Your definitive source to filming locations and all things Hollywood!
I am ecstatic to report that Brooks Memorial Home for the Aged, where Kris Kringle (Edmund Gwenn) lived in the 1947 holiday classic Miracle on 34th Street, has finally been identified! Sadly, though, it is no longer standing. Watch my latest reel to discover where filming took place.
TL; DW – The now-defunct Black-Foxe Military Academy, formerly located at 637 North Wilcox Avenue in Los Angeles’ Hancock Park, played the facility onscreen.
Ryan Murphy’s latest Netflix series, Hollywood, is worth a watch for a slew of reasons, not the least of which is its locations. The Los Angeles featured in the 1940s-set show is nothing short of jaw-dropping! Even the seemingly mundane spots like the bank Jack Costello (David Corenswet) and his wife, Henrietta (Maude Apatow), briefly visit in episode 1 are drool-inducing! So I, of course, set out to ID it! Countless Zigzag Moderne elements were visible dotted around the striking space, leading me to do a Google search for “Art Deco,” “bank,” and “Los Angeles.” One of the first results kicked back was this L.A. Conservancy page detailing The Deco Building at 5209 Wilshire Boulevard in Hancock Park. I had never heard of the place, but headed right over to Google Images and was floored at what I saw – a pristine Art Deco time capsule hidden away on a busy L.A. street. Despite its stunning exterior, I had driven by countless times without even realizing it was there! I decided to promptly amend that by doing some socially-distant stalking of it just a few days later.
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The Deco Building was originally constructed as the Security-First National Bank in 1929. You can check out a photo of it from its early days here.
Designed by the Morgan, Walls and Clements architecture firm, the exterior is clad in stunning black and gold terracotta tile.
Sadly, it is one of the only black and gold Art Deco structures still standing in the city.
The Deco Building operated as a bank until 1970 and subsequently went through several different incarnations including a gold and silver wholesale dealership, a Persian rug showroom, and a cabaret/private club known as Zephyr. Following a restoration in 1999, the site was transformed into upscale office space.
Though the exterior is spectacular, it is the inside that is the real stunner.
The two-story space, which is a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument, features high ceilings, a mezzanine, gilded skylights, and intricate chandeliers. The vault, visible at the back of my photos above and below, even remains intact!
Considering its gorgeously preserved architecture, it is no surprise that the property wound up in a production like the historically-set Hollywood.
In the premiere episode, titled “Hooray for Hollywood,” Jack and Henrietta head to the bank building hoping to secure a $20,000 loan to buy a home, but they are unsuccessful.
Though brief, the scene is pivotal as the loan denial pushes Jack to agree to work as an escort at Golden Tip Gasoline, thereby setting off the series’ main storyline.
The short segment also gives us fabulous glimpses of The Deco Building’s interior and all of its grand detailing.
Hollywood is not the site’s only small-screen foray.
The Deco Building portrays the headquarters for Governor Charles Brooks’ (Richard Burgi) re-election campaign in the Season 2 episode of Lie to Me titled “Bullet Bump,” which aired in 2010.
And J (Issa Rae) has a job interview there in the Season 2 episode of The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl titled “The Call,” which aired in 2013.
The Deco Building also boasts a Disney connection! A portion of the Mickey’s of Hollywood store at Disney World’s Hollywood Studios was modeled after the structure. You can check out an image of it here.
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 Deco Building, aka the bank from the “Hooray for Hollywood” episode of Hollywood, is located at 5209 Wilshire Boulevard in Hancock Park.
