Mad Max Hits Beach, Part 2
MEL GIBSON, who will play murdered CBS correspondent George Polk in an upcoming film based on Kati Marton’s book “The Polk Conspiracy,” has purchased a rustic, Malibu beach house for close to its asking price of about $2.5 million.
Gibson--who co-stars in “Lethal Weapon 3,” which is filming in Lancaster--starred in “Hamlet,” “Bird on a Wire” and “Mad Max.” The Australian native also narrated the 1991 TV special “Australia: Continent of Dreams.”
He bought the Malibu home, with 65 feet of beach, for his family, sources say. Gibson has five children.
Built in the 1940s, the home has five bedrooms and four baths in about 2,500 square feet, behind gates. The sale included plans for a 5,000-square-foot, Southwestern-style house with a swimming pool and waterfall.
Gibson has owned a house in Malibu since March, 1989, when he bought the former, three-bedroom home of actor/singer/songwriter Rick Springfield for about $3 million. That house is in the Serra Retreat area.
Alan Mark of Fred Sands Estates and Bob Rubenstein of Malibu Realty shared the listing on Gibson’s latest purchase, and they also represent two other houses for sale on the same street at about $5 million each. Neither realtor was available for comment.
JOAN COLLINS, who is starring in Noel Coward’s “Private Lives” in one- and two-week engagements across the country, has leased out her Beverly Hills home for a month at an estimated $35,000, said sources not involved in the transaction.
Collins, best known for her TV role as Alexis Carrington Colby on “Dynasty,” ends her one-week run of “Private Lives” at the National Theatre in Washington, D.C., today.
Gerald and Vera Weisfeld, who owned a discount department-store chain in the United Kingdom, leased Collins’ Beverly Hills mansion.
The gated home, on a private knoll with spectacular city views, has a four-bedroom main dwelling and a two-story guest house.
The home was built in the 1960s for actor Laurence Harvey, with whom Collins made her screen debut, at age 17, in “I’ll Be Leaving You.” After Harvey, comedienne Totie Fields owned the estate, which Collins bought in 1986 for about $2 million before refurbishing it.
Ruth Hoffman of Mike Silverman & Associates represented the Weisfelds, and Paris Realty represented Collins.
NANETTE FABRAY, who starred in the just-closed West Coast premiere of “Club of Hearts” at the La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts, has put her Pacific Palisades home of 27 years on the market at just under $2 million.
The Emmy- and Tony-award-winning actress--who starred on stage with Danny Kaye, Ray Bolger and Phil Silvers and appeared in Sid Caesar’s TV show before having her own series, “Yes, Yes Nanette” in 1961--decided to sell her house, “because she’s on her own, and it’s too big a place for her,” said a spokeswoman for Fred Sands Realtors.
Fabray, widowed for many years, listed her traditional, ranch-style house with three bedroom suites and two maids’ quarters or guest apartment with Dennis Frusciano and Cynthia Satterfield of Sands’ Pacific Palisades office.
The home was built in 1938 and is on nearly an acre, behind gates and zoned for horses.
RANDY QUAID, who appears weekly as Dwight Davis on Jonathan Winters’ sitcom “Davis Rules,” has sold his two-bedroom, weekend cottage in Montecito for $1.1 million.
He bought the one-story home, on slightly under an acre, in October, 1989, for $1.35 million, sources say.
MICHAEL MURPHY--who plays the mayor of Gotham in “Batman Returns,” expected to be released in June--has sold his three-bedroom house on Las Flores Beach in Malibu for nearly $1 million.
Murphy has homes in New York City and Kennebunkport, Me.
Posey Carpentier Realty handled both sides of the Malibu deal.
D. DAVID MORIN, who played a documentary photographer in Bette Midler’s movie “For the Boys” and appears regularly in TV commercials as “the Mazda man” and for American Express, has completed a major remodel of his home in gated Laughlin Park, where comedienne Lily Tomlin and actor Lee Horsley live.
Laughlin Park is in the Los Feliz area, where Morin grew up.
He turned his 2,600-square-foot adobe into a contemporary Santa Fe, ranch-style house. It has a Sedona red exterior accented with Taos blue trim.
Built in 1961, the house was purchased by Morin in 1987 for $300,000. With its improvements, the home is worth nearly $1 million, he figures. Morin still plans to expand the home onto an adjacent lot, which he also owns.
