But this year, for some reason, I am seeing way more tour buses. It’s almost one-to-one Hollywood Tour vans and parking enforcement vehicles. Why there are so many more tour buses these days I do not know. Especially since…
There is nothing to see.
Not really.
Stars live secluded in canyons and beach colonies and Upper Manhattan. Their compounds are gated. And would you even know the difference? If a tour guide took you to Bel Air, pointed to a gate, and said this is where Tom Cruise lives, how would you know it’s not really where the owner of Starlight Tours lives? Or a military academy?
Will you see stars shopping in Beverly Hills? Maybe. You’ll more likely see their personal assistants.
These tours also show you “locations” from movies and TV shows. The truth is after a hundred years of movie making, every street and location has been used at least once. So the Coffee Bean you’re in right now was once a hamburger stand used in FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH. The street you just crossed was seen in an Allstate commercial back in 1967. The actual house used on BLESS THIS HOUSE might be right around the corner. Just assume it is.
LA is a great vacation destination. Lots of fun things to see and do. Disneyland, Dodger Stadium, the Venice Beach walk, Universal, the Grove, Farmer's Market, LACMA, Costco. If you want to see television shows you can write to the networks. TV tickets are free. And there are kiosks in tourist locations like the Grove that offer these tickets. Some shows that were locked down due to the pandemic are starting to welcome studio audiences again.
But the bottom line is this: You want to see big movie stars? You want to see A-list celebrities? Come back in the winter and go to a Lakers game.
34 comments :
I read that TV show set-houses were on regular tours, like those of The Brady Bunch and Leave It to Beaver. I always looked forward to seeing the Big W trees from the movie but I understand it's in Santa Monica and owned by one of your furniture warehouse magnates.
The LA Times has an interesting article today..."How the streaming era is hurting TV writers."
When did "way more" replace "much more" or "many more"? It's not just from the mouths of teenagers working on their GEDs. I've heard it from network correspondents and 70-year-old bloggers.
If I came to LA, these two things would be at the top of my list 1) attend a taping of Jeopardy and 2) See one of Ken's plays, especially if he was there to meet. Do buses go by his house? Guide: "There's the house of a guy who wrote for Mash". 20 something: "What's Mash"
Carole Lombard resided at 7953 Hollywood Boulevard for a few years in the mid-1930s, where she gained renown for her offbeat parties. (Lombard left in early 1936 after her romance with Clark Gable began, and the house's relative lack of privacy proved a drawback for the couple.) Future residents included actor Max Showalter and singer Morrissey, and I dare say those 30 and under would know his identity far better than Carole's... although the home is in a relatively quiet residential neighborhood west of Fairfax and not a typical location for a tour bus stop.
You don't need a bus tour or a map for these locations or celebrities. Google it.
The Brady Bunch house is easy to see. It's on a nice residential street, and it is second only to The White House for photos. Please don't be an idiot to the neighbors who live there and don't be stupid enough to walk up to it. Security vehicles are to the right of the house and it is otherwise also protected from people who want to grab chunks of it. Just take a photo if you want and go away.
There are apps for other such locations and even restaurants if you have a desire to eat where they filmed Mad Men (Canter's) or "That Thing You Do" (hurry, Watson's is closing).
Plan ahead and check calendars for screenings of films by the American Cinemateque and other frequent film events at museums and other locations. You would be surprised how little they cost. Some are free but they are usually first-come-first-served and that kills time. But you can see, for example, “2002: A Space Odyssey” followed by a live interview with Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood, or “Working Girl” while Sigourney Weaver watches it with the audience and comments afterward. Kurt Russell spoke after a screening of “Big Trouble in Little China.”
If you are into classic TV and movies, it is worthwhile to drive around to see the homes of Lucille Ball, Jack Benny, Ronald Coleman and Jimmy Stewart. It's one of the few fictions based in fact. On radio and TV, the latter three were neighbors on Benny's show. And the homes are not hidden by walls. They are monuments to great artists, alive or passed.
The Hollywood Historical Society has a museum next to The Hollywood Bowl that is actually in the original DeMille building, which was moved there. It's worth seeing and there are knowledgable people there who can also explain where to see locations that still exist. These are the real Hollywood. Not everything is gone.
Walt Disney's Hyperion Studio in Los Feliz is now a Gelson's supermarket. There is a little plaque near the street, but inside the store there are photos. Not everyone has closed the door and thrown away the keys. The location of where the “Disney Brothers Studio” is still there, too. So are the steps where Laurel and Hardy carried the piano.
