Steve Martin filming locations – Page 2

April 15, 2013April 12, 2013

Now! Clothing from “L.A. Story”

My second most-wanted location from the 1991 classic comedy L.A. Story was Now!, the ultra-hip clothing store with unisex dressing rooms where SanDeE* (my girl Sarah Jessica Parker) worked. (My first most-wanted was, of course, the iconic freeway sign that I blogged about last Thursday.) So I was floored to see that the locale was included in “The L.A. of L.A. Story” special feature on the movie’s 15th Anniversary Edition DVD. In the feature, which was lensed in 2006, production designer Lawrence Miller said, “This was a clothing store at the intersection of La Cienega and Santa Monica Boulevard and is now, regrettably, a Sav-on drug store.” I was shocked to learn this information as Now! had always looked like a Venice Beach-type shop to me and I had even spent quite a bit of time looking for it in that area. D’oh! Well, believe you me, once I had the correct address, I immediately added it to my To-Stalk list and ran right out there just a few days later, while in L.A. for a brief visit. It was not until I started doing research for today’s post, though, that I discovered what a ridiculously vast history the place has – such a vast history, in fact, that while I had intended on publishing this column last Friday, I was still compiling information at 8 p.m. on Thursday night and had to postpone it until today.

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Now! clothing is currently a CVS pharmacy. (CVS Caremark acquired all Southern California Sav-on drug stores in 2006.) Amazingly enough, though, it still looks almost exactly the same today as it did 22 years ago when L.A. Story was filmed! But more on that later.

The location has gone through many different incarnations during its lifetime, each of them quite unique and notable. It was originally constructed in 1940 as a 22-lane bowling alley named La Cienega Lanes, which you can see a photograph of here.

La Cienega Lanes, which was owned at one point by Art Linkletter, was featured numerous times in the 1956 thriller Man in the Vault, as the hangout of locksmith Tommy Dancer (William Campbell). Both the exterior . . .

. . . and the interior of the alley appeared in the movie.

La Cienega Lanes closed sometime in the late 1970s. In July 1979, music producer Denny Cordell opened a private, members-only “roller boogie palace” named Flippers at the site. The exclusive club, which had a cap of 1,000 members who paid $200 annually plus a $7 entrance fee for each visit, boasted a bar, a restaurant, a custom skate shop, and a skating floor made of polyurethane. You can check out a photograph of the exterior of the rink in all of its bright blue and purple glory here. By February 1980, the tropical-themed club ceased being a members-only institution and was opened to the public. It also became a popular concert venue at that time, with such legends as The Go-Go’s, John Cougar, The Ramones, and Prince on the line-up. The band Cerrone even featured the exterior of the rink on the cover of their 1984 album Club Underworld. Flippers was also a major celebrity hot spot and in its heyday such stars as Cher (who was rumored to be part-owner of the place), Olivia Newton-John, Cheryl Ladd, Loni Anderson, Robin Williams, Jane Fonda, Aretha Franklin, Jacqueline Bisset, Patrick Swayze, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar all got their skate on there.

Flippers has a bit of a filming history, as well. The club was featured in the Season 4 episode of Charlie’s Angels titled “Angels on Skates”, in which the Angels – Kelly Garrett (Jaclyn Smith), Kris Munroe (Cheryl Ladd), and Tiffany Welles (Shelley Hack) – investigated the kidnapping of a young skater named Rita Morgan (Lory Walsh).

The interior of the roller disco was also used in the episode.

Fellow stalker Mike, from MovieShotsLA, let me know that Flippers was also featured in the Season 3 episodes of CHiPs titled “Roller Disco: Part 1” and “Roller Disco: Part II”. Unfortunately, Season 3 of CHiPs has not yet been released on DVD, nor is it available for streaming on iTunes, Amazon, or Netflix, but I was able to make the grabs below thanks to the Melissa Sue Anderson Fan website.

