Hope Sale: Thanks for the Memory
BOB HOPE, who acquired huge property holdings during his long career as a comedian, and his wife, DOLORES, have sold a 195-acre ranch in Calabasas that they’ve owned since 1955.
A Woodland Hills-based home builder, Continental Communities, bought the property in a $10-million deal that closed escrow about a week ago.
Hope’s attorney, Payson Wolfe, said that the ranch is probably the Hopes’ last large West San Fernando Valley holding, “but he does have some properties elsewhere larger than this.”
The president of Continental Communities, Robert E. Zuckerman, said he plans to develop the site, on the northwest corner of Las Virgenes Road and the Ventura Freeway, with 75 homes priced at about $1.5 million each; a 40,000-square-foot office building, and a 250,000-square-foot shopping center.
There is no home on the site. “Mr. Hope used it to run cattle, sheep and some horses,” Zuckerman explained.
Until recently, Hope had a reputation for buying and holding real estate. “But lately, he has been marketing a lot of his property,” Zuckerman said. “I think that has to do with estate planning. He is 86, but (despite his age), the decisions rest with him, not his advisers.
“We found out about this property through one of his associates, and we were very excited to get our check to Mr. Hope before anybody else. We paid exactly what he wanted, which is the way he likes to do business.”
Hope has some other properties that are for sale, Wolfe said, but the attorney would not elaborate. The comedian was unavailable for comment. He was busy last week rehearsing his NBC-TV special, scheduled to air this weekend, featuring “Phantom of the Opera” star Michael Crawford.
Hope “loves to talk real estate,” Wolfe said. But the comedian has been reticent about discussing his personal wealth. To a magazine article claiming he was worth $500 million, Hope once responded:
“If I had half a billion dollars, I wouldn’t go to Vietnam (for his TV specials during the war there); I’d send for it. Anyway, it’s easy to save $500 million; you just save $1 million a year for 500 years.”
ZSA ZSA GABOR has purchased a 21-acre horse ranch just north of Moorpark and plans to retire there, according to her publicist.
“She wants to sell her Bel-Air home and settle down on her horse ranch to raise Tennessee walking horses,” he said. “She’ll either expand the house that’s there or build a brand-new house. She wants a 6,000-square-foot rambling ranch home.”
Gabor was in Europe and couldn’t be reached for comment, but she paid $1.75 million for the ranch, according to public records.
DARIAN MATHIAS, an actress who recently appeared on ABC-TV’s “Growing Pains,” and Steven Bijan at Mike Glickman Realty’s Woodland Hills office, co-listed the property, which had been owned by Mr. and Mrs. Mitchell McClure, owners of Courtesy Chevrolet in Thousand Oaks. Mathias once rode a horse through the office to promote the ranch to fellow agents.
TOM SELLECK has put his Wilshire Boulevard bachelor pad on the market at $950,000.
He bought the one-bedroom, 2 1/2-bath condo new in March, 1984, while starring in the “Magnum, P.I.” TV series, filmed mostly in Hawaii. “He didn’t want to camp out at his folks’ house when he came home to visit in L.A.,” a spokesman for Selleck explained.
The actor reportedly decided to sell the 16th-floor, 1,828-square-foot unit--with a wet bar, fireplace, den, built-in wine storage, spa in the master bath, knotty-pine double-door entry and used-brick covered balconies--because he got married and became a father.
After buying the unit, he married dancer Jillie Mack, and they became parents of a daughter, Hannah. A year ago last fall, the Sellecks purchased two houses in Southern California: one, which they are remodeling, on L.A.’s Westside; the other, where they spend most of their time, in Ventura County. The condo is listed with the Selleck Co. in Woodland Hills, a consulting and marketing firm headed by Bob Selleck, the actor’s father.
LIBERACE’S Palm Springs house is being purchased, with escrow to close in a couple of months, at $750,000.
After the pianist died there in February, 1987, the villa became the property of his Liberace Foundation, which gives music scholarships to colleges nationwide, mainly through funds raised at the Liberace Museum in Las Vegas. The foundation put the house on the market at $850,000 in November, 1988, after failing to get city approval to turn it into a museum.
Before Liberace bought the villa in 1967, it was a small hotel known as The Cloisters, though it was built as a mansion in 1926.
The buyer, whose name is Stefan Hemming, has the right to negotiate separately for any of Liberace’s belongings remaining in the house. Some were removed months ago and are on display in the Liberace Museum. Others may be auctioned later.
Liberace owned four houses at various times in Palm Springs, and the one that is said to be his first has just been put on the market at $400,000, including furnishings.
The house also will be one of four on a March 4 home tour sponsored by the American Assn. of University Women. Tickets, at $10 each, may be obtained from the Palm Springs Historical Society or Palm Springs, Palm Desert or Rancho Mirage chambers of commerce.
The three-bedroom, three-bath, 2,800-square-foot house was built in the mid-’50s for actress Mae West, but Liberace bought it instead, adding a piano-shaped pool, indoor Japanese and Roman tubs, outside mirrors, a chandelier and a dining-room mural with caricatures of himself at the piano, flanked by Frank Sinatra, Dinah Shore, Bob Hope and Debbie Reynolds.
Palm Desert residents Larry Seaward and his wife, Mary, bought the house last May as an investment. It had been used as a rental and was in need of work.
“I’ve had a lot of fun with it,” Seaward said. “I’m just a retired guy who buys things and plays around with them, but I’m not that handy. I hired some painters and gardeners, and we had a contractor put on a new roof.” The house is listed with Dale Erickson in the Palm Springs office of Great Western Real Estate.
