Celebrities – Page 4 – IAMNOTASTALKER

March 15, 2013April 26, 2018

The Safari Inn from “True Romance”

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

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

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

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

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

. . . which overlooks a pool.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

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

March 14, 2013March 13, 2013

The “Easy A” House

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Big THANK YOU to Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong blog, for finding this location! Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

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

March 12, 2013March 11, 2013

The Lobster Shack from “Easy A”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Big THANK YOU to Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong blog, for finding this location! Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

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

March 7, 2013March 6, 2013

Clark Gable’s Former House

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Big THANK YOU to E.J., from The Movieland Directory website, for finding this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

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

March 6, 2013March 6, 2013

The House Where Judy Lewis, Loretta Young and Clark Gable’s Daughter, Was Born

Today’s locale is easily one of the coolest I have visited in my 13-plus years of living in Southern California, which is ironic being that it is comprised of mostly vacant land. I am talking about the one-time location of the house where Judy Lewis, the secret love child of screen siren Loretta Young and movie legend Clark Gable, was born. I learned about the spot in fellow stalker E.J.’s book Hollywood Death and Scandal Sites and, although I knew next to nothing about Loretta Young at the time, was immediately intrigued. So I added the address to my To-Stalk list and began doing some preliminary cyber-stalking to see what the residence looked like now. When I went to Google Street View, though, it only showed miles upon miles of what looked like vacant swampland. I emailed to E.J. to ask if he knew what had happened to the area and he replied with a link to this CurbedLA article about the so-called Ghost Streets of Playa del Rey. Well, believe you me, although I was sad that Judy Lewis’ birth house was no longer, hearing that Los Angeles had its own ghost town had me salivating and I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out there just a few days later.

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As the story goes, Loretta Young and Clark Gable met on the set of the 1935 film Call of the Wild. She was 22 and single, he was 35 and married to his second wife, Ria Langham. The two quickly began an affair that had Hollywood tongues wagging and it was not long before Loretta was pregnant. In order to hide the pregnancy, which she thought would destroy both her and Clark’s careers, the young star took off to Europe for an extended vacation with her mother, Gladys Royal. The rumors did not stop, though, and reporters followed Loretta and Gladys’ every move. Mother and daughter wound up secretly returning to L.A. and Loretta immediately went into hiding at a rental property that she and Gladys owned at 8612 Rindge Avenue in Playa del Rey. At 8:15 a.m. on November 6, 1935, Judy Lewis was born. Loretta returned to her mansion in Bel Air shortly thereafter and Judy was left at the Rindge Avenue house in the care of a nurse. She remained there until July 1936, at which time she was sent to St. Elizabeth’s Infant Hospital in San Francisco. Loretta “adopted” Judy about five months later. Rumors, of course, circulated around the adoption and as Judy grew up and came to resemble her famous father more and more, those rumors only caught fire. As you can see below, there is absolutely NO denying that Judy Lewis was Clark Gable’s daughter. It was not until Judy confronted Loretta at the age of 31 (at Loretta’s home in Palm Springs, which I am now going to have to stalk!), though, that the star admitted she was Judy’s biological mother and that Gable was her biological father. Such an incredibly sad story.

And while Judy states in her book that she was born at “8612 Rindge Street” in Venice, I have been able to surmise (with about 99.9% certainty) that, because there is no Rindge Street in Venice, Judy’s former house was actually located at 8612 Rindge Avenue in Playa del Rey, a neighborhood about two miles south of Venice. I believe that Judy’s former residence is the one denoted with a pink arrow in the historic aerial view, circa 1952, below.

Judy’s former house was located in Surfridge, an affluent seaside community that was founded in the 1920s by Minneapolis-born real estate developer Fritz Burns. The neighborhood, which was situated overlooking the Pacific Ocean, immediately attracted celebrities including Cecil B. DeMille and Carmen Miranda, who had custom homes built there. In 1928, a tiny airfield that was mostly used to host air shows was constructed on a plot of land neighboring and just east of Surfridge. That airfield eventually became Los Angeles International Airport, what is now the sixth busiest airport in the world. You can see LAX in the background of the photographs below. It is almost shocking how close it is to the former Surfridge neighborhood.

