United kingdom Daily news: Holidays in Los Angeles: Dodging scary tour guides and Jennifer Aniston on a trip to LA's real home of the stars

Holidays in Los Angeles: Dodging scary tour guides and Jennifer Aniston on a trip to LA's real home of the stars

By Frank Barrett, Mail on Sunday Travel Editor

PUBLISHED: 09:44 EST, 28 May 2012 | UPDATED: 12:35 EST, 28 May 2012

Madonna? You wanna see her house, mister - I'll take you right up by it.' A swarthy man of ferocious demeanour had suddenly fallen in step with me. Like a drug dealer, he talked urgently through the side of his mouth.

On the gritty Los Angeles-based police drama The Shield, even the toughest officers are terrified of the Armenian Mob. Was I being targeted by the Mob's 'Movie Homes Of The Stars' sub-team? I kept looking straight ahead, anxious not to make eye contact.

An exterior shot of the Beverly Hills Hotel with the swimming pool in the foreground

The place to be seen: The luxurious Beverly Hills Hotel in Los Angeles, where Frank bumped into Jackie Collins

'What? You don't like Madonna?' He let fly a curse and then turned on his heels. Welcome to Hollywood Boulevard. Instead of searching for Madonna's mansion, I was heading for the part of the Boulevard that includes the Dolby Theatre (formerly known as the Kodak Theatre, home of the Oscars ceremony) and the neighbouring Grauman's Chinese Theatre, where generations of stars have recorded hand and footprints in cement.

This area has become the starting point for dozens of competing bus tours, each promising its own special glimpse of celebrity.

During the Thirties and Forties, not only did most actors actually live in Hollywood, they generally owned what would now be considered fairly modest properties, with no high walls topped with razor wire and no sophisticated alarm systems. If you wanted to say hello to Jimmy Stewart, his front door was accessible to anybody with the nerve to ring the bell.

While many of today's celebrities have fled Hollywood, those who have stayed now live in the very expensive parts of Beverly Hills, Bel Air and Holmby Hills where the tour buses can never roam.

And these days the most expensive houses are owned not by the rich and famous but by 'the rich we've never heard of' - or 'the rich who have no connection whatsoever with movies'.

For example, the largest house in Los Angeles County - a mansion in Holmby Hills built by television producer Aaron Spelling - was recently bought by Bernie Ecclestone's 23-year-old daughter Petra for $85million (about Â£54 million).

Glamorous residents: Frank spotted Friends star Jennifer Aniston (left) at the Beverly Hills Hotel while Bernie Ecclestone's daughter (right) owns an $85million home in Los Angeles

If you are intent on visiting the homes of the famous still living in the Hollywood area, then Starline Tours is the best known tour company. Although it doesn't promise a view of Madonna's house, it does guarantee a glimpse of properties owned by Tom Cruise, David Beckham and Simon Cowell. Customers are also given a close-up of the Hollywood sign, a particularly pointless exercise.

Our driver/guide Michael introduced himself with the guarantee that we would have a 'B-A-double L' on his two-hour trip 'just as soon as we get going ...' We waited to get going - and waited. Eventually three giggling women from Australia came racing up. 'We're three sheilas from Sydney,' they announced. 'Really?' asked Michael. 'You're all called Sheila? How about that.' This was shaping up to be a long trip.

'Anybody done this tour before?' asked Michael a little later. An elderly man raised his hand. 'Then you can take over if anything happens to me,' chuckled the guide. 'As you can tell, I'm a student of fine comedy. It's going to be laughter all the way with me.

'Hey, your first star is coming up on the right - get your cameras ready.' Everybody dutifully got ready to press the shutter.

'Just passing is Charlie Sheen,' said Michael. There were gasps all round - 'Charlie Sheen' turned out to be one of the homeless people who gravitate to Hollywood Boulevard pushing their worldly goods in a battered supermarket trolley.

'Only joking,' said Michael. 'I have a GREAT sense of humour!' He then pointed out a bland block of flats: 'That's where Elton John and Cher live. Not together, obviously!' His sense of humour was the comedic equivalent of a small girl dragging her fingernails across a blackboard.

Walk of fame: Hollywood Boulevard has become the starting point for dozens of competing bus tours, each promising its own special glimpse of celebrity

Then, in an unlikely turn of events, just as we deviated from Sunset Boulevard, Michael hit the comedy bull's eye - and he had no idea how or why. 'Now as we make a turn here, I want you to look out to the right and just beyond that hedge, sticking up above the wall is Tom Cruise's flagpole - can you see it sticking up?'

The Aussie women at first began to giggle before dissolving into hysterics. Unsure how he had managed to unleash such mirth, Michael then scored another unexpected hit.

'Up on the right you can see the very top floor of the house belonging to David Beckh am - all you can really see is his big chimney.' Cue more hysterics. 'You like his chimney?' asked Michael, mystified by the guffaws coming from the back.

'We adore his chimney,' squeaked the Aussies, rocking with helpless laughter. 'It's so much bigger than Tom Cruise's flagpole.'

