Star Track: The Next Generation : O.C. Author Keeps Hollywood Tour Book Current for Those Hoping to Catch Sites of Celebs

“The most interesting things aren’t on the movie star maps or the established tours,” William Gordon was saying as he hiked along the canyon-hugging9 trail overlooking Lake Hollywood not far from the famous Hollywood sign.

As Gordon spoke, a torrent of concrete and bricks thundered down a plywood chute into two dumpsters at the bottom of a steep cliff, shattering the tranquillity of Castillo del Lago, the spectacular new digs of pop diva Madonna.

Gordon, a Laguna Hills free-lance writer and author, stared up at the white nine-story Spanish-style castle, which served as mobster Bugsy Siegel’s gambling casino in the ‘30s and which is now being renovated for its Material Girl owner, who purchased the 8,000-square-foot, nine-bedroom, six-bath manse last year for $5 million.

“I always thought it was a fascinating house,” he said with a grin. “I’m just so happy Madonna bought it.”

Gordon makes it his business to keep track of the latest real estate doings of Hollywood’s stars and celebrities.

It’s all fodder for “The Ultimate Hollywood Tour Book” (North Ridge Books; $15.95), which is billed as “the incomparable guide to movie stars’ homes, movie and TV locations, scandals, murders, suicides, and all the famous tourist sites.”

If you’re hooked on the American Movie Channel or can’t miss an episode of “Entertainment Tonight,” you’ll love Gordon’s book.

Want to see the former homes of Agnes Moorehead, George and Ira Gershwin, Jack Benny, Lucille Ball, Rick Schroder, and the current homes of Jimmy Stewart and Peter Falk? Simply cruise down Roxbury Drive in Beverly Hills.

Interested in the dark side of Hollywood? Check out the house at 12305 5th Helena Drive in Brentwood, where Marilyn Monroe died of an alleged drug overdose. (Notes Gordon: “She lived in the house alone with her dog Maf (short for Mafia), which she received as a present from Frank Sinatra.”)

Have a fascination for the obscure? How about the Brentwood house where Richard Nixon lived after losing the 1960 presidential election, or the Hancock Park apartment that served as a hideaway for John Kennedy during the 1960 Democratic National Convention. Gordon even lists Sunset Strip Tattoo, the tattoo parlor on Sunset Boulevard favored by Cher, Kiefer Sutherland, Julia Roberts and Charlie Sheen.

And if you want to visit the high school where “Beverly Hills 90210” is filmed, don’t go to Beverly Hills. The exteriors are filmed at Torrance High School. And the Walsh family home in the show? It’s actually in Altadena, a good 30-minute drive from Beverly Hills.

The 272-page book, which spans the Greater Los Angeles area, features 33 easy-to-follow street maps and 47 photographs (including aerial shots of those hard-to-see-from-the-street homes such as the Pacific Palisades compound of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver).

Gordon is enjoying a modest success with his self-published book, having sold 5,500 copies in six months. Not bad for a tour book that came out last September-- after the summer tourist season.

“There are certain stores it just flies out of,” he said, noting that the manager of the B Dalton Bookseller in Farmer’s Market “was telling me some of the tour guides buy it and tell the people on the tour buses about it.”

Gordon, 42, has an affinity for tourists.

When he moved out to Los Angeles from Akron, Ohio, in 1988, he did what every visitor from the Midwest yearns to do: He got in his car and began driving around in search of the city’s famous and architecturally unique homes.

“It’s just fun going out in the Hollywood Hills and getting lost,” said Gordon, who considers himself neither star-struck nor a movie buff. “I really wasn’t all that into celebrities as much as the houses.”

Gordon originally considered offering customized driving tours such as an “L.A. Law” tour or a “Star Trek” tour that would focus on the location sites from each show and the stars’ homes. But, he said, “I got frustrated with the insurance situation. It was going to be too expensive, so I thought I’d just do the book.”

The author of two previous books--one a compilation of quotations about the craft of writing and the business of publishing, and the other on the Kent State killings--claims his Hollywood book is more up to date and accurate than the maps to the stars homes hawked on street corners and is more contemporary and geographically comprehensive than a competing Hollywood tour book.

Gordon said it took him six months to do the research for his book, although “I had been sightseeing for years so I knew a lot of this stuff.”

In addition to talking to several dozen film location scouts and other knowledgeable sources, he spent countless hours at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences library where he scoured celebrity biographies and magazine and newspaper clippings dealing with the stars’ homes and other Hollywood attractions.