As LAX began to expand in the 1960s, Los Angeles World Airports started to purchase - and subsequently tear down – houses in the Surfridge community.

More than eight hundred residences wound up being razed, but, for whatever reason, roads, sidewalks, retaining walls, and street lights were left intact creating a spooky, almost surreal neighborhood of cracked streets that wind through empty lots. Today, the area encompasses between 302 and 470 (depending on which newspaper article you are reading) fenced-in, vacant acres.

And while Los Angeles World Airports considered developing the site by building an 18-hole golf course, a sand dune preserve and a viewing station to watch planes take off and land, those plans wound up being thwarted for a variety of reasons. All that exists on the property now is a 200-acre butterfly preserve where the once-endangered El Segundo blue butterfly now flourishes. According to a recent Los Angeles Times article, a portion of the site is set to be restored in the near future, though, whereupon several ghost roads and ancient foundations will be removed and native plants brought in to return the area to its pre-developed state.

In the meantime, it’s a great place to watch planes take off and land, not to mention an intriguing stalking location.

You can check out some great photographs of the Surfridge neighborhood before it was razed here and here.

The abandoned Surfridge community is even a filming location. The site was featured in the music video for the Azure Ray song “New Resolution”.

You can watch that video by clicking below.

Thanks to fellow stalker Jeff, I learned that the Surfridge neighborhood was also featured in the climax of the 2011 thriller In Time, although a little CGI trickery was employed to change the background of the scene. You can read about the exact areas of Surfridge that appeared in the movie on the Seeing Stars website here.

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

Big THANK YOU to E.J., from The Movieland Directory website, for telling me about this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The house where Judy Lewis, Loretta Young and Clark Gable’s daughter, was born was formerly located at 8612 Rindge Avenue in Playa del Rey.

March 5, 2013March 4, 2013

O’Brien’s Irish Pub & Restaurant from “The Truth About Cats & Dogs”

Last month, while spending the weekend in Santa Monica, the Grim Cheaper and I randomly grabbed dinner at Finn McCool’s Irish Pub on Main Street. Immediately upon sitting down, I asked the bartender if anything had ever been lensed on the premises – as I am apt to do whenever I find myself dining somewhere for the first time. (Shocker, I know. Winking smile ) And while he was not sure about Finn McCool’s filming history, he did inform me that a scene from the 1996 romantic comedy The Truth About Cats & Dogs had taken place at a different Emerald Isle-themed watering hole located just a few doors down – O’Brien’s Irish Pub & Restaurant. Because Los Angeles is a place where change seems to be an epidemic, I was absolutely shocked – and pleased – that an establishment that appeared in a movie shot almost two decades ago was still in existence. So I dragged the GC right on out there the following night.

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O’Brien’s Irish Pub & Restaurant was originally founded in 1995, the same year that The Truth About Cats & Dogs was filmed. Amazingly enough, though, despite its longevity, I could find little to no information about the place’s history online.

What I can say, though, is that the watering hole serves up some fabulous food. I opted for O’Brien’s Veggie Patty, with added toppings of cheddar cheese and sautéed mushrooms, and am happy to report that it was absolutely divine. The GC ordered the Slider Burgers and was also very happy with his choice. I was most excited about O’Brien’s champagne offerings, though, which were fantastic!

I loved the place’s low-lit, wood-paneled ambiance, as well.

Check out the antique books displayed on the shelf above the opening to the restaurant’s main room in the photograph below. Love it!

O’Brien’s Irish Pub was featured only once in The Truth About Cats & Dogs, in the scene in which Noelle (Uma Thurman) poses as radio host/animal expert Dr. Abby Barnes (Janeane Garofalo), who is in turn posing as Noelle’s fictional friend Donna, while the two are out on a date with Brian (Ben Chaplin).

