‘Love Boat’ Doc Finds a Place in the Sun

TV’s “Love Boat” doctor (actor Bernie Kopell) has gone from the sea to the desert, acquiring a condo at the Desert Princess Country Club and Resort in Cathedral City on the border of Palm Springs.

Known as the country club’s Village Las Flores, the condos will have access to the resort’s 300-room hotel to be operated by the Princess Cruise Lines’ resort division when it opens next fall. ABC’s “Love Boat” is filmed on the Princess Cruise Lines’ Pacific Princess.

Tennis Pro Bill Davis, who will be in charge of the resort’s 10 championship tennis courts, said, “Bernie Kopell will headline some of our tennis tournaments this season and will be seen regularly on our courts.” Kopell and his wife, Yolanda, bought a two-bedroom condo overlooking the golf course as a second home with their primary residence in Tarzana, according to a spokeswoman for Village Las Flores developers, Watt Industries/Palm Springs and Gibraltar Savings of California.

Ever hear of the Green Gables Restaurant in the outskirts of Phoenix? Built in 1939 by Robert Gosnell Sr., the castle-like structure was for years one of the best restaurants in the United States. Columnist and TV personality Dorothy Kilgallen wrote in Good Housekeeping that dining there was “like having dinner in a room out of a fairy tale.”

The restaurant was supposed to have been a favorite haunt of such celebrities as Jack Dempsey, Duncan Hines, Bob Hope, Clark Gable and Zsa Zsa Gabor.

In 1958 a writer for Redbook wrote: “It will be a long time before I get over my surprise at being escorted up the driveway to Green Gables by a knight in full armor on a white horse and having Robin Hood in green doublet and hose park the car.”

Robin Hood is gone. So are the knight and the horse. And the restaurant. It was closed last fall when the 11,300-square-foot building was sold by John Griswald, who bought it in 1969. The new owner is Boston-based Cabot, Cabot & Forbes, which plans to turn the structure into a $5-million office complex through remodeling and a new four-story office building to the west. Construction started last week.

Yet, all won’t be lost, says Ted Allen, vice president of Cabot, Cabot & Forbes. The development firm intends to retain the architectural character and most of the landscaping of the original Green Gables.

Singer/songwriter Stevie Nicks has leased the Hollywood Hills home of director John Richard Schlesinger for four months while she is recording a new album, says Steve Shapiro of Stan Herman Associates in Beverly Hills.

The house has a view, swimming pool, security gates and is “fabulously furnished,” Shapiro said. But Nicks is bringing in her own piano.

House guests would find ample privacy in this home: It has 17 baths!

Enough for comedian Jerry Lewis and his then wife, Patti, who lived there for 25 years while raising their six sons, and enough for movie mogul L. B. Mayer, who lived there for several years before the Lewises.

Producer/director Mervyn LeRoy built the mansion, which is in Bel-Air, in the ‘40s on an acre a few blocks from Sunset Boulevard.

And the house still has some living room furniture from the Mayer era that the Lewises kept because the chairs have swivels that facilitate watching a CinemaScope screen, says Jane Lewis, who has the $3.7-million listing through Mike Silverman & Associates of Beverly Hills. The house also has a sound recording room for anyone wanting to cut their own demos. Patti Lewis is the current owner.