“All the houses are public record, so they were easy to find,” he said, adding, however, that “there were a lot of houses I didn’t publish if they had children or it didn’t look secure.”

Gordon, who moved to Laguna Hills in January, continues to drive to Los Angeles once a week to keep his research files up to date.

In fact, he had driven up to Hollywood on this particular morning to pick up a list of current film locations at the film permit office--and to lead an impromptu celebrity home tour.

The tour began in the Hollywood Hills, with a cruise by actor Ned Beatty’s home and the intersection of Beachwood and Belden Drives where scenes from the original “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” were filmed.

“Hollywood Hills streets are too narrow for tour buses,” Gordon observed, as actor Nicolas Cage’s 5,367-square-foot “castle” on Tryon Road loomed into view on a nearby ridge.

Swinging over to Mulholland Drive, Gordon pointed out the gated driveway leading to the homes of Jack Nicholson and next-door neighbor Marlon Brando and, farther on, the entrance to the home of Warren Beatty and Annette Bening.

Then it was down Benedict Canyon Drive, past “the house Roseanne and Tom (Arnold) supposedly trashed” and the “ ‘Superman’ Death House” where actor George Reeves was found dead in 1959 with a .30-caliber Luger by his side.

After a side trip to 10050 Cielo Drive (site of the Manson cult murders), it was back onto Benedict Canyon Drive and down into Beverly Hills where Gordon pointed out Jayne Mansfield’s “pink palace,” an 18-room Sunset Boulevard mansion originally built by Rudy Vallee and now owned by Englebert Humperdinck.

With the summer tourist season fast approaching, Gordon said the upcoming fourth printing of his book will include both major and minor revisions.

“One reason I published it myself is to keep control of it,” he said. “I intend to constantly update it and keep it in print indefinitely so the book won’t be outdated, which is an inherent problem with most of the tour guides.”

Revisions will include the upcoming move of the Screen Actors Guild from its Hollywood Boulevard location to the Miracle Mile, MGM’s move from Culver City to Santa Monica and new film location sites, including Venice Pier, where part of the hit Michael Douglas film “Falling Down” was shot.

Gordon is also thinking of mentioning the tabloid headline-making fight between “Beverly Hills 90210” star Shannen Doherty and an aspiring actress at the Roxbury, which is listed as the hot Sunset Boulevard nightclub favored by “young Hollywood.”

“There’s some silly stuff in the book, but so often people are interested in silly things,” he said, noting, for example, that right around the corner from the motion picture academy library “is where Zsa Zsa Gabor slapped the cop.”

One of the hottest tourist attractions in the book is the Lakeview Terrace site of the police beating of Rodney King. Which is not far, Gordon noted, from the Corral, the biker bar location for a scene in “Terminator II.” You’re on your own if you want to locate the bar, however. “One of the location scouts asked me not to put it in the book because it isn’t a safe neighborhood,” said Gordon.

Given the miles he’s logged driving around L.A.’s star-studded neighborhoods, it seems inevitable that Gordon would have had several close encounters with celebrities.

He said he’s seen Madonna jogging, Valerie Harper walking her dog, and Tori Spelling driving out of the driveway of daddy Aaron Spelling’s awesome 56,000 square-foot chateau in Holmby Hills.

But as Gordon said as the car approached comedian Buddy Hackett’s Beverly Hills home--not far from the Spanish-style house where Bugsy Siegel was murdered: “I never bother people.”

And he recommends curious fans do the same:It could be dangerous, he said. “I think some of these stars are a little paranoid. There is a real possibility of a tourist getting shot. I think there is a fine line you have to walk.”

Besides, he said, “you usually won’t see them at their house. If you want to see a star, go to a restaurant.”

After stopping at Marilyn Monroe’s crypt in a tiny, hard-to-find cemetery in Westwood (1218 Glendon Ave.) and heading toward the seedy Hollywood hotel where Julia Roberts’ hooker character lived in “Pretty Woman” (1738 N. Las Palmas Ave.), Gordon said he has yet to grow bored seeing the sites of Hollywood--even after the umpteenth time.

“It’s so glamorized,” he said. “You see all these people bigger than life on the screen. A lot of the natives get jaded; they grew up with it. But for somebody like me coming from Ohio, it’s a big deal to see it all.”

Gordon will narrate an “Ultimate Hollywood Tour Book” slide show at 7 p.m. today at the San Clemente Library, and at 1 p.m. March 31 at the Crown Valley branch of the Orange County Public Library.