My "Sleeping Beauty Castle" has always been the Hanna-Barbera building on 3400 Cahuenga Blvd. The exterior is protected by the Los Angeles Conservancy. There is a small sign in the back parking lot with a picture of Dino from The Flintstones and little dino tracks on the pavement. The LA Fitness next door was a production annex. The Jetson-looking addition on the right was added later for merchandise and other staff offices. It now houses office space for Universal Marketing and other businesses.
The reference to Benny and Colman reminds me of a couple of classics.
One is that Colman and his wife did Benny's shows as his next-door neighbors, and Benny once explained how comedy works. As his wife munches on an apple, Ronnie says, "Benita, I was just watching Phil Harris's orchestra rehearse," and she replied, "Please, Ronnie, not while I'm eating." Benny said that was an example of how a joke might take years to come to fruition: Years of jokes about what a group of reprobates were in Harris's group were required for that joke to work.
The other is an episode in which you hear someone say, welcome to the bus tour of celebrity homes. They go to Don Wilson's, and you hear him announce the commercial and then make jokes about Benny. Then Rochester's for more jokes, then Dennis Day's for more picking on Benny and the song, then Mary with the same, then Phil's for a number after picking on Jack, and so on. Finally, the driver says this is Jack Benny's home, and Benny says, "Driver, this is where I get off." That was his only line, but the entire show was about him.
I suspect that for all his celebrity and wealth, Eddie "Rochester" Anderson would not have owned a home in Jack Benny's neighborhood in the 1950s. But Benny was always a proponent of civil rights. He cancelled appearances in the South rather than perform for segregated audiences.
@ Greg
Assuming you know what HGTV did to the Brady Bunch house. Same on outside, different on inside. They gutted it, and rebuilt its interior, as close as possible to the original studio set. Limited series available on HGTV. Kinda interesting to watch, and all of the original cast of "kids" were involved. HGTV keeps security on it.
(Fortunately, the same thing did NOT happen to "The Golden Girls" exterior home in Brentwood. The interior of the house is wonderful, and I would have hated to see it "converted" to the TV studio set. That home's exterior was used in the first season, before a [now demolished] replica was built at the Disney Studio in Florida. It's easy to find pics of the interior, as it sold two years ago.)
Lucy's house was basically gutted recently. Not recognizable.
There is, of course, that episode of I Love Lucy where Lucy Ricardo, on one of those tours, climbs over a celebrity's brick back yard wall to get a souvenir orange. When I was a guest in Lucy's house, she told us that tourists occasionally scaled her brick backyard wall also. Having seen her do it on TV, they insanely thought it was OK to do it to her.
"If you want to see television shows you can write to the networks."
That advice is as dated as a 1950s Map to the Stars' Homes. (Here's Walt Disney's address!) If you want to see a TV show shot, as I often do, you GOOGLE the show with "tickets" after the title. This will give you the link to whichever TV audience ticket service provides tickets to that show. They are, of course, still free. "On-Camera Audiences," for instance, is through whom I've gotten tickets to So You Think You Can Dance? The Conners and Big Brother. Be aware that really popular shows will have waiting lists. Big Brother, for instance, has only 83 seats a week, and most of those go to guests of the show. I was on that waiting list for 5 years before I actually got to go. I was on a So You Think You Can Dance? waiting list for 4 years, though once I got tickets, they have since offered me tickets several times, and I've been to the show thrice.
On the other hand, tickets to The Conners are generally easily available. Bill Maher's HBO talk show is one of the very few that handles ticketing guests themselves. There's a phone number in the closing credits you call to get tickets for that show.
Yes, famous locations are all over SoCal. I went to elementary school within sight of "The Big W" in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. You can get a glimpse of the house my dad was raised in in WC Fields's Million Dollar Legs - Dad was living there while the movie was shot. The location of that opening shot in Boogie Nights where the camera pulls out of a movie theater, crosses the street twice and goes in a door is two blocks down the street from where I live now, while the Knot's Landing cul-de-sac is about a mile from my home. The closing credits of Knot's Landing for most of its run was an aerial shot of what was supposed to be Knot's Landing, but was actually Malaga Cove and Palos Verdes Estates (Nearly 50 miles from the cul-de-sac). The school where I went to 6th grade and my grandmother's house were both in that closing-credit helicopter shot every week.
But some are still special. The Laurel & Hardy Music Box steps cited by a commenter above, were thrilling to me to visit. Walking up those steps felt like treading on Holy Ground to me.
