Archive for 2012-11-11
Rumor has it...
No, babies, Your Mama's gin soaked fingers did not make a mistake, that really is forty-five million clams.
The torus-shaped house (above), with its dramatically undulating copper sheathed roof, was custom designed in the mid-1970s for Mister and Missus Hope by maverick California architect John Lautner. Missus Hope herself described the unusual residence in a 1999 article about Palm Springs in Vanity Fair magazine as a "contemporary castle." Less flattering comparisons have been made—a doughnut on acid, a flying saucer, the TWA terminal at Kennedy Airport in New York—but, whatever. Let's the naysayers nay say all they like. As far as Your Mama is concerned it's a magnificent and idiosyncratic piece of architecture. We love it and we'd pee our pants over an opportunity to get inside for a look around.
But, children, is it worth $45,000,000? Hmm. Maybe. Maybe no. Ask Suzanne Somers, a long-time Palm Springs resident who, back in 2008 amid much brouhaha and ballyhoo, attempted to sell her very different but no less quirky 73-acre mountainside compound in Palm Springs for $35,000,000 before the asking price was slashed to just under thirteen million, a radical reduction that still didn't bring in a moneybags buyer.*
Various reports put the Hope house—near the tippy-top top Southridge, a swank, guard-gated enclave of mostly contemporary residences—at around 22 or 25 and even 29,000 square feet however the Riverside County Tax Man shows the avant garde residence sits high on 3.17 ridge top acres and measures in at 17,531 square feet with six bedrooms and four bathrooms.**
Glass walls ring a circular, multi-level central courtyard and more towering walls of glass spill out to landscaped grounds that feature a private motor court and two car car port, vast rolling lawns dotted with putting greens and sand traps, and a squiggly-shaped in-ground swimming pool. The property does not currently have a tennis court, which is a real shame in Your Mama's book because for forty-five million big one we do not want the extra added expense and hassle of installing a tennis court.
Due to its elevation 200 or more feet above the Coachella Valley desert floor, the Hope house has wrap around views of the rugged mountains and mid-century-modern lined streets of Palm Springs, one of the gayest little cities on the planet where the average age of residents, so novelist Sydney Sheldon once not exactly accurately quipped, is deceased.
Among the approximately 20 homes in the Southridge enclave there are a number of other notable houses including the Cody House—designed by modernist architect William Cody and built in 1964 for Chicago-based industrialist Stanley Goldberg.
Also up in Southridge is the wild, wacky, wonderful and world renown Elrod House, designed in 1968 by John Lautner for interior designer Arthur Elrod. The much photographed and written about Elrod House was briefly owned in the early Aughts by supermarket magnate Ron Burkle who sold it in 2003 to California-based businessman Michael Kilroy for $5,500,000. Mister Kilroy tried in vain to sell the Elrod House in late 2009 when it landed with a much discussed thud on the open market with a $13,890,000 price tag. As it turns out Mister Kilroy also owns the house across the street—and also listed in late 2009 for $2,890,000—as well as the one next door, an interconnected collection of steel-framed glass boxes designed by architect Hugh M. Kaptur for Steve McQueen back in the day when he was hitched to the impossibly chic actress Ali McGraw. Mister Kilroy also listed this house in late 2009, with an asking price of $3,470,000, but also failed to unload it.
*Miz Somer's 10 bedroom and 9 bathroom compound is currently listed for $17,500,000.
**At least one data base we consulted shows there are six bedrooms and 10 bathrooms.
aerial photo, Palm Springs (top): Google
exterior photos, Palm Springs (bottom left and right): Mossler Properties
aerial photo, Los Angeles: Google
New York Socialite Jo Hallingby Lists Two...Again
Today we take a wee turn from the glitzy, glossy and gift bag strewn world of Tinseltown celebs to the even more rigorous, restrictive and rarefied arena of New York City's high nosed upper crust, a necessary if tightly wound and sometimes jagged cross section of stiff lipped blue bloods whose names still signify importance within their clannish social circle if not so much out of it, ambitious upstarts of both genders who sometimes marry well and divorce better, droves of foreign majesties and potentates, magnificently philanthropic tycoons, low-profile international industrialists by the dozens and, finally—the new dogs on the block—Wall Street royals of all types and stripes with freshly acquired but ever so vast—and sometimes much envied—fortunes.
One such lady who runs amongst the frothy cream of the globe's most financially fortunate and —ahem—socially aristocratic is attorney and socialite Jo Hallingby who we respectfully decline to put into any of the above mentioned categories and who— Your Mama first learned through to the good work of our much appreciated but unpaid aide de camp Hot Chocolate—recently re-listed two of her posh East Coast properties with seven figure price tags.
In New York City Miz Hallingby has a sprawling, mid-floor apartment in what listing information describes as "one of Rosario Candela’s most celebrated white-glove prewar cooperatives" that she's just re-listed with an $18,000,000 asking price and in Southampton (NY), the staunchest of the string of upscale communities that comprise the hoity-toity Hamptons, Miz Hallingby has an Old School Georgian style mansion on 3.2 very prime waterfront acres now listed at $23,000,000.
