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Tuesday, April 24, 2012

L.A. Plays New York: "Mad Men," Week Five (The Howard Johnson's Episode)

Mad Men

As you know, we like to play "Spot the Los Angeles Location" while watching "Mad Men," as the show always finds crafty ways to turn L.A. locations into New York (or Rome, or anywhere else). On Sunday's episode, Don Draper (Jon Hamm) and Megan Draper (Jessica Paré) check out the Howard Johnson's restaurant in Plattsburgh, NY, and while Don loves the chain's food -- and orange sherbet -- Megan comes away less than impressed. But where were the scenes shot? After asking on Twitter, I got my answers.

The interiors for the scenes (and those aqua blue cushioned booths!) were shot at Rod's Diner in Arcadia. Read more about Rod's here. (Thanks to Keven Chavez for telling us.)

Also, the exteriors were adapted from an old Howard Johnson's on Dalewood Dr. in Baldwin Park, according to Raul Borja. Read more about it here.

Can't get enough of "Mad Men" locations? Curbed LA compiled a list of 20 L.A. locations from the show here -- and I'm proud to note that Franklin Avenue is used to cite several of them.

(Screengrab via Eater, which offers up an interesting primer on the history of Howard Johnson's restaurants.)

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I wondered where the exterior HoJo scenes were shot. I took some night shots at Rods when they were filming. never saw Don tho... but I saw the trooper. The shots are at:
http://snipurl.com/237i39g

Rods was also used in several episodes of Luck too...

Bill in S.G. (and eat at Rods)

Mod Betty / RetroRoadmap.com said...

Thank you So Much for this info! I had been completely obsessed with trying to figure out where this was filmed, as I consider myself fairly knowledgeable about Howard Johnson's.

Now that I know Rod's was the location, I'll have to make sure we make a visit there on our Retro Roadmap trip to Los Angeles in just a few weeks. Yay!

Glennis said...

Was curious about this, too. I was wondering if the interior was filmed at the King's Highway in Palm Springs - how nice you have featured that up above so I can compare it with Rod's!

nlpnt said...

Late to this but I'd like to point out that the actual Plattsburgh HoJo's (the hotel's now a Best Western Plus and the restaurant a Ninety-Nine) still looks very much like a '60s HoJo's apart from the signage and non-orange roof.

https://www.google.com/maps/@44.6972746,-73.493326,3a,37.5y,54.81h,91.53t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sxQVHIepWFp7mje1x_Et6UQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656