Truly Trivial Details From Tinseltown

Ever wonder where the exterior of Jerry’s apartment in “Seinfeld” is filmed? Or the apartment in “Melrose Place”? And who bought the crypt next to Marilyn Monroe’s?

William Gordon has the answers.

They’re included in the new edition of “The Ultimate Hollywood Tour Book” (North Ridge Books), Gordon’s updated 272-page guide to “movie stars’ homes, movie and TV locations, scandals, murders, suicides and all the famous tourist sites” of the film capital.

There’s more to the update than the new cover and page layouts. For the segment on the former Lana Turner home at 730 N. Bedford Drive in Beverly Hills--where Turner’s gangster boyfriend, Johnny Stompanato, was stabbed to death in 1958--Gibson has added new information obtained from a recent Turner biography, written by a hairdresser who claims the actress confessed to him that she killed Stompanato.

“I’m a little skeptical, but I thought it was noteworthy that he would make such a claim,” Gordon says. “It’s long been suspected that the daughter was taking the blame for Lana Turner. The daughter said she stabbed Stompanato. But she was 14 and he was a 175-pound ex-Marine, and people were always wondering, ‘Could she have killed this guy?’ ”

Gordon, 46, says he goes to Hollywood about twice a month to do research. He finds new movie location sites by reviewing the city’s film permit records and scouring movie press kits on file at the Motion Picture Academy library. And he’s always on the lookout for other celebrity sites, such as:

* Jerry Seinfeld’s “New York” apartment, actually in Los Angeles at 757 New Hampshire Ave. Says Gordon: “It’s in a crummy part of town, near MacArthur Park.”

* The “Melrose Place” apartment is in Los Feliz at 4616 Greenwood Place: “Raymond Chandler lived in that apartment, I discovered, back in the 1930s. It’s a dump, I’ve got to tell you. It’s one of the most disappointing things to see.”

* Then there’s Westwood Village Memorial Park and Mortuary, where the crypts adjacent to Marilyn Monroe’s recently were selling for a cool $20,000 to $25,000. Hugh Hefner purchased one--which is only fitting: Monroe adorned the first issue of Playboy magazine.

“There are a lot of people who want to be buried next to Marilyn Monroe,” Gordon says. “It’s kind of silly. But to him, it was kind of sentimental, I guess.”