tinseltown involved my girl Miss Marilyn Monroe and her second ex-husband, legendary baseball player Joe DiMaggio. (Their relationship wasn’t always sunshine and roses.) Known as the Wrong-Door Raid, it occurred in the late night hours of November 5th, 1954, but did not become public knowledge until almost a year later. I stalked the apartment building where the raid took place – at 8122 Waring Avenue in West Hollywood – last summer, initially planning to blog about it as a Haunted Hollywood locale. As I got to researching the events of that evening, though, I realized they were far more comical than scary and decided to postpone the post until now.
[ad]
After a scant 274 days of marriage, Joe and Marilyn divorced on October 27th, 1954. Convinced the starlet was finding solace in another man’s arms (namely her voice coach, Hal Schaefer), DiMaggio hired private detective Barney Ruditsky to tail her. On the night of November 5th, Ruditsky gave DiMaggio some news – Marilyn had just arrived at an apartment building on Waring Avenue in West Hollywood, quite possibly to meet up with a paramour. Joltin’ Joe was dining at the Villa Capri with close friend Frank Sinatra at the time and, hoping to catch Marilyn in the act, the two men rushed out of the restaurant and headed over to West Hollywood. (What they planned to do when they “caught” her is unclear.) On the sidewalk outside of the building, they met up with Ruditsky and a second private eye named Philip Irwin. Some other cohorts were also apparently on the scene, but reports vary as to who. Camera (as well as, supposedly, an ax) in hand, the men broke down the back door of one of the building’s ground floor units shortly after 11 p.m. and stormed inside. They did not find Marilyn, though. Instead, they surprised a spinster named Florence Kotz, who had been asleep in her bed. The group had somehow mistakenly entered the wrong apartment. Marilyn was in an upstairs unit with her friend Sheila Stewart (and quite possibly Schaefer as well, although that has not been proven) during the incident.
Florence immediately called the police, but the perpetrators had already run off, disappearing into the night. Not much was made of the events and the poor woman was left wondering why a group of strange men had broken down her door and taken a photograph of her in bed. Then in September 1955, Confidential magazine published an article telling the true story behind the raid. The sh*t quickly hit the proverbial fan. Frank was eventually served a subpoena on February 16th, 1957 at his Palm Springs home via two detectives who, in a karmic twist, knocked on his front door at 4 a.m., waking him up. Ironically, he filed a complaint. He later testified that he was a participant in the Wrong-Door Raid, but had never entered Florence’s apartment, choosing instead to stay behind in the car. His version of events was largely disputed, though. No one was ever prosecuted for the crime, but Florence did sue the group for $200,000, eventually settling for $7,500.
All I can think when reading about the events of the Wrong-Door Raid night is, ‘What a bunch of morons!’ Love makes people do crazy, ridiculous things, I guess. As Amanda Peet said in fave movie A Lot Like Love, “If you’re not willing to sound [or act, in this case] stupid, you don’t deserve to be in love.”
Years later, Schaefer came forward and “confessed” that he had been with Marilyn in Sheila’s apartment that night. I tend not to believe him, though. While he might well have been in Sheila’s home, I highly doubt it was because Monroe had any romantic interest in him. The guy seems like a total creeper – especially in the video below when describing the events that took place in the hospital with Marilyn following his suicide attempt.
There are several differing reports as to which unit DiMaggio and Sinatra actually broke into and which unit Marilyn was actually in during the raid, but according to the book Hollywood Death and Scandal Sites, written by fellow stalker E.J. of The Movieland Directory, Florence’s apartment was the one located at 754 North Kilkea Drive.
And Sheila’s apartment was the one at 8122 Waring Avenue.
For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 
Stalk It: The Wrong-Door Raid apartments are located at 8120/8122 Waring Avenue/754 N. Kilkea Drive in West Hollywood.
