For Eddie, It’s Time for ‘Another’
EDDIE MURPHY, whose newest film “Another 48 HRS.” has grossed about $75 million since its release June 11, has put the Benedict Canyon house he bought a couple of years ago from CHER on the market at $9 million.
“He wants something (nearby) that is gated and is in a gate-guarded community, because people bother him by ringing his doorbell all the time,” said Barbara Robinson, who has the listing with Alvarez, Hyland & Young in Beverly Hills.
“He also wants something more traditional, like his New Jersey residence, with a guest house and more rooms.”
The actor/comedian calls his Beverly Hills-area home his “Moroccan villa,” Robinson said. Its exterior is off-white, like many homes in northern Morocco, but it is furnished in the Egyptian decor designed for Cher. The house also has a moat around it.
The actress/singer built the two-story, 10,000-square-foot-plus house about 10 years ago on 3 1/2 acres with rolling lawns, towering palms, a swimming pool and a long, private driveway behind massive gates.
The house has an atrium in the living room, with a skylight that can be opened electronically. Murphy added a projection room.
It also has six bedrooms, eight baths, a gym, formal dining and family rooms, and a breakfast area in the kitchen.
Murphy bought the mansion, furnished, for about $6.3 million.
PETER GUBER, co-chairman of Columbia Pictures Entertainment, has just finished converting the oceanfront Malibu Colony house he bought about a year ago for $4.5 million into what a neighbor describes as “the perfect Japanese house,” with Japanese roof tiles and landscaping.
“The funny thing is, he decided that a Japanese house is what he wanted before (Tokyo-based) Sony Corp. bought Columbia,” the neighbor observed.
The house was what she termed “a white, pseudo-modern” remodel of a home built in 1928, but the four-bedroom, 3,661-square-foot rehab already had an indoor spa and a tearoom in it when Guber bought it.
Professional golfer MARK O’MEARA, who won the National Pro-Am at Pebble Beach this year for the second consecutive year and is one of the top players on the PGA tour money list, has listed his Escondido residence, with a putting green, at $695,000.
“He’s moving to Florida,” said a spokeswoman for Great Western Real Estate, which has the listing through Betty and Wayne Ferrell, in the firm’s Escondido office.
O’Meara has lived in the four-bedroom, 2 3/4-bath house--with about 3,000 square feet--since he bought it new five years ago.
After moving into the two-story home, he hired John Lamrock, a designer involved in the development of the Carmel Mountain Ranch golf course, to create a practice area in the back yard.
Lamrock created a regulation putting green, covering nearly 2,400 square feet of O’Meara’s 1.13-acre property, which also has a swimming pool, spa, fire pit and mature fruit-bearing trees. The putting green has three holes and two sand traps and is lighted for evening play.
Veteran TV news anchorman JESS MARLOW and his wife, Phyllis, have put their home in southwest Pasadena on the market at $1,275,000.
“They’re building a much larger house for themselves in back of the one they have for sale,” said Maureen Moller, who has the listing with Coldwell Banker in San Marino.
The Marlows completely refurbished the existing 3,650-square-foot house after they purchased it a couple of years ago for close to $800,000, according to public records.
“The house was old and in need of work,” Moller said.
Built in 1910, the Craftsman-style home has four bedrooms, 3 1/2 baths, a basement, garden room, swimming pool and spa.
FRANK AGRAMA, who produced the NBC miniseries “Around the World in Eighty Days,” is connecting a townhouse that he acquired in May to one he previously owned in the master-planned community of MountainGate in Brentwood.
Agrama, whose Harmony Gold film production and distribution company is working on a miniseries to air in December that stars Patrick Macnee and Morgan Fairchild as “Sherlock Holmes and the Leading Lady,” wasn’t content with the size of his 4,500-square-foot townhouse. So he bought a townhouse across the street for $1.05 million, then traded his new purchase for a townhouse next door to the one he owned earlier.
Now he’s combining the two contiguous units for a total of 8,700 square feet. Construction is costing him more than $600,000, and the work is expected to be completed in three months.
John Phillips of Petrick & Associates Realtors handled the sale of the town house across the street.
RANDY PHILLIPS, whose management firm of Stiefel/Phillips Entertainment handles Rod Stewart and Prince, has purchased a five-bedroom, five-bath Mediterranean-style estate in the Beverly Hills Post Office area for about $2 million.
Phillips plans to totally remodel the 3,533-square-foot house, built in 1927 and last rehabbed extensively in 1950. He formerly lived in a smaller home in Benedict Canyon.
He bought the property from Don Fletcher, a former executive of 20th Century Fox, and his wife, Linda. They moved to Bel-Air.
Deborah Moore and Syri Stoll of Asher Dann & Associates represented Phillips, and Drew Mandile of Alvarez, Hyland & Young represented the seller.
