When location manager Timothy Hillman needed a house that would make a statement about the Barbara Walters-type mother Jane Fonda portrays in the upcoming film "Monster-in-Law," he settled on a majestic 1927 Wallace Neff home in Pasadena as the character's home. "We wanted to show that she oozed class," Hillman says, "so we picked this gated estate with fountains in front and grand windows into the living room."
It wasn't the first time this house had appeared on screen: It was seen in "Frances," the 1982 film biography of actress Frances Farmer, and the Disney film "The Pest," and it played the homes of Elizabeth Taylor and diet doctor Robert Atkins in television movies.
Some actors become stars, and some L.A.-area houses -- this Wallace Neff is one -- have their own kind of star status, appearing in a number of films, television shows, commercials and print ads. As if it's no sweat to get work. And, as with actors, the houses' repeated movie roles have to do with both tangible and ineffable factors, such as whether the house has the right floor plan to handle balletic camera moves, is in a film-friendly neighborhood or is able to pass for a home somewhere else in America.
Let's start with the tangibles. Carlotta and Buck Stahl live in Case Study House No. 22, a glass-walled miracle in the Hollywood Hills, designed by the noted architect Pierre Koenig in 1958 and memorialized by an evocative Julius Shulman photograph of two women sitting inside the house. Soon after the home was built, film companies were interested in its unique design and cliff-top fit.
"They made a movie here in 1962 called 'Smog,' " says Carlotta Stahl. "But when they came up, it was a clear day, so they had to spray gunk on the windows to make it look like you were looking out at smog." The 2,300-square-foot house has more recently appeared in "Nurse Betty," "Why Do Fools Fall in Love," "Galaxy Quest" and "The Marrying Man."
"It's an architectural masterpiece perched at the top of the Sunset Strip, looking out at a blanket of lights," explains location manager John Panzarella, who used the Stahl home for the home of soap opera doctor Greg Kinnear in "Nurse Betty." "The house is completely made of glass, so you have the opportunity to film the interior from the exterior. You can set up a shot with the pool in the foreground, and through the glass wall you can see right into the house."
He says that of all the midcentury modern homes in the L.A. area, this one makes the strongest visual statement. "You can shoot a McMansion anytime you want, and no one will remember it," he says. "It just satisfies my creative juices to get great architecture into movies."
So, like an exquisite starlet, the Stahl house possesses matchless and pleasing features. And it doesn't matter that it can't act.
Its cinematic opposite may be the Rosales house, seen in "True Romance," "Bad Influence" and "Town & Country." Richard Rosales bought the Greek Revival mansion in the historic West Adams district after a fire, and he now manages it. (Yes, houses have managers.) "Film companies like the house because it has nice details yet it looks rundown," he says.
In fact, Rosales keeps the scene of the fire, the basement, unrestored, the better to attract music videos. "A lot of people with mansions have nice oak floors and don't want to scratch or damage anything. We're not worried about getting dusty or dirty," he says. "When they want run-down mansions, we get all the business."
"He's easy to work with," says Panzarella. "With some people, we deconstruct all their decorating and they freak out. He doesn't."
Another factor in the popularity of the Rosales house is its versatility. In "True Romance," the first floor served as a drug den while the second floor stood in for Christian Slater's would-be coke dealer's apartment in another part of town. Film companies appreciate it when they can drive their trucks and equipment to one site and shoot more than one location.
"A great view isn't enough for a house," says Catherine Meyler, the owner of a location listing service that represents architectural gems such as the Stahl house. "I also need a good exterior, or a nice lawn, or an unusual selection of plants to give the producer more vistas to work with."
Debbie Hoffman is a mother of three whose family lives in the house America knows as the home used in the '70s television series "Family." Since then it has appeared in "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids," "Jurassic Park 3" and "Bringing Down the House." It's no coincidence that the Hoffmans bought this two-story, four-bedroom home, with its sloping roof, because it seemed the ideal place to raise children.
