‘La Bamba’ Star Buys in the Hills
Actor LOU DIAMOND PHILLIPS and his wife, JULIE CYPHER, are first-time home buyers, closing escrow last Tuesday on a house built in the ‘20s in the Hollywood Hills.
“We looked on and off for close to a year, because we’d look and then he’d be off making a movie for four months,” said Constance Chestnut of Jack Hupp & Associates, who represented the young couple in the $1-million deal.
Phillips, 27, starred in “La Bamba,” “Stand and Deliver” and a couple of other films as well as the upcoming “Transit” and “Show of Force,” and his wife, 25, is a director working on singer Melissa Etheridge’s current video.
When Chestnut showed them the Hollywood Hills house, “they walked in and fell in love with it, because it has a lot of romance to it,” she said. “It’s really Old Hollywood, with hand-painted tiles, mahogany floors, beamed ceilings and a courtyard entry with a fountain. The house was built on several levels, with a few steps down to the living room, three up to the bedroom and so on.
“And for better or worse, it’s untouched. The guy who sold it was there about 30 years and didn’t do much with it.” The house even has its original kitchen stove. “I don’t know if they’ll remodel as much as they will restore,” Chestnut added.
The house has three bedrooms, maid’s quarters and a den in about 4,500 square feet. It was listed with Jeremy Poole of Fred Sands Realtors.
Bass player MARK ANDES, with the rock group Heart, has purchased a 2-acre farm in Ojai with a 4,000-square-foot house on it for just under $1 million. Heart’s newest album is due out Valentine’s Day.
Andes’ former home, a 2,200-square-footer with an ocean view at Playa del Rey, is for sale at $750,000 through Goldfarb/Rolnik & Co. in Bel-Air and Merrill Lynch Realty.
Producer GEORGE LUCAS plans to move his post-production sound company next spring from Northern California to a $50-million entertainment-oriented complex that was just completed in Santa Monica.
His Sprocket Systems, a division of Lucasfilm Ltd., will be known as Skywalker Sound when it occupies 35,000 of the 205,000 square feet in the complex built by Tishman Construction for the owners, movie producers Arlene Sellers and Alex Winitsky, at 3000 W. Olympic Blvd.
Lucas’ space is being customized with editing and screening rooms as well as mixing and dubbing facilities.
The future is apparently now for producer/director STEVEN SPIELBERG, who has purchased two lots on Malibu’s Broad Beach with 98 feet of beachfront property for $5 million, sources say.
Last spring, after doubling the size of a Pacific Palisades home to 20,000 square feet, Spielberg was quoted as saying, “Somewhere in the back of my mind is the challenge of doing another house, but that’s for the future.”
The Malibu property has what local realtors describe as “a fixer” on it that industry sources figure Spielberg will either rehab or demolish.
Retired industrialist NORTON SIMON and his actress wife, JENNIFER JONES, have sold a Carbon Beach lot with a swimming pool that was part of their Malibu estate for $2.4 million.
The year before last, they donated the two houses on the estate to UCLA, which sold one to TV producer Pierre Cosette and the other to a couple who have already listed it, with Rodeo Realty, at $5,495,000.
The lot was purchased by commercial developer Jerry Lushing and his wife, Gloria, who plan to build a house there for themselves. Bruce Nelson of Asher Dann & Associates handled both sides of the deal.
Also in Malibu, there’s a 335-acre ranch for sale there at $30 million with a nine-bedroom, 12,000-square-foot mansion; a 4,000-square-foot second home with an indoor waterfall; barns; stables; a tennis court; black-bottom pool; spa; income-producing avocado groves, and a helipad.
The owner was described as “a low-profile, industrialist cowboy who is moving to Australia because he wants more land.” The 335-acre Malibu ranch is listed with with Dana Keith and Bob Quinn of Fred Sands Estates.
ROY DISNEY, vice chairman of the Burbank-based Walt Disney Co. and nephew of the firm’s famous namesake, has bought the 18th-Century Coolmaine Castle in the south of Ireland for close to its $1.16-million asking price.
Movie cameraman Bob Willoughby sold the 40-acre property overlooking Courtmacsherry Bay in County Cork to the 59-year-old entertainment mogul.
Disney bought it as a home because he and his wife have “strong family connections with Ireland,” and he “has a keen interest in ocean racing and very much hopes to be able to bring one of his yachts” there, according to Sotheby’s International Realty, which handled the sale with Keane Mahony Smith, Cork.
Disney, who also has a home in Toluca Lake, is on the steering committee of the America’s Cup campaign and owns two yachts, a 50-footer and a 70-footer.
