Forget the Westside--Try Star-Gazing in Toluca Hills : Celebrities: Oakwood Apartment units are so popular with the entertainment industry that company officials offer performers special deals.
Unlike tourists who flock to the boulevard of footprints, Angelenos know that celebrities don’t really live or hang out in Hollywood. Better places to spot famous faces include Santa Monica’s Montana Avenue, the Century City or Beverly Center malls, Jerry’s Deli in Studio City or maybe even Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.
But a good bet to catch a gaggle of celebs is a small enclave in Los Angeles known as the Toluca Hills Oakwood Apartments on Barham Boulevard.
Even a very selective list of residents can be pretty comprehensive. Among those who have called it home: Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson, Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, Dean Stockwell, Lou Gossett Jr., Mary Wells, Kim Novak, Queen Latifah and Neil Patrick Harris, as well as cast and crew members of “Forrest Gump,” the “Batman” movies, “Under Siege 2,” “Regarding Henry,” both “Sister Act” movies, the “Star Trek” movies, the “Beverly Hills Cop” movies, “Sleeping With the Enemy,” “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” “Puppet Master” and Paramount’s upcoming “Congo.” Theater groups that have resided there include the cast and crew of “Phantom of the Opera,” “The Secret Garden,” “Les Miserables,” “Grand Hotel,” “Tommy,” “Jesus Christ Superstar,” “Crazy for You” and “Annie.”
The apartments are so popular with the entertainment industry, that Oakwood--a corporate-housing company with units in 400 cities--offers performers special deals, courtesy of its entertainment sales representative, Joni Rodenbusch.
About 10 years ago, Oakwood managers realized the now 28-year-old Toluca Hills location was getting fewer corporate clients, but more from the movie, television and music industries. “We’re centrally located to all the majors,” Rodenbusch explains. “We’re right near Universal, Disney, Warner Bros., NBC and we’re eight minutes from Paramount.”
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In 1991, Oakwood--now nearly 80% show-biz folk--”started focusing completely on entertainment,” Rodenbusch says from her office, with its celebrity-photo-covered walls. (She’s one of the non-industry residents.)
“Through pretty much word-of-mouth, it became a popular place to live,” Rodenbusch says. People, she says, are drawn to Oakwood’s two pools, two Jacuzzis, tennis courts, basketball court, two fitness centers, dry cleaner, hair salon, convenience store, conference room, clubhouse, Hertz car rental office, Sunday brunch and what may be the biggest draw, a rehearsal hall.
“It became apparent we needed to do something to capture more of that specialized market,” Rodenbusch says. “We began offering a special entertainment rate.”
Once she is contacted by production managers, line producers, production coordinators, tour managers and theater-company managers, Rodenbusch sets up clients in housing for anywhere from a day to three months or more. Rates, she points out, are “like airline tickets, we have so many different discounts and specials, it can be different each day.” (The few long-term, full-time apartments are in the $650 to $950 range.)
“Basically, you’re looking at actors and actresses who are working on a project or musicians working on an album who don’t want the expense of a hotel and the lack of security, where anyone can walk into a hotel lobby,” she says. Oakwood boasts a guard in a kiosk at its entrance.
So when someone who’s a long-term resident says, “Wow, that looked like Alice Cooper,” Rodenbusch can respond, “That was Alice Cooper.”
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Oakwood has few problems with celebrities, despite reputed problems elsewhere.
“It’s a misnomer to say they create problems and are very eccentric and do weird things,” she says firmly. “Aerosmith were the nicest people in the entire world.”
“Guns N’ Roses stayed here,” she recalls, “and there were never any problems. The home-like atmosphere makes them treat it like home. Axl and Slash would sit in the Jacuzzi and just chat with their neighbors.”
But “a few funny things” have happened when housing heavy-metalers, Rodenbusch says. A member of another band--she won’t say who--left his pet alligator to lounge in the bathtub, terrifying a housekeeper. Still yet another band member’s pet snake decided to take a trip from its second-story bathroom home, through the toilet, only to end up coming out of the first-floor tenant’s toilet. Needless to say, those residents now look before they sit.
While A-list stars may stay in pricier quarters when working on projects, much of the cast and crew end up in one of the complex’s 1,151 apartments. While at work on Janet Jackson’s most recent album, her associates took up 63 apartments.
The bulk of Oakwood’s clients, however, are child actors who flock to Los Angeles during pilot season, from January through April. “We have about 300 kids and their families during that time,” Rodenbusch says. Rodenbusch can provide “a lot of information on the industry. I can get them agents’ names, acting schools, dance schools, beeper companies, cellular phones, car rentals, tell them how to get child work permits and tutors.
“With child actors, there can be animosity between families,” she says, pointing out a time when two families taunted each other so fervently during a performance a fight had to be stopped. “Child actors have to change from being kids to small working adults,” she says with a sigh. “That animosity and competitiveness is only among the parents, not the kids.”