According to both Wikipedia and IMDB, the roller disco set from Skatetown, U.S.A. (which was built inside of the Hollywood Palladium) was based on the real life interior of Flippers, but I think that information is actually incorrect. Flippers opened its doors in July 1979 and Skatetown was released just a mere three months later, in October 1979. Being that movies typically take at least eight months to edit, even if they had done a rush job on the flick, the timing simply does not add up. Not to mention that the Skatetown set looks nothing at all like Flippers.

And while a few websites have stated that 1979’s Roller Boogie was filmed at Flippers, that information is also incorrect. The exterior roller rink scenes from the movie were shot at at Moonlight Rollerway in Glendale, which I blogged about back in October 2010.

I am unsure of where the interior scenes were filmed, but, as you can see below, it was not Flippers. According to a poster named “Wanda Pr of Arlington” on Flickr, who was in the movie, the interiors were shot at “an old dance hall on Sunset.”

For whatever reason, Flippers did not last long. In 1983, the space was purchased by Doug and Susie Tompkins, owners of the popular San Francisco-based Esprit de Corp. clothing brand. The site was to become the company’s first freestanding retail store. The couple quickly began a $15-million, 15-month renovation of the building and hired famed designer Joseph D’Urso to carry it out. He remodeled both the interior and the exterior of the property and added a three-story, 150-space parking lot (pictured below). The 32,000-square foot store, which became Esprit’s flagship, opened in December 1984.

According to a 1985 Milwaukee Journal article, D’Urso designed a swirling ramp at Esprit’s entrance to provide handicapped access as well as a “ceremonial route” to the double front doors.

He also designed a small “tree-shaded plaza” in the hopes that “people would feel more protected from the traffic” cruising by on the busy Santa Monica and La Cienega Boulevards.

It was during its time as an Esprit store that the building was used in L.A. Story. The location popped up twice in the movie, first in the scene in which Harris K. Telemacher (Steve Martin) went shopping with his girlfriend, Trudi (Marliu Henner), and wound up meeting SanDeE*, who sold him a pair of white pants. Only the interior of the store was shown in that scene.

In “The L.A. of L.A. Story”, Lawrence Miller stated that the interior, which featured Zolatone walls, metal catwalks, and black waxed cement, was left pretty much as-is for the shoot. He also said they were “blessed” to such a find such a perfect interior in which to film and that it worked perfectly as “part of the build-up” to Harris and SanDeE* meeting in an environment that “shows how inappropriate she is”. Man, what I wouldn’t give to have seen that interior!

Harris later returns to Now! to pick up his pants, which were being altered, and it is in that scene that the exterior of the building is shown. As you can see below, aside from a few very minor changes, the site stills looks exactly the same today as it did then!

As you can imagine, I could hardly contain myself when I arrived at CVS and saw how much it still looked like Now! SO INCREDIBLY COOL! It was all I could do not to start spinning out in front of the store like SJP did in the flick. Winking smile

Despite immense popularity among the teen set, Esprit de Corp. suffered a major downfall in the late ‘80s, due in large part to Doug and Susie’s messy divorce, and the flagship store closed its doors in 1994. The site sat vacant for a decade, despite talks of the city of West Hollywood purchasing it to use as their City Council chambers and a library. Sometime in 2004 or 2005, the building was turned into a Sav-on. Thankfully, though, the exterior was left intact for all of us stalkers to appreciate. And, according to this April 2013 article on the WeHoVille blog, the shadow of the Esprit sign is STILL visible on the side of the building! I so wish I had known that before stalking the place! For those who are interested, the shadow is located on the eastern-most side of the parking structure. You can just barely see it in the Google Street View image below.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Now! Clothing from L.A. Story, aka CVS pharmacy, is located at 8491 West Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood.

