Melrose Place

The show is set in a small fictional apartment courtyard complex located at 4616 Melrose Place in West Hollywood, California.

Melrose Place's premiere season featured eight main characters: Dr. Michael Mancini (Thomas Calabro), a physician who works at Wilshire Memorial Hospital and changes from a kind, devoted husband in season 1 to a mean, adulterous villain from season 2 on; Jane Mancini (Josie Bissett), his budding fashion designer wife; Billy Campbell (Andrew Shue), a struggling writer adapting to life out of his parents' control; Alison Parker (Courtney Thorne-Smith),[3] a receptionist at D&D Advertising; Jake Hanson (Grant Show), a struggling manual laborer and motorcycle enthusiast; Matt Fielding (Doug Savant), a gay social worker; Rhonda Blair (Vanessa A. Williams), an aerobics instructor; and Sandy Harling (Amy Locane), a Southern belle and struggling actress who moonlights as a waitress at a local bar called Shooters, the group's main hangout. Locane was written off after 13 episodes and replaced by Daphne Zuniga as Jo Reynolds, a photographer running away from her abusive husband. Williams was not brought back for the second season, her character having become engaged to a wealthy restaurant entrepreneur.

Actress Heather Locklear, who in season one had guest starred as Alison's ambitious and merciless boss Amanda Woodward, was promoted to series regular status in the second season after her character bought and moved into the Melrose Place apartment building. Although she was always billed as a "special guest star", Locklear remained with the show for the rest of its run.[4][5] Guest Laura Leighton, recurring as Jane's trouble-making younger sister Sydney Andrews in the first two seasons, was upgraded to series regular for season three. Marcia Cross, recurring as Dr. Kimberly Shaw in season 1 and early season 2, became a series regular by the end of the second season (though she was not credited in the opening until the start of season four). Janet Carroll appeared in several episodes as Marion Shaw, Kimberly's domineering mother. Beata Pozniak was featured in the second season in 7 episodes as Dr. Katya Petrova Fielding, a doctor with a daughter from a previous marriage who befriends and ultimately marries Matt (for a green card), who becomes an endearing father figure for her child.

Season four saw two new regular characters: Peter Burns (Jack Wagner), the ruthless hospital Chief of Staff introduced in season three; and Brooke Armstrong (Kristin Davis), a young, conniving intern at D&D Advertising also recurring the previous season. Davis's character was subsequently killed off in the middle of the fourth season, while Zuniga left the series at the end of the season. Patrick Muldoon also arrived in the third season as the villainous Richard Hart. Although Muldoon was not billed with the main cast (though he appeared in numerous promotional photos with them), he appeared in most of the fourth season's episodes and is also Melrose Place's longest recurring character (i.e. not in the opening credits) in terms of number of episodes.

The fifth season saw the addition of Rob Estes as restaurateur Kyle McBride, Lisa Rinna as his opportunistic wife Taylor, and Brooke Langton as Samantha Reilly, an artist and a new tenant in the apartment complex. Bissett and Cross left the series towards the end of the fifth season; Kelly Rutherford was brought in as Megan Lewis, a prostitute hired by Kimberly Shaw to have an affair with Michael Mancini, and David Charvet played Craig Field, Amanda's new co-worker and later Sydney's boyfriend. The season finale featured the exits of series regulars Thorne-Smith, Show, and Leighton.

The season premiere of season six featured the departure of original cast member Doug Savant while Alyssa Milano (recurring as Michael's sister Jennifer Mancini since season five) was bumped to series regular, with Linden Ashby joining the cast as Dr. Brett Cooper and Jamie Luner as his seductive and rich ex-wife, Lexi Sterling.

Charvet was written out in the middle of season 6, and the beginning of season seven saw the departure of Shue, Langton, Rinna, Milano, and Ashby. The show's seventh season introduced John Haymes Newton as Ryan McBride, Kyle's younger brother, and Rena Sofer as Eve Cleary, a woman from Amanda's past who marries Peter. Sofer was not billed with the main cast. Bissett reprised her role as Jane for the seventh season.

Filming for the series took place at a studio in Santa Clarita, California.[6] Stages were located 30 miles outside of Los Angeles.[7] The scenes filmed outside reveal the original facade of the building at 4616 Greenwood Place in Los Angeles serving as the main backdrop for Melrose Place.[8] The D&D Advertising building is the same complex where the offices of Spelling Entertainment are located on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles.[9]

The production filmed episodes back-to-back, according to Rolling Stone in 1994.[10] A dozen directors were employed during each season to direct the thirty episodes. Charles Correll is by far the main director of the series with 47 episodes to his credit over the entire production period, far ahead of the 27 episodes directed by Chip Chalmers.

