Settling Into 56,500 Sq. Ft.
Producer AARON SPELLING and his wife, CANDY, are making themselves at home in “The Manor,” their newly built, 56,500-square-foot chateau in Holmby Hills, and they’ve put their former, more modest residence of 16 years on the market.
Spelling, who just co-produced the movie comedy “Soapdish”--starring Kevin Kline and Sally Field, is in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most prolific TV producer of all time, with such series as “Love Boat,” “Dynasty” and “Hotel.” To view all of the TV episodes he ever produced would take 3 1/2 months, the record book says.
The Spellings’ new home is about as big as a football field in terms of total square feet--a fact that generated considerable publicity and some neighborhood consternation during its nearly five years of construction.
Now that the landscaping has been completed, the size of the megamansion--which includes a bowling alley and a full-size ice rink--is less apparent. Candy Spelling oversaw the design but credits architect Jim Langenheim, interior decorator Bob Dally and landscape consultant Phil Shipley for their input.
Shipley selected more than 60 fully grown trees for the six-acre site, which once belonged to singer Bing Crosby. “One of the joys no one has written about is a beautiful 40-foot lily pond. We spend hours admiring it,” Candy said.
“I think one of the most unique things about our home is a large, formal rose garden planted on top of the garage with a stairway leading up to it,” she added.
“And another thing we’ve never mentioned is a lovely French wine and cheese room, furnished with sidewalk tables and chairs and French music. With my husband’s work, we have no time to get to Paris, so it’s a little touch of the Left Bank here.”
The Spellings’ former home is three blocks away, on the same street. Designed by the late architect Paul Williams, the two-story Colonial was built in the late 1930s, but the Spellings added a large projection room.
The gated home also has five bedrooms and two maids’ quarters in about 12,000 square feet on 1.2 acres with a tennis court, pool and what has been described as “a sweeping lawn.” Bruce Nelson has the $6.85-million listing at his John Bruce Nelson & Associates, Beverly Hills.
JOHN DAVIS, executive producer of the 1988 teen movie “License to Drive” and son of billionaire industrialist Marvin Davis, has closed escrow on a Bel-Air house that is still under construction, say sources not involved in the $7-million-plus sale.
The Tuscan-style home will be more than 15,000 square feet in size when completed in a year or two. The home, which is about half completed, has a private motor court, huge terraces and a pool, all on just under an acre. Davis, who has been living in Malibu, is building a tennis court.
A 4,000-square-foot home owned by music conductor Roger Wagner was razed to make way for the new house, designed by architect Peter Choate, who has also designed homes for such celebrities as Anne Bancroft, Mel Brooks and Doug Cramer, other sources said.
The house is being developed by Don Caverhill, who was represented in the sale by his former brokerage partner Linda May, who is now with Fred Sands Estates. Vicki Risko, also with Sands’ Estates division, represented Davis. None was available for comment.
THOMAS SPIEGEL, the former Columbia Savings chairman who has been accused by regulators of squandering millions of the seized thrift’s funds, has put his home in the flats of Beverly Hills on the market at $9.5 million.
The house was not built by Columbia, which once bragged that it was the nation’s best-run savings and loan and had a division that constructed many Beverly Hills homes during the 1980s.
Built about five years ago, Spiegel’s gated home has six bedrooms in an estimated 10,000 square feet on an acre with a motor court, swimming pool, tennis court and entertainment pavilion. Ruth Hoffman of Mike Silverman & Associates has the listing.
Probate court has confirmed a $4.78-million bid by soap-opera producer WILLIAM J. BELL on the former Bel-Air home of the late Dolly Green, the last surviving child of Beverly Hills co-founder Burton Green.
Green, who died last September, had owned the 1 1/3-acre property--with gardens and a pool--since the early ‘70s. Asking price, when the estate came on the market in January, was $6.9 million.
Designed by the late architect Wallace Neff, the Mediterranean-style villa was built in 1932 for producer Sol Wurtzel. It has four bedrooms and two maids’ rooms in about 9,000 square feet.
John A. Woodward IV, estates director, Jon Douglas Co., had the listing, and Judy Leach, also of the Douglas Co., represented Bell, who is executive producer of “The Bold and the Beautiful” and “The Young and the Restless.”
DOROTHY KINGSLEY--who wrote the screenplays for such movies as “Kiss Me Kate,” “Can Can,” “Pal Joey,” “Don’t Go Near the Water,” “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” and “Angels in the Outfield”--has listed her Carmel Valley winery and home for $13.5 million.
She’s working on a TV movie remake of “Angels in the Outfield” with her sons Dennis Durney as producer and Terry Durney as co-writer, said listing agent Patty Mortensen of Jon Douglas Co.’s Brentwood office.
Kingsley, who lives most of the time at her Pebble Beach home, owned the Carmel property, known as “Rancho Del Sueno,” with her husband, Richard Durney, who died recently.
The couple bought the nearly 1,000-acre site in 1954. They established their winery, which has an annual capacity of 16,000 cases, in 1968.
“They built everything,” Mortensen said. There is a two-bedroom main house with a pool; two-bedroom guest house with pool; winery, wine-tasting room and chapel, featured on the wine label. The property also has horse trails, a bass-fishing pond, quail, deer and wild boar.
Producer/director SYLVIO TABET says he is not moving to Europe, as was reported--based on incorrect information provided to The Times--in this space last week.