April 11, 2013April 10, 2013

The “L.A. Story” Freeway Sign

One locale that the Grim Cheaper suggested I track down a few years back – and that I have wondered about ever since – was the spot where the freeway sign from the 1991 classic comedy L.A. Story once stood. Because it was a prop sign that was situated on a long expanse of a non-descript Southern California road, though, I figured that, short of getting ahold of a crew member, it would be a virtually impossible find. Cut to two weeks ago when, while doing research on the O’Neil house from Beverly Hills, 90210, I came across this Wikimapia page which stated that the L.A. Story freeway condition sign had been located on Burbank Boulevard in Encino. I just about fell out of my chair upon learning this news because I had never before seen it mentioned anywhere. And while I tried to find other articles that backed up the claim, I came up empty-handed. I knew that the information had to have come from somewhere, though, so I searched Amazon to see if a DVD commentary for the movie was available. While no such commentary exists (how is that possible?!?!), I did come across a listing for the 15th Anniversary Edition of L.A. Story which included – are you ready for this? – a vignette titled “The L.A. of L.A. Story: An Interactive Map of the Popular Sites Filmed for L.A. Story”. Um, yes, please! The DVD is sadly out of print, but I did find a used copy of it on eBay for $5 and, let me tell you, it was the best $5 I ever spent – although I am sure the GC would disagree. Winking smile

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The L.A. of L.A. Story, which was shot in 2006 and is absolutely amazeballs, features production designer Lawrence Miller (who sadly passed away in 2009) returning to ten of the movie’s most iconic locations to tell the stories behind them. LOVE IT! One of the locales visited was, of course, the famous freeway sign. In the piece, Lawrence describes shooting on Burbank Boulevard, just east of Hayvenhurst Avenue, but never specifies the exact spot where the sign stood. I was having a heck of a time pinpointing the location via Google Street View, so I enlisted the help of Mike, from MovieShotsLA, who found the right area almost immediately. Thank you, Mike! As you can see below, the two double-pronged trees visible behind Lawrence in the feature match up perfectly to the spot that Mike found on Burbank Boulevard. So the two of us ran right out to stalk the site this past Sunday afternoon while I was in town for a couple of days.

In L.A. Story, wacky weatherman Harris K. Telemacher (Steve Martin – who also wrote the screenplay!) encounters a rather cheeky freeway condition road sign that instead of foretelling traffic statuses, predicts the future of his life. According to Lawrence, the sign was custom-built and was programmed to “talk” to Harris in several different languages so that its lines would not need to later be dubbed when shown in foreign countries. So interesting!

As you can see below, the Los Angeles cityscape was digitally added to the background of the road sign scenes.

In real life, the area behind where the sign once stood is comprised of a massive amount of foliage.

In The L.A. of L.A. Story, Lawrence also states that Burbank Boulevard was chosen as the sign site because it is a “freeway lookalike” that is easy to close down, and that he was the person who actually chose the exact spot where the sign would be installed on the day of the shoot.

As you can see below, the area still looks very much the same today as it did in 2006 when the special was filmed.

Unfortunately though, there is currently quite a bit more plant growth than there was when Lawrence visited the site seven years ago.

Which is especially upsetting because when The L.A. of L.A. Story was filmed, he was actually able to find the hole where the sign once stood, which I just about lost my mind over! And while Mike and I ferociously dug through the underbrush looking for that hole (we were pretty much on our hands and knees pulling back weeds – I can only imagine what passersby were thinking!), we were unable to uncover it. I did vow to go back with a rake and a shovel one day, though, so have no fear! I will locate that darn hole if it’s the last thing I do! Winking smile

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

Big THANK YOU to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for finding this location! Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The L.A. Story freeway sign was located on eastbound Burbank Boulevard, just east of Hayvenhurst Avenue at what Google Maps lists as 16388 Burbank Boulevard, in Encino.