I've always been intrigued by Preston Sturges's Players Restaurant, which is long gone.
https://www.kcet.org/food-discovery/food/the-players-preston-sturges-screwball-times-on-the-sunset-strip
@ Leighton: "Assuming you know what HGTV did to the Brady Bunch house. Same on outside, different on inside. They gutted it, and rebuilt its interior, as close as possible to the original studio set. Limited series available on HGTV. Kinda interesting to watch, and all of the original cast of "kids" were involved. HGTV keeps security on it."
Even Eve Plumb? I thought I'd read that she kept her distance from all the reunion stuff?
Wasn't it pretty well known back in the 70s or so that a lot of those tours would just randomly drive around nice neighborhoods and point to a big house and say, "That's Lucy!" or "Cary Grant lives behind that wall!"
In Chicago there was a bus tour that would drive around to all the buildings where Oprah Winfrey lived, or had lived, or after a certain point, when her real estate was bought and sold with dummy corporations or trusts, where she was rumored to live. My parents used to live on LSD and the building next to theirs was on teh list for a while. A double-decker bus would roll by and the people would call out her name like she was gonna come out and say hi, or at least way from a window.
I've never understood why people want to take pics, get autographs from celebrities. I've been near famous people, I just leave them alone. At one point, Johnny Unitas and I were apparently living parallel lives - I sat in a table next to him at a restaurant 2x in a week, In the same week, I sat next to him at the movies (Will Snith's Independence Day). Never said a word or bothered him.
@ JIm
Even Eve Plumb. HGTV has the big bucks. They overpaid for the house, but made it back in boatloads, with advertising for the show - I believe their highest rated in 2019...
Alls I knows is, the only things left in Beverly Hills or thereabouts I'd like to see or experience anymore, are the restaurants. In particular, the Smokehouse and maybe The Stinking Rose. (Yes, I'm a gourmand and I love garlic.)
Also, fun fact: the most famous resident of my own home town (Lakewood CA, near Long Beach) is... Barret Hansen. Recently saw a pic online of him enjoying the cuisine at my local George's Greek Cafe.
500 points and a cookie to everyone here who knows who Barret is without looking him up. :-)
I know who Ronald Colman was, at least once a year I watch LOST HORIZON. Great movie
The old fantasy of Hollywood was major studios downtown, sidewalks crowded with stars and extras in full costume ambling to lunch counters, and night life as portrayed onscreen -- all open to the tourist passing through town. And of course Miss Podunk and the star of the senior play would immediately find fun jobs and helpful comic roommates, almost inevitably leading to stardom. Many years ago read a news article on LA's homeless problem. One official said that when patients were released from mental hospitals, they were given a bus ticket. Those with nowhere to go would head for Hollywood, expecting to find that fantasy.
Similar myths drew (and draw) would-be flower children to San Francisco, overconfident "winners" to Las Vegas, and aspirants in a wide range of fields to New York. But the Hollywood dream was always sold as fame and fortune without really requiring talent or even effort. Even shows and films that presented grim cautionary tales somehow managed to hint that YOU could be the one in a million. A bit like lottery ads that give the odds and close with a guy on a yacht.
The song "Do You Know the Way to San Jose" isn't about San Jose at all, but rather about the Hollywood fantasy. The lyrics are sad if you listen: I came LA to become a star, it's all a lie, and I'm trying to figure out how to get back to where I think I still have friends who'll let me crash.
I always see celebrities at Farmers Market, Venice, Beverly Hills, Chateau, etc. I actually see more in Austin.
It's easy to find the house of Tom "The Smirking Dwarf" Cruise. It's the one with a security team guarding his trash cans.
In the seventies, the owners of the house in Minneapolis used for exterior shots where Mary, Rhoda, and Phyllis lived got so tired of being bombarded by fans of the "Mary Tyler Moore" show they put up "Impeach Nixon" signs in the windows.
I never liked driving in L.A. I got the impression L.A. residents didn't like me driving on their freeways. I decided that on future visits it would be better for everyone if I stayed in Santa Monica and used the Big Blue Bus to get around. Then "Speed" came out and the Big Blue Bus was suddenly "famous".
My Hollywood fantasy was to try to imagine the place in the mid-Sixties, when Desilu was running at full steam while maybe a mile north at Western Recorders Brian Wilson and the Wrecking Crew were busy on "Pet Sounds". Of course the area looked like a bunch of old warehouses- which is what they were.
$12.6 million for a 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle card. That's a spicy meatball!
@ Steve Lanzi- not only do I know who Barret Hansen is, but I also know very well the George's you're talking about. My wife and I go there occasionally but not nearly as often as the Supermex next door. We live about 2-3 miles away from there in E.L.B.
