Linda Evans Seeks Role as Landlady
Actress LINDA EVANS has moved to a house she bought a couple years ago in Washington state and is looking for a tenant for her Beverly Hills-area home.
“Our give-away price is $12,500,” said Stephen Shapiro, a partner of Stan Herman & Associates, who is handling the monthly lease.
“Linda’s is cheap because she just wants a reasonable rent and a person as a tenant that she feels comfortable with. She doesn’t like to play the real estate business.” Homes in nearby neighborhoods have rented for as much as $100,000 a month.
When she was starring in TV’s recently canceled “Dynasty,” Evans would go to her Washington house only when the show was on hiatus.
“Now Linda is in Washington pretty much full time,” Shapiro said. “After so many years on the series, she’s just taking time to cool out until she decides what to do next.”
Evans, a follower of the metaphysical fad of channeling, bought her home near the Yelm, Wash., ranch of J.Z. Knight, who claims to be a channel for a 35,000-year-old man named Ramtha.
Evans’ Beverly Hills-area home has three bedrooms, two maid’s rooms, a den and a master bedroom with a fireplace and his-and-hers baths.
The 4,000-square-foot, antique-filled residence comes furnished. It also has a heart-shaped lawn and is behind gates on a prime street in what is known as the Beverly Hills Post Office Area.
Entertainer PIA ZADORA and her multimillionaire husband, Meshulam Riklis, are buying a new house while their landmark Beverly Hills home, Pickfair, is being remodeled, say industry sources not involved in the deal.
The house, not far from Pickfair, just came on the market at $6.7 million and has a tennis court, spa, pool, city views and a three-hole golf course. It was built by Columbia Residential Development.
The home is in the same posh subdivision, Beverly Park, where SIR GORDON WHITE, chairman of the U.S. division of the British conglomerate Hanson Trust PLC, bought a house in July for $7 million, not $3 million as was reported last week.
In July, the Beverly Hills Planning Commission gave preliminary approval to plans that would cost about $2 million and add nearly 3,000 square feet to the 13,421-square-foot Pickfair, the famed estate of DOUGLAS FAIRBANKS and MARY PICKFORD.
Castle Ivanhoe, a Silver Lake home where JUDY GARLAND lived as a child, was purchased last year by screenwriter David Fertik and some partners, and they completed a restoration of it in time for this month’s 50th anniversary of “The Wizard of Oz” premiere.
Fertik, a longtime fan of the late “Wizard of Oz” star and a professor of film history at Cerritos College, termed the rehab “a labor of love.” “It was like Sleeping Beauty’s castle,” he said. “Nothing had been done to it in 30 years, but we went beyond restoration, adding onyx and marble.”
Garland lived in the castle, with its towers and drawbridge, in 1933-34, when she was about 12, he said. His partners are Arnold Pomerantz, a vice president of Payless Shoes, and actor/contractor Demetre Phillips.
The house is on the market at $1.15 million with Denise Giovanello of Fred Sands’ Hollywood Hills office.
The highest home sale in the history of Trousdale was due to close escrow Friday, after we went to press. It was an $8-million, all-cash deal for a home built nine years ago for industrialist Bob Whittaker and his wife, Susan.
A wealthy Chinese family purchased the 12,000-square-foot, one-story house, which has hundreds of Oriental touches, including a 60-by-14-foot, hand-carved Burmese teak screen on a wall by the front door. There is also a smiling, 6,000-pound statue of Buddha outside, which can be seen from the living room, and a tennis pavilion with a roof of Japanese blue tiles.
The 4.5-acre home sits on a promontory with a view of the Los Angeles Basin. “Trousdale is the only place in Beverly Hills, with a few exceptions, that has great views,” said Bruce Nelson of Asher Dann & Associates, who had the listing. Margie Oswald of Merrill Lynch/Rodeo Realty represented the buyers.
What has been described as the largest Holmby Hills transaction since the early ‘80s, when producer Aaron Spelling bought Bing Crosby’s house for $10.25 million and then demolished it, has closed escrow.
The latest deal was for a new, 12,000-square-foot house with a tennis court, built and developed on 1.21 acres by Brian Adler. A Japanese buyer paid nearly $9 million in cash.
“It was only on the market about four weeks before it sold, and this was not the first offer,” said Jon Aaroe, who shared the listing with Ron de Salvo, both of Jon Douglas Co.
