Things to Do in Monrovia – IAMNOTASTALKER

December 23, 2011December 22, 2011

The Brass Monkey Bar from “Bad Santa”

Another Christmas-themed location that I stalked recently was the Brass Elephant bar – the Monrovia-area watering hole that stood in for the similarly-named “Brass Monkey” bar where Sue (aka Lauren Graham) worked in my least-favorite holiday movie of all time, 2003’s Bad Santa. Fellow stalker Chas, from the It’sFilmedThere website, had tracked down the establishment a while back and once I learned that it was located inside of the Aztec Hotel, an extremely unique structure that had intrigued me ever since I first moved to the San Gabriel Valley over eleven years ago, I decided that I just had to stalk the place. And this past Tuesday morning, I finally did just that.

The Aztec Hotel was originally built in 1925, on what was then the historic Route 66, by Robert Stacy-Judd, the English-born architect who also designed the Masonic Temple in North Hollywood, the First Baptist Church in Ventura, and the incredible Atwater Bungalows in Echo Park. The hotel was Stacy-Judd’s first commercial design job in the United States and he credited his inspiration for the project to John L. Stephen’s 1841 tome Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan. Although technically Mayan in design, the architect named the property the “Aztec Hotel” because, as he is quoted as saying in the 1993 book Robert Stacy-Judd: Maya Architecture and the Creation of a New Style, “When the hotel project was first announced, the word Maya was unknown to the layman. The subject of Maya culture was only of archaeological importance, and, at that, concerned but a few exponents. As the word Aztec was fairly well-known, I baptized the hotel with that name, although all the decorative motifs are Maya.”

And while the Aztec Hotel enjoyed immense success and was one of the most exclusive lodgings in the area for a brief period, it fell upon hard times due to both the Great Depression and the realignment of Route 66 and was forced to shutter its doors in 1935, less than a decade after opening. It was sold, by auction, shortly thereafter for $50,000. The new owners renovated the place and it once again became a popular retreat thanks to the proximity of the newly-opened Santa Anita Park race track. Such luminaries as Bing Crosby, Mickey Rooney, Clark Gable, and my girl Marilyn Monroe were all reportedly counted as guests at one time or another. Sadly though, the property fell, once again, into disrepair in the years following and served as everything from a drug den to a brothel. The 44-room, two-story hotel, which was named a National Historic Landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, was just recently purchased by new owners who have set about restoring the historic site to its former glory. Amazingly, numerous elements of Stacy-Judd’s original design remain in place to this day, including the tile floor in the lobby, ceiling light fixtures, stained glass windows, several murals, and a fireplace.

Sadly, the Brass Elephant bar, which is located just off of the Aztec Hotel’s lobby, was closed when I showed up to stalk it, but I did manage to snap the above pictures through an open window.

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In Bad Santa, the Brass Elephant stood in for the Brass Monkey – the supposed-Phoenix, Arizona-area mall bar where disgruntled Santa Willie (aka Billy Bob Thornton) first met bartender Sue. It popped up in two scenes in the movie – first in the scene in which Willie successfully hits on Sue before getting into a fist-fight with a fellow patron.

And later in the scene in which Gin (aka Bernie Mac) tries to blackmail Willie and his partner-in-crime, Marcus (aka Tony Cox). As you can see in the screen captures above, the Brass Elephant was dressed heavily for the filming, with special booths brought in, walls retouched, and bright lighting installed, and is virtually unrecognizable from its appearance onscreen.

Because the Brass Monkey was supposed to be located adjacent to a mall in Bad Santa, the real life exterior of the Aztec Hotel did not appear in the flick. A fake exterior for the bar was instead created at the Del Amo Fashion Center in Torrance, where the vast majority of the movie was lensed.

The Aztec Hotel was also featured extensively in the 2009 movie Spooner, as the place where Rose Conlin (aka the adorable Nora Zehetner), the object of Herman Spooner’s (aka the even more adorable Matthew Lillard’s) affection, stays for a few days after her car breaks down.

