When I was a kid, our family trips to L.A. were punctuated with retro-kitsch dining experiences, including a traditional after-landing-at-LAX late-night stop at Ed Debevicâs on La Cienega and lunch at Hard Rock CafĂ© at the Beverly Center.
No trip to L.A. in the late â80s was complete without a meal at the ultimate knockoff â50s burger stand, Johnny Rockets. One summer evening, after popping a nickel in the counter-affixed jukebox at the Beverly Hills location at the corner of Beverly Drive and Santa Monica Boulevard, my dad and I drove down Beverly and made a right-hand turn on Wilshire Boulevard. There in front of the Beverly Wilshire hotel was everything an imaginative eight-year-old boy in Hollywood dreamed of. Lights and ladders surrounded a silver Cadillac stretch limousine as people buzzed about. This was moviemaking magic. Though we didnât see Julia Roberts or Richard Gere that night, and though I wouldnât realize it until years later, this was the making of Pretty Woman.

Touchstone Pictures
Released on March 23, 1990, the urban fairytale about a Hollywood Boulevard hooker falling in love with a lonely, tough-as-nails New York businessman has enchanted the world for the last 30 years. It made Robertsâthen 22 years oldâa household name, and it made Touchstone Pictures (Disney) over $460 million across the globe on a budget of $14 million.
Originally much darker and called 3000âthe amount of money exchanged between Vivian (Roberts) and Edward (Gere) for services renderedâPretty Woman transformed into the ultimate romantic comedy when film and TV titan, the late Garry Marshall, grabbed the directorial reigns.
Pretty Woman filmed from the Valley to downtown and, of course, Hollywood to Beverly Hills. Sadly, a few key members of the crew who could speak most to the ins and outs of the filmâs locations have passed on. Marshall died in 2016 at 81 of complications from pneumonia following a stroke. George Herthel, the filmâs veteran location manager, passed away in 2012 after being diagnosed with ALS. Art director David Haber died in 2006.
Production designer Albert Brenner, a five-time Oscar nominee, is still around, though he preferred to answer questions via email from home here in Los Angeles because at 94 he doesnât hear well on the phone.
Brennerâs work in film and television spanned 55 years. Heâs collaborated with generations of directors including Arthur Penn (The Missouri Breaks), Ron Howard (Backdraft), Mel Brooks (Silent Movie), and Billy Crystal (Mr. Saturday Night). A key collaborator was Marshall, for whom Brenner designed seven films including Beaches (1988), The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement (2004), and Valentineâs Day (2010). He also designed a personal favorite of mine, The Monster Squad (1987). âItâs not one of my favorites,â says Brenner, âbut that doesnât matter.â (For the record, of the filmâs Brenner has designed, his favorite is 1975âs The Sunshine Boys.)
The darkness that pervaded the original Pretty Woman script was completely turned around by Marshall, says Brenner. âSomebody said to Garry, âThis is a very dark picture for you,â and Garry said, âOh, it wonât be. Trust me.ââ Brenner adds, âPretty Woman became a humorous and glamorized Garry Marshall-ed reflection of Hollywood because you saw some of the darkness there, but then there was always the lightness, or the joke.â
Itâs clear from the outset of our correspondence that I might be looking into the intricacies of Pretty Womanâs locations and design a little too deeply.
The opening scene where we first meet Edward and his slime-ball lawyer Philip Stuckey (Jason Alexander): âIt was a house that was available and it had the right look. It wasnât a grand search for something specific.â After pushing Brenner about the home in Bel Air, he acquiesces and says that the house suggested a sense of wealth and its large windows overlooking L.A. were attractive.
The Los Angeles Equestrian Center where Vivian and Edward go to watch a polo match: âWe needed an equestrian center and that was there and thatâs what we did.â
The iconic Beverly Hills sign that Vivian and Edward drive by at the intersection of Santa Monica Boulevard and Doheny Driv? Nope, nothing special about that spot either. âJust whatever was convenient,â says Brenner.

Jared Cowan
There has to be something more going on than run-and-gun location filming in Pretty Woman, right? Itâs a studio picture that made two locations incredibly famous. Brenner doesnât quite know how to respond when I tell him that the Las Palmas HotelâVivianâs rundown apartment building just off Hollywood Boulevardâis a stop on most Hollywood bus tours. âI didnât know,â says Brenner.

Touchstone Pictures

Jared Cowan
Rental listings in the Los Angeles Times for the Las Palmas Hotel date back to 1951. By the late â80s, Hollywood Boulevard and its surrounding streets were decaying. An L.A. Times article from 1988 describes the intersection of Hollywood Boulevard and Las Palmasâthe Hollywood location around which Pretty Woman was setâas âa magnet for amateur pornographers and assorted pimps and prostitutes and street kids.â It goes on to report that âthere are always drug deals to be madeâ outside Georgeâs cafĂ©, which is also seen in the film and is today the hot chicken restaurant Hot Motha Clucker.
Other locations in the vicinity include a bungalow home outside of which Edward asks a homeless man for directions to Beverly Hills, only to be told (in dialogue dubbed over by Marshall), âYouâre here. Thatâs Sylvester Stalloneâs house right there.â The rough-and-tumble Blue Banana nightclub was created in one of the retail spaces now part of the Egyptian Theatre complex.