In 1997, the filming of the sixth season was brought forward by two weeks because of Heather Locklear's pregnancy, which was not included in the story. A body liner was used for around ten shots.[11] The actress also doubled her filming time and her screen time was reduced to finish filming in mid-September 1997.[12] Lisa Rinna (Taylor) was also pregnant during filming at the end of the sixth season. However, her pregnancy was integrated into the plot.[13] This was also the case for the pregnancy of Josie Bissett (Jane) during the seventh season. Estes and Bissett welcomed their first child, son Mason True, on July 21, 1999.[14]

Melrose Place debuted on July 8, 1992, at No. 19 on the Nielsen ratings with a 10.3/19 share and 16 million viewers. In December 1993, Meredith Berkman of Entertainment Weekly called the show "arguably the hottest one-hour drama on television."[18] Though ratings dropped slightly over the first season,[19] the addition of Heather Locklear as Amanda is credited for improving ratings and bringing the show from No. 94 to No. 50 in the second season.[18]

The series finale was watched by 10.38 million viewers.

The original series produced a spin-off series, Models Inc., which ran for one season in 1994–95. That series focused on a Los Angeles modeling agency run by Hillary Michaels (played by Linda Gray), the mother of Melrose's Amanda Woodward; the show was cancelled after a single season due to low ratings.[32][33]

A continuation of the series, also called Melrose Place, premiered on September 8, 2009, on The CW Television Network.[34] The new series featured primarily a new cast, although five actors from the original series made appearances: Thomas Calabro, Laura Leighton, Josie Bissett, Daphne Zuniga and Heather Locklear. The revival series suffered from low ratings and negative reviews, and was cancelled in 2010 after one season.[35]

In 1996, actress Hunter Tylo was cast in Melrose Place and opted to leave daytime soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful to take the role. However, she was fired by Melrose Place producer Aaron Spelling prior to filming any episodes for the series, when she announced she was pregnant. The character she was to play, Taylor McBride, was recast, Lisa Rinna taking the role. Tylo quickly returned to The Bold and the Beautiful. Tylo sued Spelling on grounds of discrimination for being pregnant and won $4.8 million from a Los Angeles jury. Spelling argued that Tylo's pregnancy rendered her unable to play the character, who was supposed to be a sexy seductress. During the trial, Tylo published pictures of herself while pregnant which showed that she retained a slim figure. Prior to trial, during the discovery phase of the litigation, Tylo's lawyers won a partial victory in an interlocutory appeal challenging a lower court's order compelling her to answer a broad range of personal questions. The Court of Appeal established Tylo's right to refuse to answer questions in her deposition about marital problems and psychological treatment, although the Court sustained the portion of the order which compelled her to answer questions about her efforts to become pregnant, her husband's ability or inability to impregnate her, and communications with her agent with respect to her efforts and ability to become pregnant. The case is widely recognized as an important one in establishing the right of privacy in deposition and the right of female actors to continue to work while pregnant.[36][37]

On October 10, 2015, a television movie called The Unauthorized Melrose Place Story was released. It tells the behind-the-scenes making-of story of the show, finishing with the filming of the season three finale.[38]

CBS Home Entertainment (distributed by Paramount) have released all seasons of Melrose Place on DVD in Region 1.

The series has also been released on DVD in Region 2 and 4 by Paramount Home Entertainment.

Due to music licensing issues, most of the original music has been replaced on these DVD releases, and some episodes are edited from their original broadcast versions.

The soundtrack "Melrose Place" containing 11 tracks was released in 1994 on Giant records; in 1998 "Melrose Place Jazz" containing 16 tracks was released by Windham Hill Jazz.

The series is rated  M  in Australia and  M  in New Zealand for its sex scenes and offensive language.

A group of artists and Melrose Place producers formed the GALA Committee, headed by artist Mel Chin, to bring artworks out of galleries and into primetime television. GALA artists designed artworks that were used as props by Melrose Place characters in the fourth and fifth seasons, often with hidden political messages:

• When Alison is pregnant, her quilt is decorated with the molecular structure of RU-486.
• A bag of Chinese take-out food is emblazoned with two opposing ideograms translated from Chinese as "Human Rights" and "Turmoil"; both terms were used by the Chinese government to justify a restriction on student protesters of June 4, 1989.
• Bottles behind the counter at Shooters bar are decorated with ads and documents chronicling the history of alcohol.
• As Alison quits D&D Advertising, a framed ad in the background features a bombed-out building. The damage to the structure is in the shape of a liquor bottle, and the words "Total Proof" appear on the poster.

Chin compared the works to viruses, symbiotic and invisible. The project was called In the Name of the Place, as part of the "Uncommon Sense" art show at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, Los Angeles, California in 1997. A portion of the fifth season was filmed at the Geffen Contemporary where the project was displayed. The artwork was also shown at the 1997 Kwangju Biennale in Kwangju, Korea and at Grand Arts in Kansas City, Missouri in 1998. Sotheby's Auction house auctioned almost fifty of these artworks for charity.

• Media related to Melrose Place at Wikimedia Commons
• Melrose Place at IMDb 
• Melrose Place at epguides.com