Is the Westside calling?
Not unlike Saul Steinberg’s famous 1976 New Yorker magazine cover illustration called “View of the World From 9th Avenue,” there are those who see the Westside of Los Angeles as the center of the universe -- and every place else is, well, elsewhere.
Now, we’re not saying that Tom Arnold is one of those people. But the comedic actor has put his Tarzana home of less than two years on the market for $2,275,000. Why? He says the 4,250-square-foot house is just “too much house for one man.” Shall we take wagers on whether he winds up back on the Westside?
His Tarzana place is in the exclusive area south of Ventura Boulevard, and it has five bedrooms and four bathrooms. Mediterranean in style, the house has hardwood floors and a granite-countered cook’s kitchen. The master bedroom’s features include cathedral ceilings and a fireplace. The half-acre property is gated and private. There’s also a large swimming pool and an outdoor patio area for entertaining.
Arnold moved from his Beverly Hills-area home in late 2006. He paid $1.95 million for the Tarzana house.
And the house indeed may be too big for him, especially since he says he’s hardly home.
His film “Gardens of the Night,” with John Malkovich, hits theaters in September, followed by “The Year of Getting to Know Us” with Sharon Stone, Jimmy Fallon and Lucy Liu in October.
Arnold, 49, and Roseanne Barr divorced in 1994. His second marriage, to makeup artist Julie Champnella, also ended in divorce. Ex-wife No. 3, Shelby Roos Arnold of WEA Realty, Beverly Hills, is the listing agent.
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Laurel Canyon just got hotter
Hottie up-and-coming movie actor Channing Tatum of “Step Up” and “Stop-Loss” fame recently bought a Laurel Canyon property described on the Multiple Listing Service as a “Balinese treehouse in paradise.” He paid $2,595,000 for the three-bedroom, three-bathroom home that was listed at $3.4 million, according to public records.
The 2,538-square-foot main house has an open floor plan and a bonus floor below that would work nicely as a gym or screening room.
A curving teak staircase leads to the second-floor master suite, which has floor-to-ceiling windows and wraparound terraces overlooking the mountains and canyons. The 12-foot pitched wood-and-beam ceilings in the suite add to the treehouse feel. There is a separate guesthouse.
Tatum, a model turned hip-hop dancer turned actor, gained a fan base from his stint on “So You Think You Can Dance.”
The 27-year-old green-eyed heartthrob has been romantically linked to Jenna Dewan, whom he met on the set of the 2006 movie “Step Up.” She played Nora. In Hollywood years, this makes them an item as old as Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.
Elisabeth Halsted of Prudential California Realty was the listing agent. Moe Abourched of MSM Luxury Estates, Encino, represented the buyer.
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Brave new world for Huxley estate
This is one of those “if walls could speak” places. Aldous and Laura Huxley’s presence is felt throughout this historic estate on Mulholland Drive that just came on the market at $1.95 million.
Built in the 1930s, it very much remains a period house. The 4,000-square-foot four-bedroom, three-bathroom Spanish Mission-style home is situated on 30,000 square feet of gardens and meditation paths -- all perched under the Hollywood sign, which is visible from the home’s northern windows.
Aldous Huxley showed us his “Brave New World” -- a futuristic society based on pleasure without moral repercussions -- and in doing so challenged the thinking of a generation. Although that novel wasn’t written in this house, “Island” -- his final one -- was finished here. The Huxleys had been living two streets away on Deronda Drive in a house that burned in 1961. They escaped with just two possessions: his “Island” manuscript and her violin.
Aldous Huxley lived in this house just two years before his death in 1963, the day of President Kennedy’s assassination. It was his wife’s home until her death in December at age 96.
Laura Huxley was a distinguished writer in her own right and frequently entertained in this house, which became a salon for intellectuals and free thinkers. Among the long list of guests at this social hive were Ben Kingsley, Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, Buckminster Fuller and Ram Dass, according to Stacy Valis, the estate’s administrator and a longtime family friend.
The house has a two-story living room with arched windows and a minstrel’s balcony. In the center is a slump-stone brick fireplace. The room has a hand-carved and vaulted ceiling, and peg-and-groove wood flooring. The outside dining loggia is framed with massive plaster archways and includes a brick fireplace.
The kitchen has original tile and period hardware.
Timothy Enright of the Enright Co. has the listing.
The Deronda site -- what remains of the Huxleys’ burned home sits on three lots -- was recently sold by the estate for $1,025,000. The buyer, Matthew Luber, president and owner of Luber Roklin Entertainment Co., plans to build on the 27,000 square feet of largely flat land, said the selling agent, Jason Reitz of Rock Real Estate. Patricia Carroll, owner of Hollywood-land Realty, and Lamonta Pierson, of that office, handled the listing of the lots.
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Staking out spots on Carbon Beach
Does David Geffen know about this? Someone else actually bought two lots on his stretch of Carbon Beach in Malibu, and it wasn’t Larry Ellison. Sales price: $24.95 million, says the Multiple Listing Service.
For accuracy’s sake, we should mention that the lots have houses on them -- good-sized ones too at 3,200 square feet and 2,000 square feet -- but don’t expect them to remain standing for long. The unidentified buyer is expected to tear them down in short order and rebuild to his liking. The combined lots total 80 feet of beachfront along what is known as Billionaires Beach.
Has the billionaires’ duel now escalated into a full-fledged skirmish with the 22000 block of Pacific Coast Highway as the prize in a battle of the checkbooks?
Geffen owns five properties on the 22000 block and the Malibu Beach Inn just a short walk away. He paid $29 million in 2005 for the hotel and recently completed a major remodel.
Just a few weeks ago, he acquired a 1,400-square-foot house with 45 feet of beachfront on the 22000 block for about $10 million.
He originally bought that same property in 1996, sold it to Creative Artists Agency head Richard Lovett, who sold it to Peter Morton, co-founder of the Hard Rock Cafes. Morton sold it back to Geffen in this most recent transaction. Head spinning yet?
Speculation is that he has grander ideas for Carbon Beach and one day hopes to run the strip as an exclusive resort for the world’s wealthiest patrons. A more cynical view being expressed in the community is that with the recent purchase, he will be able to divert the public’s access to the beach away from his main domicile.
Then there is Ellison, head of software giant Oracle and named the world’s 11th richest man by Forbes magazine. He owns five houses along Carbon Beach -- his are adjacent -- and, in an apparent tit-for-tat with Geffen, bought the 21-room Casa Malibu Inn on Carbon Beach for $20 million.
And then, seemingly out of the blue, along comes yet a third major purchaser along the same block of sand.
Surely, given the price of gas, there must be oil under it.
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