July 20, 2012July 19, 2012

The Venice Beach Cotel – aka SanDeE*’s Apartment from “L.A. Story”

One location that I have been dying to track down ever since first moving to Southern California in 2000 was the apartment building where SanDeE* (my girl Sarah Jessica Parker) lived in the 1991 classic comedy L.A. Story. (And yes, that is the correct spelling of her name – as she says in the movie, “Big s, small a, small n, big d, small e, big e, and there’s a little star at the end”. LOL) I knew that the building was located somewhere in Venice, but because I do not know the area very well and rarely venture out there, I had a hard time tracking it down. So imagine my excitement when, a couple of years ago, I came across a blurb about the place in fave stalking book Hollywood Escapes: The Moviegoer’s Guide to Exploring Southern California’s Great Outdoors. As it turns out, SanDeE*’s apartment building is none other than the Venice Beach Cotel on Windward Avenue. And while I immediately added the address to my To-Stalk list, I was not able to get out there until this past Saturday afternoon when Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and I were doing some stalking in the area.

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Venice Beach actually has a very interesting history – one which involves the Cotel. The city was dreamed up by a wealthy tobacco heir/real estate developer named Abbot Kinney, who wanted to establish “The Venice of America” right here in Los Angeles. In the early 1900’s, he purchased some coastal acreage, most of it marshland, south of Santa Monica and proceeded to create a replica of the Italian city. The marshes were drained and transformed into eight miles of canals (a popular filming location, which I will be blogging about soon), complete with imported gondolas and singing gondoliers. A 1600-foot fishing pier was also constructed, along with carnival rides, a large beachside pool, and an indoor saltwater pool known as “The Venice Hot Saltwater Plunge”. The focal point of Kinney’s city, which was opened to the public in 1905 and was nicknamed “The Playland of the Pacific”, was Windward Avenue, a main street lined with beautiful neo-Italianate, columned buildings and sweeping archways as far as the eye could see. The buildings housed everything from luxury restaurants and shops to hotels, one of which was the ritzy St. Charles. Today, that site is known as the Venice Beach Cotel and it is the city’s oldest hotel.

Sadly, while St. Charles was once luxurious and upscale, it fell into decline, along with the rest of the city, shortly after Abbot Kinney’s death in 1920. And while Venice Beach has experienced a resurgence of sorts in recent years, the property is still a bit seedy. And what does the word “Cotel” mean, you ask? According to the hostel’s website, “The name Cotel comes from the prefix ‘co’, meaning getting together (people), which is what we are all about!”

The infamous mural that dominates the west side of the Cotel is named “Venice Reconstituted” and it was originally painted in 1989 by muralist Rip Cronk. It looks quite a bit different today than it did in L.A. Story, though, because in 2010, Cronk restored the huge painting, renamed it “Venice Kinesis”, added and deleted a few figures, and moved it up an entire story in a futile attempt to keep it out of reach of taggers.

There is also a 102-foot by 50-foot mural that covers the east side of the Venice Beach Cotel, but it, too, has been re-visioned. The piece was originally painted in the early 1900s by Terry Schoonhoven and was a view of what Windward Avenue looked like at the time. You can see a historic photograph of it here. Sadly, the work deteriorated and faded considerably over the years, so, in early 2012, artist Jonas Never covered over it with a new mural named “Touch of Venice” that was inspired by Touch of Evil, Orson Welles’ 1958 film which was shot in its entirety in the beachside city.

In L.A. Story, the Venice Beach Cotel is where SanDeE*, the dimwitted, colonic-loving girlfriend of wacky weatherman Harris K. Telemacher (Steve Martin), lived. The building and Rip Cronk’s mural popped up a few times in the flick.

I cannot tell you how absolutely devastated I was when I saw that SanDeE*’s front doorway had since been removed, as I had so wanted to reenact the image below. Sad smile

As I later discovered, though, SanDeE*’s (and I cannot express what a pain in the a** it is to type that name out repeatedly! Winking smile ) doorway was never actually there, but was a façade that was added solely for the movie. You can check out some pictures of the building from the same time period that L.A. Story was filmed here, here, and here, which show that the doorway never actually existed. BOO!