It is while at O’Brien’s that Abby spills salsa all over the front of her shirt causing her to say, “Of course! Of course I would do that!” Amen, Abby! That is SO something I would do, as well.

The Truth About Cats & Dogs was filmed in O’Brien’s bar area, which is located towards the back of the restaurant.

The exterior patio area also appeared briefly in the flick.

In a rare twist, the restaurant’s real life name and location were used in the filming. Not only did Brian tell Noelle to meet him at the bar “on the corner of Main and Pier” – O’Brien’s actual location – for their date, but a sign reading “O’Brien’s Irish Pub & Restaurant” was visible on the door in the background of the scene. 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! Smile

Stalk It: O’Brien’s Irish Pub & Restaurant, from The Truth About Cats & Dogs, is located at 2941 Main Street in Santa Monica. You can visit the eatery’s official website here.

February 28, 2013February 27, 2013

54 Holly from “1600 Penn”

Way back in April of last year, my good friend Marci, owner of my very favorite gift shop, Lula Mae, texted me to let me know that something was being filmed at a vacant diner (that was once the site of an eatery named 54 Holly) located just down the street from her store. And while I was absolutely itching to get down there to watch the filming, at the time that I received Marci’s text I was all the way across town in Hollywood stalking a premiere with my girl, Miss Pinky Lovejoy, of the Thinking Pink blog. When I was finally able to stalk the restaurant the following day, it had already been stripped and returned to its bare bones self, which is a shame because set decorators had apparently gone all out with their embellishment of the place. I did manage to snap some pics of the empty eatery, though, and from there set out to discover what exactly had been filmed on the premises.

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Because Marci had told me that all of the production trucks had Glee signs posted in their front windows, I emailed the pictures to my go-to Glee source, fellow stalker April, to ask her to watch out for 54 Holly in upcoming episodes. (Yes, I was at one time a diehard Gleek – then I met the cast and my fandom went right out the window. They are absolutely horrid. I have not seen a single episode since. You can read a great write-up on Mike the Fanboy about the early days of the show when the cast was nice here.) April scoured several episodes of the series for me during the time period that the restaurant would have appeared, but did not see it pop up anywhere. It was then that I took to cyberstalking and came across a post on fave website OnLocationVacations which stated that the filming at 54 Holly was actually for an episode of 1600 Penn. So I finally sat down to watch the series last night – and I have to say that I was not impressed. In fact, I am thankful that the diner appeared in the show’s pilot, which spared me from having to see more than one episode. Winking smile

54 Holly was originally founded by Ernie Tan and Irene Pan in 1984, which makes me so incredibly sad. I hate to see restaurants that have been around for decades close their doors, especially when the spaces that once housed them then sit empty for months or even years, which is exactly what happened in this case. Such a shame. Anyway, 54 Holly looks to have been shuttered sometime in early 2012 after almost thirty years in business, and the storefront has remained vacant ever since. While it was in operation, the eatery maintained a retro feel. The blogger Foodoofus visited 54 Holly back in September 2011 and spoke with Ernie who informed him that he kept the place looking like an old time coffee shop because, “It’s the ambiance that keeps people wanting to come back. The ambiance is first and the food is second.” Apparently he did want to make changes to the décor at one point in time, but his customers wouldn’t hear of it. You can see photographs of what the place used to look like here. Quite a few celebrities, including Dustin Hoffman and Elizabeth Hurley, had even been known to pop in from time to time.

The tiny, 1,053-square-foot property is currently still for lease at a rate of $2,632.50 per month. You can check out its LoopNet listing here. As you can see, almost all of the fixtures, including the tops of the stools, have been removed and the site is now pretty much just a skeleton of its former self – which made it perfect for filming as set dressers were given a blank slate with which to work.