Miz Hallingby may very well be an attorney and uptown social force in her own right but her surname—and presumably a significant portion of her wealth—comes from her late husband, financier Paul Hallingby. Mister Hallingby, who was often referred to as a billionaire in the press, went to meet The Great Market Maker in the Sky in 2005 at the age of 85. Mister Hallingby is credited with helping with the development of The Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City. He was a director of the New York Stock Exchange and, for many years, was a well-compensated pooh-bah at the once venerable Bear Stearns—now absorbed into the JP Morgan Chase financial colossus—where he held the title of managing director emeritus at the time of his death.
Miz Hallingby may be the surviving widow of Mister Hallingby but she was not his first wife or his second wife or even his third. In fact, rakish Mr. Hallingby—that naughty naughty goat—had five previous wives, at least one of whom does not—if press accounts are to be believed—care much for the sixth and widowed Missus Hallingby.
Mai Hallingby—the fifth ex-Missus Hallingby who reportedly received "nearly $10 million" in her 1994 divorce—and Jo Hallingby went round and round in the courts for years over which of them is legally entitled to receive a $930 a month annuity check from Mister Hallingby's estate. Imagine the legal bills incurred by these two women over a measly $930 per month annuity payment that neither of them probably needs in order to eat or keep the lights on. Let's be honest, butter beans, these gals probably both spend more than $930 a month having Lin-Lin Sue come over and clip their toenails thrice a week.*
It might help to understand the bitter animosity and legal wrangling between the two women to know that Mister Hallingby (allegedly) met Sixth Missus Hallingby—that's Jo—on the Hampton Jitney six months before he filed for divorce from Fifth Missus Hallingby—Mai—who says she only first heard of her own impending divorce when she read it in Aileen Mehle's always deliciously dishy fashion and high society gossip column in Women's Wear Daily. We don't know if there's any veracity to that or not but, you know, you can't make stuff like this up!
Anyhoo, according to his obit in The New York Times, at the time of his death, in 2005, Mister and Sixth Missus Hallingby maintained three homes, a Sutton Place cooperative apartment, a house in Southampton and a getaway in the gated, expensive and very exclusive Lyford Cay community in the Bahamas where some of the other estate owners include or once included high fallutin' folks like Prince Ranier III of Monaco, American automobile heir and car industry executive Henry Ford II, Greek shipping honcho Stavros Niarchos and Greek shipping magnates George S. and George P. Livanos, Oscar-winning Scottish actor Sean Connery and American billionaire hedge fund tycoon Louis Bacon.
We know nothing of the Hallingby's Lyford Cay crib but we do know that this isn't the first time Miz Hallingby has attempted to sell her sizable Sutton Place spread that has a sweeping and unimpeded view of the 59th Street Bridge, the East River and the south end of Roosevelt Island where the lush but sober Louis Kahn-designed monument to Franklin Delano Roosevelt now sprawls over the tip.
Miz Hallingby first listed the 13-room apartment in September 2010 with a $14,500,000 asking price. The river fronting apartment was taken off the open market in early 2011 only to return nearly a year later, in January 2012, with a slightly higher $15,000,000 price tag. Then, just the other day, Miz Hallingby engaged the services of a second real estate agent who specializes in the New York City residences of the very rich and re-listed her apartment with an inexplicably and remarkably more plump $18,000,000 price tag. If nobody wants it for fifteen million, then maybe someone will want it for eighteen, right? Stranger things have happened.
Current listing information shows the mini-mansion sized apartment has 4 bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms. However, those figures are a bit misleading when you compare them against the floor plan included with marketing materials. The floor plan shows three principle bedrooms—two guest/family bedrooms that share a Jack-and-Jill bathroom and a spacious master suite with fireplaced bedroom, separate sitting room, numerous walk-in closets, a pair of dressing rooms and two bathrooms—plus an extensive staff wing with three more prison cell-sized bedrooms that share a single hall bathroom. The floor plan indicates one of the staff bedrooms is or could be used as an office and another as a home gym. Whatever the case there are—in current configuration—three family bedrooms and 1-3 staff bedrooms for at total of 3-7 bedrooms depending on use. A windowless half bathroom off the 33-plus foot long entrance gallery brings the potty count to four point five.
The apartment has a magnificent 56-plus sweep of river frontage from one end of the living room to the far end of the library, 32 windows on four sides, three fireplaces, four Juliet balconies, and at least 15 closets—many of them walk-ins. There are formal living and dining rooms, a library, a butler's pantry and a spacious center island kitchen with walk-in pantry almost as large as the staff bedrooms. Just off the kitchen is a family/breakfast room and the laundry facilities that are tucked into a short corridor that connects the family areas from the staff and service wing. Current listing information shows the monthly maintenance fees run $12,995 per month.
The day-core is decidedly elegant and opulent with rich Parquet de Versailles style hardwood floors, heavy duty moldings, yard after yard of painstakingly swagged and prodigiously passamenteried curtain treatments, jewel-toned brocade covered sofas and gilt-trimmed 18th century French boiserie in the living room, gilded accents and Chinoiserie style wall coverings in the dining room and purposefully mismatched fabrics in the paneled library where at least one built-in set of shelves is filled to the gills with tiny figurines.**
Past residents of Miz Hallingby's storied and hallowed pre-war building include actress Sigourney Weaver, iconic designer Bill Blass, publishing pasha John Fairchild, socialites Winston and C.Z. Guest and gem collecting philanthropist Janet Annenberg Hooker.
