16358
Ventura Blvd., Encino: outside Delmonico's
restaurant, where pop singer Paula Abdul
was the victim of a car theft in broad daylight. Paula had arrived for
lunch here at 1:30 PM on July 18, 1995, and had briefly left her white
300SL Mercedes-Benz running unattended in front of the restaurant while
she went to get a valet parking ticket. Two men jumped into her car and
sped away. Police say Paula was "extremely upset." 
The
Santa Monica Pier, at the west end of Colorado Avenue:
Only in L.A.:
in the summer of 1995, a despondent man attempted suicide by handcuffing
himself and jumping off the end of the Santa Monica Pier, shortly after
midnight. He was promptly rescued by three celebrity lifesavers:
the "Hollywood Madam"
(Heidi Fleiss), Michael
Jackson's plastic surgeon (Dr. Steven Hoefflin)
and KNBC News' medical reporter, Bruce Hensel.
The trio had been dining at the a posh restaurant nearby (Ivy At the
Shore), and decided to take a stroll on the pier. (Ironically, Dr.
Hoefflin later made the news again in late 1997, when another surgeon accused
him of fondling and exposing his celebrity patients while they were sedated.
He strongly denied the charges - and countersued. An investigation by the
Medical Board of California cleared him of the charges.) 
7800
Beverly Boulevard, Hollywood: CBS
TV City, where "Price
Is Right" model Dian Parkinson
alleged that game show host Bob Barker
had coerced her into having sex with him, in a 1994 lawsuit she filed against
him, charging sexual harassment. Barker denied the charges, claiming that
she had actually seduced him, and he threatened to sue her
for malicious prosecution. The case was dropped by Parkinson. 
12050
Ventura Boulevard, Studio City: in March
of 1994, actor Burt Reynolds
was exiting this Super Crown bookstore in the Valley (near CBS
Studio Center, where he filmed his series "Evening Shade"),
carrying a box of books, when he was accosted by two muggers. The attackers
knocked Burt down, but Reynolds (who was wearing a cast on his arm at the
time) got up and decked one of them. The two would-be robbers fled empty-handed.

5505
Ocean Front Walk, Venice: in March of
1994, on the night of the Academy
Awards, police arrested actor Dudley
Moore ("Arthur") on domestic
violence charges here at his former beach home, after his girlfriend of
three years (Nicole Rothchild) accused him of battering her. Dudley was
released on $50,000 bail, and Ms. Rothchild soon changed her story, saying
that he had never hit her after all. On April 16, 1994, the two were married
at this same seaside home in Venice. (By 1997, they had filing for divorce.)
Of course, the world later learned that he was suffering from an incurable
brain disease, which ended his life seven years later, in March 2002.