54 Holly showed up at the very end of the pilot episode of 1600 Penn, which was titled “Putting Out Fires”, in the scene in which President Dale Gilchrist (Bill Pullman) took his family – Emily Nash Gilchrist (Jenna Elfman), Skip Gilchrist (Josh Gad), Becca Gilchrist (Martha MacIsaac), Marigold Gilchrist (Amara Miller), and Xander Gilchrist (Benjamin Stockham) – out for a “normal” dinner at a supposed Washington, D.C.-area pizza joint. Both the interior . . .

. . . and the exterior of the restaurant were shown in the episode.

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

Big THANK YOU to my good friend Marci, from Lula Mae, for telling me about this location! Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The site of the former 54 Holly restaurant, from the pilot episode of 1600 Penn, is located at 54 East Holly Street in Old Town Pasadena.

February 27, 2013February 27, 2013

Bahooka Family Restaurant from “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”

This past Sunday morning, my mom emailed me a link to a Los Angeles Magazine article about the upcoming closure of a veritable San Gabriel Valley institution, Bahooka Family Restaurant in Rosemead, with the admonishment, “You’d better take pictures! It HAS to have been in movies.” And she was right. Bahooka has starred in no less than three films over its 37-year history, most notably in a scene from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas that featured Johnny Depp. I was absolutely shocked to learn that the iconic restaurant would soon be shuttered. While I had never dined there, I worked as a substitute teacher in Rosemead for over eight years and would drive by the oddly-decorated eatery almost every single day. I also used to hear quite colorful stories about the place from fellow teachers who had grown up in the area. So when I found out that Bahooka’s days were numbered, I was a bit heartbroken and dragged the Grim Cheaper right on over there that very afternoon with the hopes of grabbing some Polynesian-style lunch. Sadly though, we were not able to do so as there was a two-plus-hour wait for a table and the GC was having none of that. I was at least able to snap some photographs of the place for posterity’s sake, though.

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The first Bahooka Family Restaurant, or Bahooka Ribs & Grog as it is also known, was founded by siblings Betty Twigg and Jack Fliegel in 1967 in a building located at 1312 West Francisquito Avenue in West Covina. The tiny eatery featured a scant 13 tables. The second, and much larger, Bahooka location opened in 1976 at 4501 Rosemead Boulevard. And while the West Covina outpost closed its doors in 1980 (allegedly due to a property dispute), the Rosemead outpost, which boasts seating for 350 patrons and a banquet room that serves 80, had been going strong ever since with a loyal following of neighborhood regulars.

When Twigg and Fliegel decided to retire years ago, they handed Bahooka, which supposedly means “shack”, over to their respective children, Steve and Stacey. Now Steve and Stacey are looking to hang up their aprons, as well, but unfortunately, according to this LA Weekly article, have no children to pass the restaurant along to. So on the market it went – with a $3.3 million price tag. The 8,598-square-foot establishment sold in just one day. The new proprietor apparently purchased the Bahooka building, its hundreds upon hundreds of fish (which I’ll get to in a minute) and the site’s liquor license. The Bahooka name, though, was not for sale, as the Twiggs and Fliegels (as well as co-owner Suzanne Schneider) plan on continuing to sell their signature salad dressing, which comes from a 47-year-old family recipe, at grocery stores, including Ralphs and Costco.

Bahooka’s decidedly unique tiki- and nautical-themed décor was collected from various antique shops and scrap yards over the years, creating what countless websites and reviewers have described as a “flotsam and jetsam” dining experience.

Just a few of the whimsical touches include an actual set of antique post office boxes in the restaurant’s entrance area . . .

. . . and a cannon in the parking lot.

The tables, most of which were empty while we were there (which does not coincide with the supposed two-hour wait time), are fashioned with nautical – and Christmas! – adornments.

A few tables are even situated inside of an old jail cell.

The eatery’s most notable décor, though, has to be the 105 (yes, 105!) built-in aquariums which house countless fish, with varieties including pacus, silver dollars, catfish, Jack Dempseys, Oscars, clown knives, and koi. Almost every booth in the place is flanked by at least two aquariums.

The bar, which inexplicably does not have any bar stools, was even fashioned out of a fish tank.

