‘Genie’ Waves Wand on Home
BARBARA EDEN, best known for her starring role as a mischievous genie in the 1965-70 sitcom “I Dream of Jeannie,” is just completing a two-year rehab of her Beverly Hills area home.
Eden will appear Oct. 20 on NBC in “I Still Dream of Jeannie,” a made-for-TV movie sequel to her hit NBC series. The air date coincides with the 25th anniversary of the sitcom’s first season.
She co-starred in 1990 with John Forsythe in the NBC movie “Opposites Attract” and this year with Heather Locklear in the CBS movie “Her Wicked Ways.”
Eden gutted her 4,000-square-foot house and is spending more than $500,000 to redo it. She bought the house 14 years ago, when it was being built.
Since beginning the remodeling, she turned one of the five bedrooms into a closet, replaced all the windows, installed French doors and hardwood floors, and rebuilt the baths and kitchen.
“I was eight months with no kitchen,” she said. The original kitchen was rustic with walnut paneling and red-brick accents.
“It was also a country kitchen that men flipped over, but I didn’t know I was going to get married when I started the project,” she said. In January, Eden married Jon Eicholtz, who is developing apartment complexes in Rancho Cucamonga.
“I decided to make the whole house brighter, so we sandblasted, plastered and painted to make it lighter and to take advantage of the views,” she said.
Her home, which is in a canyon, has views of the hills. The house also has a redwood deck, swimming pool and paddle tennis court.
“We’re putting a new roof on the house in a couple of weeks,” she said. The roof is the final phase of her remodeling project.
The former Beverly Hills home of PRINCESS SHAMS, sister of the late Shah of Iran, has been sold to hair-products creator Vidal Sassoon for $5 million, sources say.
The 1.5-acre property had been for sale since October, 1989, when a young couple from Texas listed it with Beverly Hills realtor Bruce Nelson at $6.4 million. The couple bought it in July of the same year for $4.9 million.
Before the couple purchased it, the home had been tied up in litigation for a few years, with millions of dollars in liens filed against it by the Iranian government, sources say.
Sassoon plans to renovate the three-bedroom, 6,000-square-foot-plus main house and two-bedroom guest house, which stand on a secluded knoll, reached from a 300-foot-long private drive.
Built about 30 years ago, the one-story home has been described as “a classic contemporary” of steel and glass, designed by architect Hal Leavitt. The main house has walls of glass with a view of the Los Angeles Basin.
Sassoon plans to add a 35-foot-long lap pool to the 50-foot-long, indoor/outdoor swimming pool “so he can walk to his lanai and swim out to the gardens,” a source said.
He has been living in a condo on Wilshire Boulevard but is getting married again and wanted a house for his bride, sources said.
Country/pop singer JIMMIE RODGERS has put his Thousand Oaks home on the market in readiness to move with his wife and child to Washington state, where he has some property to develop, sources said.
Rodgers--who recorded such late-’50s, early-’60s hits as “Honeycomb,” “Secretly,” “Kisses Sweeter Than Wine”--has been writing songs for other performing artists in recent years. He has owned the Thousand Oaks residence for the past 11 years.
The home has four bedrooms, three baths, a tennis court and a koi pond. It’s listed at $420,000 with Pat Klein and Eileen Platt at Fred Sands’ Westlake Village office.
Character actor JOHN MAHONEY, who appears in the recently released film “Barton Fink” and played actress Olympia Dukakis’ date in the 1987 movie “Moonstruck,” has leased a two-bedroom home with city-to-ocean views and a pool in the Sunset Strip area, sources say.
Mahoney has moved here from Chicago to work on the upcoming CBS, medical-drama series “The Human Factor,” a source said. Value of the six-month lease was estimated at $18,000.
Vida Namouli of Asher Dann & Associates had the listing, and Myra Braham of Coldwell Banker, Hancock Park, represented Mahoney. Neither was available for comment.
Comedian/actor BLAKE CLARK has purchased a newly built five-bedroom house in the Northridge community of Ridgegate, where wrestler Hulk Hogan also has a home.
Clark played the chauffeur in the (1982-87) “Remington Steele” TV detective series, appeared in the 1985 film “St. Elmo’s Fire” and will be seen in the soon-to-be-released movie “Dark Wind,” a source said.
He’s also appeared in HBO Comedy Specials as well as the “Tonight” and “David Letterman” TV shows.
Clark’s new home is a 4,000-square-foot, two-story traditional. He paid in the $600,000 range, a source said.
Selling agents were Kay Dickey and Andrew Manning of Fred Sands’ Studio City office.