Marilyn Monroe’s Childhood Home
One location that had been on my To-Stalk list for what seemed like ages was the Hawthorne-area home where my girl Miss Marilyn Monroe spent the first eight-and-a-half years of her life. Fellow stalker Lavonna had texted me the address years ago, but because I so rarely find myself in that neck of the woods, I was never able to make it out there. Until a couple of weeks ago, that is, when I realized that the residence was not too far from a hotel near LAX where the Grim Cheaper and I happened to be staying. So I dragged him right on over to stalk it (and to a Four Christmases locale that I will be writing about in late December).
[ad]
Gladys Mortensen was single, living in Hollywood and working as a film cutter at Consolidated Film Industries when she became pregnant with Marilyn in 1925. In December of that year, shortly before she was to give birth, she headed to Hawthorne in the hopes that she could move in with her mother, Della, for a brief time before and after the delivery. Della had other plans, though – she was about to sail to Borneo to make amends with her estranged husband, Charles Grainger, who was working in the oil fields there. Arrangements were instead made for Gladys to stay across the street at the home of Wayne and Ida Bolender, a deeply religious couple who served as foster parents to several children.
The Bolenders had moved into the 3-bedroom, 1-bath, 1,376-square-foot clapboard residence pictured below in 1919. At the time, the home, which was built in 1913, boasted 4 four acres of land (it now sits on a 0.20-acre parcel), where the family raised chickens and goats and grew vegetables. The property’s original address was 459 East Rhode Island Street, but during the re-districting of the area in the ‘30s and ‘40s it was changed to 4201 West 134th Street. You can see a photograph of the house from the time that the Bolenders owned it here. It is absolutely REMARKABLE how little of it has changed over the past ninety-plus years! You can also check out a picture of a newborn Marilyn in front of the dwelling here, in which a “459” address placard is visible in the background. So incredibly cool!
Gladys gave birth on June 1st, 1926 in the charity ward of Los Angeles General Hospital. She named her new daughter Norma Jeane Mortensen. After twelve days, the two returned to the Bolender’s. Gladys spent about three weeks at the Hawthorne house with Marilyn before heading back to Hollywood and her job at Consolidated in July. She left her baby behind, paying Wayne and Ida $5 a week to care for her. Contrary to what has been reported, Gladys did not abandon Marilyn entirely, but came to visit her on a weekly basis, often spending the night.
When Gladys’ son from her first marriage, Jackie, from whom she was estranged, died at the age of 14 in August 1933, she became compelled to regain custody of Norma Jeane. She took on a second job and by October 1934, had saved enough money to purchase a six-thousand-dollar house (at 6812 Arbol Drive in Hollywood – sadly, it’s no longer standing). That same month, eight-year-old Marilyn left the Bolenders and moved in with her mother. She didn’t stay long, though. Gladys had a nervous breakdown in late December and was committed to an asylum, at which point Norma Jeane was sent to live with one of her mother’s good friends, Grace McKee. She didn’t stay there long, though, either. By 1935, Gladys could no longer afford to care for Marilyn and sent her to the Los Angeles Orphan’s Home (now Hollygrove Home for Children, which I blogged about here). The girl who would become the world’s most famous blonde spent the remaining years of her childhood being bounced around from foster parents to family members. Then, at the tender age of 16, she married her first husband, James Dougherty, and moved into a guest house in Sherman Oaks, which also, unfortunately, no longer stands. You can read my blog post on that location here.
For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Los Angeles magazine online. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.
Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Lavonna for telling me about this location! 
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: Marilyn Monroe’s childhood home is located at 4201 West 134th Street in Hawthorne.
Rockhaven Sanitarium
Back in early September, while doing research on filming locations in Montrose, I came across this 2011 Crescenta Valley Weekly article about a vacant former mental institution named Rockhaven Sanitarium. My interest was immediately piqued, of course (y’all know how much this stalker LOVES herself some abandoned properties), and I thought the site would fit in perfectly with my Haunted Hollywood postings – especially once I discovered that none other than Gladys Baker Eley, mother of Miss Marilyn Monroe, called the place home for almost a decade and a half. So I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out to stalk it while the two of us were in L.A. last month.