Thanks to the site’s truly unique look, it is not hard to see how it ended up onscreen numerous times over the years. In 1998’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Bahooka masqueraded as a Hollywood-area restaurant where Dr Gonzo (Benicio Del Toro) stopped to use a pay phone, while his friend Raoul Duke (Johnny Depp) ordered drinks at the bar.

The restaurant’s legendary 34-pound, 36-year-old pacu fish, Rufus, was even featured in the movie.

Rufus is absolutely HUGE in real life. The photograph below does not even begin to do him justice.

On a Rufus side-note – in a typo worthy of fellow stalker Owen’s When Write Is Wrong blog, the poor fish’s name is misspelled on the sign displayed below his tank.

Rufus’ “twins”, who are both also huge, are pictured below.

In 2007’s The Number 23, Bahooka was the site of the Christmas party where Walter Sparrow (Jim Carrey) was hit on by his co-worker Sybil (Michelle Arthur).

In the 2010 comedy Barry Munday, Bahooka was where Barry Munday (Patrick Wilson) met Ginger Farley (Judy Greer).

And while IMDB states that the 1993 movie Kalifornia also did some filming at Bahooka, I scanned through the flick yesterday and did not see the restaurant pop up anywhere.

Besides being a filming location, Bahooka is also something of a celebrity magnet. Such stars as Topher Grace, Valente Rodriguez, Oscar De La Hoya, Kirstie Alley, and David Hasselhoff have all been spotted dining there over the years.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Bahooka Family Restaurant, from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, is located at 4501 Rosemead Boulevard in Rosemead. You can visit Bahooka’s official website here. The restaurant will only be open until Sunday, March 10th, after which time its doors will be closed for good.

February 26, 2013December 6, 2013

Louis B. Mayer’s Former House – The Birthplace of the Academy Awards

Last week, the Grim Cheaper emailed me a fabulous Vanity Fair article about the genesis of the most iconic night in Hollywood – the Academy Awards. According to the blurb, in January 1927, legendary producer Louis B. Mayer was enjoying some idle conversation with friends Conrad Nagel and Fred Niblo at his beachfront home when the idea to form an elite club of fellow movie-industry moguls struck him. The article states, “Their flight of fancy—and what some might call anti-union maneuvering—swiftly took wing. The following week three dozen studio stalwarts attended a brainstorming dinner at L.A.’s Ambassador Hotel. By May, Mayer, Douglas Fairbanks, and eight others were addressing several hundred in black-tie and ball gowns at Hollywood’s Biltmore Hotel. Fairbanks presented the big picture, Mayer hit them up for $100 a head, and, lo and behold, they had forged an academy (Nagel’s term) of cinema’s elite. Little did L. B. Mayer suspect that two years later his simple notion would spawn a splendid offshoot: the first Academy Awards dinner dance, held on May 16, 1929, in the Blossom Room of the Roosevelt Hotel.” Well, as you can imagine, once I read those words, I was immediately itching to track down the house where it all began. As it turns out, the property is one I know quite well and had read about in countless books over the years – the infamous Peter Lawford beach house in Santa Monica where my girl Marilyn Monroe is rumored to have trysted with both John F. Kennedy and his brother, Bobby, back in the 1960s. So I dragged the GC right on out to stalk the place this past weekend while in L.A.

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Because there are numerous conflicting reports about the residence’s history online, I contacted my buddy E.J., from the Movieland Directory website , to give me the lowdown. According to him, the 6,416-square-foot abode was commissioned in 1926 by Mayer, who had purchased an empty ocean-side tract of land known as Rancho San Vicente the year prior. He employed MGM art director Cedric Gibbons to design the Mediterranean-style dwelling and utilized studio electricians, artisans and carpenters to construct it. The home was completed in an astonishing six weeks time, by April 18, 1926, with builders literally working around the clock to finish. Floodlights were brought in so that the laborers could continue to ply away through the night and, according to E.J., Mayer’s children would often head down to the beach to watch the spectacle.

