Perhaps the most popular dining spots for San Fernando Valley celebrity folk and other filmmakers was Sportsmen’s Lodge, located near the corner of Ventura Boulevard and Coldwater Canyon Avenue in Studio City. Unfortunately, the historic venue became another Covid-19 victim and has been developed as a retail shopping center. But its story is too good to be deposited on the trash heap of former San Fernando Valley landmarks.
The King of Spain, who claimed ownership of the entire region, deeded the land to the Catholic Church. After the Mexican Revolution, the land was deeded to Califorñio rancheros. At the end of the nineteenth century, it was sold to the entrepreneurial Isaac Lankershim and his associates. In 1909, the property that would become the Sportsmen’s Lodge was purchased by powerful Los Angeles Times publisher Harry Chandler.
In 1913, it opened as the Hollywood Trout Farm with fishing ponds and a bait-and-tackle shop. The property made its way into the hands of then-famous actors and brothers, Noah and Wallace Beery, who ran the trout farm for several years. The Beerys stocked those ponds with fish.
As parts of what was then called the Ventura Highway were paved, orchards and farms grew along the roadway. Small shops, cafes, and other services soon sprouted at the corner of Coldwater Canyon and Ventura Boulevard. These small businesses grew beside a series of small lakes and ponds created in the 1880s near the edge of the Los Angeles River.
The Beery brothers sold the property to a man who built a 30-seat restaurant in the early 1940s. Dave Harlig bought the venue at the end of World War II, added the first dining room and kitchen, and reopened it as the Sportsmen’s Lodge on December. 31, 1946.
The dining room became a movie studio hangout for those working in front of and behind the cameras from nearby Republic Studios (later named CBS Studio Center), the RKO Encino Ranch, and Universal Studios. Surrounded by orange groves, the Ventura Boulevard restaurant quickly became a local hot spot, a place where patrons could hook their dinner and have it fried fresh in the kitchen.
The 190-room hotel opened in 1962. Harlig sold the food facilities while keeping the land in 1975, and it changed hands again in 1990. The new owner remodeled it in a mountain lodge motif with two restaurants and eight banquet halls.
One long-time Lodge waiter recalled that after watching The Ten Commandments he realized its star, Charlton Heston, was the customer he had recently seen perched on a bar stool sipping a bowl of soup. The former waiter recalled showing Sylvester Stallone how to make strong Cuban coffee and watching Tom Selleck eat barbecued buffalo burgers.
Many other celebrities have been seen eating or drinking in the Caribou Restaurant and the Muddy Moose Bar & Lounge. Just a few of its habitues were Lauren Becall, Humphrey Bogart, Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, John Wayne, Bette Davis, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Marlon Brando, Doris Day, Gabby Hayes, Tallulah Bankhead, Lena Horne, Joan Blondell, and Billy Bob Thornton. It’s where Ronald Reagan and his bride Nancy held their wedding reception.
Clark Gable and Carol Lombard, whose small ranch, today’s Clark Gable Estates in Encino, were frequent diners.
Considering how many film studios were, and remain, in close proximity to the hotel, it’s no wonder it also became a popular filming location for movies and, especially, television. In the fast-paced world of TV where productions often shoot a number of pages in a day, and those scripts might include multiple locations, Sportsmen’s Lodge offered a wide variety of backdrops. Guest rooms, a pool, bars, restaurants, and ballrooms made it convenient for a show to stay in one place and capture a number of exterior and interior scenes.
Among the films shot at Sportsman’s Lodge were: Everything’s Ducky (1961), Made (2001), Crossroads (2002), I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry (2007), Bad Words (2013), and A Futile and Stupid Gesture (2018). Innumerable scenes within other films have been shot at the Lodge.
Numerous television programs used Sportsmen’s Lodge as a locale convenient to the studios, their personnel, and equipment, just a few of which have been: The Fugitive (1964); Columbo (1973); Falcon Crest (1981); Melrose Place (1996); Desperate Housewives (2006); The Office (2009); Parks and Recreation, (2010); CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, (2012); Grace and Frankie (2016); and Modern Family (2017).
The contemporary story of the Lodge is all about unsuccessful attempts to have it designated a historic landmark and varying approaches to developing the property. The Shops at Sportsmen’s Lodge is operating, while a new hotel is being developed to replace the one built more than 60 years ago.
The San Fernando Valley continues its evolution through build, use, tear down, rebuild.
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Martin Cooper, President of Cooper Communications, supervised public relations for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences for ten years; held executive positions with Disney and Universal Studios; and was Board Chairman of the UCLA Film & Television Archive. He is a Fernando Award Honoree and Past Chairman of VICA. An award-winning author, he has written four books, two of them on the San Fernando Valley. He is currently researching his next book, The ‘Reel’ Hollywood: The San Fernando Valley, the history of motion pictures in the Valley.