[ad]
Rockhaven Sanitarium, which was also known as the Screen Actors Sanitarium, was originally founded in January 1923 by a nurse named Agnes Richards. After witnessing firsthand the poor treatment of the mentally ill while working in both San Bernardino’s Patton State Hospital and the Los Angeles County General Hospital (which is ironically where Gladys Baker gave birth to Norma Jean on June 1st, 1926), Richards decided to open her own “secluded sanctuary” to treat ailing women with dignity in a home-like setting. She leased a two-story building with a stone façade (hence the name “Rockhaven”) on Honolulu Avenue in Montrose for $125 a month and took in six patients, whom she called “residents.” By the next year, the number of residents had grown to 24.
To house the growing number of residents, Richards began purchasing neighboring homes, as well as constructing new buildings on adjacent vacant land. She also eventually bought the original stone dwelling. By 1940, the expanded site, which was one of California’s first private mental health institutions, consisted of 15 Craftsman and Spanish Revival-style buildings, 12 lots of land totaling 3.3 acres, facilities to treat over one hundred patients, a small hospital, a dining hall, and a professional kitchen. The gorgeous grounds, which won a landscaping award in 1966, featured gardens, towering oak trees, grottos, ponds, flowerbeds, fountains, shaded patios, statuaries, and meandering footpaths. Richards believed that beautiful surroundings were necessary to the healing process and Rockhaven was nothing if not idyllic.
As depicted in the documentary “Rockhaven: A Sanctuary from Glendale’s Past,” which won a Los Angeles Area Emmy Award, the sanitarium was not your typical mental health facility. Thanks to the fact that residents were taken on regular excursions, rooms were decorated by interior designers, holidays were celebrated, and patients allowed to wear their normal clothing, Rockhaven was a place where troubled souls could lead normal, even happy lives.
As Richards began to gradually withdraw from running Rockhaven in 1956, her granddaughter, Patricia Traviss, took over daily operations. Patricia continued to run the facility until 2001, when she retired and sold it to the Ararat Home of Los Angeles. Ararat transformed the property into a nursing home, but, claiming it was too difficult to maintain, wound up closing its doors in 2006. In a bit of a macabre twist, when Rockhaven was shuttered, for whatever reason, many patients’ belongings were left behind as if their owners were planning to return – clothes remained hanging in closets, greeting cards and flowers stood on shelves, and framed photos lingered on nightstands. When the city of Glendale purchased the site for $8.25 million in April 2008, they gathered together all of the lost belongings and put them into storage for safe keeping. And while there were originally plans to turn the historic location into a community center and public park, when the economy took a downturn, that project had to be put on hold. The future of Rockhaven is, sadly, now up in the air. In the meantime, the city, the Historical Society of the Crescenta Valley and the Friends of Rockhaven maintain and care for the location.
Due to its bucolic quality, several notables sought treatment at Rockhaven including Billie Burke (aka Glinda from The Wizard of Oz), bandleader Babe Egan, dancer Marion Rose, Broadway actress Peggy Fears, Clark Gable’s first wife, Josephine Dillon, and, as I mentioned earlier, Gladys Baker. (It has been said that actress Frances Farmer also spent some time at Rockhaven, but I believe that claim to be just a rumor.)
Gladys was admitted to Rockhaven Sanitarium on February 9, 1953. She remained there for the next 14 years, thanks to a $5,000-a-year trust fund that Marilyn had set up for her. During her tenure there, Gladys attempted suicide several times and even escaped from the facility in 1963, by tying bed sheets together, climbing out of an 18-inch closet window and scaling a fence. She then walked 15 miles to Lakeview Terrace Baptist Church in Pacoima, where she was found the following day. During yet another eventful escape, Gladys somehow or another got married!