The property, which cost $26,000 to construct, featured a gatekeeper’s apartment, 13 onyx bathrooms, wood-beamed ceilings, wrought-iron balconies, foot-thick exterior walls to keep the interior cool during the summer, a pool, and a projection room with a movie screen that rose from the floor. Legend has it that the first screening of Gone with the Wind took place in that projection room.

Oh, and did I mention the views?

Louis B. Mayer moved out of the home upon separating from his wife, Margaret, in 1944. She later took over ownership of the property, the front of which is pictured below, through the divorce settlement. In 1956, the residence was purchased by British-born actor Peter Lawford and his wife, Patricia Kennedy, for $95,000. JFK would often visit his sister and brother-in-law at the beach house, which became a sort of den of ill repute with Lawford throwing parties and lining up call-girls, starlets and models for the then Senator and later President to rendezvous with. One of those starlets was, of course, Marilyn Monroe. Jack stayed on the premises, which at the time was located on a private, gated road, so often during his presidency that the place became known as the Western White House. And it was there that Marilyn was set to have dinner on the final night of her life, August 4th, 1962, but she wound up declining the invite at the last minute. Much speculation has surrounded the happenings at the house on that particular evening, the most truthful of which, in my opinion, is chronicled in the fabulous book The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe.

In 1974, while working on the Pussy Cats album, John Lennon, Ringo Star and Paul McCartney all lived at the beach house. In fact, the last known photograph of John and Paul was taken on the premises. According to E.J., Warren Beatty also owned the property at one point in time and it was once rented by Led Zeppelin, as well. The historic home was last sold in October 1978 for $862,000.

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: Louis B. Mayer’s former home, aka the birthplace of the Academy Awards, is located at 625 Palisades Beach Road (or Pacific Coast Highway) in Santa Monica. The beach side of the house can easily be viewed by parking in the lot located near 480 Pacific Coast Highway and walking just a few hundred feet south.

February 22, 2013February 21, 2013

The Marina del Rey Marriott from “90210”

One location that has been on my To-Stalk List for ages now is the Marina del Rey Marriott, which appeared in the Season 1 episode of fave show 90210 titled “That Which We Destroy” – in two different scenes featuring my girl Shannen Doherty, no less! And while I had planned on stalking the locale last July when Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and I were in the area for a full-day stalking adventure, as so often happens when the two of us get together, we had far too many locations and far too little time. Thankfully though, my and the Grim Cheaper’s new L.A. home-base is in Santa Monica, just a few miles north of the hotel, so, while we were in town last weekend, I made it a point to finally visit the place.

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The Marina del Rey Marriott, which is within walking distance of both Venice Beach and Mother Beach, features an outdoor pool, a fitness center, views of Marina del Rey’s gorgeous waterways (and, ironically enough, the parking lot where Jack McKay was killed on Beverly Hills, 90210, which I blogged about here), 24 different meeting rooms comprising a total of 18,000 square feet of space, and a ginormous rooftop ballroom named the Bayview Ballroom, which boasts 360-views of Los Angeles, a huge outdoor patio area and a helipad!

The Marina del Rey Marriott has won several accolades over the years, including being named an LA’s the Place Top Pick in 2010. Playboy Magazine also recognized the hotel’s outdoor bar, Glow Ultra Lounge, as one of the top ten lounges in Los Angeles.

With its dark red pillars, shining marble floors and glowing accent candles, the Marina del Rey Marriott gives off a very hip and trendy vibe and it is not at all hard to see how it ended up onscreen on 90210.

The Marriot actually popped up three times in the “That Which We Destroy” episode of 90210. First, one of the hotel’s hallways masqueraded as the hallway of the theatre where Brenda Walsh (Shannen Doherty) starred in a local performance of Hamlet.

