Haunted Hollywood – Page 14

October 26, 2011September 29, 2017

The So-Called Houdini Ruins

One location that I have wanted to stalk for just about forever now is the so-called Harry Houdini Estate, or Houdini Ruins, located at the corner of Laurel Canyon Boulevard and Lookout Mountain Avenue in Laurel Canyon. I first read about the site five years ago in fave stalking tome Hollywood: The Movie Lover’s Guide, but, for whatever reason, had never made the trip out there to stalk it. Then, a couple of weeks ago, the Grim Cheaper and I found ourselves in the Laurel Canyon area and decided that, because the locale had long been rumored to be haunted by the ghost of the famous magician, the timing could not have been more perfect to finally stop by. It was not until after I got home and did some research that I discovered that Houdini had most likely never even set foot on the property, let alone lived there, and therefore had pretty much no reason whatsoever to haunt it.

It is not exactly clear how or why the rumor about the Houdini Estate got started. According to an October 1989 Los Angeles Times article written by Michael Szymanski, the first printed mention of it was in Kenneth Schessler’s 1972 book This is Hollywood. When Szymanski told Schessler that his information about the Estate had largely been panned, Schessler responded, “I heard about the controversy, but I proved it by finding it in a directory of some sort. I just can’t remember where.” Um, OK, I believe you, then! Winking smile What is known as fact is this: Harry Houdini did reside in the Los Angeles area for a brief period around 1919 while filming two movies for the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation/Paramount Pictures. Where he stayed during that time, though, is anybody’s guess. Journalist Maurice Zolotow once researched the magician for a Los Angeles Magazine article and said, “Houdini resided in Hollywood for about two years, yet I’ve never been able to discover where he lived.” Further adding to the mystery and allure of the Laurel Canyon site is the fact that the 40-room Italianate-style mansion which once stood there burned entirely to the ground in 1959. All that remained after the blaze were some ornate stone staircases, cement walls, and the former servant’s quarters. The main home was never rebuilt and the ruins of the fire, which came to be known as the “Houdini Ruins” and which you can take a look at here and here, were visible from Laurel Canyon Boulevard for years to come. As you can see in the above photographs, though, that is, unfortunately, no longer the case.

However it began, the Houdini Estate rumor spread even further after the fire and countless websites and books still to this day state that the Laurel Canyon ruins were once a part of the magician’s property, despite many claims to the contrary. Houdini historian Manny Weltman even went so far as to say, “Houdini never set foot on those grounds, and anyone who says so is lying. If anyone comes up with proof I’ll eat my magic hat.” When the site went up for sale in 1989, Merrill Lynch hired two different title search companies to research the title, but neither could find any link to Houdini. Today, the location, which mainly serves as an event venue and is known as “Houdini House”, consists of a 3.9-acre plot of land with landscaped terraces, waterfalls, ponds, hiking trails, meandering pathways, and an Old-Hollywood-style home that sleeps twelve. One of my friends actually attended a wedding at the estate and said it was an absolutely magical experience. So, whether Houdini ever set foot on the property or not seems to be entirely irrelevant, as it has somehow managed to generate a mystique all on its own. Oh, what I would not give to throw a Halloween party there! Can you imagine how incredibly cool that would be?!?! And while the Houdini House rental rates are actually quite reasonable, somehow I still don’t think the GC would ever go for it.

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Someone who did go for it, though, was The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills’ Taylor Armstrong, who in the Season 1 episode titled “It’s My Party and I’ll Spend If I Want To”, famously threw her 4-year-old daughter, Kennedy, a $60,000 Mad-Hatter-themed birthday party at the Houdini Estate. And no, that was not a typo – the party, which was for a FOUR-YEAR-OLD, actually cost $60,000!!!!! The spectacle caused fellow Housewife Lisa Vanderpump to ask, “What ever happened to Pin the Tail on the Donkey?” Love it!

The bust of Houdini which was shown in the Housewives episode can just barely be viewed from Laurel Canyon Boulevard and is pictured above, albeit quite blurrily.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The so-called Houdini Ruins are located at 2400 Laurel Canyon Boulevard in Laurel Canyon. Unfortunately, as I mentioned above, no part of the property is visible from the street, so I cannot really recommend stalking it. You can visit the Houdini House’s official website here.