In 1967, Gladys was released to her daughter Berniece Baker Miracle, Marilyn’s half-sister, who lived in Florida. She passed away in Gainesville 17 years later, on March 11, 1984, at the age of 81.
You can check out a video of Gladys taken during her later years by clicking below. It is absolutely eerie not only how closely she resembled her famous daughter, but also to catch a glimpse of what Marilyn would most likely have looked like as an elderly woman.
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: Rockhaven Sanitarium, the former home of Marilyn Monroe’s mother, Gladys Baker, is located at 2713 Honolulu Avenue in Montrose.
Ferndell Nature Center
It’s that time again, my fellow stalkers! Time for my annual, month-long Haunted Hollywood theme! And yes, I do realize that October 1st is not actually until tomorrow, but I just could not wait one more day to get started! So here goes! My first Haunted Hollywood locale is actually one of my very favorite spots in all of Los Angeles – a peaceful little idyll named Ferndell that is tucked away inside of Griffith Park. And while the place could hardly be described as spooky or sinister, because it played a role in one of L.A.’s more fascinating unsolved mysteries – the 1949 disappearance of actress Jean Elizabeth Spangler – I figured what better time than now to blog about it.
[ad]
According to the non-profit group Friends of Griffith Park, the twenty-acre site now known as Ferndell was originally a meeting place for the Tongva-Gabrielino Indian tribe. The group dubbed the canyon “Mococahuenga.” In the early Twentieth Century the area became a part of Griffith Park and in 1914 park workers began planting ferns there. Pathways, bridges and waterfalls were added shortly thereafter and by the 1920s, the shaded oasis had become an immensely popular weekend attraction for native Angelinos and visitors alike.
Today the peaceful twenty-acre glen is marked by a quarter-mile gravel trail, meandering streams, terraced pools, over twenty small waterfalls, 17 footbridges, more than one dozen different fern varieties, and vast canopies of pine, palm, sycamore, ash, and redwood trees.
There is also a fabulous café named Trails located just outside of Ferndell’s rear entrance.
Sadly, Ferndell was allowed to fall into decline over the years – due mostly to the layoff of maintenance workers in the 1970s and 2008 budget cuts – and in 2012 the Cultural Landscape Foundation declared it one of the United States’ 12 most threatened landscapes. Friends of Griffith Park is currently working to restore the site to its original grandeur, although I can’t really imagine it looking any prettier than it already does.
The place is honestly one of the most picturesque spots I have ever laid eyes on. In fact, my very favorite picture of my dad and the Grim Cheaper was taken there back in 2008. 
Ferndell’s beauty does not at all mesh with the unsolved mystery that has been linked to it for over 60 years. At around 5:30 p.m. on October 7th, 1949, stunning bit-part actress Jean Spangler left her apartment in the Park La Brea area of Los Angeles, telling her sister-in-law that she was on her way to meet her ex-husband. (That statement was later proven to be a lie – Spangler never met or had plans to meet her ex-husband that night.) She was spotted by a store clerk shortly thereafter at the Original Farmers Market at Third & Fairfax. The clerk said that Jean appeared to be waiting for someone. At around 7:30 p.m., the starlet made a phone call to her sister-in-law saying she would be home later that night. She was never seen or heard from again.
On October 9th, Jean’s purse was found just outside of the Ferndell entrance of Griffith Park. One of the straps had been ripped loose, suggesting a struggle.
Most cryptic of all, though, was the fact that a handwritten note was discovered inside the purse that read, “Kirk: Can’t wait any longer. Going to see Dr. Scott. It will work best this way while mother is away,” (The unfinished note ended with a comma, leading police to believe that she was interrupted while writing it. Although the mark is not discernible as being a comma in the screen capture below, all articles I’ve read on the subject report that the note ended with a comma and not a period.) Over 150 officers and volunteers searched the park, but no other sign of Spangler was found. One of Jean’s friends later informed detectives that the actress was three months pregnant at the time of her disappearance and that she had been considering an abortion. Police were never able to locate a “Dr. Scott,” though, and it has long been assumed that his name was a pseudonym being that abortions were illegal in 1949.
