The house where Rocky (Eric Stoltz) and Rusty Dennis (Cher) lived in Mask recently hit the rental market, gifting fans a peek at the interior. You can read all about it in my latest post for Dirt.
Phil’s House from “The Midnight Hour”
Calling all The Midnight Hour fans! My latest post chronicles several of the 1985 made-for-television classic’s locations, including the Monrovia house used as the residence of Phil Grenville (Lee Montgomery).
The “From the Bottom of My Broken Heart” House
Head over to Dirt to check out my latest post about the house from Britney Spears’ From the Bottom of My Broken Heart music video.
Jonathan’s House from “Highway to Heaven”
Head over to Dirt to read my latest post about Jonathan’s (Michael Landon) house from “Highway to Heaven.”
Judge Bone’s House from ‘Picket Fences’
Curious where the fabulous Craftsman residence belonging to Judge Bone (Ray Walston) on Picket Fences can be found? Check out my latest post at Dirt.com to find out!
The “Hider in the House” House
Be sure to head over to Dirt to check out my latest Haunted Hollywood post! It’s about the main house from the creeptastic movie Hider in the House. You can read it here.
Jill’s Doctor’s Office from “Picket Fences”
Hindsight being 20/20, I really should have studied architecture in college. Expertise in that area would have served me well, not only in my hunts for various locations, but in writing about them, as well. I can’t tell you how many times a day I scour the internet and/or pester my friend/guest poster extraordinaire Michael, who does have a background in the subject, for help in identifying design terminology. (I remember “crenelated” being a particularly tough find while writing this post.) Needless to say, I’ve still got a lot to learn. Case in point – up until just recently I would have considered the property above to be Victorian in style. But it’s actually American Foursquare, which, per Curbed, is defined by a rectangular base, wide front porch, and lack of exterior and interior ornamentation. The latter characteristic is a “direct response to the heavy woodwork of the Victorian era,” so that shows you what I know! Style misidentification aside, I was thrilled to learn about the residence, which fellow stalker Brad recently identified as the office where Dr. Jill Brock (Kathy Baker) treated the zany townspeople of Rome, Wisconsin on fave show Picket Fences. Known as the Tillapaugh House in real life, it has quite an interesting history!
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Built in 1906 for New York transplant Gilbert Tillapaugh and his wife, Elizabeth, the stately property originally stood a couple blocks northwest of its current location at 129 South Primrose Avenue in Monrovia. It was moved – yes, picked up and moved! – in 1978 to make way for a new apartment complex. In looking at the photos of the home at its initial Primrose Ave. location here and here, namely the large drainage grates in the sidewalk visible on either side of it, as compared to current Street View imagery, I believe the dwelling was formerly situated in the spot where the white box is below.
In 1951, the Tillapaugh House wound up in the hands of the American Red Cross, who utilized it as the headquarters of their Monrovia chapter. It was amidst the group’s long tenure there that the property was relocated to 200 East Lime Avenue. You can check out some photos of it in the process of being set up at its new location here and here.
After more than four decades of occupation, the Red Cross moved out in 1995. Four years later, the Tillapaugh House was acquired by the Monrovia Redevelopment Agency and continued to be used as offices. The historic residence was then, sadly – and almost unbelievably – relegated to storage space when the State of California suspended such agencies in 2012. Without a proper use for it, the city eventually put the property on the market in 2016. At the time, it lacked a shower or bathtub and only featured a single half-bath on the lower level. Talk about a fixer-upper!
Some buyers with foresight snatched the place up and did a complete revamp, transforming it back to its original state as a single-family home. Today, the sightly pad, which is a City of Monrovia Historic Landmark, boasts 3 bedrooms, 3 baths (2 with standalone tubs!), a den, 2,331 square feet of living space, countless original details, a tiled fireplace, hardwood flooring throughout, chair and rail moldings, a 0.18-acre lot, and a detached 1-car garage.
You can check out some interior photos of it here.
The exterior of the Tillapaugh House appeared regularly on Picket Fences.
Despite a major change in color scheme and the addition of some foliage, the property still looks much the same today as it did on television screens in the mid-90s (minus the snow, of course).
Not only was the home utilized in establishing shots of Jill’s office on the series, but some on-location filming took place there as well, in episodes such as “Rights of Passage” . . .
. . . and “Sugar & Spice.”
Only the exterior of the Tillapaugh House was featured on Picket Fences. Beginning with the pilot episode, all interior scenes involving Jill’s quaint and homey office were shot on a studio-built set.
Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Brad 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: The Tillapaugh House, aka Jill’s office from Picket Fences, is located at 200 East Lime Avenue in Monrovia. The Brock residence from the show is just about a mile away at 211 Highland Place.
