Penthouse Catches Uncle Miltie’s Eye
MILTON BERLE’S longtime Beverly Hills home is in escrow, and the 81-year-old comedian is negotiating to lease a Wilshire Boulevard penthouse at $12,000 a month.
He’s selling his house of 19 years for slightly more than $3 million in cash to Mark and Laurie Cohen, owners of Crestview Financial, a mortgage company. Escrow is expected to close in mid-March.
Berle was asking $3.65 million for the property. He put it on the market at $4.39 million last October. His wife, Ruth, died last April.
“I didn’t have to sell the house,” Berle said. “But there are too many memories there, you know, after being married 36 years.”
“Now we’re working on getting a penthouse for him,” said Yaffa Lerner, who co-listed the home with her husband, Michael, both of Asher Dann & Associates, Beverly Hills.
“Though he will continue to own commercial buildings in New York, he’s not interested in owning a home,” she continued. “He just wants to lease something luxurious in a nice, clean new building--low- or high-rise--with valet parking on the Wilshire Corridor.”
The house he’s selling is 60 years old. “It has a lot of character but needs updating, of course, and that’s what the buyers plan to do,” Lerner said.
It’s on a large lot in the area known as “the flats” and has a back yard, swimming pool and cabana. The 5,198-square-foot house has a 60-foot-long living room, library with a fireplace, enclosed patio/office, breakfast and dining rooms, four bedrooms, maids’ quarters and a grand foyer with hand-painted wood ceilings.
Producer JON PETERS, co-chairman since October with producer Peter Guber of Columbia Pictures, is expected to close escrow about April 1 on the San Ysidro Ranch, the Montecito retreat where JOHN F. and JACQUELINE KENNEDY honeymooned.
Peters is buying the 540-acre resort for $23 million, according to Gene O’Hagan, the Jon Douglas Co. broker who conceived of the deal and put it together.
“Peters came to the ranch for years as a guest and always wanted (to own) it,” O’Hagan said. When Peters became a studio chief, the idea made more sense, another Santa Barbara-area broker noted, because the retreat could be used for story conferences and other meetings planned by Columbia and Sony, the studio’s new parent company.
“It will be nice to see the ranch go to someone else in the film business,” said broker Paul O’Keeffe, who is quietly marketing late actor RONALD COLMAN’S 4.5-acre estate next door at about $7 million. Colman was co-owner of the San Ysidro Ranch in the ‘30s and ‘40s, when it attracted such guests as movie stars GLORIA SWANSON, DICK POWELL and JEAN HARLOW.
Still another local broker voiced concern that Peters would change the character of the retreat and raze the buildings. O’Hagan said that Peters “will keep the ranch’s integrity but give it a much-wanted face lift to make it even more charming.” It will continue to be a guest ranch “and not try to be a health spa,” he added.
Negotiations are under way to retain the Moana Corp., which has owned the ranch since 1987, as manager.
Chrysler Chairman LEE IACOCCA’S recently announced bride-to-be, DARRIEN EARLE, is asking $8,000 a month for her two-story, Holmby Hills home.
“I sold her the house 14 years ago, and she’s lived in it all this time,” said Natalie Janger, who is handling the lease through Mike Silverman & Associates. “It may be for sale in the future, because they most likely will live back East.”
The blue, Connecticut-style country house has four bedrooms, maid’s quarters, a den, gardens and a pool.
FRANK G. MANCUSO, chairman and CEO of Paramount Pictures since 1984, has put his New Jersey home on the market at $1,775,000.
The 11-room house has five bedrooms, seven baths and many features that are similar to ones in his Bel-Air mansion, including a movie theater and a master suite that has screening facilities.
“It’s where he lived when his children were born, and it’s where they grew up. So he loves the house, but he doesn’t stay on the East Coast much except for meetings,” said listing agent Rose Ciccarelli of Murphy Realty/Better Homes & Gardens in Franklin Lakes, N.J., where the home is located.
She described Franklin Lakes as “an enclave of prestigious homes, 25 miles from the heart of New York City.” Among Mancuso’s neighbors have been WILLIE RANDOLPH, former New York Yankees second baseman who is now with the Los Angeles Dodgers; TOMMY JOHN, former Dodgers and Yankees pitcher; New York Giants quarterback PHIL SIMMS, and a host of company chairmen and presidents.
The 215-acre White Stallion Ranch, believed to be the last large undeveloped property in Hidden Valley, has been purchased for development of a private, gated community of 10 estates. Young Realtors of Westlake represented both parties in the nearly $9-million cash transaction.
A partnership that reportedly includes actors SYLVESTER STALLONE and BRUCE WILLIS sold the Ventura County property to First City Properties Inc. and O’Malley Partners. The estate sites, at least 20 acres each in size, will be priced from $1.5 million to about $3.5 million, said buyer David O’Malley.
MAUD ADAMS, best known for her starring role as Octopussy in the 1983 James Bond film by the same name, just sold a 28-year-old house in the lower Benedict Canyon area that she took a year to remodel.
This is the fourth house in eight years that the actress has bought, fixed up, lived in and sold. She owned this home for about two years.
The one-story contemporary with bleached hardwood floors and black-granite kitchen counters was purchased for nearly $2.15 million. “Now she’s going to do another house, but we just don’t know where yet,” said Stephen Shapiro of Stan Herman & Associates, who handled the deal.