Because Spangler had recently completed filming a small role in Young Man with a Horn, which starred Kirk Douglas, there were suspicions that he might have been the Kirk mentioned in the note. He denied having any sort of relationship with her, though. Spangler also had ties to several mobsters and other underworld types, which caused the investigation to take numerous twists and turns – all of which led nowhere. The LAPD still considers Jean to be a missing person and her case remains open to this day.
Jean’s disappearance was the subject of a 2001 Mysteries & Scandals episode, which you can watch by clicking below.
Thanks to its picturesque quality, Ferndell has long been a favorite of location scouts. According to the book Hollywood Escapes: The Moviegoer’s Guide to Exploring Southern California’s Great Outdoors, The Young Rajah was shot at the park in 1922. Unfortunately though, I could not find a copy of the silent film, which starred Rudolph Valentino, to make screen captures for this post.
According to The David Janssen Archive, Ferndell was where Dr. Richard Kimball (David Janssen) fell into a stream in the pilot episode of The Fugitive, which was titled “Fear in a Desert City.”
In the pilot episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, which was titled “Encounter at Farpoint,” Ferndell masqueraded as the “woodland simulation” where Commander William T. Riker (Jonathan Frakes) talked to Lt. Commander Data (Brent Spiner) about being human.
The episode featured some amazingly realistic special effects, as you can see below. 
I am fairly certain that the “woodland simulation” scene was shot both on location at Ferndell and on a soundstage. As you can see below, the stream that Wesley Crusher (Wil Wheaton) fell into in the episode was quite wide and deep. Being that I have never seen a stream of that size at Ferndell, I believe that a fake one was created for that portion of the scene at Paramount Studios where the series was lensed.
Ferndell was also featured in the Season 1 episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine titled “In the Hands of the Prophets” as the Bajoran Monastery of the Kai garden where Commander Sisko (Avery Brooks) met Vedek Bareil (Philip Anglim) for the first time.
Ferndell once again masqueraded as the Bajoran Monastery of the Kai garden in the Season 2 episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine titled “The Circle.”
In the 2012 romantic comedy Ruby Sparks, Ferndell is where Calvin Weir-Fields (Little Miss Sunshine’s Paul Dano) both envisions Ruby Sparks (Zoe Kazan) riding her bike while looking at the ceiling of his therapist’s office (hence the weird vent patterns visible in the screen captures below) . . .
. . . and where he later jogs with his brother, Harry (Chris Messina).
Ferndell pops up briefly in the Summer musical montage scene from 2016’s La La Land.
I have also long suspected that Ferndell was the spot where my girl Miss Marilyn Monroe posed for photographer Ed Henry in 1950. You can check out those pictures, which were not released until 2009, on the Life magazine website here. Unfortunately though, I have not been able to verify that hunch.
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: Ferndell Nature Center is located at 2333 Fern Dell Drive, inside of Griffith Park, in Los Feliz.
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.
[ad]
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.
The Colony Palms Hotel
Upon first moving to the Desert back in January, the Grim Cheaper’s boss, who also resides in the Coachella Valley, told me about a small Palm Springs-area inn named the Colony Palms Hotel that she thought I might be interested in stalking due to its vast Hollywood history. For whatever reason, though, I completely forgot about the place until the GC and I happened to drive by it a couple of weeks ago. So, since we were right there and since it was almost 5 o’clock, I suggested we pop in for a quick cocktail. It turned out to be quite the fortuitous stop, too, because while sitting at the wood-paneled bar, I did some cyber-stalking of the property on my trusty iPhone and just about died when I came across this June 2012 Los Angeles Times article that stated that my girl Miss Marilyn Monroe used to hang out there!