L.A. Story was hardly the first film to shoot at the Cotel. In 1958’s Touch of Evil, which as I mentioned above, was shot in its entirety in Venice, the building stood in for the Ritz Hotel in the fictional border town of Los Robles, where Susan Vargas (Janet Leigh) was threatened by drug kingpin “Uncle” Joe Grandi (Akim Tamiroff) while on her honeymoon.

As an homage to Touch of Evil, the Cotel doubled as The Ritz Hotel once again in the opening scene of the 2001 flick Double Take.

As you can see below, an exact replica of the “Ritz Hotel” sign from Touch of Evil was created for Double Take. So cool!

In 1968’s I Love You, Alice B. Toklas!, Harold (Peter Sellers) shops at what he calls a “hippy supermarket” set up in front of the Venice Beach Cotel.

In the opening scene of 1992’s White Men Can’t Jump, Billy Hoyle (Woody Harrelson) parks in front of the hotel and then throws his basketball up against Rip Cronk’s mural as he walks by.

In 1993’s Point of No Return, Maggie Hayward (Bridget Fonda) walks by the building upon first arriving in Venice.

Rip’s mural showed up very briefly in an establishing shot in 1992’s Venice/Venice . . .

. . . which starred a very young David Duchovny.

According to Hollywood Escapes, the Venice Beach Cotel is also visible in the 1983 remake of Breathless, but, unfortunately, I could not find any copies of it with which to make screen captures for this post.

And on a Sarah Jessica Parker side-note – My good friend Steffi, who lives in Switzerland and is even more Sex-and-the-City-obsessed than I am (if that’s possible), texted me the below picture yesterday. Um, LOVE IT, LOVE IT, LOVE IT!

Be sure to “Like” IAMNOTASTALKER on Facebook here and “Friend” me on my personal page here. You can also check out the IAMNOTASTALKER About Me page here and you can follow me on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And don’t forget to take a look at my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Venice Beach Cotel, aka SanDeE*’s apartment building from L.A. Story, is located at 25 Windward Avenue in Venice. You can visit the hostel’s official website here.

April 12, 2012April 11, 2012

Franck’s Wedding Coordinator Shop from “Father of the Bride”

When the Grim Cheaper and I first showed up to stalk Fig & Olive restaurant, from the 2012 “Matthew’s Day Off” Honda CR-V Super Bowl commercial which I blogged about last week, I became absolutely enchanted with Melrose Place, the tiny tree-lined street on which the eatery is located. Even though I had been a fan of the series Melrose Place back in the 90s, before tracking down Fig & Olive earlier this year I had no idea that the charming and idyllic little street, which runs a scant three blocks and is made up of mostly high-end boutiques, even existed. In a recent About.com Los Angeles article, author Shana Ting Lipton calls Melrose Place a “hidden gem” and she could not be more right! Because its name so closely resembles that of the neighboring, and far more well-known, Melrose Avenue, I believe Melrose Place often gets lost in the shuffle, which explains why this stalker had never before heard of it. Needless to say, I absolutely fell in love with the picturesque little thoroughfare on the spot, as did the GC.

While we were there, I happened to notice that the sidewalks on Melrose Place were extremely wide with brick ornamentation and my mind immediately flashed upon the shop where wedding coordinator Franck Eggelhoffer (Martin Short) and his assistant, Howard Weinstein (BD Wong), worked in fave movie Father of the Bride – a location that I had long been trying to track down. For some odd reason, I had remembered that the sidewalk in front of Franck’s shop was also quite wide and lined with brick (I know, I know – my mind retains the oddest of information), so I snapped a quick pic of the Melrose Place sidewalk so that I could compare the two when I returned home. Well, lo and behold, when I popped in my DVD later that night, I was able to confirm that the sidewalks were one and the same. Yay!

From that point, all I had to do was pinpoint the exact storefront where Franck worked and, being that Melrose Place is only three blocks long, the venture was an easy one. Then, last Thursday, after I had figured out the correct spot, I dragged Mike, from MovieShotsLA, right on back out there to do some stalking of it.