The Little Fires Everywhere finale left me flabbergasted! Maybe I paid too much attention to the series’ locations and not enough to its character development because I was rather shocked when (spoiler alert!) Elena Richardson (Reese Witherspoon) was painted as the story’s villain. Were we supposed to hate her from the outset? I liked her! Sure she’s high-strung, misguided, and a touch overbearing, but until the end of episode 7, when she revealed Mia Warren’s (Kerry Washington) secret, I never thought of her as bad, per se. In fact, I thought the series was about two very different mothers trying to do their best with the hands they were dealt. Never did I think that audiences were supposed to view Elena as evil and Mia, who stole a baby away from its father (which, to me, is unforgivable), as the show’s heroine. To be fair, I never read the book so I am probably missing some backstory, but wow, that ending was a real disappointment! Even the locations left me wanting, especially the house where the Richardson youngsters set up a lemonade stand at the episode’s opening. I was tipped off to the locale shortly after filming took place thanks to a reader who lives in the area. All I was told about the shoot was that it involved a lemonade stand. I stalked the pad shortly thereafter, was taken by its beauty, and have been eagerly awaiting its appearance ever since. So I was thrilled when the finale opened on a close-up of a lemonade pitcher. That thrill quickly became disappointment – and shock – when I saw that, thanks to extremely tight camerawork, the house in the background wasn’t visible at all! What the what? Despite that, because the residence is so picturesque, I deemed it worthy of a post.
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Built in 1925, the stately 2-story abode boasts a whopping 5,999 square feet of living space, 6 bedrooms, 6 baths, a fireplace, a pool, and a 0.43-acre lot.
But none of it appears in the Little Fires Everywhere finale, titled “Find a Way.”
The episode opens with a flashback scene of the Richardson children in their younger days setting up a “fat-free” lemonade stand. Only a portion of the curved front exterior staircase, a large hedge, and the sidewalk are shown in the segment.
Had the camera panned up a bit, audiences would have been given a pretty great view. Along with the house not being visible, one thing that seems a bit strange is the fact that the Richardson kids set up a lemonade stand in front of a home that is not their own. When I was a kid, my lemonade stands were always in front of my residence or on a street corner, neither of which is the case here. You might be thinking ‘Maybe the segment was supposed to take place in front of the Richardson pad, but for whatever reason, they had to shoot elsewhere, which explains the background not being shown.’ But at one point Lexie Richardson (Jade Pettyjohn) tells her sister, “Run back to the house,” so that’s not it. I don’t really know what the story is with this one.
Considering its beauty, I thought for sure the pad would have been featured in other productions, but I was unable to dig up any additional cameos.
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 lemonade stand, from the “Find a Way” episode of Little Fires Everywhere, was set up in front of 533 South Muirfield Road in Hancock Park. The Richardson mansion from the series is just two houses away at 511 South Muirfield.
I knew I would love Little Fires Everywhere long before it premiered. One look at the trailer had me drooling! A confounding mystery at its center, Reese Witherspoon at the helm, a setting that is almost a character, and two of my favorite cuties, Joshua Jackson and Geoff Stults, in lead roles. What’s not to like? (Though I have to say I really could have done without seeing Jackson in those tighty-whities in episode 1. That’s an image I’ll never be able to get rid of!) The fact that the new Hulu series is lensed in Los Angeles is just the cherry on top! I was fortuitously given intel on several of its locales late last year, months before its March 18th debut. So I, of course, did some major LFE stalking while I was in L.A. in January for my dad’s many pre-surgical doctor appointments. One of the spots I hit up was the massive brick estate belonging to Mark McCullough (Stults) and his wife, Linda (Rosemarie DeWitt).
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Though set in the real-life town of Shaker Heights, Ohio, the McCullough pad can actually be found at 120 South June Street in Hancock Park. It is just a few blocks away from the series’ central locale, the Richardson residence, an oft-shot dwelling at 511 South Muirfield Road that is most famous for having portrayed the Tate mansion on the 1970s television series Soap.
The two properties bear an uncanny resemblance to each other, as you can see below – so much so that I am surprised they were both chosen for use on the series. Shaker Heights is repeatedly noted as being “the first planned community in America” on Little Fires Everywhere (in reality, it’s just one of the first), so I guess it somewhat makes sense that two residences would be similar. But from what I’ve seen online of the real town, while all the homes are stately and handsome and quite a few are even Tudor in style, they seem to have fairly distinct looks. So I definitely find the utilization of two such similar spots odd.
The McCullough house initially pops up in the third episode of Little Fires Everywhere, titled “Seventy Cents.” In it, Linda and Mark throw their adoptive daughter, Mirabelle, a first birthday party, which winds up going horribly wrong when (spoiler alert!) her birth mother unexpectedly appears at their door.
