Fraud Tours of Star's Homes

Hollywood has several bus tours that advertise they take you to the homes of the stars, but is it true or is it fantasy and fraud? I know the answer because I investigated those tours of the star's homes for Fox 11 News in 1987.

Here is how we structured the investigation to get to the truth about the bus tours of the stars homes. I took one of the tours undercover with a producer and a hidden camera. We recorded the storylines of the driver/tour guide about each of the homes where he stopped. The guide would say the home belonged to a well known movie or TV star and some times you can see him or his family members in the yard or getting into their cars. These homes were in Beverly Hills and on some of the major streets. Sometimes the guide would say that behind that large stonewall is the home of some famous movie star but you could not see anything. He would say watch the gate entrance because last week we saw the star drive out. Many of the addresses were said to be the homes of movie stars who have been dead for years and the homes now belonged to other people.

My producer Frank Elmquist and I then checked with real estate companies to see who really did live at the addressed. Sometimes we found that it was an old address of a star who had not lived there for years. But the strangest thing we found was that the home of the stars depended on the driver/tour guide. We made several trips with different guides and recorded all of them on videotape. The driver/guides went to the same home addresses but different guides said different stars lived at the homes. In one-day different guides said on our videotape that three different stars lived at the same home address. The guides seem to tailor the movie and TV stars to the group of people on the tour bus. If it was an older group the homes would be the former residents of the famous stars of the past. If it was a younger group of tourists the same addresses would be the homes of younger rock stars. Remember these are the same homes on the same streets in Beverly Hills. I asked one of the driver/guides about this and he said. "hay, different drivers have different stories. Maybe some of us get the addresses confused at times."

In our Fox TV investigative consumer report we had video of the same homes at the same addresses as different guides told the tourist that different stars lived there, on the same day. Plus all the homes were conveniently located near each other on a route in Beverly Hills. I guess when the stars bought their homes they wanted it to be easy for the tour buses to find them. It was a total fraud!

This month a major LA daily newspaper had a feature article on the tour buses that take visitors to see the homes of the stars. The reporter took one of the trips. He outlined some of the tour guide's comments about famous star sites in Hollywood. He said the guide pointed out on Sunset Blvd. the famous Hollywood High School where many stars went to school. He said Michael Jackson was a student there when he was a teenager. Now this would come as a surprise to Michael Jackson's family who lived in the San Fernando Valley off Ventura Blvd. Michael went to Birmingham High School, a long way from Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood. The reporter said in his story that he was surprised that all the stars lived on the major streets in Beverly Hills, it was like they all wanted to live in a row. Or perhaps these are the easiest streets the buses can get in an out of and stay out of trouble with the Beverly Hills Cops. Beverly Hills has bus size ordinances for tour buses. Apparently things have not changed in the tours of the stars locations. Since the newspaper reporter didn't know the difference and only took the tour with one guide he does not know if the addresses of the stars would change depending on the tour guide and the make-up of the tourist group.

The tour of the stars homes is what ever your tour guide wants it to be and fits into his schedule. He must meet a time schedule to pick up the next group of tourists. If he is running out of time for his scheduled tour because of heavy traffic and has promised to show his group Barbara Straisand's home he has a high stone wall that he can quickly drive by and say Barbara lives behind the wall in total seclusion.

As one driver/guide said, what's the big deal, these are people who will never come back here again and they want to see the home of their favorite star, so I show them a home. . It's all Hollywood fantasy, or consumer fraud.

Filed October 2002.