Ol’ Blue Eyes Buys Beach Tear-Down
FRANK SINATRA and his wife, BARBARA, have purchased an oceanfront tear-down in Malibu for about $3 million, public records show.
They bought on Broad Beach, where such other celebrities as Dustin Hoffman, Steven Spielberg, Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau and Dinah Shore live.
“The Sinatras got a fabulous buy,” said Robert Rubenstein of Malibu Realty Inc., who didn’t participate in the transaction but has listings on some new homes on the same street at about $9 million each.
“The lots for my listings were sold for $3 million each, and that didn’t include a house,” Rubenstein said. “He (Sinatra) can call his a remodel and not have to go through all the Coastal Commission hearings (that new construction entails); that adds up to a good savings.”
The Sinatras’ property, about a third of an acre, has a two-story, 31-year-old house on it with five bedrooms and 4 1/2 baths in 2,858 square feet.
The Sinatras’ architect, Ted Grenzbach, was unavailable for comment, and the real estate broker who handled both sides of the deal, Jerry Pritchett, said he couldn’t discuss the transaction or the Sinatras’ plans.
Ol’ Blue Eyes, who sang to a sellout Radio City Music Hall crowd in May at the age of 74 and shared the bill with comedian Don Rickles in a program last Sunday on Long Island, also has a home in Beverly Hills. He bought that property in 1986, just before he sold a bachelor pad that he built nearby in the late 1940s.
The singer/actor’s main residence is a nine-home compound in Rancho Mirage.
SHELLY GARRETT, former actor-turned-playwright and producer, just purchased a new house in Walnut for $870,000, and he’s already customizing it by changing a game room into a theater and adding a black-bottom swimming pool with caves, according to the listing agent.
The house has six bedrooms, 5 1/2 baths and about 6,300 square feet. It’s in a quiet area with equestrian trails.
“He bought it so he could have a place to write,” said the listing agent, Pamela Blakeslee of Century 21/Young Realty in West Covina, “but he travels a lot, because he has several shows on the road.”
Garrett, who produced beauty pageants to pay his bills while struggling as a TV actor with bit parts in such programs as “Baretta” and “Police Woman,” has emerged as one of the first successful black presenters of theatrical comedy since his play “Beauty Shop” was a sellout in Los Angeles last year.
Even former Presidents apparently aren’t immune from real estate slumps:
RICHARD M. NIXON and his wife, PAT, have dropped the asking price on their seven-bedroom, Saddle River, N.J., home from $3.25 million to $2,995,000. The 7,000- to 8,000-square-foot house, on four acres, came on the market in May.
And HARRY REINSCH, former president of Bechtel Corp., and his wife, HELEN, have reduced the price on their South Laguna home from $22 million to $12.9 million--”but not in one drop,” said Betty Comegys of Waterfront Homes, who has the listing. “They reduced it to $18 million in January.”
The 18,500-square-foot house, on slightly more than an acre, was listed a year ago June, about the same time that two nearby homes also came on the market at $22 million, the highest price known to be asked for a private home in Orange County. Those homes also have been reduced, one to $18 million; the other, to $15.9 million.
JULIAN LENNON is on the move again:
For the third time in less than three years, the pop musician, son of the late John Lennon, is changing residences.
He was due to close escrow after our press time last week on a home in the Beverly Hills Post Office Area at close to its $1,525,000 asking price, and he’s put the home he bought last October, off Mulholland Drive, on the market at $1,295,000.
He bought that home when he sold an estate in the Santa Monica Mountains that was used as the site of a World War II bunker.
“He’s selling the home he bought last year because he likes the other house (that he just purchased),” said Erin Caldwell, a vice president of Alvarez, Hyland & Young, who represented Lennon in his purchase and has his listing.
“He likes the views, trees, big lawn and pool; he likes the country feel to it, with its pitched beam ceilings. And he likes its privacy.”
His new home is off a private drive and has three bedrooms and two baths in a 3,000-square-foot main house, which was built 55 years ago but has been completely remodeled, according to Caldwell. The property, about a third of an acre, also has a guest apartment.
The home that he’s just listed--a gated, 1930s Mediterranean-style residence--has three bedrooms, three baths, a used-brick motor court for six cars; a black-bottom swimming pool, fountains, ponds, orchids and ferns.
Music producer DON WAS, whose 11-member band Was (Not Was) released its album “Are You Okay?” in July, has purchased a two-acre estate on Mulholland Drive in the Beverly Hills Post Office Area for nearly its $1.5-million asking price, sources say.
The property has a recently remodeled three-bedroom, 5,000-square-foot main house and a two-bedroom, 1,000-square-foot guest house, both with views of the San Fernando Valley. Was had been living in the Hollywood Hills.
Jeanine Sales of Stan Herman & Associates represented both parties in the transaction.
Director/screenwriter DAVID TWOHY bought a get-away home for himself in Big Bear.
Twohy directed “The Grand Tour,” which filmed this spring in Oregon and stars Jeff Daniels, and he wrote the screenplay for “The Fugitive,” which will begin production soon for Warner Bros.
Twohy’s mountain hideaway has four bedrooms and three baths in 2,000 square feet. He paid $350,000.
The 34-year-old bachelor, who was working nights as a bartender until recently, also owns a 1,500-square-foot condo in Santa Monica.