October 19, 2011September 29, 2017

Laurie Strode’s House from “Halloween”

A couple of months ago, fellow stalker Mikey, from the Mike the Fanboy website, clued me into an INCREDIBLY cool little bit of Haunted Hollywood stalking information that I had not been previously aware of. Apparently, the real life owners of the home that stood in for the Strode residence in the 1978 classic horror film Halloween are so extremely stalker-friendly that they provide a supply of plastic pumpkins on their front porch all year long for fans of the movie to pose with in photographs. Well, as you can imagine, I was absolutely bowled over with excitement upon hearing this news and decided that, even though I had previously stalked the Strode house and blogged about it briefly way back in October of 2008, that it was most-definitely worthy of a re-visit. So I dragged the Grim Cheaper out to South Pasadena to do just that this past weekend.

And, sure enough, as soon as we arrived at the home, I spotted an assortment of plastic foam pumpkins sitting on a chair on the property’s front porch, along with a framed sign.

That sign reads, “Yes this is the scene with Jamie Lee Curtis from the 1978 Halloween. You may borrow the pumpkin. Have a good time.”

The sign also includes a still from the movie so that fans can refer to it while posing on the front walkway. How incredibly cool are these homeowners??? Big, huge, Andre-the-Giant-sized props go out to them for embracing the cinematic history of their residence and allowing stalkers to share in some of the fun. If I owned a famous movie home, you can bet your bottom dollar that I would be doing this same, exact thing. LOVE IT! LOVE IT! LOVE IT!

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The supposed-Haddonfield, Illinois Strode residence was featured several times in Halloween. It first appeared in the beginning of the movie in the scene in which Laurie Strode (aka Jamie Lee Curtis) is reminded by her father, Morgan Strode (aka Peter Griffith), to drop a key off at the “Meyer’s place”. According to the fabulous website The Cabinet, that particular scene was the very first of the entire movie to be shot. And according to IMDB’s Halloween trivia page, director John Carpenter hired Jamie Lee Curtis, in what was her very first movie role, as a sort-of nod to Alfred Hitchcock who had cast Jamie’s mother, Janet Leigh, in the iconic role of Marion Crane in Psycho. In another homage to the legendary Hitchcock classic, Carpenter also named the character of Michael Meyer’s psychiatrist “Sam Loomis” after Marion’s lover in Psycho.

The Strode residence next shows up in the scene in which Laurie returns home from school, after having been accidentally scared by Sherriff Leigh Bracken (aka Charles Cyphers).

And finally, it appears in the scene in which Laurie waits, pumpkin in hand, to be picked up by her friend Annie Brackett (aka Nancy Kyes) to go baby-sitting.

It is that scene that the homeowners allow you to recreate with their fake pumpkins. SO INCREDIBLY COOL!

Amazingly, the Strode residence looks pretty much exactly the same today as it did in 1978 when Halloween was filmed. The north-facing side of the house is the area that appeared in the movie.

For whatever reason, the east-facing side, which is pictured above, was not seen in Halloween. According to fave website Zillow, in real life the property is not a single-family home, but a multi-occupancy dwelling which features three separate units.

And while I cannot say for certain that the home’s actual interior was used in the filming, I am guessing that it was.

On a very random side-note – while doing some research on Halloween earlier today, I almost fell off my chair upon discovering that Kyle Richards (star of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, whom I loathe more than there are words in the English language to express – I honestly do not think there has ever been a bigger b*tch in the history of reality television, but I digress) had played Lindsey Wallace, the little girl whom Annie babysat, in the 1978 flick.

And on a Halloween side-note – as the GC and I were driving away from the Strode residence, we spotted a house that was decorated beyond belief for the upcoming holiday!

As you can see above, the amount of detail that went into the embellishment of the home is utterly incredible!

I was shocked to discover that the fence which runs along the perimeter of the property and reads “cemetery” above the gate was actually just a prop! I mean, I, of course, realized the “cemetery” part was decoration, but the entire fence? WOW!

And it was not until I was about to leave that I realized the home’s brick façade was also just a decoration! As you can see in the above photograph, the entire front of the residence has been wrapped in some sort of plastic covering. Talk about going all out!!! If I ever have a house, you better believe that this is what it is going to look like every year come Halloween! Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Laurie Strode’s house from the original Halloween movie is located at 1115 Oxley Street in South Pasadena. The massively-decorated-for-Halloween home that we stumbled upon is located right around the corner at 1130 Diamond Avenue in South Pasadena.