Jared Cowan
The seedy quality of the Las Palmas Hotel was exactly what the filmmakers were after. However, its now-famous fire escape was a main selling point for Marshall. The director, a New York native born and raised in the Bronx, says in the DVD commentary that the Las Palmas Hotel reminded him of the old days of living in a five-floor walkup in Greenwich Village. That building also had a fire escape and âlooked like it would burn down any minute.â The fact that the location is standing today is nothing short of curious when, over the last ten years, new buildings have popped up around it.
But for Brenner, the fact that the Las Palmas Hotel had an empty apartment was key. (At the end of the original script, Vivian comes back to the apartment to find her friend and mentor, Kit, overdosing.)

Jared Cowan
Tourists visiting Beverly Hills might be surprised to learn that the penthouse shared by Edward and Vivian at the filmâs most famous location was a set created by Brenner. For the last 30 years the Beverly Wilshire hotel has capitalized on the success of Pretty Woman. Funny, considering that the hotel appears on screen for just under three minutes of the filmâs two-hour running time, as only exteriors of the building were shot there.
Brenner says, âThe Beverly Wilshire is hysterical because itâs an amusement that they always say that the suite is either occupied or under renovation. They never say it wasnât shot there or it didnât exist.â While hotel doesnât advertise the screen-used penthouse, the Beverly Wilshire does offer its âPretty Woman for a Dayâ experience, which reportedly goes for $300,000. However, some articles are misleading, and make it sound as though suite is located at the hotel.
The production flirted with the idea of shooting at the Beverly Wilshire. Brenner says, âIt was one quick question and the answer was no, so that was the end of that. Even if the Beverly Wilshire had said yes for any of it, it would have been so restricted because they werenât going to inconvenience any of their clients.â Instead, the filmmakers turned to a faded L.A. icon to film hotel interiors.
The Ambassador Hotel opened in 1921 and was a beacon of the city before Wilshire Boulevard was a paved road. The hotel hosted six Academy Award ceremonies and its famous nightclub, the Cocoanut Grove, attracted droves of A-list performers including Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, and Harry Belafonte. It was at the Ambassador, after giving a victory speech for the California primary in the Embassy Ballroom, that Robert F. Kennedy was shot in the hotelâs kitchen in the early morning hours of June 5, 1968. He died a day later. After a decline in the neighborhood, the Ambassador closed as an operating hotel in 1989, making Pretty Woman one of the first of dozens of films to shoot there over the next sixteen years when it functioned almost exclusively as a filming location. Between 2005-2006 the hotel was demolished to make way for school named after Bobby Kennedy. (In a fitting send off following a long negotiation with the property owners, LAUSD, Emilio Estevezâs 2006 film Bobby was the last movie to shoot at the hotel.)

Though the Ambassador had recently closed, Brenner says that the lobby and peripheral areas had to be decorated from scratch, as everything was empty or trashed. The Embassy Ballroom was used in the scene where Barney (Hector Elizondo), the hotelâs manager, teaches Vivian proper dining etiquette. The penthouse was built into the hotelâs presidential suite, giving the filmmakers the utmost control. It was designed in such a way that there was always something interesting to see no matter where you put the camera.
When asked about a color palette that spans multiple locations, Brenner says that Iâm searching for hidden meaning that isnât there. Mauves and purples cover the penthouse walls and carpet; theyâre seen in the tablecloths and napkins at Cicada, the downtown L.A. restaurant used in the filmâs famous escargot scene (âSlippery little suckersâ); you can see them in the flowers strategically placed behind Julia Roberts at the pool at the W Hotel in Westwood, doubling as the Beverly Wilshire pool. There was no symbolism or metaphor.
âWe chose a color scheme and we went with it,â Brenner says. âIt was nothing planned out.â
When Brenner refers to the hotel room colors as âmuted,â I begin to question it, but then remember that weâre talking about the â80s. Though thereâs a modesty that comes across in Brennerâs work approach, he eventually says that the hues compliment Robertsâ coloring and add to the romance of the film.

Jared Cowan
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At this point I wonder if I should mention the penthouseâs equestrian motif seen in paintings and statues scattered around the room. Brenner didnât recall, so I didnât broach the potential relationship between the set decoration and the fact that Edward and Vivian go to a polo match, followed by horseback riding at sunset in Burbank. In Marshallâs autobiography, My Happy Days in Hollywood, he discusses the struggle to devise a fairytale ending for the film. âI had to find some kind of metaphorical way for Richard to ride up on a white horse and rescue herâin the most modern and feminist sense of the word,â writes Marshall.