The residence is also featured in episode 4, “The Spider Web,” though as was the case in “Seventy Cents,” we only see a very tight shot of it.
Even when Linda is hounded by news crews outside of the house in the episode, we aren’t shown much other than the driveway.
It is a pretty fabulous pad, so it is surprising that we have yet to get a full shot of it.
In real life, the 1927 residence boasts 6 bedrooms, 8 baths, 2 stories, a whopping 6,177 square feet of living space, 2 fireplaces, a 0.40-acre plot of land, a tennis court, a pool, a hot tub, and a detached 3-car garage with what looks to be an in-law unit above it.
As shown in the police report detailing the birthday party fiasco, which Elena Richardson (Witherspoon) reads in “The Spider Web,” the McCullough’s house is said to be at 120 Brighton Road, so the property’s real life address number is being utilized on the series.
I am fairly certain that the actual interior of the home is also being used.
For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 
Stalk It: Mark and Linda McCullough’s house from Little Fires Everywhere is located at 120 South June Street in Hancock Park. Melanie Cave’s (Elizabeth Perkins) home from Truth Be Told is just up the road at 509 North June Street. And the Richardson residence from Little Fires Everywhere (aka the Tate mansion from Soap) can be found a few streets over at 511 South Muirfield Road.
Apple TV+ sure has hit the ground running! Everything released on the new platform thus far seems to be television gold! I’ve made no secret of the fact that I consider The Morning Show one of the best series to ever grace the small screen and was thrilled to find For All Mankind and Truth Be Told just as gripping. The latter, based on Kathleen Barber’s 2017 novel Are You Sleeping, centers around a journalist-turned-podcaster named Poppy Scoville-Parnell (Octavia Spencer) who begins re-investigating a decades-old murder to make sure the right man is behind bars, à la Serial. Obviously, as soon as I read the synopsis, I had to tune in! And my crime-loving heart wasn’t disappointed. Minutes after the end credits for episode one started rolling, I, of course, began hunting for locales and was ecstatic to learn that, while set in Northern California, filming largely took place in L.A. During my perusing, I came across a 2018 Backstage article which noted that some footage was shot at a house at 509 North June Street in Hancock Park. From there it wasn’t hard to piece together that the site portrayed the supposed Menlo Park abode belonging to Melanie Cave (Elizabeth Perkins), mother of convicted killer Warren Cave (Aaron Paul), on the series. So I ran right out to stalk it shortly thereafter.
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Melanie’s house is featured throughout Truth Be Told’s eight-episode run. Though we only get a limited view of it, the place first shows up in the pilot, titled “Monster,” in the scene in which Poppy bombards Melanie in her driveway in the hopes of securing an interview with Warren.
I obviously couldn’t get images matching what was shown in the scene, but the driveway is pictured below.
We don’t actually see the full exterior of the pad until episode 3, “Even Salt Looks Like Sugar.”
I have to say that producers did a great job in choosing the residence because while watching the scene below from episode 2, “Black People in the Neighborhood,” the Grim Cheaper, a native San Franciscan, turned to me and said, “I can pretty much guarantee that home actually is in the Bay Area.” I had already read the Backstage article by that time and when I informed him that it was actually in Hancock Park, he refused to believe me. Ah, the magic of Hollywood!
The adorable little property is just as charming in person as it appeared on the series. With its peaked roof and rounded front door overhang, it reminds me quite a bit of Denise’s house from I Love You, Man as well as the Lawrence residence from the 1976 series Family, so it is not at all hard to see how it made its way to the screen.
I believe that the inside of the dwelling was also utilized on the series, but could not find any interior images with which to verify that.
It appears that the actual backyard was used briefly, as well.
In real life, the 1925 pad boasts 3 bedrooms, 3 baths, 3,236 square feet, 2 stories, and a 0.18-acre lot.
With it’s charmingly idyllic Anywhere, U.S.A. appeal, I am shocked it hasn’t appeared in more productions, but I was unable to dig any up.