While she's somewhat inexplicably raised the asking price on her Sutton Place apartment Miz Hallingby has much more sensibly slashed the asking price for her Old School-stately 3.17 acre estate in Southampton (NY) from its original asking price of $26,500,000 to its new and improved $23,000,000.
Property records aren't entirely clear on when Mister Hallingby purchased the Southampton spread with its approximately 300 feet of Shinnecock Bay frontage but there is some evidence it may have been as long ago as 1960. It was certainly previous to 1994 when records show it was held jointly by Mister Hallingby and his fifth ex-wife, Mai. The property was retained by Mister Hallingby and the deed last passed in early 2010 when the property became wholly owned by Jo Ann Davis Hallingby.
Current listing information shows the two-story white brick Colonial measures about 6,500 square feet with a total of six bedrooms and 6.5 bathrooms and is perfectly dressed for its genteel seaside locale with striped window awnings and black shutters that in a perfect world are actually operable.
The center hall house has a marble floored foyer, front and back staircases, a formal dining room and a sunny formal living room with windows on three sides, a fireplace with delicate carved stone mantelpiece, buttercup yellow walls, matching buttercup yellow curtains and a lumpy, lattice-pattern rug that Your Mama would bet both our long bodied bitches, Linda and Beverly, surely stymies foot shufflers and tipsy cocktailers. There's also a "chef's kitchen," according to listing information, and and a mint-condition conservatory/sun room that looks like it was ripped right out of the pages of Better Homes & Gardens in 1974.
For sleeping, dressing, fighting and fornicating in private there are two master suites, according to listing information, a third bedroom guest suite and a separate two-bedroom guest suite—plus a staff suite for a total of six.
An essentially but not exactly octagonal porch-cabana extends somewhat wart-like off the rear of the residence and offers direct access and views of the forty foot long and perfectly turquoise swimming pool. The porch-cabana is on point in Old School style with the most amazing wicker and bamboo furniture—those fan back things are so Marisa Berenson we can't even stand it—all of which is painted summertime white and some of which is custom fitted with crisp, white-piped azure-colored cushions.
At the front of the house a long and gated gravel drive swoops around to a charity party accommodating circular drive and at the rear a broad, flat lawn stretches away from the house down to the pond's edge where there is a deep water dock, according to listing information.
It was Miz Hallingby's house in Southampton where, in February 2011, thieves broke in and pinched "a dozen paintings worth $250,000," according to press accounts, including works by Jean Dufy, Frederick H. McDuff, Jacques Martin-Ferrieres, Pierre Bittar and Howard Behrens, a man sometimes called, according to his own website, "The Monet of the 21st Century." We're not sure if any of the artworks were recovered.
One of the other of many high net worth homeowners on Miz Hallingby's dead end lane in Southampton include lavish livin' hedge hog Larry Robbins who also owns a major estate in Alpine, NJ where he reportedly plans to spend around $10 million to build an approximately 16,000 square foot structure to house a ice hockey rink. Also on the block is lady hedge hogger Karen Fleiss who famously had her Fifth Avenue duplex of staggering proportions on the market in mid-2008 with an optimistically engorged $47,500,000 asking price.***
*Use them noggins, children. We have no idea if either Miz Hallingby pays someone stereotypically named Lin-Lin Sue or any one else to clip their toe nails on either a frequent or infrequent basis.
**Miz Hallingby reportedly collects 19th century Meissen figurines, the pre-cursors—if you will—to those too-cutesy Precious Moments figurines widely (and disturbingly) collected by those folks who adore a wee figurine but lack a certain monetary prowess.
**Miz Fleiss, bless her bajillionaire heart, failed to sell her 8 bedroom, two unit duplex on Fifth Avenue as a single unit even after the price plunged to $34,500,000. In late 2008 Miz Fleiss and her orthopedic surgeon husband opted to take the duplex off the market and re-listed just the lower level with an in-hindsight still rose-tinted $15,000,000 asking price. The price fell steadily to $9,950,000 before it was purchased in January 2010 for $8,898,000 by fellow hedge hog Richard Duke Buchan III who, incidentally, gut renovated the full-floor apartment and has had it on the market since January 2012 at a variety of asking prices that started at $22,000,000, dipped to $17,500,000 and climbed back up to its current and familiar price tag of $22,000,000. Such are the wild and wacky real estate ways of the super rich.
exterior photo (New York City): Nicholas Strini for Property Shark
interior listing photos (New York City): Sotheby's International Realty
listing photos (Southampton): Sotheby's International Realty
One such lady who runs amongst the frothy cream of the globe's most financially fortunate and —ahem—socially aristocratic is attorney and socialite Jo Hallingby who we respectfully decline to put into any of the above mentioned categories and who— Your Mama first learned through to the good work of our much appreciated but unpaid aide de camp Hot Chocolate—recently re-listed two of her posh East Coast properties with seven figure price tags.
In New York City Miz Hallingby has a sprawling, mid-floor apartment in what listing information describes as "one of Rosario Candela’s most celebrated white-glove prewar cooperatives" that she's just re-listed with an $18,000,000 asking price and in Southampton (NY), the staunchest of the string of upscale communities that comprise the hoity-toity Hamptons, Miz Hallingby has an Old School Georgian style mansion on 3.2 very prime waterfront acres now listed at $23,000,000.
