Harold Lloyd Mansion for Sale Again?
Silent screen star Harold Lloyd’s home for 43 years is being spruced up for its new owner, Ted Field, but it has already been shown a few times to possible other buyers.
When contacted, Paris Moskopoulos of Paris Realty in Beverly Hills, who represented Field in the purchase last May, conceded that the mansion, known as Greenacres, has attracted some buyer interest but that it is not being actively marketed.
“We are renovating it, and Mr. Field plans to move in at the beginning of the year, but if someone comes along and gives him his price, he will take it,” Moskopoulos said.
And what is Field’s price? Moskopoulos chuckled. “I don’t know, but if somebody wants to put something in writing, we will look at it.”
Field, a TV producer and an heir of Chicago department-store magnate Marshall Field, bought the 44-room, 36,000-square-foot home (that is partly in Beverly Hills and partly in L.A.) from Bernard and Dona Solomon through the Solomons’ divorce proceedings. Greenacres had been listed for $9 million but went for the court appraisal of $6.5 million--a bargain in the eyes of many in that super-rich community.
The house, patterned after a 17th-Century Italian villa, was completed for Lloyd in 1928 but was painstakingly restored by the Solomons after they bought it in 1979. Lloyd died in 1971.
Field may be toying with selling the mansion, but he is definitely looking to sell his New York condo on Park Avenue for $7.5 million through Paris Realty.
“He was going to spend more time in New York but changed his mind,” Moskopoulos explained.
Field has been doing a lot of buying and selling during the past year. Last April, he sold a 10,000-square-foot, Beverly Hills mansion once owned by film producer David O. Selznick to Johnny Carson’s sidekick Ed McMahon. Field owned that house for four years but reportedly never lived in it.
He can afford such luxuries. Forbes Magazine listed him among the 400 richest people in America for 1986 and reported his worth at $260 million.
Barbara Sinatra took a second out from talking about her children’s center in Rancho Mirage (see story, Page 1) to chat about selling the Beverly Hills-area house built by hubby Frank about 30 years ago.
“We’re planning on making this our homefront,” she said of their nine-home desert compound. “The other house was built as a bachelor’s pad, but it does have a beautiful view.” It’s listed with Mike Silverman & Associates at $3 million, furnished. “But all the furniture isn’t there now,” she added. “Some has been sent out to be repainted and fixed up.”
Restaurateurs Wolfgang Puck and his wife, Barbara Lazaroff, are busily remodeling a Country English-style, 1937-era house they bought recently from a Hong Kong businessman.
No, the house isn’t in Hong Kong. It’s only 10 minutes from their trendy Sunset Boulevard eatery, Spago.
It’s also bigger than their previous L. A. home. It has three bedrooms, a maid’s room, guest quarters, a swimming pool, paddle tennis court, and what Rose Borne of Stan Herman Associates described as “gorgeous grounds and gardens,” which should be nice for the family pets--dogs, cats, birds--”She’s a big lover of animals,” Borne said.
Marilyn Nelson and Borne, both of Stan Herman Associates, represented the Pucks in the sale. The house was priced at $2.2 million.
Want a house near Johnny Carson’s in Malibu’s Paradise Cove for a mere $500,000-$750,000? (Johnny paid $9 million for his in 1984.)
The property, five lots away from the popular talk-show host’s Malibu home and across the street from his tennis court, will be on the block next Sunday through Stan Kottle of Marsh Dozar A1969452137”the new owner would probably raze the house.”
It’s on 1.11 acres with an ocean view and a foot path to the water, but the house itself isn’t nearly as grand as Carson’s glass-walled home overlooking the ocean or other residences in the neighborhood, including the one where pop singer Madonna and actor Sean Penn were married in August, 1985.
About 30 years old, the house to be offered at auction (as part of a court case) has five bedrooms and two baths in only 2,400 square feet and “looks something like a prison because the rooms are as small as cells,” Kottle conceded. Whoever buys the property might want to demolish the house and build one on the site the caliber of the Anawalt Lumber Co. family’s 5,000-to-6,000-square-foot home that is under construction two lots away, he suggested.