For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 
Stalk It: Melanie’s house from Truth Be Told is located at 509 North June Street in Hancock Park.
The Fall 2019 television season is chock full of fabulous new series! The Grim Cheaper says the deluge brings him right back to the Must-See TV days of the ‘90s. A few of our favorites include The Morning Show (as mentioned here), All Rise, Bluff City Law, Prodigal Son, and The Unicorn. The latter, based on a true story, centers around widower Wade Felton (Walton Goggins) and his attempts to move on with life a year after his wife’s death via a little help from his friends. While it doesn’t sound like it’d be a great premise for a comedy, I find myself laughing throughout each episode. And bonus – though set in Raleigh, North Carolina, it’s shot in Los Angeles! So I, of course, set out to find the home where Wade lives with his two young daughters, Grace (Ruby Jay) and Natalie (Makenzie Moss), on the show. (Pardon the selfie above – I stalked the house while by myself on a quick visit to L.A. last week.)
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I had seen the trailer for The Unicorn months before the series’ debut in September and immediately recognized the residence that appeared in it as the Partridge House, located at Warner Bros. Ranch in Burbank. The picturesque Colonial, a practical set situated on the backlot’s Blondie Street, has appeared in countless productions over the years, as I detailed in this 2016 post for Mike the Fanboy. So named thanks to its regular appearance as the Partridge residence on The Partridge Family, it also portrayed the Thatcher home on Life Goes On and the Kravitz pad on Bewitched and is currently where MeeMaw (Annie Potts) lives on Young Sheldon.
By the time the pilot of The Unicorn aired, though, a different property had been selected to portray the home of the Felton family. When I first laid eyes on the Craftsman-style pad, I was convinced it was located in Pasadena, but searching around Crown City and its environs yielded nothing that matched.
Episode 2, titled “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do,” thankfully provided additional clarity via an address number of “138” visible on the house next door to the Felton’s. That number gibed more with the Hancock Park area than Pasadena, so I started searching there and found the Felton home within minutes at 132 Wilton Drive in Windsor Square.
The exterior of the handsome home appears regularly in establishing shots of the Felton residence, as well as in some on location filming of outdoor scenes.
Only the exterior of the property is featured on The Unicorn. The interior of the Felton pad – described by Wade’s friend Delia (Michaela Watkins) as being “like the Disney Channel version of Grey Gardens” in the first episode – is just a set that exists inside of a soundstage at Paramount Studios where the series is lensed. It looks nothing like the actual inside of 132 Wilton Drive, which you can check out some photos of here. Interiors for the pilot episode (pictured below), though, were shot at the Partridge House at Warner Ranch, which, as I mentioned above, is a practical set meaning that both the inside and outside of it can be utilized for filming.
I’ve been fortunate enough to tour the Partridge House a few times, which is where the photos above and below come from. Unfortunately, my angles are just slightly off from what was shown in The Unicorn’s pilot.
The inside of the Partridge House is basically just an empty shell that productions can come in and change or outfit as needed. As you can see below, the kitchen area does not even have cabinets when not being used for a shoot.
Again, my angle is a bit off, but pictured below is the kitchen nook that served as the Felton’s dining area in the pilot. You can just see the Partridge House’s living room fireplace through the opening in the wall in my photo.
A full view of the living room is below. The kitchen stands just behind the “built-in bookcases,” which were removed for The Unicorn pilot in order to make the space more open.
Though I did not snap a photo of the living room area looking out toward the staircase, I did capture the stairs themselves during my visits to the Partridge House.
The Partridge House also boasts a functional backyard and The Unicorn producers made use of it in the pilot.
The alcove where Wade keeps his freezer – a focal point of the episode – is an actual element of the house, situated between the rear door and the detached garage, as you can see below.
When The Unicorn got picked up, filming moved to Paramount Studios, where the Felton residence interior set was then built from scratch. It looks virtually nothing like the interior from the pilot, though Wade’s freezer alcove was a holdover. You can just see it outside of the door to the left of the stairs in the lower screen capture below.
