Southern California Close-Ups: Going Hollywood

There's much more than stars to check out in Hollywood, where nuns, horse trails, the Magic Castle and Cirque du Soleil await.

December 25, 2011|By Christopher Reynolds, Los Angeles Times

7. Stars at work, stars at rest

Paramount Pictures (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)

Like Universal and Warner Bros. studios in the San Fernando Valley and Sony in Culver City, Paramount Pictures (5555 Melrose Ave.) opens its lot to paying visitors, offering a two-hour guided weekday tour ($45 a person) by foot and golf cart. The Warner Bros. tour is best at giving outsiders a sense of working Hollywood, including glimpses of prop inventories and sound-effects tools. But Paramount is where "Glee" is shot, where Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers made musicals (Stage 29), where "Citizen Kane" and "Rear Window" were shot (Stages 19 and 18, respectively), where Kelsey Grammer spent 20 years on the sets of "Cheers" and "Frasier" (Stage 25, 1984-2004). Your guide will pull out a tablet computer to show movie and TV scenes shot on the premises, and you'll probably get a peek at sets from some current shows. Note that studio rules forbid proposing marriage to anyone in the cast of "Glee" — "which has happened. Awkward," says guide Brynn Kushner. After the tour, drive slightly east, stroll prosperous, pedestrian-friendly Larchmont Village and have a great ham sandwich at Larchmont Bungalow (107 N. Larchmont Blvd.). Then hop in the car again, head up to Santa Monica Boulevard and turn south into Hollywood Forever (6000 Santa Monica Blvd.), where you'll find Rudolph Valentino, Douglas Fairbanks, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Ramones guitarist Johnny Ramone, actresses Hattie McDaniel and Fay Wray and many others. In 2011, the cemetery added a memorial to Toto — the dog, not the rock band. Unlike Forest Lawn and others, Hollywood Forever eagerly offers maps to celebrity graves and hosts parties and DJs. From mid-May through mid-September, there are outdoor movie screenings (www.cinespia.org), where you can recline "above and below the stars."

8. The reappearing club, the hidden hotel, the wayward pagoda

The Magic Castle (Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times)

The bad news: You probably aren't among the 5,000 worldwide members of the Academy for Magical Arts. The good news: You can still get into its clubhouse, the Magic Castle (7001 Franklin Ave.). It's a 1908 Victorian mansion a few blocks north of Hollywood Boulevard. Since 1963, the castle has served dinners and brunches to members and guests, who enjoy the magicians who work the castle's intimate rooms — usually nine performers a night in three rooms — flashing cards, reading minds, creating illusions. Though a fire in October closed the club briefly, the adjoining annex soon reopened Wednesdays through Sundays, and management is hoping for a full reopening in January or February. If you don't know a member, you can buy a 30-day membership ($100). Or — attention, please — you can book a room at the neighboring Magic Castle Hotel (7025 Franklin Ave.). In fact, this low-profile, 30-room hotel (a converted apartment building with a central pool) would be a great value even without access to the castle — low rates, pleasant grounds, sky-high TripAdvisor scores. Check in, take a swim, don the tie and jacket or little black dress (the castle has a formal dress code) and catch the hotel's free shuttle to the clubhouse. There you'll step into a world where secret doorways lead to shadowy bars, where Cary Grant and Johnny Carson once were insiders and Neil Patrick Harris sits on the board of directors. When the last trick is done, catch that shuttle again and close out the night with a $12 martini at neighboring Yamashiro (1999 N. Sycamore Ave.), a restaurant and bar that features a 600-year-old Japanese pagoda and wide, twinkling views of the inexhaustible city.