Miz Hallingby may very well be an attorney and uptown social force in her own right but her surname—and presumably a significant portion of her wealth—comes from her late husband, financier Paul Hallingby. Mister Hallingby, who was often referred to as a billionaire in the press, went to meet The Great Market Maker in the Sky in 2005 at the age of 85. Mister Hallingby is credited with helping with the development of The Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City. He was a director of the New York Stock Exchange and, for many years, was a well-compensated pooh-bah at the once venerable Bear Stearns—now absorbed into the JP Morgan Chase financial colossus—where he held the title of managing director emeritus at the time of his death.
Miz Hallingby may be the surviving widow of Mister Hallingby but she was not his first wife or his second wife or even his third. In fact, rakish Mr. Hallingby—that naughty naughty goat—had five previous wives, at least one of whom does not—if press accounts are to be believed—care much for the sixth and widowed Missus Hallingby.
Mai Hallingby—the fifth ex-Missus Hallingby who reportedly received "nearly $10 million" in her 1994 divorce—and Jo Hallingby went round and round in the courts for years over which of them is legally entitled to receive a $930 a month annuity check from Mister Hallingby's estate. Imagine the legal bills incurred by these two women over a measly $930 per month annuity payment that neither of them probably needs in order to eat or keep the lights on. Let's be honest, butter beans, these gals probably both spend more than $930 a month having Lin-Lin Sue come over and clip their toenails thrice a week.*
It might help to understand the bitter animosity and legal wrangling between the two women to know that Mister Hallingby (allegedly) met Sixth Missus Hallingby—that's Jo—on the Hampton Jitney six months before he filed for divorce from Fifth Missus Hallingby—Mai—who says she only first heard of her own impending divorce when she read it in Aileen Mehle's always deliciously dishy fashion and high society gossip column in Women's Wear Daily. We don't know if there's any veracity to that or not but, you know, you can't make stuff like this up!
Anyhoo, according to his obit in The New York Times, at the time of his death, in 2005, Mister and Sixth Missus Hallingby maintained three homes, a Sutton Place cooperative apartment, a house in Southampton and a getaway in the gated, expensive and very exclusive Lyford Cay community in the Bahamas where some of the other estate owners include or once included high fallutin' folks like Prince Ranier III of Monaco, American automobile heir and car industry executive Henry Ford II, Greek shipping honcho Stavros Niarchos and Greek shipping magnates George S. and George P. Livanos, Oscar-winning Scottish actor Sean Connery and American billionaire hedge fund tycoon Louis Bacon.
We know nothing of the Hallingby's Lyford Cay crib but we do know that this isn't the first time Miz Hallingby has attempted to sell her sizable Sutton Place spread that has a sweeping and unimpeded view of the 59th Street Bridge, the East River and the south end of Roosevelt Island where the lush but sober Louis Kahn-designed monument to Franklin Delano Roosevelt now sprawls over the tip.
The apartment has a magnificent 56-plus sweep of river frontage from one end of the living room to the far end of the library, 32 windows on four sides, three fireplaces, four Juliet balconies, and at least 15 closets—many of them walk-ins. There are formal living and dining rooms, a library, a butler's pantry and a spacious center island kitchen with walk-in pantry almost as large as the staff bedrooms. Just off the kitchen is a family/breakfast room and the laundry facilities that are tucked into a short corridor that connects the family areas from the staff and service wing. Current listing information shows the monthly maintenance fees run $12,995 per month.
The day-core is decidedly elegant and opulent with rich Parquet de Versailles style hardwood floors, heavy duty moldings, yard after yard of painstakingly swagged and prodigiously passamenteried curtain treatments, jewel-toned brocade covered sofas and gilt-trimmed 18th century French boiserie in the living room, gilded accents and Chinoiserie style wall coverings in the dining room and purposefully mismatched fabrics in the paneled library where at least one built-in set of shelves is filled to the gills with tiny figurines.**
Past residents of Miz Hallingby's storied and hallowed pre-war building include actress Sigourney Weaver, iconic designer Bill Blass, publishing pasha John Fairchild, socialites Winston and C.Z. Guest and gem collecting philanthropist Janet Annenberg Hooker.
Property records aren't entirely clear on when Mister Hallingby purchased the Southampton spread with its approximately 300 feet of Shinnecock Bay frontage but there is some evidence it may have been as long ago as 1960. It was certainly previous to 1994 when records show it was held jointly by Mister Hallingby and his fifth ex-wife, Mai. The property was retained by Mister Hallingby and the deed last passed in early 2010 when the property became wholly owned by Jo Ann Davis Hallingby.
Current listing information shows the two-story white brick Colonial measures about 6,500 square feet with a total of six bedrooms and 6.5 bathrooms and is perfectly dressed for its genteel seaside locale with striped window awnings and black shutters that in a perfect world are actually operable.
The center hall house has a marble floored foyer, front and back staircases, a formal dining room and a sunny formal living room with windows on three sides, a fireplace with delicate carved stone mantelpiece, buttercup yellow walls, matching buttercup yellow curtains and a lumpy, lattice-pattern rug that Your Mama would bet both our long bodied bitches, Linda and Beverly, surely stymies foot shufflers and tipsy cocktailers. There's also a "chef's kitchen," according to listing information, and and a mint-condition conservatory/sun room that looks like it was ripped right out of the pages of Better Homes & Gardens in 1974.