@ Kevin
If you'd like to see what the ACTUAL interior of the MTM house in Minneapolis looks like, here you go:
https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/2104-Kenwood-Pkwy_Minneapolis_MN_55405_M73457-67452
@Leighton- that's a helluva house. I get not referencing MTM in the description, but not one sly reference on one of the several TVs they show?
Buttermilk Sky, the story is that Benny once was going to play in the South and was informed at the hotel that there was no room for Anderson, and he walked out. I don't know about that, but I do know that Rochester was largely immune from criticism over being the Black valet to a white man in the civil rights era because he wasn't subservient, or cast to be that way, in the least.
@ Don
The sale got plenty of coverage in the media, so they didn't need to mention the connection, I suppose. But the location is "epic" in Minneapolis, regardless. The TV idea is great.
Also, for those wanting to see the interior of the REAL Brentwood "Golden Girls" house....you have to scroll down for house interior pics...that kitchen is AMAZING...
https://hookedonhouses.net/2020/07/18/real-golden-girls-house-california/
In regards to "The Brady Bunch" house redo.....there are these two links...I watched the entire series on HGTV. They did "fudge" a bit with the layout, as they were "force feeding" the set layout into an existing house. Actually, twenty years ago, I had my pic taken in front of the actual house.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqx3d6Jrpuk
https://www.hgtv.com/shows/a-very-brady-renovation/articles/take-a-3d-tour-of-the-completely-restored-brady-brunch-house
Thank you.
"The reference to Benny and Colman reminds me of a couple of classics.
. . . .
The other is an episode in which you hear someone say, welcome to the bus tour of celebrity homes. They go to Don Wilson's, and you hear him announce the commercial and then make jokes about Benny. Then Rochester's for more jokes, then Dennis Day's for more picking on Benny and the song, then Mary with the same, then Phil's for a number after picking on Jack, and so on. Finally, the driver says this is Jack Benny's home, and Benny says, "Driver, this is where I get off." That was his only line, but the entire show was about him."
That's a great episode, and if I'm remembering it correctly, it's an even better example of the way some of his material worked better because of the years of character development already spent. Near the beginning of the episode, I think, someone mentions that the tour bus is free, sponsored by the city or something like that. Benny's "cheap" character trait was so well-established by that time that when the audience learns that he took the bus to his own home, there's no need to explain why he did it.
Thinking about Old Hollywood, I've always liked this Clara Bow quote:
"We had individuality. We did as we pleased. We stayed up late. We dressed the way we wanted. I used to whiz down Sunset Boulevard in my open Kissel, with several red chow dogs to match my hair. Today, they're sensible and end up with better health. But we had more fun.”
Don Kemp: nice neighborhood. :-)
You're close enough to me to pick up your cookie in person.
Also, SuperMex is always great for a bite to eat. They should open up a location in Ken's area.
@Steve Lanzi- Supermex is our default "go to" if you will for the last 19 years we've been in the area. Their Supermex margarita, basically a Cadillac, is really good. Their "O.G." margarita is the strongest though. I've learned to have one of those only once in a while in my dotage.
You might know, but Supermex is a small family chain. There's five or six in the general Long Beach/Lakewood area, one in Whittier I think, or used to be. They had one in Las Vegas several years ago but it closed. A couple of them they franchised out to non-family but those are closing too. Like many places, they can't find enough help. I think West L.A. might be a little out of their comfort zone, although Ken surely might like it if he ever found himself in Long Beach. Their flagship is still in downtown Long Beach.
I went to Pink's because it was described to me when I lived in Montebello in a story by Harlan Ellison called "Prince Myshkin, and Hold the Relish". The story is there, framed on the wall. I've never seen a celebrity there, with the exception of...Harlan Ellison, who was there on the night they hung up his story.
I'll take it.
I had to live there, but over the years, I've seen Peter Marshall (eNORmous voice), Mike Connors, Charmian Carr ("Liesl" from the Sound of Music), Weird Al Yankovic, Armand Assante (no, Mr. Assante, I don't work at Tower Records) who likes Peter Townshend's solo stuff, Ted Lange, Joe Piscopo (don't stand behind him and expect to see the sun), Jack Anthony Bailey ("Sticks" from Happy Days), Walter Koenig and Queensryche, but precisely NONE of them on a tour.
I've not done much of anything in the entertainment field, but I'VE been "spotted":
PERSON: Are you somebody [I should know]?
ME: I don't believe so.
PERSON: You sure?
I've had the above conversation two or three times.
- Brian "I AM SOMEbody" Phillips
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