Touchstone Pictures

Jared Cowan
All of Vivianâs shopping scenes on Rodeo Drive were shot on Sundays.
In one memorable scene, Vivian, in her Hollywood street clothes, enters the clothing boutique Boulmiche, where she is assessed by couple of snobby Beverly Hills sales associates and asked to leave. Later, Vivian has her revenge when she returns to Boulmiche following a shopping spree in another Rodeo store.
Boulmiche is still in business in Beverly Hills, but is today located on Beverly Drive; in 1989, the store was located at Rodeo Drive and South Santa Monica Boulevard. Brenner says the location was perfect because the corner vantage point afforded Marshall a long view down Santa Monica as Vivian approached the store. The location also had a balcony where Marshall could film a high, wide angle shot of the store, but because of the potential for damage from the equipment, the owners wouldnât allow Marshall to shoot from there. Brenner built a platform for the director to get his shot.


The Beverly Wilshire wasnât the only sleight-of-hand trick in Pretty Woman. When Edward takes Vivian on a quick trip to San Francisco to attend opening night at the opera, they fly out of a private jet terminal at Hollywood-Burbank Airport. Today, the area is still occupied by a private terminal off of Empire Avenue. However, the opera house is not in San Francisco at all, but it wasnât for lack of trying.
The production was slated to shoot at the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco, but the October 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake caused major damage to the location, forcing the filmmakers to reevaluate. Brenner says that none of the L.A. theaters had the right look for the San Francisco opera house. Instead, the second unit filmed an exterior shot of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh. Brenner designed the theaterâs balcony and built it against the wall of a soundstage. A single shot of Vivian and Edward walking through the cavernous opera house lobby was filmed at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County in Exposition Park. Brenner recalls there being a dinosaur fossil displayed just off camera.


Jared Cowan
Other downtown L.A. locations included Grand Park, where Vivian takes Edward on his impromptu day off, and Stuckeyâs office building at 333 S. Hope Street on Bunker Hill. The 55-story building known as Bank of America Plaza was constructed in 1974.
âDowntown L.A. was a lot scruffier than it is now,â says Brenner. âIt was hard to make downtown L.A. look chic and wealthy. Thatâs why that one plaza stood out as something more sophisticated.â
Also seen in the plaza is a 42-foot high steel sculpture by Alexander Calder called âFour Arches.â In one scene, Edward watches a father and son play in the plaza before Edward steps out from behind the sculpture and approaches the building. Itâs clear that Vivian has caused his hard, business-minded façade to melt away. By this point in the correspondence with Brenner, I suspect that the arches in the sculpture have nothing to do with Edwardâs story âarc,â and he candidly quells my suspicions.

Touchstone Pictures

There is one instance in Pretty Woman, however, when fine art directly influenced a scene and its location. Towards the end Edwardâs day off, Vivian takes him to a hole-in-the-wall coffee shop called Barbâs Quickie Grill. Though only used for a fast shot, it has one of the most fascinating stories of all the locations in Pretty Woman. Originally, Louâs Quickie Grill was located on the corner of Highland and Santa Monica. In 1960, the coffee shop moved a couple blocks west near the corner of Orange Druive. When owners Lou and Anita Shulkin retired in 1987, they handed over the business to Barbara Knox, a waitress who started working for them in 1954. âBarbâ closed the restaurant in 1999 due to the onset of Alzheimerâs. An L.A. Times obituary for Knox says that she can be seen in the film, working in the restaurant.

Brenner says that the scene was meant to elicit a feeling of loneliness. To do that, the filmmakers looked to Edward Hopperâs famous 1942 painting, Nighthawks, which depicts a late-night corner coffee shop, light spilling out onto a desolate street, as a soda jerk serves three patrons sitting hunched over the counter. Like the painting, Marshallâs camera looks through the windows of Barbâs Quickie Grill as Vivian and Edward talk over coffee. Splashes of red, green, and blue light, similar to colors in the painting, frame the front of the restaurant.

Touchstone Pictures

Jared Cowan
Other than flying out of Hollywood-Burbank Airport, which he says was a much sleepier airport when they made Pretty Woman, Brenner has not been back to any of the filmâs locations over the last 30 years. And why should he? âI mean, you go on to the next [film],â he says. That may be, and just when I think the impact of the film is lost on the production designer he tells me that he and his wife have a friend who loves the movie. Brenner says, âEvery time itâs on television she sends [us] a text: Itâs on again.â I consider mentioning my experience passing by the Beverly Wilshire while production was in full swing in the summer of â89. I decided to keep that one to myself.
Follow Jared on Twitter at @JaredCowan1.
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