For sleeping, dressing, fighting and fornicating in private there are two master suites, according to listing information, a third bedroom guest suite and a separate two-bedroom guest suite—plus a staff suite for a total of six.
An essentially but not exactly octagonal porch-cabana extends somewhat wart-like off the rear of the residence and offers direct access and views of the forty foot long and perfectly turquoise swimming pool. The porch-cabana is on point in Old School style with the most amazing wicker and bamboo furniture—those fan back things are so Marisa Berenson we can't even stand it—all of which is painted summertime white and some of which is custom fitted with crisp, white-piped azure-colored cushions.
At the front of the house a long and gated gravel drive swoops around to a charity party accommodating circular drive and at the rear a broad, flat lawn stretches away from the house down to the pond's edge where there is a deep water dock, according to listing information.
It was Miz Hallingby's house in Southampton where, in February 2011, thieves broke in and pinched "a dozen paintings worth $250,000," according to press accounts, including works by Jean Dufy, Frederick H. McDuff, Jacques Martin-Ferrieres, Pierre Bittar and Howard Behrens, a man sometimes called, according to his own website, "The Monet of the 21st Century." We're not sure if any of the artworks were recovered.
One of the other of many high net worth homeowners on Miz Hallingby's dead end lane in Southampton include lavish livin' hedge hog Larry Robbins who also owns a major estate in Alpine, NJ where he reportedly plans to spend around $10 million to build an approximately 16,000 square foot structure to house a ice hockey rink. Also on the block is lady hedge hogger Karen Fleiss who famously had her Fifth Avenue duplex of staggering proportions on the market in mid-2008 with an optimistically engorged $47,500,000 asking price.***
*Use them noggins, children. We have no idea if either Miz Hallingby pays someone stereotypically named Lin-Lin Sue or any one else to clip their toe nails on either a frequent or infrequent basis.
**Miz Hallingby reportedly collects 19th century Meissen figurines, the pre-cursors—if you will—to those too-cutesy Precious Moments figurines widely (and disturbingly) collected by those folks who adore a wee figurine but lack a certain monetary prowess.
**Miz Fleiss, bless her bajillionaire heart, failed to sell her 8 bedroom, two unit duplex on Fifth Avenue as a single unit even after the price plunged to $34,500,000. In late 2008 Miz Fleiss and her orthopedic surgeon husband opted to take the duplex off the market and re-listed just the lower level with an in-hindsight still rose-tinted $15,000,000 asking price. The price fell steadily to $9,950,000 before it was purchased in January 2010 for $8,898,000 by fellow hedge hog Richard Duke Buchan III who, incidentally, gut renovated the full-floor apartment and has had it on the market since January 2012 at a variety of asking prices that started at $22,000,000, dipped to $17,500,000 and climbed back up to its current and familiar price tag of $22,000,000. Such are the wild and wacky real estate ways of the super rich.
exterior photo (New York City): Nicholas Strini for Property Shark
interior listing photos (New York City): Sotheby's International Realty
listing photos (Southampton): Sotheby's International Realty
Richard Perry and Jane Fonda Do It Up Modern
LOCATION: Beverly Hills, CA
PRICE: $7,300,000
SIZE: 7,513 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 6.5 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Your Mama gets loads of emails and phone calls from all-kinda folks who want know who bought what, where and for how much. Over the last few months we've received an unexpected and unusual number of queries about the real estate activities of later-in-life lovebirds Richard Perry and Jane Fonda.
Mister Perry is an accomplished music producer of the highest magnitude with more than a dozen gold records and a slew of A-grade credits with superstars like Rod Stewart, Carly Simon, Diana Ross, the divine Martha Reeves, Babs herself, Percy Faith, the Pointer Sisters, Leo Sayer, Donna Summer, Neil Diamond and Andy Williams, to name just a handful or two. Miz Fonda is, natch, the Jane Fonda, the snappy, smart and sassy two-time Oscar winning actress/activist/aerobics instructor once, best and still known in many circles as the campy but preposterously sexy Barbarella and/or the political lightening rod Hanoi Jane.
The queries began almost immediately after our June 2012 (dis and) discussion of the celebrity pedigreed Sunset Strip home Mister Perry then owned, unofficially but openly shared with Miz Fonda and had up for sale for nearly $13 million. Finally for the curious, there's an answer via the long-legged gal at Trulia Luxe Living. Mister Perry and Miz Fonda have decamped the lower Sunset Strip for the stylishly au courant Trousdale Estates 'hood at the very eastern edge of Beverly Hills (CA). Property records show the gated and completely renovated residence was actually acquired by Mister Perry at the tail end of June 2012 for $7,300,000.*
Listing information still available on the internets shows the original residence was built in 1961, had not been on the market in 44 years and had been the long-time home of a "legendary TV & film director." That Tinseltown legend turns out to have been recently deceased and wildly prolific three-time Emmy winner John Rich. Although Mister Rich worked regularly well into the late 1990 he started out way back in the middle 50s (I Married Joan, Where's Raymond). His Showbiz Salad Days were, arguably, the early 1960s to the early 1980s when he directed and/or produced numerous episodes of a long list of iconic sitcoms and westerns that include The Dick Van Dyke Show, Bonanza, Gunsmoke, the Brady Bunch, That Girl, All in the Family and Benson.