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Franck’s shop shows up only once in Father of the Bride, in the scene in which George Banks (Steve Martin) begrudgingly accompanies his wife, Nina (Diane Keaton), and daughter, Annie (Kimberly Williams-Paisley), to meet the hard-to-understand wedding coordinator for the first time. One of my very favorite lines in the movie is actually uttered during that scene – when George laments over the high price of the wedding cake, he says, “My first car didn’t cost $1,200!”, to which Franck responds, “Well, welcome to the ‘90s, Mr. Banks!” Love it!

In the scene, George, Nina and Annie are shown walking east on Melrose Place in front of the building numbered 8420.

And I, of course, just had to imitate them by posing for an action walking shot while I was there. Smile

I believe that the green “Antiques” awning that was visible in the background behind the trio was once attached to the building pictured above, which is located at 8422/8424 Melrose Place. Fellow stalker Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong blog, came across an article about the vacant property which mentions that it did, in fact, once house an antique store. And, as fate would have it, back in 2007 the very same building was also the site of a Hanes Comfortique Event hosted by none other than Owen’s main squeeze, Jennifer Love Hewitt. Talk about synchronicity!

The building that stood in for Franck’s shop, which was also an antique store at the time of the filming, is now home to the Zero + Maria Cornejo boutique. According to the About.com Los Angeles article that I mentioned earlier, Melrose Place actually used to be known as “the antiquing street” thanks to the myriad of antique shops that were located there once upon a time.

And while the full exterior of the property was not shown in Father of the Bride, the door that Annie, George and Nina walked through still looks exactly the same today as it did back in 1991 when the movie was filmed! Love it!

The real life interior of the store was also featured in Father of the Bride. As you can see in these pictures, while that interior has since been remodeled, it is still set up in the same basic three-room configuration that it was during the filming.

Even the ribbed pillars that were visible in the background of the scene are still there, as you can see in the main photograph featured in this RackedLA post.

In the scene, George, Nina, Annie, and Franck sat on a couch in front of the store’s eastern-most window.

That window is pictured above.

It is thanks to that portion of the scene that I was able to pinpoint exactly where Franck’s shop was situated. While looking for clues, I had noticed a few distinct architectural elements on the building located across the street, which was visible through Franck’s window. From there I used Google Street View to search for those elements and, thankfully, it was not long before I found them. As you can see in the screen shot and Street View image above, the arched window (denoted with a pink arrow), horizontal lip (denoted with a yellow arrow) and rectangular-shaped cutout (denoted with a blue arrow) of the building located at 8417 Melrose Place all match up to what appeared onscreen.

Sadly, as you can see above, those elements are now covered over with large awnings and are no longer visible. Thank God for Street View!

I had also spotted a center island and a “Keep Right” sign through the window in the scene and, looking at aerial views, saw that that same island was located just east of the Zero + Maria Cornejo boutique. And while the island still exists to this day, the “Keep Right” sign has since been removed.

The Zero + Maria Cornejo employee that we spoke with while there could NOT have been nicer and was not only floored to learn that he worked in such a cinematically significant location, but also allowed Mike and me to snap some pics through the same window that Annie, Nina, George, and Franck sat in front of.

On a Father of the Bride side note – I just learned that the character of Franck Eggelhoffer was inspired by real life wedding planner Kevin Lee, who appeared on this past season of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills as the wedding coordinator hired by Lisa Vanderpump. You can watch a video clip of the “real Franck” by clicking above. And yes, Martin Short had the guy down to a T!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Zero + Maria Cornejo, aka Franck’s wedding planning shop from Father of the Bride, is located at 8408 Melrose Place in West Hollywood. Fig & Olive restaurant, from the 2012 “Matthew’s Day Off” Honda CR-V Super Bowl commercial, is located just down the street at 8490 Melrose Place in West Hollywood. You can visit Fig & Olive’s official website here.