While I initially assumed that the show made use of 132 Wilton Drive’s backyard for all episodes beyond the pilot, that turns out to be incorrect. The Feltons’ backyard is actually part of the Paramount set, situated inside of a soundstage on the lot.
In real life, the Wilton Drive house, which was built in 1917, boasts 4 bedrooms, 2 baths, 2,200 square feet of living space, and a 0.13-acre lot.
The property last sold in 2011 and looked quite different at the time, with a rounded Colonial-inspired portico attached to its façade, as you can see below. In recent years, the new owners widened the steps leading down to the sidewalk, swapped out the lower-level windows and front door, and removed the portico, adding a large porch in its place. The result is a home that is much more Craftsman in style.
Not to mention much more photogenic! As such, it is no surprise that it wound up onscreen as the residence of the Felton family.
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 Felton home from The Unicorn is located at 132 Wilton Drive in Windsor Square.
It’s finally that time again, folks – time for my annual Haunted Hollywood stalkings! I intended to commence this year’s postings with a real doozy of a murder case, but got held up a bit in my research. I am currently awaiting some documents from the County of Riverside that should provide more clarity as to the precise location where the killing took place and will write about it just as soon as they arrive. In the meantime, I thought I would instead kick things off with a locale from a horror classic. Now, as I’ve mentioned many times, a fan of slasher flicks I am not. But this past July, my friend Owen tipped me off to a spot that he thought would figure in nicely to an October post – the Hancock Park home that masked as a waxwork, aka a wax museum, in the 1988 horror film of the same name. As he informed me in his email, the “cool-looking” brick pad boasts “great windows and a turret!” Interest piqued, I added the address to my To-Stalk List and headed right on out there this past weekend.
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Finally watching Waxwork last night did little to turn me into a horror fan. In fact, I have to say the movie was pretty darn terrible (though star Zach Galligan sure is a cutie!). The premise? A morose old man named David Lincoln (David Warner) attempts to set off the “voodoo end of the world” by bringing eighteen of the most evil people who ever lived back to life. How does he do this, you ask? By creating wax effigies of each person and feeding them the souls of the various patrons who visit the waxwork he has built inside of his private home in the middle of suburbia. And he would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for two meddling high schoolers, Mark (Galligan) and Sarah (Deborah Foreman), who thwart his plan. Like I said, Waxwork isn’t good.
But Owen was right – the house is fabulous . . . and fabulously creepy!
Though burned to the ground by Mark and Sarah at the end of Waxwork, in real life the pad still stands proudly at 255 South Rossmore Avenue. (In actuality, a miniature was used in the filming of the fire scene.)
While it looks much the same as it did onscreen in 1988, sadly views of it from the street are largely eclipsed by a massive hedge that now lines the front of the property.
Only the exterior of the residence appeared in Waxwork. The interior of Lincoln’s eerie home was just a set, as evidenced by the double doors that opened from the living room into his onsite wax museum.
Originally built in 1924 for L. Milton Wolf, in real life the dwelling boasts 7 bedrooms (!), 3 baths, 3,878 square feet of living space, a pool, a detached garage with what looks to be an upstairs in-law unit, and a 0.43-acre plot of land.
The house is somewhat historically significant, too! As Owen informed me, its longtime owner Loretta Lindholm was responsible for the installation of the many ornamental lights that now dot the streets of Hancock Park. For her efforts, she received a Los Angeles City Council Commendation!
For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.
Big THANK YOU to my friend Owen for telling me about this location! 
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: The Waxwork house from Waxwork is located at 255 South Rossmore Avenue in Hancock Park.
