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Originally Posted by GaylordWilshire
Jeff: I will have to check out 13 Ghosts to see if we can find the other house in the movie--but that is indeed the Waters house in the Youtube clip. Another spooky appearance in the clip is none other than the Wicked Witch herself, Margaret Hamilton. She appears for a second--wasn't sure at first, but I checked the cast and yep, she's one of the stars. In fact, she may be the biggest, though also starring are Martin Milner, who was doing Route 66 on tv that same year, and Rosemary DeCamp--who I was familiar enough with growing up but have no idea now if she was in movies or was a singer or what. Anyway, quite a mixed bag of players in 13 Ghosts! As for the Waters carriage house--the vents in the tower are a big clue--I think it was filmed in Curse with the camera low to the ground to give it some height, since the rear building was quite a bit shorter than the main house.
PS Now you've got me wondering when the Waters house was demolished--for some reason I assumed it was in the '40s, when so many Victorians went, but if 13 Ghosts was shot in '59 or '60... of course maybe the footage in the Youtube clip was old... |
GW: I SEEM to remember reading somewhere that the Waters house was demolished in the 60's. That footage in the 13 Ghosts trailer is so crisp that it certainly looks as though it was made at the time, 1959/60. It doesn't look like old or stock footage.You can clearly see part of the enormous ivy-shrouded Canary Palm trunk that is seen glancingly in "Curse of the Cat People." It is an incredibly atmospheric-looking house.
I'll be fascinated if you or someone can identify that house in the full-length movie. At an IMDB message board for 13 Ghosts, people ask where the house was. Two posters guess the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, which I hugely doubt, and one guy states very authoritatively that "hundreds" of houses like it (19th Century Victorian mansions) are to be found in Laurel Canyon! Sounds as though he hasn't even been to Los Angeles.
Rosemary DeCamp was one of the busiest character actresses of the 40's, mostly at Warner Brothers. She was in "Yankee Doodle Dandy," and played a bitchy role as a San Francisco housewife in a film noir entitled "Nora Prentiss" with Ann Sheridan that was a box-office hit in 1947. Most people remember her from 50's TV sitcoms.