October 11, 2011September 29, 2017

Bob Hope’s Former House – A Trick-or-Treating Mecca

As I have mentioned a couple of times before on this blog, this stalker absolutely loves herself some Los Angeles Magazine – especially the ever-witty and always-informative “Ask Chris – The City Explained” write-in column, in which Associate Editor/author Chris Nichols answers Angelenos’ random questions about life in the City of Angels. This month’s column featured a letter from a Valley-area reader with a tidbit of Halloween information that I had never before heard. She wrote, “When I was a kid, we always went trick-or-treating at Bob Hope’s house in Toluca Lake, where they handed out whole candy bars. Does his widow keep up the tradition?” (Sadly, the issue hit newsstands just a few days before Dolores Hope passed away on September 19th.) Chris replied, “The Hope house has long been known for doling out the best Halloween loot, from those full-size candy bars and silver dollars to nose-shaped kazoos and Frisbees imprinted with a caricature of the funnyman, who passed away in 2003. At 102, Dolores Hope leads a pretty active life (I reached her on vacation in Europe), but after chartered buses showed up with scores of children last Halloween, Dolores decided to end the tradition at her historic estate.” Well, I thought that was just about the coolest thing I had ever heard (aside from the whole chartered buses showing up thing, of course) and as soon as I finished reading Chris’s words, I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out to stalk the place.

Sadly, not much of the home, which was built in 1939 and boasts 8 bedrooms, 11 baths, 34 rooms, 14,876 square feet, and sits on over 4 acres of land, is visible from the street.

Bob and Dolores purchased the residence, which as you can see in the above aerial view is absolutely GINORMOUS, in 1940 and it was there that Bob, sadly, passed away on July 27th, 2003. Amazingly, the legendary comedian was making people laugh right up until the very end. According to this CNN interview with Bob’s grandson Zachary, when asked where he wanted to be buried while on his deathbed, Bob replied, “Surprise me.” Gotta love it!

While we were stalking the home, the GC and I ventured around to the property’s side gate on Ledge Avenue where several mourners had placed flowers in memory of Dolores. So incredibly sweet.

And I do have to say here that I think the fact that Bob and Dolores maintained such an awesome Halloween tradition for so many years is absolutely extraordinary. What an amazing couple! As Candy Waldron, one of the Hope’s longtime neighbors, said in this July 2003 Los Angeles Times article, “He could have closed his gate and ignored the holiday. But every year he’d give out hundreds of toys.” Apparently, one Halloween the couple even handed out autographed photos of Bob! Oh, how I wish I had grown up in Toluca Lake! All Hallow Steve, from the FABULOUS Halloween Addict blog (which I somehow only recently discovered), was just as fascinated as I was with the Hope’s Halloween traditions and managed to dig up a comment on the Trend Hunter website from a Toluca Lake native which said, “I always think fondly about Bob Hope around Halloween. His old estate is right by my parents’ house, and we’d go trick-or-treating there. Each year, his butler would pass out a sack filled with king-sized candy bars, one sack to each child. There would always be a Bob Hope toy too, like a mini glow-in-the-dark Frisbee with his profile and “Bob Hope 1990″ or something like that. I’ve never forgotten his generosity.” All Hallow Steve even managed to track down a photograph of one of those Frisbees (pictured above). LOVE IT!

In the Ask Chris column, Chris Nichols finished up his response about the Bob Hope house with, “Dedicated trick-or-treaters might think about taking their chances in Las Vegas, where Mayor Oscar Goodman is said to give out lucky poker chips.” Randomly enough, while vacationing at the Hotel Del Coronado in San Diego a few years back, the GC happened to spot Oscar Goodman sitting next to us at one of the property’s outdoor patios. And, let me tell you, I literally almost had a heart attack when the GC walked right up to him to ask for a picture! Yes, the Grim Cheaper, a man who could care less about the Alicia Silverstones, the Kyra Sedgwicks, and the Jermaine Jacksons of the world, not only recognized, but actually went up to and asked the Mayor of Las Vegas for a photograph! Oscar happily obliged and then gave him one of the aforementioned poker chips (the front and back of which is pictured above), which the Mayor apparently uses as a business card. SO COOL!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Bob and Dolores Hope’s former house is located at 10346 Moorpark Street in Toluca Lake.