January 20, 2012January 20, 2012

The “L.A. Story” Gas Station

Last week, while doing research for my post on L’Orangerie, aka Chez Quis restaurant from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, I came across some information on The Worldwide Guide to Movie Locations website about the Gilmore Gasoline Service Station on Highland Avenue in Hollywood – a very cool-looking, old-time gas station that appeared in the 1991 movie L.A. Story. Thanks to the place’s unique, Art Deco architecture and historic feel, I became just a wee-bit obsessed with it and immediately added the address to my ever-growing “To-Stalk” list.

I think part of the reason that I became so enamored with the Gilmore Gasoline Service Station is that it reminded me of the circular, 50s-style drive-in restaurant that was used in Britney Spears’ “For Those Who Think Young” Pepsi commercial – which was sadly just a set that was built inside of a soundstage. For reasons that are beyond my comprehension, I have long been obsessed with all of the Pepsi ads featuring Britney. I honestly cannot get enough of ‘em. In fact, I just watched about twelve different versions of both “The Joy of Pepsi” and “For Those Who Thing Young” videos. But I digress. Anyway, because he has an affinity for all things historic, I figured that the Gilmore Gasoline Service Station was one location that the Grim Cheaper would actually not mind being dragged to. Sadly though, when we arrived, we found the structure to be in a pretty pitiful state. Such a shame!

The Gilmore Gasoline Service Station has an absolutely fascinating backstory. The structure was originally built for the Gilmore Oil Company, which was founded by one of the most influential and prominent families in Los Angeles history. Arthur Freemont “A.F.” Gilmore, a dairy business owner from Illinois who migrated to Southern California during the 1880s, found fortune in 1903 when he accidentally struck oil while drilling a water well on some property that he owned in the Rancho La Brea area. In 1919, after A.F. had passed away, his son, Earl, founded the Gilmore Petroleum Company, which later became the Gilmore Oil Company. Their Red Line service stations, which bore the motto “Someday you will own a horseless carriage. Our gasoline will run it.”, soon became common fixtures across all of Los Angeles. The Gilmore family is most famous, though, for founding the Gilmore Bank and the world-famous Farmers Market at 3rd & Fairfax, and for building Gilmore Field – the now-defunct minor league baseball park that was once home to the Hollywood Stars baseball team.

The double-canopied Gilmore Gasoline Service Station was designed in 1935 by an engineer named R.J. Kadow. It was one of the first Gilmore stations to be constructed and is now, sadly, one of the last remaining of its kind. After the Gilmore Oil Company was sold in 1945, the station went through a succession of different owners and, in early 1990, after the then-tenant decided not to renew his lease, there was talk of possibly tearing the structure down. Thankfully, the Melrose Neighborhood Association stepped in and, on March 23rd, 1992, the building was declared a Los Angeles Historic Cultural Monument. Despite the station’s historic status, though, it has somehow been allowed to fall into disarray in recent years. According to a November 1990 Los Angeles Times article, there were once plans to restore the building and open a snack shop/gas station/classic car rental on the site, but I am not sure if those plans ever came to fruition and, as you can see above, the place is currently in dire straights. You can check out some photographs of the station taken during better days here.

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In L.A. Story, Harris K. Telemacher (Steve Martin) and Sara McDowel (Victoria Tennant) stop at the Gilmore Gasoline Service Station, where they ask for a “full service” treatment – their tank filled, car washed, and all four tires removed and exchanged LOL – before heading to a fund-raising dinner. As you can see in the screen captures pictured above, at the time that the movie was filmed in 1991, the gas station was an incredibly cool little place. I cannot express how disheartening it was to discover that a unique piece of Southern California’s history – one with historic cultural status, no less – has been allowed to deteriorate in such a way. As I said earlier, what a shame!

Fellow stalker Chas, of the It’sFilmedThere website, also let me know that the station was featured in the 1982 movie 48 Hours as the supposed San-Francisco-area gas station where parolee Reggie Hammond (Eddie Murphy) told detective Jack Cates (Nick Nolte) where he had hidden the stolen money.