[ad]
The Colony Palms Hotel was originally founded in 1936 by Al Wertheimer, a Detroit mobster who was once a member of the Motor City’s notorious Purple Gang. At the time, the property was known as the Colonial House and, while billing itself as a hotel, under Wertheimer’s tutelage the site was actually a private club that featured an underground gambling den, a bar and a brothel that were reached via a secret staircase hidden behind a pantry door. The upscale establishment quickly became popular with the Hollywood set and such stars as Clark Gable, Carole Lombard and Humphrey Bogart were known to frolic there.
In 1951, the property was sold to Robert Howard (whose father owned the legendary racehorse Seabiscuit) and his wife, Academy Award-nominated actress Andrea Leeds. The couple hired architect E. Stewart Williams and designer/artist O. E. L. Graves to remodel the site and it was re-opened a year later under the name Howard Manor. The Spanish Colonial-style hotel remained popular with the Hollywood elite and such stars as Kirk Douglas, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Diahann Carroll, Frank Sinatra, Howard Hughes, Ronald Reagan, David Janssen, Dean Martin, and my girl Marilyn were all known to check in from time to time. You can see a photograph of what the place looked like during the Howard Manor days here.
The hotel changed hands several times from the late 1950s through 1979 (it was even at one time owned in part by boxer Jack Dempsey), at which point it was purchased by fitness guru Sheila Cluff, who had previously founded The Oaks at Ojai. Sheila transformed the site into a health resort and renamed it The Palms at Palm Springs.
In 2004, The Palms was purchased by a commercial investor named Steven Ohren who immediately enlisted designer Martyn Lawrence Bullard to renovate the place, at a cost of $15 million. Of his creation, which took three years to complete, Bullard said in a December 2007 Palm Springs Life article, “I wanted to make it young and fresh with these mad designs — sort of Chateau Marmont in the desert.” Thankfully though, the Chateau’s horribly snobby attitude (that place is my least favorite hotel in L.A.) was left at the door. The same Palm Springs Life article stated, “After tolerating the standard withering gaze of ultra-hip hotel staff around the world, he [Ohren] promises an attitude-free environment.” And he delivered! I am very happy to report that the Colony Palms is most-definitely attitude-free.
Sadly, Ohren, who lived onsite at the Colony, passed away in 2008. The hotel was subsequently sold in July 2012 to developer Michael Rosenfeld, who, thankfully, has managed to maintain the place’s charming, attitude-free environment. Today, the 57-room, three-acre property boasts a pool, a gym, a hot tub, a Moroccan-themed spa, and several French-inspired gardens.
The Colony also features a poolside fine-dining establishment named the Purple Palm, a nod to Al Wertheimer’s one-time membership in the Purple Gang.
As you can see below, the Purple Palm’s patio is nothing short of heavenly! I could have spent all day there!
Despite the Colony Palms’ fairly large size, the property feels intimate and quaint with numerous tucked-away spaces. And while I would absolutely LOVE to stay there for a weekend, being that rates start in the $250-range (during the off-season summer months, no less!), I know the GC will be having none of that.
Bonus – the Colony Palms is also a filming location! Kristin Cavallari checked into the hotel with her glam squad while in town for an Uncommon James photo shoot in the Season 2 episode of Very Cavallari titled “Shake Ya Palm Palms,” which aired in 2019.
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! 
Stalk It: The Colony Palms Hotel is located at 572 North Indian Canyon Drive in Palm Springs. You can visit the Colony’s official website here.
Brookside Park from Marilyn Monroe’s Photo Shoot with the White Sox
Back in February, while doing research for my post about the Rainbow Bar and Grill, where my girl Miss Marilyn Monroe went on her first date with Joe DiMaggio, I came across a blurb in the book The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe which stated that the starlet had first caught Joltin’ Joe’s eye via a photo shoot she had done with the Chicago White Sox in 1951. The blurb mentioned that the shoot had taken place at none other than Brookside Park in Pasadena – right in my own former backyard! I was absolutely over the moon about learning this information, immediately added the site to my To-Stalk list and made it one of my very first stops while visiting L.A. just a few days later.