October 10, 2011September 29, 2017

The “Double Indemnity” House

A couple of weekends ago I dragged the Grim Cheaper out to the Beachwood Canyon area of the Hollywood Hills to stalk one of the most famous macabre movie locations of all time – the Spanish-Colonial-Revival-style abode that was featured in Double Indemnity. Incredibly, up until a few weeks ago I had yet to see the 1944 film noir classic, which was directed by Billy Wilder, even though it is largely considered to be one of the greatest movies of all time. And I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised when I finally did sit down to watch it. Not only did the film not seem dated, but I was absolutely riveted to my chair for the entire 107 minute run time. Sure, some scenes were a bit cheesy – especially the love scenes between Pacific All Risk Insurance Company salesman Walter Neff (aka Fred MacMurray) and disgruntled housewife Phyllis Dietrichson (aka Barbara Stanwyck), not to mention Walter’s silly pronunciation of the word “baby” – but overall the film was incredibly well-done and thoroughly suspenseful, which is shocking being that it was made almost a full seven decades ago. If you have yet to see it, I cannot more highly recommend doing so!

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In Double Indemnity, the supposed-Glendale-area hillside abode pictured above is where Phyllis lives with her abusive oilman husband, Mr. Dietrichson (aka Tom Powers), and his daughter, Lola Dietrichson (aka Jean Heather). It is while walking up to the home at the very beginning of the film that Walter Neff utters what is arguably its most famous line. Of the residence, he says, “It was one of those California Spanish houses everyone was nuts about ten or fifteen years ago. This one must have cost somebody about thirty thousand bucks – that is if he ever finished paying for it.” It is at the house that Phyllis and Walter first meet and fall in love. The two later cook up a scheme to purchase an accident insurance policy for Phyllis’ unknowing husband and then murder him to collect on the claim. The “double indemnity” of the title refers to a clause in the policy which stipulates that in the case of certain more unlikely accidents, i.e. a death on a train, the amount of the insurance payout would double.

Amazingly enough, as you can see above, the house has remained virtually unchanged since 1944 when Double Indemnity was filmed. I simply cannot express how cool I think that is!

The only real difference is the garage door, which has since been modernized. Otherwise though, the home looks pretty much exactly the same in person as it did onscreen in all of its black-and-white glory.

The view has obviously changed a bit in the ensuing years, though. Winking smile

The screenplay for the movie, which was co-written by Raymond Chandler and Billy Wilder, was based on an 8-part serial written by James M. Cain that was first published in Liberty Magazine in 1936. Cain based his story on the real life 1927 murder of Albert Snyder by his wife Ruth Snyder and her lover Henry Judd Gray, the trial of which Cain had covered while working as a journalist in New York. And amazingly enough, it seems as if the house that wound up being used in the movie was the very same house that Cain had written about in his story. In the book he calls the abode the “House of Death” and, of it, he says, “I drove out to Glendale to put three new truck drivers on a brewery company bond, and then I remembered this renewal over in Hollywoodland. I decided to run over there. That was how I came to this House of Death, that you’ve been reading about in the papers. It didn’t look like a House of Death when I saw it. It was just a Spanish house, like all the rest of them in California, with white walls, red tile roof, and a patio out to one side. It was built cock-eyed. The garage was under the house, the first floor was over that and the rest of it was spilled up the hill any way they could get it in. You climbed some stone steps to the front door, so I parked the car and went up there.” Cain’s words could not be a more perfect description of the residence that appeared in the movie, which leads me to believe that the abode must have served as the inspiration for the home in the story and that Cain then later suggested the place to producers to use for the filming. So incredibly cool!

According to an October 17, 2009 Los Angeles Times article, an almost exact replica of the interior of the house was recreated on a soundstage at Paramount Studios in Hollywood for the filming.

As you can see above, in real life the home’s front door is much closer to the bottom of the central staircase than it was onscreen. The actual residence, which was built in 1927 and boasts 4 bedrooms, 3 baths, and 3,077 square feet of living space, currently belongs to interior designer/set decorator Mae Brunken. You can check out some fabulous photographs of the actual interior of the property here. (The photograph of the home pictured above does not belong to me, but remains the sole property of the Los Angeles Times and photographer Ricardo DeAratanha).

In an interesting twist, as you can see above, producers had the address number of the Double Indemnity house changed from “6301” to “4760” for the filming. I would not have thought that sort of thing happened back in the days before DVD players, pause buttons, and the internet, but all evidence to the contrary.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Double Indemnity house is located at 6301 Quebec Drive in the Beachwood Canyon area of the Hollywood Hills.

