25 million new reasons to be cheerful
Kelsey Grammer, whose TV fame began on “Cheers,” has reason to toast his good fortune.
A little more than two years ago, during the final season of the NBC sitcom named after his character Frasier, the Emmy-winning actor bought a Beverly Hills-area home for $17.5 million. He has now sold it for about $25 million.
Grammer, and his wife, former model Camille Donatacci, have a home in Malibu. He bought the four-bedroom, 6,600-square-foot house on 5 acres in the hills in 1998 for $4.5 million. In 2001, he bought a beachfront home listed at $6.9 million but sold it in 2004.
The house he just sold has seven bedrooms and 11 bathrooms in 19,000 square feet. It also has an elevator, a gym, a lanai, a library, a media room, an office, a wine cellar and five fireplaces.
Italian in style, it is reminiscent of a European villa built in the 16th century, but this house was completed in 2003 on 3 acres in the gated community of Beverly Park.
Grammer, 51, played the pompous but likable psychiatrist Frasier Crane on “Cheers” (1984 to 1993) and “Frasier” (1993 to 2004).
He is executive producer of the TV series “Medium” and plays Dr. Hank McCoy, the furry blue “Beast,” in “X-Men: The Last Stand,” released Friday.
Where he’ll live like a dairy king
Sam Gores, president of the talent and literary agency Paradigm, and his wife, Jensen Buchanan Gores, have purchased a Wallace Neff-designed home on nearly an acre in the flats of Beverly Hills for $16.5 million.
The seller is Bruce Stuart, whose grandfather, Elbridge Amos Stuart, founded what later became the Carnation Milk Co. Stuart restored the Neff house, built in 1926, and razed an adjacent house to build a matching 2,200-square-foot media room/guest quarters.
Behind the Mediterranean-style main house, Stuart built a studio/guest house and a greenhouse. He had the park-like grounds landscaped with rolling lawns, a formal Italian garden, a reflecting pond and a pool.
The Neff house has a ceiling mural in the dome of the rotunda by artist Richard Wyatt, whose work is also seen in Union Station. The living room has such signature Neff details as a massive stone fireplace, stenciled ceiling beams and heavy wooden pocket doors.
In the main house, there are four bedrooms, including a master suite with a steam shower, soaking tub and heated marble floor. There are eight bedrooms and 8 1/2 bathrooms in the 9,000-square-foot estate.
Judy Cycon, Prudential-John Aaroe, Beverly Hills, and Harriet Cameron of Prudential, Sherman Oaks, represented the buyers; Richard Klug, Sotheby’s International Realty, had the listing.
A house built on potato chips
Laura Scudder, the potato-chip and peanut-butter queen, once owned a La Habra Heights home that has been listed at $3.5 million.
The Spanish hacienda was built on 12 acres in 1935 by Scudder and her husband, Charles, with the help of two craftsmen from Mexico.
The five-bedroom, 5,200-square-foot house, now on 2.4 horse-zoned acres, has rough-hewn beams and tiles from the Caribbean. The home’s massive fireplace can hold a 6-foot-long log.
Although the Scudders and their food empire are more often linked with Monterey Park, the couple lived in this La Habra Heights house, with a tennis court and a pool, for 10 years.
In 1957, Laura Scudder sold the business that she had started in 1927, but she continued to run operations until she died at age 78 in 1959.
Eileen Greene of Century 21, Jervis & Associates, La Habra, has the listing.
$28.5 million asked
for Archie’s place
Archie Bunker never lived so well. Carroll O’Connor was a different story.
The Malibu home of the Emmy-winning actor, best known for his role as Bunker in the ‘70s TV comedy “All in the Family,” is now on the market at $28.5 million.
What makes it so pricey? The home is on what the Multiple Listing Service terms “a very rare triple lot ... on 123 feet of the flats of Broad Beach.” The area is generally regarded as Malibu’s most exclusive neighborhood.
O’Connor and Nancy, his wife of 50 years, kept a 4,200-square-foot compound there with four ocean-view bedrooms and four bathrooms, including a detached guesthouse. The main house has a beachfront office and a game room. Outside features are a grassy yard, gardens and a beachside volleyball court.
The midcentury modern-style compound has Asian influences.
“This type of property only comes on the market once in a lifetime,” the MLS reports.
O’Connor died in 2001 at 76.