The Brock House from “Picket Fences”
I was recently asked how I come up with new material to write about. My answer? I am a huge consumer of content! All content – movies, television shows, magazines, books, blogs, websites, podcasts, documentaries, etc. etc. etc. I eat them all up! (In fact, I was tipped off to two Haunted Hollywood locations via old newspaper articles while doing research for this very post!) Many times, too, inspiration comes from fellow stalkers. Case in point – a longtime reader named Brad recently messaged to ask if I had ever done any stalking of the David E. Kelley series Picket Fences, which ran on CBS from 1992 to 1996. The quirky family drama/small-town police procedural, largely shot in Monrovia, was one of my favorite shows back in the day, but somehow I hadn’t thought about it in years! I had actually stalked the main house from the series when I first moved to Los Angeles in 2000, years before I had a blog. It was so long ago, though, that I no longer had the address listed in any of my files. Brad was kind enough to provide it to me, along with a few others, which I was thrilled to run out and stalk. I was even more thrilled to discover shortly thereafter that Season 1 is currently available for streaming on Amazon Prime and promptly settled in for a watch. Despite being almost three decades old, Picket Fences really holds up! I’m enjoying it just as much today as I did when I was a teen. And being so familiar with the L.A. area this time around has made revisiting the show even more of a joy! You can expect quite a few PF locations to be popping up here in the coming weeks. And what better spot to kick things off with than the supposed Rome, Wisconsin home where Sherriff Jimmy Brock (Tom Skerritt) lived with his wife, Dr. Jill Brock (Kathy Baker), and their three children, Kimberly (Holly Marie Combs), Matthew (Justin Shenkarow) and Zachary (Adam Wylie), on the whimsical series.
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In real life, the handsome 1924 Colonial sits on a leafy street just north of Old Town Monrovia. The 4-bedroom, 2-bath, 2,844-square-foot property last sold in 1971, which is a lucky break for us stalkers as the lack of changeover has resulted in very few alterations to the exterior. Outside of two large trees which have since been removed from the front yard, the place is a virtual time capsule from the Picket Fences days!
In an atypical move for a television show, no location changes were made by the network once Picket Fences got picked up by CBS. The Brock house remained the same from the pilot through the end of the series, as did the police station, Jill’s office, and the town courthouse – all of which I will be reporting on soon, don’t you worry!
Not only did the property appear regularly in establishing shots of the Brock residence, but some on-location filming took place there as well, including in the Season 1 episode titled “Thanksgiving” (pictured below).
The pad actually seems a bit of an odd choice to portray the main house on the show considering there’s not a picket fence in sight (then or now), as many readers have pointed out. You’d think at the very least the production crew would have temporarily installed one on the various shoot days that took place there.
Though I have not been able to track down any interior photos of the dwelling, I am fairly certain it was never utilized on Picket Fences, not even in the pilot. From the outset, the Brock house appears to have been nothing more than a set built inside of a soundstage, first at Santa Clarita Studios and then Ren-Mar Studios Hollywood (now Red Studios Hollywood).
Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Brad for reminding me about 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: The Brock residence from Picket Fences is located at 211 Highland Place in Monrovia.
Monrovia High School from “A Cinderella Story”
My taste in movies is about as mature and refined as my palate, which favors chicken strips and ranch dressing above all else. Case in point – I am obsessed with the 2004 tween romance A Cinderella Story. Chad Michael Murray? Hilary Duff on roller skates? A high school love story? A pink ‘50s diner? Yes, yes, yes and yes! I’ve written posts on several of the film’s locations over the years (you can read them here, here and here), but somehow forgot to dedicate one to Monrovia High School, which portrayed North Valley High (home of the Fighting Frogs!) and which I visited way back in 2013. I figure the time to rectify that is now!
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Designed by architect Austin Whittlesey, working under John C. Austin and Frederick M. Ashley, construction on Monrovia High School began in January 1928.
Completed early the following year, the Spanish Colonial Revival-style building, which features Palladian elements, cost $600,000 to erect.
Numerous expansions have taken place in the years since, the most recent from 2009 to 2011.
That project, which totaled a whopping $60 million, included the addition of a 2-story science building, a 30,000-square-foot gym complete with a weight room, and a new football stadium and surrounding track.
Thankfully, all of the additions were designed with the school’s original architecture in mind, ultimately creating a cohesive, striking and picturesque property.
Not only is the school itself beautiful, but the grounds are absolutely bucolic. I was just a wee bit obsessed with the massive tree pictured below.
I mean, just look at it!
Considering its handsome façade, it is no surprise that the place wound up onscreen. In A Cinderella Story, Monrovia High was used extensively. Areas of the school featured include the front exterior;
interior hallways;
the baseball field;
the pool;
the football field (which was, sadly, redone during the 2009 expansion);
and the main quad (it also looks a bit different post-expansion) . . .
. . . where the pep rally took place.
The quad is the spot I was most interested in seeing during my stalk, namely the “Friendship Circle” planter where Sam and Austin regularly sat throughout the movie.
Unfortunately, we stopped by on a Saturday, when Monrovia High was closed, so I wasn’t able to poke around. I was thrilled to see, though, that the quad area is visible through the front gates.
The gates even afford a small glimpse of the planter!
A Cinderella Story is hardly the only production to feature Monrovia High.
Skip Lewis (Chad Lowe) and Ken (Charlie Sheen) go to school there in the 1984 made-for-television movie Silence of the Heart.
