New Home for ‘Mrs. Walton’
Actress MICHAEL LEARNED, who played the mother on the popular CBS series “The Waltons,” and her husband of about a month, Los Angeles attorney John Doherty, have purchased a $1-million pied-a-terre in the Beverly Hills area. They plan to maintain their apartment in New York.
Learned won three Emmys for “The Waltons,” which aired from 1972 to 1981, and she won a fourth Emmy for the 1981 series “The Nurse” on CBS.
She co-starred in March with Richard Chamberlain in the CBS movie “Aftermath: The Test of Love.” Last year she co-starred with James Arness in the CBS movie “Gunsmoke: The Last Apache.”
Learned, who is a native of Connecticut, was living in Los Angeles in 1971 when she landed the part of Olivia Walton, but she moved to New York City when she made the 1980 pilot for “Nurse.”
The Westside home that she and her husband bought has four bedrooms and four baths in about 3,000 square feet. It’s a two-story French Traditional built in 1970 but remodeled after the seller, charity fund-raiser Marion Rubenstein, bought it in 1983.
“It’s a great house for entertaining with its gourmet kitchen and French doors leading from the dining room to a brick terrace,” said Jackie Bright of Mike Silverman & Associates, who had the listing.
Rubenstein held many fund-raisers there with as many as 200 guests at a time, Bright added. She described the house as “a canyon retreat” in the Beverly Hills Post Office area.
Donna Fields of Prudential Rodeo Realty represented the buyers.
Pop singer JANET JACKSON, who signed a recording contract worth an estimated $32-million in March, has purchased the Malibu home of Gale Anne Hurd, producer of the sci-fi movies “Aliens” and “The Terminator.”
Jackson paid the $4.5-million asking price, including furnishings, sources said.
The house has a second-floor master suite with ocean view, two guest bedrooms, a screening room and a gym, all in about 4,000 square feet. It also has about 70 feet of Carbon Beach frontage.
The contemporary-style home was described by a real estate source as “very white, with a museum feel to it, built so it would present art well.”
Hurd bought the property last June, then extensively remodeled the 26-year-old house before moving into it herself, a source said. Hurd is moving to Woodside, a heavily wooded area near Palo Alto, another source added.
Last fall, Jackson paid about $4 million for a newly built, 10,000-square-foot home with six bedrooms on a 2.1-acre hill overlooking Rancho Santa Fe Farms, a new community contiguous to Fairbanks Ranch in northern San Diego County.
Ellen Francisco co-listed the Malibu home with Steve Lewis, both of Douglas Properties. Carol Rapf of Jim Rapf & Associates, Malibu, represented Jackson. None of the realtors would comment on the transaction. Jackson took title in the name of a trust.
BRUCE WILLIS, star of the “Die Hard” movies, and his wife, “Ghost” co-star DEMI MOORE, have decided to sell the Beverly Hills area home where they stayed while their main residence, in Malibu, was being built.
The couple, who appear together in the film “Mortal Thoughts”--which she also co-produced--is asking $2 million for the home on Mulholland Drive, in the Beverly Hills Post Office area.
The home has three bedrooms in 3,000 square feet and maid/guest quarters over a two-car garage, all behind electric gates and down a long, private driveway on five acres.
The property is being sold for land value only, “because the house, which is more than 30 years old, needs work. Most people would want to remodel or add on,” said listing agent Silva Mirzoian at RE/MAX Estate Properties, Beverly Hills.
Willis and Moore, who were married in 1987, are one of the most successful husband-wife acting teams in Hollywood. Besides their contemporary home on the water at Carbon Beach, they also own a triplex penthouse in Manhattan. They bought the Art Deco co-op last year for $8 million.
They have a 2 1/2-year-old daughter, Rumer, and are expecting their second child this summer.
Actor JOE PANTOLIANO has closed escrow on a Santa Monica house, which he plans to expand and extensively remodel, according to sources not involved in the deal.
Pantoliano co-stars, as the hustler Dominic, on NBC’s “The Fanelli Boys,” which is on hiatus. Among his movie roles were Guido the pimp in “Risky Business,” a punk rocker named Snake in “Running Scared” and Richie Vallens’ manager in “La Bamba.”
The house that he bought, for $385,000, has two bedrooms in about 3,000 square feet, sources said. He has put his 1,500-square-foot, recently remodeled Venice house on the market at $439,000.
The Venice house has a mural in it painted by Pantoliano’s friend and fellow actor Lou Diamond Phillips.
Mike Delamater and Leslie Kirk of Fred Sands’ Santa Monica office share the listing and represented Pantoliano in his purchase, the sources said.
Leasing tidbits . . . A number of East Coast-based celebrities have rented homes for two to six months on the Westside, sources say.
Among them are actors Ben Kingsley and Robert De Niro, white rapper Vanilla Ice, and actress Ellen Barkin and her actor husband, Gabriel Byrne, who rented a house owned by actor Harry Hamlin. Stan Herman & Associates handled the deals.