Upon reading today’s title you might be thinking, ‘Hey! Jawbreaker is not a horror movie! What is it doing showing up in a Haunted Hollywood post?’ But hear me out. Last September, a fellow stalker named Mariana emailed to inquire if I had any intel on the “castle-like” pad where Liz Purr (Charlotte Ayanna) lived in the 1999 flick. I had never seen the film at the time (in fact, I was so unfamiliar with it, I kept referring to it as “Jawbreakers”) and asked Mariana to send over some screen captures so that I could try to track the residence down. I then promptly started researching the movie, which centers around three popular high schoolers who accidentally murder their best friend. Though technically billed as a black comedy/thriller in the same vein as 1988’s Heathers, it sure sounded horror-like to me. Director/screenwriter Darren Stein even classified it as “a blend of dark comedy with an underbelly of horror” to Broadly in 2016. So I figured Liz’s house would fit in perfectly with my October postings and was thrilled to hear back from Mariana later that same day. It turns out she didn’t need my help to ID the pad because she wound up finding it herself while using Google Street View to scour the Hancock Park area where she figured the stately Tudor was most likely to be located. During her hunt, Mariana also unearthed an even bigger Haunted Hollywood connection – Liz’s mansion was formerly owned by horror king Rob Zombie in real life! A dwelling that not only appeared in a thriller, but also once belonged to a renowned scary movie director?!? Um, yes, please! So I promptly added it to my HH To-Stalk List and, though it was too late to include in my 2017 postings, made sure to visit it in time for this year’s.
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Rob Zombie (real name Robert Bartleh Cummings) purchased the 1924 manse, which boasts 5 bedrooms, 7 baths, 7,401 square feet, a formal entry, a pub room, 4 fireplaces (one with a marble hearth), a chef’s kitchen with a butler’s pantry, a theatre, a gym, a wine room, a half-acre lot, a guest house, a pool house, a pool, a spa, and multiple patios, for $1.799 million in September 1999. He subsequently sold the pad in January 2014 for $3.55 million. Not a bad profit for a four-and-a-half-year investment! You can check out some photos from the listing here. The residence is all wood-paneled walls, beamed ceilings, and ornately carved doors. It looks like a virtual castle inside!
The subsequent owners put the property up for sale at a whopping $7.849 million in December 2016. By that time the interior had been significantly modernized (as you can see in this virtual tour and these photos) and, in my opinion, most of its charm was lost. I mean, who covers over wood paneling with gray paint?!? Someone sure liked the alterations, though, because the residence sold less than a month after hitting the market for $50,000 over its asking price.
It is from the handsome dwelling that Liz is kidnapped by her friends, Courtney (Rose McGowan), Julie (Rebecca Gayheart) and Marcie (a pre-Dexter Julie Benz), as a birthday prank in the opening scene of Jawbreaker. The girls’ stunt goes horribly wrong, though, as – spoiler alert! – Liz winds up choking to death on the jawbreaker that Courtney stuffs into her mouth to stifle her screams. (And let me just say that the image of the massive ball lodged in Liz’s throat will haunt me forever.)
The mansion pops up in several additional scenes, as well, including one in which Courtney, Julie, and Marcie bring Liz’s dead body back home in an attempt to stage a murder scene in her bedroom and cast blame on an unnamed rapist.
At the time of the filming, the residence was thoroughly visible from the road. Sadly, that is no longer the case.
The property is currently obscured by fencing and a large amount of foliage, which I am guessing was installed by Rob Zombie for privacy reasons. The front steps have also since been altered. While the home boasted a single exterior staircase when Jawbreaker was shot, today the entry is marked by a double set of steps that lead up to the gate.
The interior of the mansion was also used in the filming . . .
. . . as was the backyard. You can check out some behind-the-scenes footage of the segments shot at the house here.
Amazingly, the home’s Haunted Hollywood connections don’t end there – per The Movieland Directory website, during the 1970s the pad belonged to Dan Blocker who was best known for playing Eric ‘Hoss’ Cartwright on Bonanza. On the morning of May 13th, 1972, the actor woke up at the residence feeling dizzy and short of breath. His wife rushed him to the hospital where he died a few hours later from a blood clot in his lungs, an adverse effect resulting from a gallbladder surgery he had undergone a few weeks prior.
Fellow stalker Mark, from the NYC in Film website, let me know that the very same mansion also portrayed the supposed Jamaica Estates-area home of the McDowells in the 1988 classic Coming to America.
Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Mariana for finding this location! 
