How’s this for a grisly coincidence: “There Will Be Blood’s” ending scenes, which show an old Daniel Day-Lewis as a rich oil baron and include the film’s violent climax, were shot at Greystone Mansion, the famed Beverly Hills building that was built by oil tycoon Edward Doheny in the 1920s for his son, who died in a murder-suicide.
The 55-room mansion has been used in many films, including the “Ghostbusters” movies and “Batman & Robin,” and as the site for Hollywood weddings. While the “Blood” filmmakers transformed one room into a beautiful study, their biggest coup was discovering, and then refurbishing, the mansion’s lost and dilapidated bowling alley.
“It was just an empty shell of a room,” producer JoAnne Sellar said. “The structure was there, but it had deteriorated over the years. There wasn’t anything of the bowling alley left.”
With some elbow grease, the production refurbished it to what it would have looked like back in the mansion’s heyday.
“It’s still there now,” she said. “We left it up for people to see.”