In 1985, Monrovia High played itself in another made-for-TV film, Between the Darkness and the Dawn.
The production, which journalist John J. O’Connor deemed “a candidate for the worst television movie of the year,” gave audiences a glimpse at what the interior of the school looked like at the time.
Rocky Dennis (Eric Stoltz) enrolls in Monrovia High at the end of the 1985 drama Mask.
Monrovia High (along with Walter Reed Middle School from License to Drive) appears as Garden City High in the 1988 horror film 976-EVIL.
Brad Kimble (Will Friedle), Leah Jones (Jennifer Love Hewitt) and Brooke Kingsley (Marley Shelton) attend Monrovia High School in the 1997 comedy Trojan War.
The school (along with several others, including Torrance High) was also used to portray John Hughes High School in 2001’s Not Another Teen Movie.
For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 
Stalk It: Monrovia High School, aka North Valley High from A Cinderella Story, is located at 845 West Colorado Boulevard in Monrovia.
The Burr House from “The Twilight Zone”
After what amounted to a nearly two-year stalking hiatus, Mike, from MovieShotsLA, is finally back! Let me reverse a bit and explain. Over the past couple of years, Mike has been busy working in production (yep, he actually toils away on movie sets now!), which hasn’t left much time for tracking down locations. I was having some trouble with a locale this past week, though, and on a whim decided to see if he could lend a hand. Mike was game and, lo and behold, the two of us were on the hunt once again, just like old times! The story of our quest, which is a bit of a long one, is detailed below.
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While doing some research on Say Anything . . . locations back in January, I came across a 1990 Los Angeles Times article which made mention of an old Victorian house in Monrovia that had been featured in an episode of The Twilight Zone. Perfect for my Haunted Hollywood postings, right? Though the exact episode was not named, the column stated that parakeets were flown through the residence during the shoot, so I assumed it would not be hard to figure out. I did a little digging, pinpointed the address of the property, headed right on over to Monrovia to stalk it shortly thereafter, and did not think much more about it until sitting down to write this post. As it turned out, even armed with such specific information regarding parakeets, identifying the episode proved arduous. My first course of action was to Google “The Twilight Zone episode” and “parakeets,” which yielded nothing. Then I literally spent hours scanning through old TTZ episodes and reading recaps, but came up with nada. Enter Mike. Literally five minutes after I texted him and told him of my quest in tracking down the “parakeet episode,” he texted me back with an answer. As he discovered, the episode was Season 1’s “Still Life,” which originally aired on January 3rd, 1986. I felt like a complete blonde when he told me his search process, which involved inputting the sentence “Which episode of The Twilight Zone filmed in Monrovia, CA?” The third result to be kicked back was a synopsis of “Still Life” on The New Twilight Zone website. Actor Robert Morris had provided the site with a behind-the-scenes photograph of the shoot which was posted with the caption, “ . . . the episode was shot in Monrovia, California in this beautiful home.” D’oh!
In real life, the dwelling is known as the Burr House and it was originally built in 1893 for Frank W. Burr and his family. The 18-room Queen Anne-style residence was constructed entirely of redwood at a cost of $2,800. At the time of its inception, it did not have heating, electricity, or even indoor bathrooms. Yep, the Burrs had to use an outhouse! That outhouse is still currently located on the property. The Burr family owned the site until 1975, which explains how so much of the home’s original detailing remains intact today, 123 years after it was built.
In 1979, Mary Ann and Ramon Otero purchased the residence and began an extensive renovation and restoration process. Today, the property boasts 5 bedrooms, 4,700 square feet of living space, several bathrooms (there are 4.5 to be exact), a pool, extensive gardens, a detached garage, and a half-acre plot of land.
In “Still Life,” the Burr House belongs to photographer Daniel Arnold (Robert Carradine), who, after visiting an estate sale, brings home an antique trunk which he later discovers has a secret compartment containing a camera that was last used during a 1913 National Geographic Society expedition to the Amazon River Basin.
As Daniel soon learns, during the expedition the camera captured the souls of several Curucai Indian tribesmen whom he inadvertently brings back to life.
The Burr House was used extensively in the episode.
The home’s actual interior was also featured throughout.
You can watch “Still Life” by clicking below.
As was noted in the Los Angeles Times (as well as in this Monrovia Patch article), the Burr House has appeared in countless movies, TV shows, and commercials over the years. In 1988, it was used as the Boon residence in a scene in Sweet Hearts Dance. Because most filming of the Boon home took place at a similar looking Victorian dwelling located at 113 Eden Street in Hyde Park, Vermont, I am guessing that the Burr House segment might have been part of a reshoot.
Mike Donnelly (Chris Farley) voted – and got stuck in the voting booth – outside of the property’s garage in the 1996 comedy Black Sheep.
You can see the garage in the photos below.
For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.
Big THANK YOU to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for his help in tracking down the correct The Twilight Zone episode!
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 
Stalk It: The Burr house, from the “Still Life” episode of The Twilight Zone, is located at 150 North Myrtle Avenue in Monrovia.