Quite a bit of the hotel appeared in the movie, including the front entrance;

the lobby;

several hallways;

the Aztec Barber Shop, which is an actual place;

one of (what I believe is) the hotel’s real life rooms;

and the Brass Elephant bar. And while I only scanned through Spooner in order to make screen captures for this post, I have to say that it looks like an incredibly cute movie that I definitely need to watch in its entirety in the very near future.

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Chas, of the It’sFilmedThere website, for finding this location. Smile You can check out Chas’ extensive Bad Santa filming locations page here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Brass Elephant, aka the Brass Monkey from Bad Santa, is located at 311 West Foothill Boulevard, inside of the Aztec Hotel, in Monrovia. You can visit the hotel’s official website here and you can visit the bar’s official Facebook page here.

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.

September 6, 2011September 5, 2011

Grandma Bunny’s House from “You Again”

As I mentioned in last Friday’s post, the hunt for Aunt Mitsy’s (aka Kathy Bates’) house from Rumor Has It actually began when fellow stalker Geoff, from the 90210Locations website, asked for some help in tracking down the abode where Grandma Bunny (aka Betty White) lived in the 2010 flick You Again. I immediately got fellow stalkers Chas, from the It’sFilmedThere website, and Owen on the case, but even with their master stalking skills, for whatever reason, this particular location mystery took us quite a bit of time to solve. The one major clue that we had to go on was that the house appeared to be situated on some sort of slanted lot and was not perfectly parallel to the street. And while several crew members had informed Chas that the dwelling was located in Altadena, he had remembered seeing some slanted-type houses in the Monrovia area while he was searching for the Georgia Rule abode way back in March of this year, so he decided to begin his hunt there. Thank god that guy has a good memory! Winking smile

As you can see in the above screen capture, an address number of “240” was also visible in the background of flick, so Chas got started searching all of the 200 blocks on every “slanted” street he could find in the Monrovia area and, amazingly enough, it was not long before he spotted the right house! So I, of course, ran right out to stalk the place just a few days later.

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Grandma Bunny’s Victorian-style abode is actually only featured once in You Again and very briefly at that. It pops up in the scene in which Marni (aka Kristen Bell), her brother Will (aka James Wolk) and his new fiance/Marni’s high school nemesis Joanna (aka Odette Annable) arrive to pick up Grandma Bunny for a wedding dance rehearsal. It is there that, while helping Bunny put in her false teeth, Marni accidentally gets denture adhesive all over her hands and then winds up getting her hands stuck in her hair, causing Grandma Bunny to chop a large chunk of it off. (It pretty much goes without saying that You Again was not that great of a movie. Winking smile )

I am very happy to report that Grandma Bunny’s house, which was originally built in 1887 (the same year that Monrovia was incorporated) and is one of the city’s oldest surviving Victorians, is just as adorable in person as it appeared to be onscreen. At the time of its construction, there were only 164 homes in Monrovia and a scant 2,000 residents. According to the city’s Historic Preservation Group’s website, the Colonial Revival-style front porch is not original, but was added to the property in the early 1900’s. In real life, the charming little abode boasts 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, and measures 1,482 square feet, although its façade makes it appear to be much larger. Ironically enough, in a bit of foreshadowing the home’s actual owner described the dwelling as “everyone’s idealized version of grandma’s house” in a Los Angeles Times article that was published in January 1989. I guess the You Again filmmakers felt the exact same way when they scouted the property. Smile

Big THANK YOU to Chas, from the It’sFilmedThere website, for finding this location. And you can check out Geoff’s, from the 90210Locations website, extensive You Again filming locations page here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Grandma Bunny’s house from You Again is located at 240 West Hillcrest Boulevard in Monrovia.

