Merv Griffin locations – IAMNOTASTALKER

April 16, 2013May 30, 2013

The Parker Palm Springs Hotel

This past Sunday afternoon, in the hopes of spotting some of the countless celebrities in town for the Coachella music festival, I dragged the Grim Cheaper out to a few of the desert’s more upscale hotels. And while we did not end up seeing any stars during our venture, we did discover one of the coolest places I have visited in all my years of stalking – the Parker Palm Springs hotel. Although I wouldn’t really consider the place a filming location – it was the subject of Bravo’s short-lived reality series Welcome to the Parker, which I never saw or had even heard of until doing research for this post – because it has a vast celebrity history and is one of the most aesthetically fascinating locations that I have ever seen, I thought it was most-definitely blog-worthy.

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The Parker Palm Springs was originally established in 1959 as a Holiday Inn of all things. In fact, it was California’s very first Holiday Inn. In 1961, the non-descript concrete and cinderblock property was purchased by singing cowboy Gene Autry for the main purpose of lodging his newly acquired baseball team, the California Angels, during Spring Training. He changed the name of the site to Melody Ranch (it was also often called The Autry Hotel) and added a few luxury touches, like a second pool, tennis courts, a bar, and a couple of restaurants. He also placed his famous silver-trimmed saddle on display in the lobby. Love it!

In 1994, Autry sold the resort to his hotel director, Rose Narva, who immediately set about remaking the site into an ornate, French-themed wonderland in affiliation with famed Breakfast at Tiffany’s-fashion-designer Hubert de Givenchy. Narva also renamed the site the Givenchy Hotel and Spa. Interestingly enough, for several years afterward Gene and his wife, Jackie, continued to live at a large private home located at the rear of the property. The two-bedroom, two bath house still stands to this day and is leased out as a part of the resort. You can see photographs of it here.

In 1998, the hotel was purchased by Merv Griffin, who promptly renamed it Merv Griffin’s Resort Hotel and Givenchy Spa. It became quite a celebrity magnet at that time, attracting such legends as Lauren Bacall, Gregory Peck, John Travolta, and Barbra Streisand. It was during Merv Griffin’s tenure as owner that, over Thanksgiving Weekend 2000, Robert Downey Jr. was arrested in Room 311 after police received an anonymous 911 tip that the actor had drugs and guns in his possession.

In 2002, Griffin sold the space to Epix Hotels and Resorts. It then sat vacant until 2003 when it was purchased by hotelier Jack Parker, who hired designer Jonathan Adler to give the space a $27-million facelift. The property re-opened in 2004 as Le Parker Meridien, or Parker Palm Springs as it is better known. According to the 2005 book Palm Springs Legends, at the time it was the city’s only five-star resort.

Today, the 13-acre, 144-room property boasts fire pits, a tropical palm garden, petanque and croquet courts, four pools (two indoor, two outdoor, one saltwater), red clay tennis courts, two restaurants (Norma’s and Mister Parker’s), an outdoor café (The Lemonade Stand), an 18-hole executive golf course, and a 16,500-square-foot award-winning spa named the Palm Spring Yacht Club which boasts 21 treatment rooms, two of them outdoor.

In the book Explorer’s Guide Palm Springs & Desert Resorts, of the unique décor author Christopher P. Baker says, “Frankly, many of the pieces look like they were picked up at a garage sale. But the overall effect is magnificent.” I’d say the hotel is more “flea market” than “garage sale”, but the effect is magnificent indeed! I literally could not stop taking pictures of the place.

My favorite portion of the resort had to be the Mini Bar, a lush, mirrored spot with seating for six tucked into a tiny alcove off the hotel’s lobby.

The Lemonade Stand is pretty amazeballs, though, too.

Love the lemon-stuffed shell.

And the tree-shaded dining area, where you can order a Pimm’s and learn how to play croquet.

The Parker Palm Springs has played host to countless celebrities over its nine-year history, including Jonah Hill, Adrien Brody, Drew Barrymore, Will Kopelman, Lindsay Lohan, Wilmer Valderrama, Eva Mendes, Charlize Theron, Kevin Spacey, Liam Neeson, Teri Hatcher, and Ozzy Osbourne. Lake Bell’s Bachelorette Party was held at the Parker just a few weeks ago and pal Cameron Diaz was in attendance. And Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie famously stayed there – at opposite ends of the property, according to their publicists – on March 25th and 26th, 2005 while shooting the “Domestic Bliss” cover story for W Magazine. (I blogged about the Kenaston Residence where the shoot took place here). According to the Hotel Chatter website, the duo, who were at the time ferociously fighting rumors of a relationship, checked in under the aliases Jasmine Pilaf and Bryce Pilaf. Nyuck nyuck nyuck! Winking smile It is not very hard to see why stars flock to the Parker – the hotel is full of tucked-away spaces and is incredibly intimate, serene and cozy despite its large size.