[ad]
Sadly though, when I arrived, I discovered that the park’s Jackie Robinson Memorial Field, where I was fairly certain the shoot had taken place, was fenced in due to some sort of construction project and was completely inaccessible to the public. Boo!
Despite that fact, I still had an absolute blast walking around trying to figure out exactly where the world’s most famous blonde had posed sixty-two years prior.
The site was originally founded as Arroyo Springs Park in 1912 when the City of Pasadena purchased thirty acres of what was then known as Sheep Corral Springs (so named because sheep often grazed there) with the intent of turning it into a public gathering area. In 1914, the wealthy wife of a Chicago lumber manufacturer named Everett Wellington Brooks donated $3,000 to the city to go towards the construction of a public swimming pool on the property. The park name was then subsequently changed to Brookside in her honor. Today, the 62-acre space is comprised of a fitness course, a walking trail, picnic facilities, five tennis courts, three baseball fields, two playgrounds, bleachers, the Kidspace Children’s Museum, and a world-class aquatics center with two Olympic-sized swimming pools (where quite a bit of filming has taken place over the years, but that is a different post for a different time).
Brookside Park also boasts some really cool ruins that I could, unfortunately, not find any information about online.
The photo shoot, which was set up by Twentieth Century Fox and featured MM posing with Joe Dobson, Gus Zernial, and Hank Majeski, took place at the Chicago White Sox Spring Training Camp at Brookside Park in early 1951. The team had been utilizing the park for Spring Training for years, beginning in 1933, with a brief reprieve from 1943 to 1945 due to World War II. Oddly enough, though, according to this Spring Training Online article, the White Sox 1951 training was actually held in Palm Springs and not at Brookside Park. I am not sure what to make of that. Anyway, as the story goes, Joe DiMaggio spotted the pictures of Marilyn in a newspaper and became immediately enamored. According to The Marilyn Monroe treasures, The Yankee Clipper later confronted Gus Zernial about the shoot. Of the encounter, Gus said in a 2006 Baseball Digest interview, “He couldn’t believe someone like me could meet Marilyn Monroe. He made the comment, ‘Why should a busher [a 1960s term for “slacker”] like me get to meet her?’ Joe then asked Gus to put him in touch with Marilyn and the rest is tabloid history.
After scouring through the photo shoot images as compared with the photographs that I took while visiting Brookside Park last month, I am fairly certain that Marilyn posed in front of the curved rock wall pictured below (which is actually the side of Jackie Robinson Memorial Field) and the buildings located just west of it.
In the photograph where Marilyn is sitting on top of a rock wall, I believe she is sitting in the spot indicated by the pink arrow in the photograph below.
As you can see, not only does the rock wall that MM sat on match the one pictured below, but the rock wall that runs perpendicular to it is also a match. Oh, what I wouldn’t give to sit on that wall myself!
The lip that is visible on the wall behind Marilyn in the batting practice photo also matches the lip of the wall pictured below . . .
. . . as does the rounded edge.
I am fairly certain that the tree pictured behind Marilyn and Gus is the same tree that is pictured below, although I would have assumed that it would have grown quite a bit larger than it seems to have in sixty years time.
And I am also fairly certain that the building visible behind Marilyn and Hank is the same building pictured below (which is located just west of the rock wall). As you can see, the air vents are a perfect match. SO INCREDIBLY COOL!
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! 
Stalk It: Brookside Park, where Marilyn Monroe’s 1951 photo shoot with the Chicago White Sox took place, is located at 360 North Arroyo Boulevard in Pasadena. The shoot was lensed near Jackie Robinson Memorial Field, which is located in the northwest section of the park, in the area denoted with a pink arrow below.