April 18, 2011April 17, 2011

The Upton Sinclair House

Last weekend while doing some research on the net, the Grim Cheaper discovered that a home in Monrovia where legendary author/screenwriter/movie producer/politician Upton Sinclair had once lived was currently for sale. So, while I was in the area visiting my parents this past Friday afternoon, I just had to go stalk it. For those who never had the pleasure of a required reading list in high school, Upton Sinclair was the Pulitzer-Prize-winning author of over 90 titles, the most famous of which was 1906’s best-seller The Jungle, a fictional, but truthful account of America’s meat packing industry during the turn of the century. I read the tome during the summer before my junior year of high school and even though it was easily one of the worst books I have ever read – like in my entire life! – I will always have a very special place in my heart for it as the day I started reading it a HUGE, white Himalayan cat appeared out of nowhere on the doorstep of my then-home. Thinking he had run away from a nearby house, my mom and I put signs all around our neighborhood announcing that we had found a lost cat. When no one claimed him after a week my parents said we could keep him and I could NOT have been more excited. In that weeklong interim, though, we kept him in one of our downstairs bedrooms, secluded from the rest of the house, as we had another cat and were afraid the two would not get along. I literally spent every waking moment of those seven days in that downstairs room, all the while reading The Jungle. I read that entire book with him by my side and even though Norman, as we came to name him, passed away six years ago, every time I see The Jungle on my bookshelf I think of him and our first week together. So when the GC told me that Upton Sinclair’s house was located just up the street from my parent’s new apartment, I could not have been more excited and just had to go stalk it.

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And I am so glad that I did! The Spanish-Colonial-Revival-style property, which boasts 3 bedrooms, 1.5 bathrooms, and 2,380 square feet of living space, was originally built in 1923. The home was designed by Frederick H. Wallis, the Los Angeles-area architect who, along with his partner Samuel Tilden Norton, constructed the Los Angeles Theatre, the William Fox Building, and the Los Angeles Financial Center. Upton Sinclair lived in the residence from 1942 to 1966 and, in the writing studio that he had converted from a garage, penned his Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel Dragon’s Teeth, as well as numerous other tomes. That studio has since been transformed into a guest house, but according to this San Gabriel Valley Tribune article, the special fireproof vault that he had built to house his many manuscripts is still intact. The residence is a Monrovia Historic Landmark, a National Historic Landmark, and is on the National Registry of Historic Places. It is currently for sale for a cool $1,195,000.

Of the home, Sinclair once said that it had the “perfect peace to write in . . . a garden path to walk up and down while I planned the next paragraph”. And I have to say that he was right – the property is truly idyllic. While I was there, all that could be heard were the sounds of birds chirping and a soft breeze rustling the trees. There was also an owl hooting away somewhere on the property – I kid you not. Oh, what I wouldn’t give to live in this home and have my own garden path to stroll along while contemplating the next paragraph for my blog each day! Something tells me that the GC would never go for the $1.2 million price tag, though. I’m guessing he would make me give up my Starbucks addiction if we were to buy this place. Winking smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Upton Sinclair house is located at 464 North Myrtle Avenue in Monrovia. You can visit the home’s real estate listing here.

March 24, 2011March 23, 2011

Watching “The Mentalist” Being Filmed – A Second Time!

This past Tuesday morning I was interviewed about my website for an article on filming locations that will be published sometime in early April in a few local, San Gabriel Valley-area newspapers. While we were talking, the reporter happened to mention that she had just spoken with the City of Monrovia’s Film Liaison who had told her that fave show The Mentalist would be filming that very day on Myrtle Avenue in Downtown Monrovia. So, I immediately headed right on over there to do a bit of Simon Baker stalking. As I have mentioned a few times before on this blog, I do not particularly enjoy stalking alone, so I begged my mom, who lives just up the street from where filming was taking place, to come to the set with me and, thankfully, she agreed. When we arrived, we discovered that producers had built a fake, but very detailed jewelry store set inside of what is, in actuality, a large kitchen appliance store named Kitchen & Bath Expo, Inc.