Being there feels more like hanging out at a good – and ultra-hip – friend’s house (Cupcake and Cashmere’s Emily Schuman’s house, perhaps – oh, if only we were friends! Winking smile ) than staying at a hotel. I would SO love to book a room there for a little stay-cation, but being that rates start at around $300 a night, I am sure the GC will be having none of that!

UPDATE – a fellow stalker named TJ recently posted a comment alerting me to the fact that the Parker actually IS a filming location. The hotel was featured extensively in the Season 1 episode of the short-lived HBO series The Comeback titled “Valerie Relaxes in Palm Springs”, in which fledgling actress Valerie Cherish (Lisa Kudrow) vacations in the desert with her husband, Mark Berman (Damian Young). Areas of the hotel that appeared in the episode include the front entrance;

the lobby;

the pool;

and Norma’s restaurant.

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 Parker Palm Springs is located at 4200 East Palm Canyon Drive in Palm Springs. You can visit the hotel’s official website here.

November 28, 2012June 19, 2017

Merv Griffin’s Former House – and Some Big News!

The Grim Cheaper and I had a fabulous time in Palm Springs last week celebrating Thanksgiving with my parents – so much so that we have decided to move there permanently! We have been seriously considering a move to the Desert for a few months now, but finally decided to pull the trigger while driving back to Pasadena last Saturday afternoon and called up our landlord to officially give our 60 days notice. While I will miss my beloved L.A. more than words can express, I think our being in the desert will do wonders for my dad’s health (not to mention my poor mom’s sanity). The fact that our new apartment (which we LOVE) is half the price of our current apartment – and twice the size! – AND features a HUGE walk-in closet only sweetens the deal. (My current closet situation is absolutely pitiful, but I digress.) And not to worry, my fellow stalkers, my blog is not going anywhere. We own a condo in Santa Monica that is only rented out part time and we will be staying in it whenever it is free so that I will be able to stalk. IAMNOTASTALKER is most-definitely here to stay, I promise. And now, on with the post!

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A couple of months ago, my mom mentioned that she had seen a real estate listing for Merv Griffin’s former 39-acre estate in La Quinta. The listing did not cite an address, though, and my mom was desperate for me to track the place down because she could not imagine where an almost forty-acre property could possibly be located in the LQ. Thankfully, I was able to find the abode fairly quickly via a Google search and, as it turns out, the pad is pretty darn close to my parents’ house. So I dragged the GC right on out to stalk the place Thanksgiving morning.

Merv, who had been a frequent Desert visitor in the past, purchased the land for his La Quinta estate while in town for a tennis tournament sometime during the 1980s. According to a 2006 Palm Springs Life article, he said, “I looked around and thought this would be a great place to bring my horses. I bought the first and only 80-acre parcel I saw. It was a disaster — nothing but sand, cactus, a little old motel, and a small lake. My son asked me, ‘What are you going to do with this?’ And I said, ‘See if I can make Kentucky out of it.’” Griffin bought up several adjacent plots of land in the following years, eventually amassing a whopping 240-acre compound. He built a private home for himself on the site in 1986 and the surrounding acreage was transformed into Griffin Ranch, an exclusive equestrian-themed gated community that formally opened in 2007. And while the Ranch was originally expected to feature 393 custom estates, according to Brad Schmett’s La Quinta real estate website, new construction was halted in 2009 and the fate of future development there is currently unknown.

Griffin’s ginormous Moroccan-style residence was inspired in part by clothing designer Yves Saint Laurent’s home in Marrakech, which Merv claims to have once snuck into while on a visit to Morocco (a man after my own heart, I swear ). He commissioned famed interior decorator Waldo Fernandez (who is/was the go-to designer for such stars as Elizabeth Taylor, Sean Connery, and Jennifer Aniston and who handled the 1980s remodel of the Beverly Hills Hotel, which was also owned by Griffin at the time) to style the interior. Sadly, Merv’s home was gutted in an electrical fire in 1987, not long after it was first constructed, and had to be completely rebuilt.

Griffin’s former estate, not much of which is visible from the road, is nothing short of spectacular, as you can see in the aerial views below. In fact, when I first saw the below images I thought I was looking at a resort! The estate boasts a 5,483-square-foot main house with a 2000-square-foot living room, retractable dome skylight, 20-foot ceilings, and two master suites with Moroccan-style steam showers. The property also features four detached circular-shaped casitas, a 1,712-square-foot guest house (with three bedrooms and two baths!), separate staff quarters, an equestrian center with a 16-stall stable, a barn, a regulation-sized racetrack (apparently the only one in the entire Coachella Valley), an infinity pool, and a 2.5-acre(!) pond complete with a swan paddle boat.