Anyhoo, listing information goes on to indicate the spacious and re-conceived mid-century modern has four bedrooms and 6.5 bathrooms in 7,513 square feet.
The jagged, angular exterior opens to an airy, multi-level interior with long expanses of crisp white walls, vaulted and beamed ceilings, glass-railed staircases and long ribbons of windows and sliding doors. In addition to some of the more (melo)dramatic flourishes such as an all-glass elevator, the house is chock full of fancy-pants eco-friendly features such as bamboo floors, photovoltaic solar panels, three ventless bio-ethanol fueled fireplaces and double-glazed thermal windows with motorized shades.
The foyer flows into a reception lounge large enough to accommodate a baby grand piano. A short but wide set of steps descends into the formal living room proper that's anchored by a sturdy stacked stone fireplace and visually open to the outdoors through a towering wall of windows that extend from the knees to the ceiling.
The open-concept dining room and kitchen has a second (bio fuel) fireplace exotically set into a wall of glass that allows the fire to be seen and enjoyed both inside and outside. It's an undeniably extraordinary and architecturally arresting visual feature, a real-live, more is more WOW! moment. Howevuh, not that it matters a lick and just between us chickens here, Your Mama thinks that fireplace conceit is a bit too too, you know? Especially in a residence that already has a glass-walled elevator.
Anyhoo, the expensively equipped kitchen and adjoining butler's pantry orbits around a massive center island with lowered snack counter. The streamlined but still organic-minded kitchen has all the expected upscale finishes and swank accoutrement that includes what may or may not be walnut cabinetry, mossy green quartz counter tops, top-quality commercial style appliances and a flat screen t.v. that lifts up out of the counter top at the touch of a button.**
The master suite includes a walled sunken sitting room with another one of those (bio fuel) fireplaces set into a wall of glass—once really is enough when it comes to a showstopper like this—and a pair of large bathrooms with steam showers, soaking tubs and radiant heated floors. There's also at least one to-die-for-sized walk-in closet with icky tan wall-to-wall carpeting, walls lined with miles of hanging racks and a nipple-high built-in dresser stuck smack in the center of the room.
A separate lower-level media/game room, accessible via a glass-railed stairway or that painstakingly engineered glass-elevator, has cork floors and plenty of space for a pool table, television/movie viewing lounge, and a booze-hound's dream bar with sink, dishwasher, ice maker and under-counter wine fridge.
Multiple outdoor living areas include a couple of dining decks directly off the kitchen that overlook the swimming pool, a serene side terrace with stone fountain and a lounging nook set high enough in a concrete wall as to be difficult to climb into without a stepping stool and a flat grassy pad with outdoor fireplace and views that extend down the canyons and across the city.
A deep overhang shades the lower level rooms and runs around two sides of the dark bottomed rectangular swimming pool. Sunbathing terraces run along either side of the pool, away from the house to a slightly raised deck that pushes out over the canyon.
Back in late June (2012), right about the time Mister Perry closed on his and Miz Fonda's new love nest in Trousdale Estates, Your Mama discussed the much more traditional mini-mansion in the lower Sunset Strip area that Mister Perry owned and and had on the open market with an idealistic but ultimately unrealistic $12,750,000 price tag. The asking price for the 5 bedroom and 8 bathroom knoll-top house, originally built for Ronald Reagan and Jane Wyman, eventually plunged to $10,000,000 before a somewhat mysterious corporate entity came along and purchased the property for $8,500,000.
Miz Fonda, who may or may not still maintain a one bedroom and 1.5 bathroom rental apartment at the star-studded Sierra Towers building, also long-maintained a 4,764 square foot multi-unit combination penthouse in Atlanta, GA that she unsuccessfully first attempted to sell for $4,500,000 in May 2010. By June 2012 the asking price had crashed to just $1,195,000. As far as we can tell, the penthouse has yet to sell but does not appear to currently be listed for sale on the open market.
*Miz Fonda's name does not appear on any of the property records documents we peeped but that does not mean she does not have some sort of stake in the place.
**It could be a press of a button that causes the t.v. to rise up out of the counter top but it could also be a flip of the switch or the swipe of a hand-held touch screen or some other action our caffeine starved brain can't even conceive right now.
listing photos: Coldwell Banker / Beverly Hills South
Emma and Andrew Shack Up in Beverly Hills
LOCATION: Beverly Hills, CA
PRICE: $2,500,000
SIZE: 3,862 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Thank to the always informative Lucy Spillerguts, young and faux ginger-tressed actress Emma Stone and her slender, half-English man-beau/Spiderman co-star Andrew Garfield (The Social Network, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus) recently dropped $2,500,000 on a Beverly Hills, CA residence once owned by deceased English actor Dudley Moore.*
Miss Stone, a teen aged thespian now in her mid-20s, got her big Showbiz break in 2007 when Judd Apatow suggested she dye her blond hair red for the high-grossing comedy movie Superbad.** Since then Miss Stone has landed a lot of plum roles in star making movies like the Spiderman franchise, Crazy, Stupid, Love and The Help. The increasingly in-demand actress has almost half a dozen more potentially high-profile projects lined up including another Spidy movie with her live-in boyfriend, Gangster Squad with the idiosyncratically bewitching Ryan Gosling and Movie 43, the upcoming cameo driven rom-com in which half of Tinseltown shows up including Gerard Butler, Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Naomi Watts, Richard Gere and Uma Thurman just to name a few. Make no mistake, chickens, this wholesome-seeming starlet has arrived and Your Mama expects she will quickly earn herself a proper Hollywood fortune, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and a few more industry accolades and statuettes to add to the Teen Choice, Screen Actors Guild, Satellite and People's Choice awards she already has.
