There's No Place Like Home-- Except India, Africa and Japan

Considering its beauty and versatility, the Pasadena area could just be the Meryl Streep of film locations. In countless MOVIES and TV series, the Foothills locale has portrayed cities ranging from Boston to Berlin. It has doubled for such far-flung destinations as India, Africa and Japan. It even, says Pasadena Filming and Special Events Manager Ariel Penn, plays Beverly Hills — better than Beverly Hills plays Beverly Hills.

Pasadena has had a starring role in the movies dating back to 1912, when legendary director D.W. Griffith used the Fenyes Estate (now the Pasadena Museum of History) as the location for When Kings Were the Law. These days, the city hosts an average of 500 film, television and commercial productions per year, thanks to its proximity to Hollywood studios as well as its diverse landscape and architecture.

In November alone, more than a dozen film and television projects shot in the area, including Fox’s Bones, CBS’ CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Criminal Minds and The Mentalist, as well as director Christopher Nolan’s Inception starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Dinner for Schmucks starring Steve Carrell and Paul Rudd and the Showtime comedy pilot The C-word, directed by Oscar winner Bill Condon and starring Laura Linney as a housewife who manages to keep her sense of humor after being diagnosed with cancer.

Filmmakers have long been attracted to Pasadena and surrounding areas because of the multitude of architectural styles which equip it to stand in for any location from the East Coast to the Midwest. The homegrown English, Colonial, Tudor, Craftsman, Mission and Mediterranean houses have filled in for such fictitious residences as Wayne Manor in the ’60s TV series Batman, the Carrington family’s Denver estate in Dynasty, the family home in 1991’s Father of the Bride and Doc Brown’s place in Back to the Future, which is actually the historic Gamble House.

In AMC’s Mad Men, Don Draper’s sprawling home in Ossining in Westchester County, New York, is actually in Pasadena. The series has also filmed at Descanso Gardens in La Cañada Flintridge, the Altadena Town & Country Club, the Huntington Gardens in San Marino — whose Munger Library stood in for a town hall — and South Pasadena’s San Pascual Stables, where wife Betty Draper pursues her riding hobby.

The Kennedyesque home of the Walker family matriarch played by Sally Field in ABC’s Brothers & Sisters was initially in Brentwood, but producers moved her digs to Pasadena after legal issues arose with the original homeowner. A member of the production’s staff says the move was also a matter of logistics, since it’s easier to find parking for crews in Pasadena than Brentwood.

Pasadena’s grand architecture and immaculate landscape also lure some filmmakers with stories set in Beverly Hills. “Pasadena looks more like Beverly Hills than Beverly Hills does in the general public’s mind,” says Penn. Beverly Hills has “amazing homes, but they’re usually on very small acreage. Pasadena has grand homes, but we also have grand yards — and that, in people’s minds, reads Beverly Hills.” Pasadena has filled in for that luxe locale in dozens of film and TV series, including the original Beverly Hills 90210, 1984’s Beverly Hills Cop, 1993’s The Beverly Hillbillies and the upcoming Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2. And Christmas in Beverly Hills filmed there in October.

Numerous public landmarks in Arroyoland have also made frequent appearances on the big and small screens. Pasadena City Hall made its film debut as Hinkle’s palace in Charlie Chaplin’s 1940 film The Great Dictator, but contemporary audiences will also recognize the building as Beverly Hills City Hall in Beverly Hills Cop. Most recently, City Hall was featured in the dark political comedy The Informant and as the city hall of fictional Pawnee, Indiana, in NBC’s Parks and Recreation.

With its Moorish, Spanish and Victorian influences, Castle Green is one of Pasadena’s most versatile and exotic locations. Built in 1898 as part of a lavish hotel resort, the building is now an upscale condominium complex which director Tim Burton once called home. It portrayed the Hotel Nacional de Cuba in 1991’s Bugsy as well as an elegant hotel in China and a Rome apartment in the spy series Alias. NBC’s Heroes even used Castle Green as a stand-in for such faraway locations as India and Russia. And in The Last Samurai, the Turkish room served as Katsumoto’s temple. In 2006’s Bobby —which takes place on the eve of Sen. Robert Kennedy’s 1968 assassination —the property’s lush gardens filled in for the grounds of L.A.’s Ambassador Hotel, which was undergoing demolition when the film was being shot.

The secluded Descanso Gardens in La Cañada Flintridge has also played its share of faraway places. In the 2005 period film Memoirs of a Geisha, the Japanese Garden and Tea House were transformed into Okinawa’s tranquil hot springs; to pull that off, the production team diverted a stream containing koi fish so they could create a pool in the empty creek bed. Visitors might recognize the greenhouse where Tom Cruise’s character is attacked by poisonous plants in 2002’s Minority Report, as well as the Boddy House as a backdrop in this year’s Couples Retreat.

Sharing screen time in Memoirs of a Geisha were the Japanese gardens at the Huntington, where a 30-foot-tall artificial flowering cherry tree was constructed for a scene at the baron’s estate. The Huntington’s grounds have also filled in for such diverse locales as Louisiana in HBO’s True Blood and post–World War II Germany in 2006’s The Good German.

While the Huntington Gallery is normally off limits for filming because of the priceless works of art housed there, filmmakers transformed the drawing room, dining room and main hallway into a German mansion while the gallery was being renovated. The Huntington has also frequently portrayed stately locations in Washington, D.C., in such films as National Treasure: Book of Secrets and the television series The West Wing. And considering the garden’s romantic ambiance, it’s no surprise that numerous weddings have been shot there in such films as 1997’s My Best Friend’s Wedding and 2003’s Intolerable Cruelty.

The L.A. County Arboretum and Botanic Garden in Arcadia has been a Hollywood staple ever since Johnny Weissmuller made his debut there as Tarzan in 1932. The site has been featured in more than 100 film and television shows, including 1940’s Road to Singapore and 1951’s The African Queen. More recently, filmmakers have used the Arboretum’s Jungle and Prehistoric Gardens as a backdrop for the first two Jurassic Park films and as the Amazon basin in 1997’s Anaconda. In 2004’s Meet the Fockers, Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand’s Florida house is actually the property’s 1885 Queen Anne Cottage, which was also home to Mr. Roarke in the television series Fantasy Island.

TV audiences will likely recognize Caltech as the fictional CalSci on the hit series Numb3rs, but it has also stood in for such real-life educational institutions as Berkeley in The O.C. and the fictitious CULA in 2001’s Legally Blonde. Caltech has hosted productions as varied as HBO’s Entourage, Ugly Betty and The X-Files. And its dining club, the Mediterranean-style Athenaeum, has proven versatile enough to portray an Italian Embassy in the television series The West Wing.

One of Pasadena’s most recognizable landmarks, the Colorado Street Bridge, can be seen in both Charlie Chaplin’s 1921 film The Kid and 1999’s Being John Malkovich. CBS’ The Mentalist filmed there this past summer, and Jim Carrey — not a stunt double — bungee jumped from the 150-foot-high span in 2008’s Yes Man.

After starring in thousands of film and television series, will filmmakers ever grow weary of Pasadena? “Absolutely not,” says Penn. “Pasadena’s been shot consistently since 1912, so they haven’t tired of us yet.”