It is thanks to the carpet in that hallway that I was able to figure out this particular location. For a while I was stumped as to where filming of the theatre scene had taken place, but after watching the episode for the umpteenth time, I noticed that the carpeting looked very much like hotel carpeting – Marriott carpeting in particular. (My dad has been a Marriott Rewards Member for years, so I am extremely familiar with the chain’s carpeting, which seems to be the same at every single property.) So I started looking through photographs of the various Marriotts in the L.A. area, starting with the ones nearest to Manhattan Beach Studios where the series is lensed and working my way outward, and it was not long before I came across the right one.

Once I figured out the “theatre” location, I realized that two other scenes from the “That Which We Destroy” episode had also been shot at the Marriott. The hotel’s Stones restaurant was used as the spot where Debbie Wilson (Lori Loughlin), Harry Wilson (Rob Estes), Tracy Clark (Christina Moore), and Sean Cavanaugh (Josh Henderson) went for a getting-to-know-each-other dinner.

Again, the carpet was a dead giveaway that the dinner scene had taken place at a hotel.

And finally the lobby bar was where, in my favorite scene from the episode, Brenda told Kelly Taylor (Jennie Garth) that she could no longer be friends with her because “I don’t want to fight over Dylan or Ryan or whoever. You know, I’m over all of that drama.” You tell her, Brenda! Tables were brought in for the filming of the scene in order to make the lobby bar look like a sit-down restaurant. In reality, there are couches situated in that area, as you can see below. Ironically enough, it looks like 90210 was filming at the Marina del Rey Marriot once again this very week.

90210 was hardly the first production to film at the hotel. In 1989’s Lethal Weapon 2, the exterior of the Marina del Rey Marriott was used as the establishing shot of the hotel where Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson) and Roger Murtaugh (Danny Glover) first met Leo Getz (Joe Pesci).

The Marriot was only used for the brief establishing shot, though. All actual filming took place about ten miles away at the InterContinental Los Angeles Century City hotel, which was at the time a JW Marriott, the same JW Marriott that was featured in the 1990 thriller Pacific Heights.

In 2006’s Drake and Josh Go Hollywood, the Marina del Rey Marriott stood in for The Chambrulay, where Drake Parker (Drake Bell), Josh Nichols (Josh Peck) and Audrey Parker-Nichols (Nancy Sullivan) stayed while (accidentally) visiting L.A.

The Marina del Rey Marriott also stood in for the Grand Saville Hotel where almost all of the Season 1 episode of Chuck titled “Chuck Versus the Undercover Lover” took place.

Glow Ultra Lounge also appeared briefly in one of Chuck’s mind flashes in the episode.

Only the interior of the Marriott was used in “Chuck Versus the Undercover Lover.” The establishing shot was of the Wilshire Grand Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles, which is currently in the process of being torn down in order to make way for what will be the tallest building west of the Mississippi.

In the Season 3 episode of fave show Dexter titled “I Had a Dream”, the Marriott stood in for Hotel Belvedere, the supposed Miami, Florida motel where Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall) stalked his former partner-in-crime, Asst. District Atty. Miguel Prado (Jimmy Smits). Both the exterior . . .

. . . and the interior of the property were used in the episode.

One of the Marriott’s actual rooms was also utilized in the filming.

As you can see below, though, some CGI trickery was used to cut off the top floors of the hotel in the episode, making it virtually unrecognizable. In fact, had it not been for fellow stalker Gary, from the Seeing Stars website, I never would have realized Hotel Belvedere was the Marina del Rey Marriott.

The Season 9 episode of American Idol titled “Los Angeles, CA Auditions” was also filmed at the Marina del Rey Marriot. The actual auditions took place in the hotel’s Bayview Ballroom.

Some scenes from the episode were also lensed in front of the hotel;

and in the lobby. And while the judges apparently arrived via helicopter and landed on the Marriott’s roof in the episode, I could not footage of that anywhere online.

In the 2010 movie Valentine’s Day, football player Sean Jackson (Eric Dane) made a speech on the rooftop of the Marina del Rey Marriott. Check out those views!!

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Marina del Rey Marriot, from the “That Which We Destroy” episode of 90210, is located at 4100 Admiralty Way in Marina del Rey. You can visit the hotel’s official website here.