The 1.5 story, flagstone-faced traditional/ranch residence, located on a wee, leafy lane up in twisty and sometimes traffic-choked Coldwater Canyon, sits low and private behind electronic driveway gates and a thick, skin-shredding bougainvillea hedge. Listing information we enticed up out of the interweb shows there are a total of four bedrooms and .5 bathrooms in 3,862 square feet, according to listing information and the L.A. County Tax Man.
Dark, high gloss wood floors in the double-wide entrance hall continue into the voluminous, step-down living room with vaulted wood ceiling, partially paneled walls washed with crisp white paint, a massive white brick fireplace, clerestory windows, and a full wall of French doors that open to a concrete and red brick courtyard terrace at the back of the house. Double glass doors in the living room open to a temperature controlled walk-in wine closet with custom-built, floor-to-ceiling bottle racks.
The adjoining formal dining room also has a bank of French doors that connect to the backyard entertainment spaces and also opens over a high serving counter to a galley-style kitchen finished with wood beams on the ceiling, white tile on the counter tops and a wide window over the vintage—or vintage-style—stainless steel sink and marvelous, built-in drainboard. Just off the kitchen there's a spacious laundry room with slop sink, a convenient pantry space and a sunny breakfast room with raised fireplace.
One of the four bedrooms has a private pooper and might be used as a guest bedroom or domestic quarters and the other two guest/family bedrooms share a Jack-and-Jill bathroom. The master suite offers a third, marble-faced fireplace and backyard access through more French doors. The renovated master bathroom has sepia-colored stone tile floors, an extra-long double sink vanity, an over-sized soaking tub with garden view and a separate glass-enclosed shower plenty big enough for two.
An L-shaped, flexi-use space tucked up into the attic on the second floor is fully finished with dark wood floors, an exposed post and beam ceiling and a long row of six-pane windows with tree top views.
Red brick terracing surrounds the heated, rectangular swimming pool—as does one of the most clunky and more hideous examples of a child safety barrier we've ever seen—and a slightly raised deck at one end is partially covered by a sun-bleached pavilion used by the non-celeb sellers as an outdoor dining space.
Miss Stone and Mister Garfield have been reported in the interweb to also share an apartment in New York City but Your Mama knows about as much about that as we know about the mathematical calculations required to understand the motions in the ocean.
*Property records don't make at all clear if this house was purchased by Miss Stone separately or with Mister Garfield. For the sake of our gossipy discussion, let's just say she bought it and that Mister Garfield—as he alluded recently on the Ellen—lives there with her.
**Don't belive Superbad was an honest to goodness hit? Tell that to the relatively low $20 million budget and the $169+ million in global revenues.
listing photos: Coldwell Banker Beverly Hills South
Tuesday Tidbit: Usher
Word on the celebrity real estate street—via the long-legged gal at Trulia Luxe Living—is that R&B superstar Usher wants to evict his ex-wife, Tameka, from the Roswell, GA mansion they shared before they bitterly divorced. He retained ownership of the lavishly equipped mansion, so the story goes, and now that he's heaved on the market with an asking price of $3,200,000 ex-Missus Usher will need to find another house to call home.
The 12,544 square foot red brick behemoth, according to listing information we perused, sits on about four an a quarter acres and has eight bedrooms, eight full and three half bathrooms, four fireplaces, a double-height foyer, formal and informal living areas, chef-friendly center island kitchen, massive master suite, fitness room and a fully-outfitted beauty parlor with shampoo sink and pedicure station.
The house happens to be in the same gated development where the Larry "Chipper" Jones family lived in an approximately14,000 square foot mansion until he and his missus split and he went an bought a six bedroom bachelor pad nearby.
We're not certain exactly where in the Atlanta area Usher shacks up but we do know that he still owns a 7,762 square foot residence in Alpharetta that he bought way back in late 2008 for $1,200,000.
listing photos: The Robinson Realty Group
Tuesday Tidbit: David Hasselhoff
The erstwhile couple parted ways years ago and first quietly shopped and then officially listed the 5 bedroom and 5.5 bathroom residence—and it's two detached guest houses, swimming pool complex and tennis court—in late summer 2008 with a fat asking price of $5,950,000. By August 2009 the price had plummeted to a still optimistic $4,195,000.
As noted by the kids at Curbed ex-Missus Hasselhoff downsized to a 3,400 square foot hillside contemporary in the Hollywood Manor neighborhood that she bought in early 2009 for $1.3 million unsuccessfully attempted to unload in late 2010 with an asking price of $1,499,000.
listing photos: The Agency
James Franco Put Down Property Roots in L.A.
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $775,000
SIZE: 1,496 square feet, 2 bedrooms, 2.75 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Thanks to well-connected canary with whom we're peripherally acquainted—let's call her Dimitri Dishdiscloser—Your Mama learned that the famously dilettantish actor/artist/author/auteur James Franco has put down some fairly modest real estate roots in Los Angeles, CA where he recently dropped $775,000 on a fixer-upper mini-compound in the hipster-sheek neighborhood of Silver Lake.