We continued through some low-grade scandal, including the spot on Sunset Boulevard where Lindsay Lohan hit the kerb while driving under the influence, and we paused at Will Rogers Park where singer George Michael was famously arrested for lewd behaviour. Later, on Palm Drive, we gazed at Simon Cowell's surprisingly modest mansion and reflected on the fact that $12 million doesn't actually buy you an awful lot in Beverly Hills.

As Britain is a country with a glorious past and a less certain future, it's probably not surprising that we spend a considerable amount of time looking back and remembering good times. Americans, to use an Americanism: not so much.

An exterior shot of Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles

Making their mark: Generations of stars have recorded hand and footprints in cement at Grauman's Chinese Theatre

This nostalgia failure has meant that many of Hollywood's famous old places have been destroyed.

In her song Big Yellow Taxi, Joni Mitchell is said to have been inspired to write the lines 'They paved paradise and put up a parking lot' when she heard that the famous Garden of Allah hotel - a one-time hang-out of Humphrey Bogart and Marlene Dietrich - had been razed to create a bank car park.

A similar fate befell neighbouring Schwab's Pharmacy, which is where actress Lana Turner - who was working there at the time - was 'discovered'. And the sumptuous property where Norma Desmond 'li ved' in the film Sunset Boulevard was bulldozed to make way for offices.

Still, it's not all bad news. If you want to enjoy glorious Hollywood there are two places you have to visit. Beg, steal or borrow the money to stay the night at either the Bel-Air or the Beverly Hills Hotel.

On our way into the Beverly Hills Hotel, we rubbed shoulders with author Jackie Collins as she was leaving (have a drink or a meal in the famous Polo Lounge and a starsighting is almost guaranteed). At the Bel-Air, as I waited for a valet to park my car, Jennifer Aniston breezed past like a goddess.

Here, today's stars walk gently because they tread on cherished dreams - it was at the Bel-Air, for example, that Marilyn Monroe had her final photoshoot three days before she was found dead.

If you want to get one of the most interesting glimpses of Hollywood's past - and it will cost you absolutely nothing - visit the area's extraordinary cemeteries. Whe n Evelyn Waugh came to Los Angeles in 1947 to talk to MGM studios about adapting his novel Brideshead Revisited for the screen, he found most of modern American life appalling.

However, the one aspect that fascinated him, as a true Catholic, was the American way of death. After a visit to Forest Lawn's Glendale cemetery, he wrote: 'I found a deep mine of literary gold.' He turned this rich seam into his novel The Loved One.

Forest Lawn is a cemetery theme park embellished with epic funerary kitsch: particularly worth seeing is the horrendous stained-glass version of Leonardo's Last Supper. Much more interesting even than Forest Lawn, however, is the Hollywood Forever cemetery situated, appropriately, on Sunset.

Fitting epitaph: The tombstone of cartoon voice artist Mel Blanc

Hollywood's oldest cemetery, it is still very much in use (George Harrison was cremated here). And it's a very popular filming location: Larry David came here for a funeral in an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm.

The cemetery's main claim to fame is that it is the final resting place of silent screen gods Rudolph Valentino and Douglas Fairbanks (the latter has a grandiose tomb complete with reflecting pool that would be more appropriate for a Third World dictator).

After my frightening encounter with that man on Hollywood Boulevard, I was curious to see the huge Armenian section in the cemetery, which contains what must be some of the world's biggest tombs.

Elsewhere on the site, there are some odd monuments: one is dedicated to punk guitarist Joey Ramone, and another to Hattie McDaniel, the first black actress to receive an Oscar, for her performance in Gone With The Wind (she'd wanted to be buried h ere but they wouldn't allow it as she was black). Nearby there is also a monument to the dog that played Toto in The Wizard Of Oz, whose actual grave was disturbed by the building of the Ventura Freeway.

The tombs of the famous are fascinating: I was so absorbed as I picked my way past Cecil B. DeMille on my way to find Jayne Mansfield that I missed the sign warning against disturbing the geese, for whom it was nest-guarding season.

As I walked to look at the extraordinarily over-the-top memorial chapel for Marion Davies, the mistress of newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst, I suddenly found a honking bird heading straight at me, its huge wings extended. I don't think I have ever run faster in my life.

When I finally stopped, I found myself at the modest gravestone of Mel Blanc, the voice of a thousand Looney Tunes cartoon characters including Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Porky Pig.

His epitaph? 'That's all, folks.' Only in H ollywood...

Getting there

Virgin Holidays (0844 557 3859, virginholidays.co.uk) offers three nights in Los Angeles from Â£799 per person, including scheduled flights with Virgin Atlantic from Heathrow, accommodation at The Grafton on Sunset Boulevard on a room-only basis and transfers. Prices are based on departures on September 24, 2012.

Room rates at the Hotel Bel-Air, which reopened last October after a two-year refurbishment programme, start at $515 (about Â£325). For more information, visit hotelbelair.com.

Room rates at the Beverly Hills Hotel, which is celebrating its centenary this year, start at $495 (about Â£315) For more information, visit beverlyhillshotel.com.

Starline Tours (starlinetours.com) runs a two-hour Movie Stars' Home Tour, which costs $39 (Â£25) for adults and $29 (Â£18) for children if booked online.