On an L.A. Story side-note – I would so love to find the supposed-Santa-Barbara-area El Pollo del Mar (the Chicken of the Sea – LOL) motel that appeared in the flick. I know that the interior scenes were filmed at the since-demolished Ambassador Hotel, but I am interested in tracking down the exterior. Does anyone happen to know where it is?

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The former Gilmore Gasoline Service Station, from L.A. Story, is located at 859 North Highland Avenue in Hollywood.

June 28, 2011June 27, 2011

The “Father of the Bride” Grocery Store

Due to my parents’ recent move and my dad’s recent hospital stay, I have sadly not had time to do much stalking as of late. While in Palm Springs this past weekend my mom happened to ask me if I had some locations stockpiled (or should I say “stalkpiled”? Winking smile ) for times such as this. Well, as I explained to her, I have so many darn locations on my “To Blog” list that half the time I forget about them, which was the case with the spot I am writing about today – the grocery store from the 1991 movie Father of the Bride. I stalked the market way back in early May and had completely forgotten about it until yesterday morning when I was going through my Picasa web albums and spotted the pictures I took while there. So, don’t worry mom! The problem lies not in there being a lack of locations to write about, but in me being able to recall them all! Anyway, a couple of months ago I asked fellow stalker Chas, of the ItsFilmedThere website, to track down several locations from fave movie Father of the Bride, one of which was the grocery store where George Banks (aka Steve Martin) refused to buy “superfluous” hot dog buns. Fellow stalker Owen had actually tried to find this location last year and had somehow managed to get into contact with actor Britt Leach who played the role of the assistant grocery store manager in the scene. Britt, who has to be one of the nicest guys in the world, not only wrote back to Owen immediately, but subsequently wrote to me as well and did his best in helping us to find the place. He informed us that the store was located in the Burbank area, possibly near the IKEA on North San Fernando Boulevard. So with that information in hand, Owen and I tried to track the place down, but, for whatever reason, came up completely empty-handed.

Enter Chas, who somehow managed to get in touch with a member of the Father of the Bride production team, one who not only remembered the exact address of the store, but who also informed him that it had sadly changed hands in recent years. At the time of the filming, the market was owned by Vons, but the property was shuttered a couple of years back, whereupon it was purchased by Henry’s Farmers Markets and the interior was remodeled shortly thereafter. Such a shame! As you can see in these pictures of the former Vons location, though, the exterior, which was not featured in FOTB, still looks almost exactly the same today as it did before Henry’s took over.

The interior, however, is another story altogether. While it is a beautiful grocery store, the interior is, sadly, completely and totally unrecognizable from its appearance in Father of the Bride.

In FOTB, George Banks heads to a local market in order to cool off after having had a bit of a meltdown over his daughter’s impending wedding. While there, he has an even bigger meltdown over the fact that while hot dogs are sold in packages of eight, hot dog buns are sold in packages of twelve. So, he decides to take a stand by ripping open packages to remove the four offending buns. When a befuddled clerk tries to stop him, George says that the hot dog and hot dog bun corporations “are not ripping off this nitwit anymore, because I am not paying for one more thing I don’t need. George Banks is saying ‘no’!” LOL He winds up getting arrested and is sent to jail, where his wife Nina (aka Diane Keaton) has to bail him out.

And even though the store now looks completely different, I just had to find the hot dog bun aisle while I was there so that I could pose with a package of buns. Smile

Father of the Bride hot dog scene–Henry’s Market in Burbank

You can watch the Father of the Bride grocery store scene by clicking above.

Big THANK YOU to Chas, from the ItsFilmedThere website, for finding this location! You can check out Chas’ Father of the Bride filming locations page here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Henry’s Farmers Market, aka the Father of the Bride grocery store, is located at 1011 North San Fernando Boulevard in Burbank.