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Seeing Stars: Where the Movies Were Shot (on Location)
The late 1990's - 2000's
Filming locations
of TV Shows,
Made-for-TV Movies & Music Videos.
- The long-running TV sitcom "MALCOLM IN THE MIDDLE"
revolved around life at the eccentric family's home, in a town that is
never named on the show.
But in real life, you'll find that familiar Malcolm
house in L.A.'s San Fernando Valley, at 12334 Cantura Street,
in Studio City, CA.
Of course, don't expect to find the show's shoddy lawn... that was studio
set dressing.
( That's on the south side of the street, 8 houses west of Laurel Grove
Ave and 7 houses east of Rhodes Ave. 1 - just one street south of busy
Ventura Blvd. Look for the wavy sidewalk.)
[ Warning:
remember that this house, and the other houses listed here, are private
homes.
Do not knock on their door, trespass on their property or do anything
else that might disturb the residents. ]
(See a Google StreetView from 2007)
Update: The
new owners have ruined the old place.
They have completely rebuilt
it, and it doesn't look anything like it used to.
You'd never
recognize it now in a million years. Here's what it looks like now.
-
The kids on "Malcolm in the Middle" attended North High school,
which was really
Reed Middle School,
located less than two miles northeast of the "Malcolm" house,
at 4525 Irvine Ave, in North
Hollywood.
Sure, you recognize that old Victorian house where
Prue, Piper & Phoebe live in the TV series "CHARMED."
But did you know that some scenes from the show were shot on location at
an actual Victorian home in L.A.? Well, it was.
You'll find it on Carroll
Avenue, a public street near Echo Park, which features a cluster of historical
Victorian homes preserved for posterity.
The familiar "Halliwell House"
is on the north side of the street, near its east end. The exact address
is 1329 Carroll Avenue, about
a mile northwest of downtown Los Angeles.
The 2001 season premiere episode of Charmed (where
Prue died and was replaced with Paige) had scenes shot on location
at two familiar local spots:
- The funeral scenes (with the girls near Prue's casket)
were shot inside a real mausoleum. In fact, it was the very same mausoleum
where silent-screen legend Rudolph Valentino is buried, at the Hollywood Forever
cemetery in Hollywood (which is next to Paramount
Studios). The address is 6000 Santa Monica Boulevard.
- The church scene, where Paige learns to levitate
a candle (and where the girls are attacked by a demon) was shot at St.
Vincent de Paul church, north of the USC
campus. It's the same beautiful church used extensively in the filming
of Arnold Schwarzenegger's horror film, "End of
Days." The address is is 621 W. Adams Blvd, south of downtown
L.A.
- The scenes set at Sunnydale High School in TV's
popular "BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER"
were actually shot on location at Torrance
High School (at 2200 W. Carson Street) in the city of
Torrance (in the South Bay region).
- Just
three blocks north of Torrance High (Sunnydale) is Buffy's house,
where she stays with her mother on the series. You'll find it at 1313
Cota Drive in Torrance.
(It's a private residence, so don't disturb the
occupants.)
- And in between the high school and her home, you'll
find the spot where (in Season 1, Episode 7), Angel rescued Buffy from
three big vampires. That scene was shot in the parking lot of the Foster's Freeze
at 1624 Cravens Avenue, in Torrance.
- After Buffy graduated high school and moved on to
college, many of the outdoor campus scenes in her first season at college
were shot at the University of California, Los
Angeles (UCLA) in
Westwood.
- When shooting at UCLA became too difficult due to
crowding, they shifted most of the outdoor campus scenes over to the CF
Braun Business Park, located at 1000 S. Fremont Avenue, in Alhambra.
- Ever wonder where they shoot the cemetery scenes
for "Buffy"? Well, it isn't always in a real cemetery. (The producers
set up some fake headstones in the parking lot of their Santa Monica studio.)
But most of the scenes that were obviously shot in a large cemetery are
usually shot at the Angelus-Rosedale Cemetery,
located at 1831 W. Washington Blvd., just south of Koreatown.
It's a very real cemetery, and one of the oldest in Los Angeles. Actress
Hattie McDaniel (the first African-American to win an Academy Award, for
"Gone With the Wind") and Anna May Wong (one of Hollywood's
first Asian actresses) are buried at Rosedale.
*
- While
we're on the subject of "Buffy", in season two, Angel
(David Boreanaz) took up residence in a deserted mansion,
along with Spike and Drusilla. By the third season, he had returned from
hell and stayed at the mansion until his own show was spun-off in the fourth
season. So where was Angel's Mansion really located? Well, it's also here
in L.A., high atop a hill in the Griffith Park area. It's really the Ennis-Brown house,
an official city landmark designed by famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright.
The address is 2607 Glendower Ave.
It's even open for public tours. (And it has its own website at www.ennisbrownhouse.org.)
Actually, the house has been in a number of films
and productions, including the classic 1959 horror movie "The House
on Haunted Hill," the 1981 sci-fi classic "Blade Runner"
(where it served as Harrison Ford's apartment) and "Twin Peaks."
- Speaking
of the "Buffy" spin-off "ANGEL",
after Angel moved to Los Angeles he set up 'Angel Investigations' in a
deserted, historic hotel. Did you ever wonder where Angel's "Hyperion
Hotel" was located?
Well, for once the script and reality agree - it's
right here in L.A., and it really is an historic hotel with old Hollywood
connections. In fact, it's on the National Register of Historical
Places. It's actually the Los Altos Hotel & Apartments,
located at 4121 Wilshire Blvd.
It was
built back in 1925, and in its heyday it housed Hollywood stars such as
Douglas Fairbanks, Clara Bow, Bette Davis, Mae West, Judy Garland
and Loretta Young. Rumor has it that William Randolph Hearst once kept
his mistress, actress Marion Davies, in the penthouse apartment. It's located
on the north side of Wilshire, just east of Crenshaw Blvd.
If you're driving through Culver City, near the
former MGM Studios, you might recognize this unusual, cantilevered
building as the headquarters of Wolfram & Hart,
the demonic law firm that is the chief nemesis of "ANGEL".
In the real world, the building is the Sony Pictures
Plaza, located right across the street from the main gate of
Sony Studios, (at 10202 W. Washington
Blvd.), The building is on the east side of Madison
Ave., between Washington Blvd and Culver Blvd in Culver
City.
- In the pilot of the TV show "7th HEAVEN,"
the actual house used for exterior shots of the Camden family home is located
in Altadena, about two and a half miles north of Pasadena's famed Colorado
Blvd. (This is not the same house now featured weekly in the series.) The
address is 1090 Rubio Street,
in Altadena. The same house was also
seen in the a number of movies including "Risky Business," "How
Stella Got Her Groove Back", "The Baby-Sitters Club"
and "Can't Hardly Wait." It was also Shelley Fabares' house
in TV's 1997 "The Great Mom Swap."
- If you are a fan of the TV series "7th
HEAVEN," you know that the father of the Camden family
is a pastor at the fictional "Glen Oak Community Church".
Well, the church seen in the series is actually the First
Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) at 4390 Colfax Avenue
in Studio City (at the southeast corner of Colfax and Moorpark.)
* Locations marked by an asterisk (*) may be located
in areas with high crime rates.
Exercise reasonable caution.
For information about watching TV sitcoms
being taped live in the studio, see the separate page about getting tickets
to live TV tapings.
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