Record Mogul Spins a Deal

Record mogul DAVID GEFFEN, who bought the late movie producer Jack Warner’s Beverly Hills estate last May for $47.5 million, has purchased lyricist/composer JERRY HERMAN’s house in the Sunset Strip area for about $3 million, sources say.

“He’ll probably use Jerry’s house as a pied-a-terre, “ a realtor suggested. The L-shaped house, on a knoll at the end of a cul-de-sac, has two bedrooms, a pool and a 180-degree view from downtown to the ocean.

Geffen, the son of a Brooklyn brassiere maker, sold his record company to MCA last spring for $545 million in stock. At the time, his company was representing Guns N’ Roses, Don Henley, Aerosmith, Whitesnake and Cher. Earlier, he produced such Broadway hits as “Dreamgirls,” “Cats” and “Little Shop of Horrors.”

He has been renting in the Beverly Hills area while fixing up the nine-acre Warner property. He’s already hired a construction company to put in a spa and deck off a bedroom of Herman’s former home.

Herman--who composed “Hello, Dolly!” “La Cage aux Folles” and “Mame”--bought the 3,500-square-foot house last July for $50,000 less than Geffen paid for it, a source said. “But Jerry put $50,000 into it, so he didn’t make anything on it.”

One reason Herman was anxious to sell is that he has so many bookings outside of Los Angeles. “He felt guilty letting a house, which he paid $3.3 million for, sit empty,” another realtor said.

Herman also owns three houses in Palm Beach, Fla., as well as a $2.5-million home in Connecticut, he added. “He felt it was too much of a strain at this time to keep them all. He still plans to sell two of the Florida homes.”

Like Herman, Geffen owns other real estate, including a vacant “fixer-upper” in Beverly Hills that is on the market at $2.95 million. He also owns a view-oriented home on a few lots at Carbon Beach, which a Malibu real estate broker estimated is worth $10 million to $15 million.

Geffen’s deals to acquire the Herman house and the Warner estate both closed escrow within 10 days, and neither transaction involved any realtors.

ALAN THICKE, co-star of ABC’s sitcom “Growing Pains,” has remodeled a French villa that he bought about a year ago in the Doheny Hills area, north of the Sunset Strip, and he’s put it back on the market at $1.85 million.

The home has three bedrooms in about 3,200 square feet.

“It’s a bachelor house with a view overlooking the city, but it could also be for a couple,” said Margie Oswald, who shares the listing with Craig Blanchard and Joyce Rey at Prudential Rodeo Realty. Thicke is living in the San Fernando Valley with his two sons.

The late actor Errol Flynn’s Hollywood Hills estate has been sold to RANDY MILLER, president and co-founder of New York Seltzer.

“The estate has four totally landscaped acres, a beautiful pool, tennis court and forest,” said Denise Fraker, who represented the buyer and sellers through Jon Douglas Co.’s Beverly Hills office.

“The only thing missing is the house,” Fraker said.

The sellers, Stephen and Judith Weis, tore down the residence, built by Flynn in the late 1920s. The late pop singer Rick Nelson, who also owned the property, was the last person to live in the house, Fraker said.

“It was OK for my client, the buyer, because he wants to build a house,” she added.

The property sold for close to its $4.3-million asking price, said sources not involved in the deal.

JERRY PERENCHIO, who sold the TV production company that he owned with Norman Lear for $485 million in 1985, will move in June into the Bel-Air estate he has been remodeling and expanding almost since he bought it in 1986, sources say.

The 10-bedroom home, known as the Kirkeby Estate and as the house used in the 1960s CBS sitcom “The Beverly Hillbillies,” has been undergoing a $9-million-plus rehab, which includes an underground motor court said to be large enough for 30 cars.

Perenchio, who also co-produced “Driving Miss Daisy,” paid $13.6 million for the property, then bought three adjacent homes for slightly more than $9 million, making his 11.5-acre estate the largest in Bel-Air. He also owns a compound in Malibu Colony.

A Palm Springs home owned for years by the late actor WILLIAM HOLDEN has been reduced to $750,000 from $1 million.

Holden bought the three-bedroom estate, with a pool and a guest house, soon after the 1957 release of “Sayonara,” in which he starred. He sold the house to the current owner and died shortly afterward, in 1981 at the age of 63.

Holden was an avid collector of Oriental furnishings and art objects. Some of the furnishings remain in the house and are available at extra cost, said listing broker Fred W. Robertson, owner of Southwest Realty Inc.