I cannot tell you how fascinating it was to see the fake store, which was named Nesbitt & Company Jewelers, in person. A false rear wall had been built in front of the large appliances that are normally on display in the front windows of the Kitchen & Bath Expo and fake jewelry cases along with fake jewels had been placed in the main area of the store and the effect was incredibly realistic. So realistic, in fact, that one of the people we spoke with who had stopped to watch the filming with us mentioned that she had walked by the storefront the previous morning and thought to herself, ‘Just what the area needs – another jewelry store!’ It was not until she saw the filming trucks the following day that she realized the entire thing was just a set.

Pictured above is what Kitchen & Bath Expo, Inc. looks like in real life.

As you can see, set decorators simply covered over the kitchen displays with fake walls. My mom asked one of the crew members why producers had not simply found a real jewelry store to film at, since there are more than a few of them in the area, but he told us that they needed a jewelry store situated next to an alley. When they couldn’t find one that met their needs, they simply decided to create their own. Ah, the magic of Hollywood!

The scene we watched being filmed involved Patrick Jane (aka Simon Baker) and Teresa Lisbon (aka Robin Tunney) pulling up next to the jewelry store in Lisbon’s car and then walking through the alleyway together. The camera was set up directly across the street from the store.

Traffic on Myrtle was shut down only intermittently during the filming and, with the crime scene tape strung across the alley, the flashing lights on the many police cars parked at the scene, and the camera not being readily visible, it must have looked to those driving by as if an actual crime had just taken place.

Simon Baker and Robin Tunney walked out just a few short minutes after we arrived on the set and Simon immediately smiled and waved at the fans standing across the street (there were only about five of us) and then the two of them walked over to the car they were set to be driving in the scene. I was really hoping that Simon would walk over to take pictures with the fans, since there were so few of us, but he never did. Sad smile

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The driving scene was completed in only one take and then Robin and Simon headed into the alleyway to do some more filming. Unfortunately, we could not get very close to the alley so we left shortly after that.

On the way back to my parents’ apartment, I noticed that every single store and restaurant on Myrtle Avenue had a sign offering discounts to the film crew taped to their front windows, which I thought was just about the coolest thing ever! Talk about being a film-friendly city! Love it!

Some filming also took place at Monrovia’s Vertia Salon, which is located right around the corner from the Kitchen & Bath Expo, Inc., but unfortunately I arrived after that scene had already been completed.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Kitchen & Bath Expo, Inc., aka the fake jewelry store set from The Mentalist, is located at 415 South Myrtle Avenue in Monrovia. The alleyway where filming took place is located just south of the Expo. Verita Salon is located at 111 East Lime Avenue in Monrovia.

March 11, 2011March 10, 2011

The “Georgia Rule” House

One location that I have been absolutely DYING to stalk for what seems like AGES now is the supposed Hull, Idaho-area home belonging to Georgia Randall (aka Jane Fonda) in the 2005 dramedy Georgia Rule. And I have to say here that despite being largely panned by the critics (Moviefone even rated it the Number 2 Worst Movie of the Year in 2007!), I thoroughly enjoyed Georgia Rule . . . and its locations – none more so than the adorable white Craftsman-style residence where Georgia lived. Over the past few years I had managed to track down just about every single locale which appeared in the flick, except for, for whatever reason, that house! Because director Garry Marshall had thanked the City of Monrovia in the movie’s final credits, I had an inkling that the house was most likely located there. So, using Google Street View, I spent countless hours searching through various neighborhoods in the San Gabriel Valley suburb – all to no avail. Then last week, I decided to bring in the big guns, so to speak, and enlisted the help of fellow stalker Chas, from the It’sFilmedThere website, who immediately added the flick to his Netflix queue. The movie arrived in his inbox on Wednesday night and within twenty minutes of watching it, he somehow managed to find Georgia’s house – in Monrovia no less – as well as another location that had eluded me! I am telling you, the guy just has the magic touch! So, while in Monrovia taking care of my dad yesterday, I ran right out to stalk the place.