For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: Liz Purr’s house from Jawbreaker, aka Rob Zombie’s former residence, is located at 555 South Muirfield Road in Hancock Park. The Tate mansion from Soap can be found just up the street at 511 South Muirfield. And Nat King Cole’s longtime home is a block away at 401 South Muirfield.
The Grim Cheaper was anxiously awaiting last Friday’s premiere of the new Amazon series Jack Ryan. There was practically a countdown going on in our house. When we finally viewed the first episode, though, my only thought was ‘I want that hour and four minutes of my life back.’ Needless to say, we were not impressed. The show is a bit of a snoozefest. And being that it was lensed outside of L.A. (mainly in Canada and Morocco), I did not even have its locations to distract me. Watching the pilot did remind me of a related site that I stalked back in November 2012 – the Hancock Park pad used for interior shots of the residence belonging to Jack Ryan (Harrison Ford) and his family in the Tom Clancy franchise’s third installment, 1994’s Clear and Present Danger. I first learned about the home thanks to a Los Angeles Times article published in February 2012, shortly after the property was put up for sale for the first time in almost thirty years. Though I promptly added the address to my To-Stalk List and hit the place up later that same year, I somehow forgot to blog about it. With all the interest in the new series, I figured it was the perfect moment to amend that.
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In real life, the massive 3-story Southern Colonial-style home, which was built in 1925, boasts 7,480 square feet, 6 bedrooms, 6.5 baths, a master suite with a fireplace, his-and-her baths and his-and-her walk-in closets, a library/den, a gourmet kitchen, a wine cellar with space for 900 bottles, hardwood flooring and crown moldings throughout, a detached 1-bedroom guest apartment, a pool house with its own kitchen, a large veranda, a rose garden, a fountain, a pool, a spa, a tennis court, a 4-car garage, a motor court, and a 0.86-acre lot. Holy amenities, Batman!
Sadly, thanks to the fact that its entire perimeter is lined with large trees, virtually none of it is visible from the street.
It doesn’t help matters that the residence sits perpendicular to the road, as you can see in the Bing Maps aerial view below. It is a very unique orientation (I have never seen a house situated sideways like that before) which, unfortunately, blocks most of the place from sight.
The views below are the best that can be gleaned of the home’s spectacular Antebellum façade.
Per the Los Angeles Times, Harrison Ford took such a liking to the property during the ten days spent filming on the premises that he offered to buy it. The owners, who purchased the pad in 1983 for $800,000, were not interested in selling, though. Their minds didn’t change until January 2012, when they placed the home on the market for $5.295 million. The real estate agent used the residence’s cinematic clout as a selling point, which is how it wound up being featured in the Times. It sold that same July for $4.32 million. You can check out the MLS photos here.
The dwelling appears numerous times throughout Clear and Present Danger. The kitchen first pops up in a beginning scene in which Jack learns that Admiral Greer (James Earl Jones) is in the hospital. Though the MLS photo below was taken from a slightly different angle than the one from which the segment was shot, you can see that very little of the kitchen had been altered from its onscreen state at the time of the sale in 2012.
Even the home’s highly unique copper and stainless steel range hood appears to have remained untouched. You can just barely see it to the right of Jack’s head in the screen capture below.
The master bedroom is then featured in a later scene in which Jack watches President Bennett (Donald Moffat) being interviewed on TV while getting ready for work. The MLS image below is, again, taken from a different vantage point, but it is still apparent how little of the room has been changed since the shoot.
In the segment, you can even see one of the room’s walk-in closets through the door in the background.
Near the end of the movie, the living room makes an appearance in the scene in which Ryan learns of Admiral Greer’s death. That space, too, looks much the same as it did when Clear and Present Danger was shot in 1994.
The Los Angeles Times article also states, “In another scene, Ford is preparing to go to South America and was filmed packing the homeowners’ actual clothes. The suitcase ended up in a prop truck, and the owners later had to retrieve their belongings from the prop department.” I scanned through the flick twice, though, in preparation for this post and did not come across a scene like that anywhere. There is one segment in which Ford is shown carrying a suitcase down the residence’s sweeping staircase just prior to his trip to Bogota, but no packing scene. I guess that bit wound up on the cutting room floor.