In the early Aughts, after a short turn on the short-lived Freaks and Geeks t.v. program, the rather fetching if not always clean looking Mister Franco achieved a modicum of mainstream notoriety as the brooding title character in the made for television biopic James Dean. Numerous high profile roles on the silver screen soon followed (the Spiderman franchise, City by the Sea, Nights of Rodanthe, Pineapple Express and Milk to name a paltry few) and in the last few years, along with a hefty handful of smaller roles, he starred in Howl and 127 Hours—for which he received an Oscar nomination—and maintains a recurring role on the daytime soap story General Hospital.
As if he wasn't quite busy or successful enough with his acting career, several few years ago—amid much booing, hissing and poo-pooing by some who felt he used his celebrity to curry favor and gain access—Mister Franco decided to get himself a proper liberal arts education. He quickly earned a BFA from UCLA, then schlepped east where he somehow managed to simultaneously enroll in—and complete—four concurrent masters programs: Columbia and Brooklyn College for English, NYU for film and Warren Wilson College in North Carolina for poetry. With four MFAs under his belt he's now working toward a trio of PhDs from three separtate academic institutions (Yale, Rhode Island School of Design and the University of Houston) and next spring he's scheduled co-teach a film production class at USC.
As academically oriented and arty farty as Mister Franco appears to have become the last few years, he's hardly forsaken his Hollywood paychecks. According to his lengthy resume on the Internet Movie Data Base, the idiosyncratic actor remains in high demand with at least a dozen projects in the hopper that include the Sam Raimi-directed Oz: The Great and Powerful and the star-studded Paul Haggis-directed dramatic-comedy The Third Person with Mila Kunis, Liam Neeson, Olivia Wilde, Adrien Brody, Kim Basinger, Maria Bello, Casey Affleck and more. Anyhoo...
Property records we peeped show Mister Franco—who may or may not be dating actress Ashely Benson (Pretty Little Liars)—purchased the property in August (2012) using the same trust he previously used to acquire at least two other long ago sold residences in Los Angeles. A bit more on those in a minute.
Property records also reveal Mister Franco bought the two-unit mini-compound from fast-rising Tinseltown costume designer Katherine Jane "Janie" Bryant who won an Emmy for her work on the boob-toob program Deadwood in 2007. For the last five years Miz Bryant's done up the costumes for Mad Men, a job that's earned her two more Emmy nominations and spurred a widespread sartorial retro-style revolution of floral frocks, pinched waists, skinny ties and slim-fitting trousers. Interestingly enough, according to property records, Miz Bryant—along with a man-friend/mate—purchased the house in 2002 from musician/filmmaker and fashion world heiress Tatiana von Fürstenberg.
Don't ask us how she knows it but Dimitri told Your Mama peripatetic Mister Franco has plans to fix up the quirky but kinda dumpy two-unit mini-compound where he's currently shacked up with his long-time b.f.f and producing partner Vince Jolivette. We don't really know who sleeps where—nor is it any of our beeswax—but for the sake of simplicity let's just assume Mister Franco occupies the larger but still fairly compact 2 bedroom and 1.75 bathroom main house—marketing materials show it has 1,496 square feet—and Mister Jolivette the smaller, mostly detached one bedroom and one bathroom unit.
Listing information from the the time of the purchase shows well-worn saltillo tile floors run throughout the lower level of the upper unit—the main house—that includes a narrow dining room with French door access to up sloping backyard and an equally narrow living room with wood beamed ceiling. The kitchen, open to the living room over a stool-height breakfast bar, has cheap-looking white cabinets, butcher block counter tops, and medium-grade stainless steel appliances.
Original wood floors that have seen their better days run throughout the second floor of the upper residence that includes a "master" bedroom with massive brick fireplace, a wee window-lined study/sitting room that may or may not be the second bedroom, a haphazard dressing room and a hall bathroom that looks fairly recently renovated with white subway tile in the shower/tub and a perfectly ordinary Home Despot-style pedestal sink.
An arched wood door in the "master" bedroom opens to a charming covered veranda with canyon views. A staircase connects the veranda to a window-wrapped room with squalid-looking wall-to-wall carpeting and downright mortifying salmon colored walls. Miz Bryant appears to have utilized the aerie as a cluttered office space where her Emmy statuette and other accolades sit prominently but carelessly on a cheap looking shelf above her desk.
Although Mister Franco has lived primarily in New York City the last few years—we think they may have occupied a third floor walk up rental on the Lower East Side but we can't be sure—this is not his first property acquisition in Los Angeles. In May 2003 he dropped $1,165,000 on a multi-story, mock-Med architectural abomination in a semi-secluded canyon in Studio City that he sold in April 2006 for $1,525,000. The following month (May 2006) he upgraded to a 1923 Tuscan-villa directly across the street from the Chateau Marmont. He paid, according to property records, $2,325,000 for the approximately 4,000 square foot house that he extensively renovated and put back on the market in fall 2009 with an asking price of $3,695,000. The three bedroom and three bathroom house sold the following February (2010) for $3,300,000.
listing photos: Keller Williams / Larchmont