October 3, 2011September 29, 2017

The Mills View House from “Picket Fences”

Well, my fellow stalkers, it is finally that time of year again, the month I look forward to all year long – October! With it comes fall leaves, cooler temperatures, and my favorite holiday of them all, Halloween. And you know what that means – I will once again be devoting the entire month of blog posts to locations having to do with Haunted Hollywood! First up is the Mills View house, a Monrovia-area property that I learned about way back in March from a journalist named Toni Momberger who interviewed me for an Inland Valley Daily Bulletin newspaper article she was writing about famous movie homes. Toni told me that she had toured the huge, Victorian-style abode as part of her research for the article and she was shocked to discover that I had never before heard of the place. As fate would have it, the house had been featured prominently in not one, but two spooky productions over the years, so I figured it would be the perfect start to my Haunted Hollywood theme and I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out to stalk it a few weeks back.

The 5-bedroom, 2-bath, 3,140-square-foot Mills View house, which was built in 1887 by architects Luther Reed Blair and Uriah Zimmerman, was originally situated on a 5-acre plot of land on what was then the corner of Banana Avenue (now Hillcrest Boulevard) and Melrose Avenue. The Eastlake-Victorian-style home was commissioned by William N. Monroe, the founder of Monrovia, as a wedding gift for his son, Milton Monroe, and his new bride, Mary Nevada. Construction on the property began in May of 1887, shortly after Milton and his wife were married, and was completed a mere seven months later. Sadly, the Monroes divorced a short time after tying the knot and ended up selling their wedding home to Colonel John H. Mills and his wife, Elizabeth Cook Mills, in 1893. The Mills dubbed their new residence “Mills View” because on a clear day the island of Catalina was supposedly visible from one of the third floor windows. Unfortunately, Colonel Mills passed away only three months after moving into the home and it went through several ownership changes after Elizabeth subsequently died in 1905. Mills View, which boasts numerous stained glass windows, a third floor attic, hardwood flooring throughout, and five fireplaces with original tilework, became a Monrovia City Landmark on June 4, 1996.

According to this Monrovia Patch article, Mills View has appeared in over 20 productions since 1980 alone. Sadly though, I know of only two – both of which, as I mentioned above, fit the thriller genre. And the property definitely does give off a spooky vibe in person – I think primarily due to its gargantuan size – so it is not very hard to see why location scouts have flocked to it over the years.

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In the Season 1 Halloween-themed episode of fave show Picket Fences titled “Remembering Rosemary”, Mills View was where Rosemary Bauer committed suicide ten years prior by jumping out of a third-floor window, and where Sheriff Jimmy Brock (aka Tom Skerritt) and his deputies Maxine Stewart (aka Lauren Holly) and Kenny Lacos (aka Costas Mandylor) returned to investigate the case after deciding to re-open it a few days before Halloween.

I am fairly certain that the real life interior of the house, which you can see some photographs of here, was used in the episode.

Mills View was also the primary location used in the 1986 horror flick House. In the movie, it was the haunted property that mystery-writer Roger Cobb (aka William Katt) inherited from his Aunt Elizabeth (aka Susan French). According to the House production notes, for the onsite filming, which lasted two weeks, production designer Gregg Fonseca repainted the exterior of the property and added Victorian gingerbread detailing, a few spires, a wrought-iron fence, and a sidewalk. At the rear of the residence, he covered up the home’s real life clapboard siding with a fake brick edifice and added some much-needed landscaping.

No filming took place inside of the actual home, though. For all of the interior scenes, a replica of the house, which included two full stories, a living room, a den, a staircase, and three upstairs bedrooms, was built on a soundstage at Ren Mar Studios in Hollywood.

And I am fairly certain that the pool shown in the movie was either a fake built on the property solely for the filming or that a second location was used, as Mills View does not currently appear to have a pool.

Two very lucky British House fans were given a personalized tour of Mills View last year and wrote a great blog post about it which you can check out here.

On a Halloween side note – I was finally able to dig up a photograph of me dressed up as Agent Dana Scully for Halloween one year during college, which I had mentioned in the blog post I wrote about meeting David Duchovny back in June. The only picture I could find, though, was not a very good one as my eyes are closed in it. Ah well. That is my good friend Alex, who was dressed up a Parrothead, posing with me.

While going through boxes at my parents’ new house looking for the Dana Scully picture, I also stumbled upon my Fox Mulder doll, which I could NOT have been more excited about! I am so going to have to stalk DD again and get him to sign the doll for me. How incredibly cool would that be??

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Mills View, from the movie House and the “Remembering Rosemary” episode of Picket Fences, is located at 329 Melrose Avenue in Monrovia.