Only the interior of the property appears in Clear and Present Danger. The exterior of the Ryan home is a different location entirely – one I have not been able to track down as of yet.
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Until next time, Happy Stalking! 
Stalk It: The house used for interior shots of Jack Ryan’s residence in Clear and Present Danger can be found at 615 South Rossmore Avenue in Hancock Park.
I consider myself a seasoned stalker. I think most would agree. Somehow though, until last month, I had never stalked one of the most iconic homes in television history. I am talking about the Cunningham residence from Happy Days. I did not even realize my colossal blunder until I was contacted by The Meredith Vieira Show about using some of my photographs in a segment they were running called “Name That Hollywood Home” last spring. Producers were interested in utilizing a pic featured in my 2009 post about The Golden Girls pad, but also inquired if I had any images of the Cunningham dwelling. I was ashamed to admit that I didn’t and had never actually seen the place in person. I finally amended that situation last month while in L.A. for the weekend with the Grim Cheaper.
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On Happy Days, the Cunningham family – Marion (Marion Ross), Howard (Tom Bosley), Richie (Ron Howard), and Joanie (Erin Moran) – along with their friend/tenant Arthur ‘Fonzie’ Fonzarelli (Henry Winkler) were said to reside at 565 North Clinton Drive in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Their traditional two-story home can actually be found at 565 North Cahuenga Boulevard in Hancock Park, less than a mile from Paramount Pictures, where the series, which ran from 1974 to 1984, was lensed. (I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that there was actually a third Cunningham child named Chuck, portrayed by Irish actor Gavan O’Herlihy, who was unceremoniously written off the show after its inaugural season, never to be seen again.)
In reality, the Cahuenga Boulevard home, which was built in 1923, boasts 6 bedrooms, 2 baths, 3,904 square feet of living space, a 0.29-acre lot, and a swimming pool (which, per Bing’s Bird’s Eye view, appears to be dry). According to Zillow, the Colonial-style pad is currently worth a whopping $3 million! It last sold in February 1995 for $422,000, so the owners have made quite a profit on the place.
The property did not show up on Happy Days until the series’ third episode, titled “Richie’s Cup Runneth Over,” in the scene in which dancer Verna LaVerne (Louisa Moritz) drove a very drunk Richie home from a bachelor party (pictured below).
The house then went on to be featured regularly in establishing shots throughout the show’s ten-year, eleven-season run.
It is amazing to me how little the residence has changed since Happy Days first premiered more than 43 years ago. Aside from the addition of a railing on the exterior steps and the removal of the planter boxes lining the porch as well as the perimeter of the front yard, the place appears frozen in time from the days when the Cunninghams called it home.
Only the exterior of the Cahuenga pad was utilized on Happy Days. The interior of the Cunninghams’ house was a set built inside of Stage 19 at Paramount Pictures. Eagle-eyed viewers undoubtedly noticed that the set looked a bit different during Seasons 1 and 2 (pictured below) than it did during the rest of the series’ run.
Filming of Happy Days shifted from a single-camera setup with no audience to a three-camera setup with a live studio audience during Season 3 and the set had to be altered to accommodate that change. The altered Cunningham home interior featured during Seasons 3-11 is pictured below.
Though the Cahuenga Boulevard residence does boast a detached garage situated at the rear of the property, the scenes taking place in that area of the Cunningham pad were not shot on location at the actual house, but on a set re-creation built on Stage 19.
According to my buddy E.J.’s book Hollywood Death and Scandal Sites, actress Lupe Velez called the Cunningham residence home in the late ‘20s/early ‘30s while she was dating Gary Cooper, whose parents lived just five houses down at 529 North Cahuenga Boulevard. Supposedly, Cooper’s parents were wildly opposed to his love affair with the “Mexican Spitfire” and would walk by her dwelling on a nightly basis, peering in the windows to see what the two were up to. It wasn’t long before Lupe relocated to a more secluded spot at 1826 Laurel Canyon Boulevard in Hollywood Hills West.
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 Cunningham home from Happy Days is located at 565 North Cahuenga Boulevard in Hancock Park.