2114
Beech Knoll Road, Los Angeles: the home
of actor Billy Dee Williams
(star of "Return Of The Jedi" and "Lady Sings
The Blues") in the Hollywood hills. On January 30, 1996, he was
arrested there for allegedly roughing up his live-in girlfriend during
an argument. 
The
intersection of 3rd Street & Lucas Street, downtown L.A.:
where James Garner
accidentally ran down a pedestrian during the filming of a 1995 "Rockford
Files" TV-movie. Led by a police escort, Garner was driving a
Pontiac Firebird west on 3rd Street (with a movie camera mounted on the
car's hood) just as a pedestrian named Juan Vasquez - heading south on
Lucas - stepped into the crosswalk. Off-duty police were supposed to have
been in control of the intersection, but no one alerted Vasquez or Garner
to the danger. Fortunately, the accident wasn't deadly. Vasquez ended up
with a broken leg, but he was released from the hospital on the same day
as the accident. *
14527 Mulholland Drive,
above Sherman Oaks: the home of actor
Harry Dean Stanton
("Alien" & "Repo Man"), where, on
Jan. 20, 1996, he was the victim of a home invasion robbery. Stanton was
held prisoner by three armed men, beaten, tied up and his car was stolen.
Fortunately, his car was equipped with an electronic tracking device, and
police quickly located it (near Alcove Avenue and Tiara Street, in North
Hollywood) and arrested the suspects. 
665
W. Jefferson, Los Angeles: the
Shrine Auditorium. It was here that Michael
Jackson was filming a Pepsi commercial
when his hair caught on fire. He was hospitalized, and reconstructive surgery
on his scalp later led to his addiction to a prescription pain killer,
forcing him to cancel his 1993 world tour and check into a drug treatment
center in Europe. 
8440
Sunset Boulevard, West Hollywood: the
Le Mondrian hotel, where one of the supposed lead singers for the pop
duo "Milli Vanilli."
tried to kill himself in 1991. Milli Vanilli had won the Grammy Award for
Best New Artist of 1989, but they were stripped of that award after it
was discovered that the two singers hadn't sung at all on their debut item;
in fact, they had only lip-synced the songs. One of the duo, Rob Pilatus
(from Germany), took an overdose of pills, slashed his wrists, and tried
to jump out of the ninth-floor window of this hotel, before the police
finally stopped him. 
North Van Ness Street, Hollywood:
five years later, on Feb. 4, 1995, the same Rob
Pilatus (of Milli
Vanilli) was arrested on charges of attempted
burglary and making terrorist threats, after he tried to steal a car and
then tried to break into a man's home. His attempt failed when the victim
hit Pilatus over the head with a baseball bat. (On April 3, 1998, Pilatus
was found dead of an apparent overdose in a Frankfurt hotel room.)
6432
Mulholland Highway (at Canyon Lake Drive):
Madonna's
former home, the "Castillo del Lago," where (on
May 29, 1995) a deranged stalker scaled the wall of the estate and was
shot three times in a struggle with an armed guard employed by Madonna.
The stalker was later convicted and sentenced to a lengthy prison term.
Earlier, another stalker had been arrested at the same Madonna estate
and sentenced to a year in jail. Both men claimed to be Madonna's husband.
Back in the 1930's, this terra cotta & yellow-striped house in the
Hollywood Hills (just below the Hollywood
sign), was an infamous gambling casino run by mobster Bugsy
Siegel.

17267
Parthenia Street (west of Hayvenhurst), Northridge:
where comedian Richard Pryor
accidentally set himself on fire while free-basing cocaine, then ran through
the streets looking for help. "One thing I learned," said Pryor,
"was that you can run really fast when you're on fire!."

12850
Mulholland Drive, in the Hollywood Hills:
actor Jack Nicholson's
house, where director Roman Polanski
("Chinatown" and "Rosemary's Baby") allegedly
bedded a 13-year-old girl, resulting in Polanski's 1977 trial, conviction,
and subsequent self-exile in Europe. (Polanski's wife, Sharon
Tate, and their unborn child had been
murdered by the Manson gang in 1969.)
[map
approximate]
Wilshire
Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue, L.A. (now
LACMA West, across the street from the Petersen
Automotive Museum): the former
May Co. department store where actress Hedy
Lamarr ("Samson & Delilah")
was arrested for shoplifting in 1966. A jury found her not guilty, and
she sued the department store for $5 million. 
426
N. Bristol Avenue, Brentwood (near O.J. Simpson's house): the
home where actress Joan Crawford and
her daughter, Christina, lived. Christina alleged in her best-seller, "Mommie
Dearest," that her mother physically and emotionally abused her.
3100
Torreyson Place, Hollywood Hills: site of the
former home of actor Errol Flynn
("Adventures of Robin Hood," "Captain Blood"),
just off Mulholland Drive. Errol's entire life was one big scandal, many
would say.
The
most public of these escapades occurred in 1943, when he was brought to
trial and accused of illegally having sex with a teenager on his yacht.
(He was acquitted.) His drinking buddies once stole the dead body of his
friend, actor John Barrymore,
and propped it up in a chair at Flynn's home to surprise him. This house
was the scene of wild parties - and Flynn allegedly had two-way mirrors
installed above the upstairs bedroom so he could watch... Alas, the infamous
Flynn home was torn down several years ago. 
* locations marked by an asterisk could be located in a
high-crime district. Exercise reasonable caution.

.Click
here to go to the Hollywood Scandals, Part I
[includes locations
associated with news stories about Hugh Grant, George Michael, Frank
Sinatra, Robert Downey Jr., Christian Slater, Quentin Tarantino,
Tommy Lee, Pamela Anderson Lee, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Gary Coleman,
Michael Jackson, Jack Nicholson,
& Mark Harmon.]
ALSO SEE "WHERE THE STARS DIED":