Upon Griffin’s passing in 2007, the home became a vacation rental and was then put up for sale this past March for a whopping $14.5 million. It was relisted in June for $9.5 million and appears to still be on the market today.

Thanks to fave website The Real Estalker, I learned that Griffin’s former house is also a filming location! The dwelling was where Slade Smiley and Gretchen Rossi vacationed with Gretchen’s parents, Brenda and Scott, in the Season 5 episode of The Real Housewives of Orange County titled “Let’s Bow Our Heads and Pray”.

Um, can you say “product placement”?

The interior of the home was also 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.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Merv Griffin’s former house is located at 81345 Avenue 54 in La Quinta.

October 14, 2011September 29, 2017

Lana Turner’s Former House -The Johnny Stompanato Murder Site

My grandma, who loves reading Hollywood biographies just as much as I do, recently gifted me with a book about the life of legendary film idol Lana Turner, authored by the star’s only daughter, Cheryl Crane. The ginormous tome, which must weigh at least twenty pounds (not kidding!), is named LANA: The Memories, the Myths, the Movies and, prior to reading it, I knew virtually nothing about the 1950s screen siren. Well, aside, of course, from the fact that she had been embroiled in one of the largest scandals ever to rock Tinseltown – the murder of smalltime gangster Johnny Stompanato, which took place inside of Lana’s rented Beverly Hills manse. So after finishing the book several weeks ago, I decided that the timing could not have been more perfect for me to do some stalking of Lana’s former residence and blog about it during my Haunted Hollywood month.

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Lana rented the large Colonial-style house pictured above in the Spring of 1958, shortly after returning to Los Angeles from England where she had been filming Another Time, Another Place with actor Sean Connery. The 6-bedroom, 6-bath, 6,769-square-foot home had originally been built in 1930 for Gone with the Wind actress Laura Hope Crews. At the time she moved in, Lana had been embroiled in a year-long turbulent romance with Johnny Stompanato, a womanizer who was best known for being mobster Mickey Cohen’s bodyguard. Lana had reportedly been trying to break up with Stompanato for several weeks, all to no avail. On the night of April 4th, 1958, only three days after she had moved into the residence, Lana had once again thrown in the towel on the relationship. After hearing the news, Johnny threatened to cut up Lana’s face and harm both her mother, “Gran”, and 14-year-old Cheryl, who had just returned home from boarding school. In the book, Cheryl describes what happened next as follows: “After John arrived, I sat in my bedroom writing a term paper while I heard his vicious threats carry through the house. In a panic I ran downstairs and into the kitchen, where on the sink counter lay one of the knives Mother had bought earlier in the day. The thought of scaring him away flashed into my mind. I went back up the stairs to Mother’s bedroom and stood outside of her door for a few moments as Stompanato continued threatening to disfigure her. Suddenly Mother threw open the door. John came up from behind, his arm raised as if to strike. I took a step forward and he ran on the knife in my hands. Stompanato looked at me and said, ‘My God, Cheryl, what have you done?’ before falling to the floor. He was dead within moments.”

Cheryl was taken to juvenile hall shortly after the killing and a coroner’s inquest was opened just a few days later, during which Lana testified. The coroner’s jury, who deliberated for a scant 20 minutes, ending up ruling Johnny’s death a justifiable homicide, acquitting Cheryl of all charges. And while theories abound that Lana was actually the one who did the stabbing and used her daughter as a scapegoat in order to avoid jail time and career ruin, legendary author James Ellroy thinks otherwise. In a February 2011 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article, he said, “People love to think something is inherently more dramatic, more secret, crazier, uglier, more vicious and vile. People love the inside scoop and will deny all the facts even when they are hit directly over the head with them. It’s a very, very, very common phenomenon to ascribe more intrigue to a prosaic event than the prosaic event truly demands." The world will perhaps never know the exact truth about what happened at 730 North Roxbury Drive on the evening of April 4th, 1958, but I find it absolutely amazing that people are still enthralled with the murder more than five decades later.

According to Cheryl, Lana’s bedroom, where the murder took place, was located on the second floor of the home on the far left-hand side. Lana moved out of the house immediately following the events of April 4th, 1958, only living on the premises a grand total of a few days. According to my buddy E.J. over at The Movieland Directory website, actress Virginia Bruce also once lived in the home, as did host Merv Griffin.

Cheryl Crane on the Johnny Stompanato Murder

You can watch an interview with Cheryl, in which she talks about the murder, by clicking above.

Big THANK YOU to my grandma for giving me LANA: The Memories, the Myths, the Movies, without which I would not have had most of the information with which to write this post.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Lana Turner’s former house, where Johnny Stompanato’s murder took place, is located at 730 North Bedford Drive in Beverly Hills.