‘Can We Talk?’ Joan Rivers Sells

JOAN RIVERS is selling her Bel-Air mansion to producer TED FIELD, who is also buying MICHAEL LANDON’S Malibu Colony home.

The comedienne bought a flat on New York’s Fifth Avenue a year ago February and has had her home on the market for about a year, most recently with realtor June Scott.

Field, who is an heir of Chicago department-store magnate Marshall Field, is paying a little more than $5 million for Rivers’ mansion, according to industry sources not connected with the transaction.

But Field isn’t buying Rivers’ home for himself. He’s buying it for his second wife, Barbara. Field recently sold the Brentwood mansion where she was living.

When in town, Field and his third wife, Susie, will continue to live in their 36,000-square-foot home, built partly in Beverly Hills and partly in Los Angeles for silent-screen star HAROLD LLOYD.

Built in 1937 by architect Paul Williams and renovated in 1986 by Rivers and her late husband, the 7,700-square-foot home has six bedrooms and four baths. It’s on an acre, with a rose garden and a pool, adjoining the Bel-Air Country Club.

Field is also buying Landon’s oceanfront Malibu home for himself and his wife for about $6 million.

For more than a year, actor/writer/director Landon has been building himself and his family a “Bonanza”-type home in the hills of Malibu, where they plan to relocate. Their new home is a 10-acre ranch with a 10,000-square-foot house, which has eight bedrooms to accommodate Landon’s nine children.

Both escrows are expected to close in mid-fall. Scott, Rivers’ real estate broker, and Paris Moskopoulos, who is representing Field, were out of town and unavailable for comment.

BURT REYNOLDS’ Holmby Hills house closed escrow a week ago Friday, at just under $5 million, and was back on the market Monday, at $5.7 million.

The turnaround was so quick that it even surprised some Beverly Hills realtors, but other industry sources pointed out that the new owners, John and Honorine Flanagan, are local investors who make money buying and selling houses. (In July, they sold a new house in Beverly Park, overlooking Beverly Hills, for $3 million to Sir Gordon White, chairman of the U.S. division of the British conglomerate Hanson Trust PLC.)

Another real estate source said the Flanagans plan to raze Reynolds’ former home in three to four weeks but put it back on the market until they get the necessary demolition permits.

“If someone comes along and wants to buy it at a good price before they get the permits, they’ll sell it,” she said.

The house is for sale, as it was when Reynolds owned it, with the Jon Douglas Co., Beverly Hills, but nobody involved in the listing could be reached for comment.

JOAN COLLINS’ Beverly Hills mansion is for sale, despite its being leased at the beginning of the month, said Thelma Orloff, who has the $6-million listing with Fred Sands Estates.

While the actress is in the south of France, her house is being leased, for the month of August, at $60,000, but the estate, which is behind gates, is still being shown to qualified buyers, Orloff emphasized.

The house was built in the 1960s for actor LAURENCE HARVEY and was later owned by comedienne TOTIE FIELDS. “And everyone did it over, until now it’s very dramatic, all marble and white,” Orloff said.

Collins bought the place in May, 1986, for about $2 million but spent a lot turning it into surroundings befitting Alexis Carrington, the character she played on TV’s “Dynasty.”

There are city views from nearly every room of the four-bedroom, seven-bath main dwelling, which also has maids’ quarters, a terrace and a mirrored bar in the living room with a large, oval inset aquarium. The master suite has a fireplace and a bath with a view.

The estate also has a two-story guest house, a pool and a fountain.

MANI BHAUMIK, a laser physicist who was born in a mud hut in India but made millions in real estate after he came to California, has sold his two-story Colonial mansion in Bel-Air to a Chinese family for just under $6 million.

Bhaumik lavishly entertained a number of guests, from NORMAN COUSINS to EVA GABOR, in the 10,000-square-foot house, which appeared in the summer 1987 movie “Beverly Hills Cop II.” He bought the house while it was under construction about three years ago and detailed it with marble balustrades, floors and statuary.

After moving in, Bhaumik, who has another home in Malibu, decided that the Bel-Air house was too large for him and put it on the market. Bruce Nelson of Asher Dann & Associates represented him in the sale.