TV series that filmed episodes at Rancho Cucamonga’s Virginia Dare Winery was a recent topic here, with the 1960s series “Combat!”, “Rat Patrol” and “The Invaders” cited.
At least one series from the 1970s used the winery: “The Magician,” in which Bill Bixby played a stage magician who used his skills to bring criminals to justice. No, he didn’t saw them in half. Although that would have been kind of cool.
Reader Randy Lopez wrote on the You Know You’re From Rancho Cucamonga If group on Facebook that he’d witnessed the filming as a kid and got Bixby’s autograph. Before I could contact him for more details, I ran into him and his wife outside a Starbucks in Pomona and quizzed him on the spot. (It was a Sunday morning, but the news never rests.)
“We were driving home from school at Sacred Heart and saw the filming,” Lopez recalled. So his father pulled over.
READ MORE: Remembering when ‘Combat!’ came to Cucamonga
“They were filming a chase through the ruins of the winery, with cars spinning around out front,” Lopez said. “Bill Bixby was sitting there in a director’s chair. I didn’t know if I should approach him, but I thought, ‘why not,’ and got his autograph.”
Lopez had been a fan of Bixby’s previous series, “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father” and “My Favorite Martian,” which made the star seem approachable. If this had been Bixby’s next series, “The Incredible Hulk,” making him angry might have been more of a concern.
The “Magician” episode, “Lady in a Trap,” aired Nov. 27, 1973 on NBC, according to Tannen’s Magic Blog. Ah, the wonders of the internet. The summary: A priceless manuscript is stolen because it includes directions to the location of loot buried at an abandoned winery. Bixby’s Tony Blake heads to the winery but finds the bad guys there to meet him.
Lopez found a clip online with some of the winery sequence, in which Bixby and other characters run through the property. The buildings are largely concrete shells with overgrown vegetation.
Bixby’s autograph disappeared at some point, Lopez said — but not in a puff of smoke.
Speaking of the 1970s, a couple of readers said “Mannix” filmed at least one episode at the distinctive winery, which was abandoned from 1961 to 1985 and had deteriorated enough to make a picturesque location. But so far no “Mannix” details have surfaced. (Meanwhile, “The Bionic Woman” and “Columbo” filmed not at Virginia Dare but at Brookside Winery in Guasti.)
On Foothill Boulevard at Haven Avenue, Virginia Dare Winery was considered perhaps the most architecturally significant series of buildings in the city. That was partly due to its age, the early 1900s, and its design by Arthur Benton, architect of Riverside’s Mission Inn.
At least three L.A. architecture books included the winery in its decrepit state, each with a different photo of the exposed concrete walls, arches and tower.
I’ve mentioned Reyner Banham’s 1971 “Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies.” Monday night, rearranging a bookcase, I flipped through some volumes and found two more references: the 1977 edition of “An Architectural Guidebook to Los Angeles,” by David Gebhard and Robert Winter, and 1984’s “The City Observed: Los Angeles,” by Charles Moore.
Moore called the property “one of the most impressive ruins in the region” — making it sound like something out of the Peloponnesian War — with crumbling walls, rusted trusses and roofs that had long ago caved in, giving an effect that was “already remote and romantic.”
“…the deserted winery resembles the deteriorating carcass of some huge beast,” Moore wrote. “It might be unremarkable in an older landscape, but in Southern California, where hardly any buildings are going to make good ruins before they vanish, it merits at least a moment of silence.”
Upland reader Murry Smilkstein invited me over to show off a watercolor by George Schilens of the property. The late Schilens, a former Upland Junior High physical education teacher, captured the winery in its weedy, overgrown state. The painting hangs in Smilkstein’s living room.
Reader Barry Cisneros told me he remembers watching “Combat!” and the other shows.
“We used to sneak into the ruins of the winery at night around 1970. It was pretty damn spooky. Someone had painted a wall with the silhouettes of big men and when your flashlight hit that it made you jump,” Cisneros said. He added: “One night some other folks were there and we managed to scare the crap out of ourselves.”
Lynn Merrill said a year or so after the “Combat!” episode, he explored the winery with his mother and an aunt. “I remember it was a big complex with lots of large buildings that were later removed. The main tower building burned in 1962 or 1963. Even in 1966,” Merrill said, “it still smelled of pungent grapes.”
After some two decades of disuse, the property’s rebirth as a business center was approved by City Hall in 1983 and completed in 1986, according to city spokeswoman Jennifer Camacho-Curtis.
The only original structures are the corner building with the tower and a storage building in the rear. Merrill said he recalled that smaller building at one time holding a display of the site’s history.
“I opened a Norwest Financial Office there when the center was new,” wrote Barbara Anhaeuser. “Long before Victoria Gardens and Ontario Mills, this was the most sought-after office space!”
Imagine if it had still had the smell of pungent grapes.
Valley Vignette
Basketball fans got to see Kobe Bryant in Ontario almost annually during Lakers preseason games at Citizens Business Bank Arena, starting in 2008 for the new arena’s inaugural event. Bryant was on the injured list but came off the bench to help the Lakers win. “He told me himself that he wanted to ‘break in’ the arena and would not have missed the preseason game,” Mayor Paul Leon wrote on Facebook this week regarding that 2008 game. “He said he wanted everyone to know that he played the opening of the arena and to never forget it.”
David Allen writes Wednesday, Friday and Sunday, forgettably. Email dallen@scng.com, phone 909-483-9339, visit insidesocal.com/davidallen, like davidallencolumnist on Facebook and follow @davidallen909 on Twitter.
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