In Georgia Rule, wild child Rachel Wilcox (aka Lindsay Lohan) is sent by her mother, Lily (aka Felicity Huffman), to live for the summer with her grandmother, Georgia, in the small town of Hull, Idaho in the hopes that doing so will calm the troubled teen’s rebellious ways.

In real life Georgia’s home, which is known as the E.N. Hawes House, was built in 1906 and is a Monrovia Historical Landmark. And I am very happy to report that the property is just as charming in person at it appeared onscreen.

The real life interior of the residence was not used in the production, but was apparently very faithfully recreated on a soundstage at the Sunset Gower Studios in Hollywood, where the movie was lensed. Oh, what I wouldn’t give to see the inside of that house in person!!

For whatever reason, producers changed the address number of the house from 243 to 247 for the filming. As you can see in the above screen captures and photographs, though, the address plaque was kept exactly the same and producers simply swapped out the real life “3” for a “7”.

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They even went so far as to change the number painted on the curb out in front of the house.

Oddly enough, though, they did not change the number of the house located next door, even though it was highly visible throughout much of the movie.

In an interesting side note – according to Garry Marshall’s commentary on the Georgia Rule DVD, he thought the house across the street from Georgia’s was too ugly to appear in the film, so he parked a large boat in front of it during the production, hiding it from view. As you can see in the photographs above, though, the house has since been remodeled and actually has a bit of “curb appeal” today.

Big THANK YOU to Chas, from It’sFilmedThere, for finding this location! Smile You can check out Chas’ highly detailed Georgia Rule filming locations page here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Georgia Rule house is located at 243 North Encinitas Avenue in Monrovia.

February 4, 2011February 3, 2011

The “Mask” House

While I realize that I still have quite a few posts to publish from my recent stalking trip to the Palmdale/Lancaster area (including the Four Aces and Club Ed movie sets), as well as a few filming-related posts to write from my nuptials last August (most notably the venue), I decided to dedicate today’s blog to my good friend and fellow stalker Kerry who has been experiencing a very emotionally-trying couple of weeks as of late. So, Kerry, this one’s for you! I hope it brings a smile to your face! Back in September, after finding out out that my parents had recently moved to Monrovia, Kerry asked me to track down the house where Roy L. ‘Rocky’ Dennis (aka Eric Stoltz) and Florence ‘Rusty’ Dennis (aka Cher) lived in the 1985 Peter Bogdanovich-directed movie Mask. She had heard that the residence was located somewhere in the Monrovia area and figured I would most likely be able to track it down. Because I had never actually seen the flick, though, I enlisted the help of Mike, from MovieShotsLA, who is pretty much a virtual encyclopedia of 80’s movies filming location knowledge thanks to the fact that he grew up in the area. And this case was no different – Mike knew the address of the Mask house right off the top of his head! Thank you, Mike! So, yesterday morning, after meeting my dad for coffee, I headed on over to the property to snap a few pics.

The house, which is located on a sleepy Monrovia corner just a few blocks east of Old Town, is actually featured quite a bit throughout the movie.

And, amazingly enough, it still looks VERY much the same today as it did back in 1985 when Mask was filmed.

Even the wall unit air conditioner and mailbox which appeared in the movie are still there in real life, over two and a half decades later! SO INCREDIBLY COOL!

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I am fairly certain from the way that the movie was shot that the home’s real life interior was also used in the flick.

On a Mask side note – Wow, Cher was absolutely beautiful back in the day! I had NO idea! That skin and those cheekbones are to die for!

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Mask house is located at 138 Grand Avenue, at the corner of Grand Avenue and Pearl Street, in Monrovia.