Innkeeper opts for More Room

BOB NEWHART, whose new CBS comedy, “Bob,” will debut this fall, and his wife, Virginia, have sold their former Bel-Air home to soap star DEIDRE HALL and her husband, novelist/producer STEVE SOHMER.

Newhart, whose “Bob Newhart Show” of the 1970s and “Newhart” of the 1980s were monster hits for CBS, will go from playing an innkeeper on his most recent show to a comic book artist on his new series.

Hall, who has played a psychiatrist on the NBC soap “Days of Our Lives” on and off for about 17 years, returned last week from shooting the NBC movie “Woman on the Ledge” in Vancouver.

Sohmer, who married Hall last New Year’s Eve, is a former studio executive who wrote the best-selling thriller “Favorite Son” and produced it as a miniseries on NBC in 1988. He has been overseeing story development for a proposed soap spinoff, in which Hall would star.

Newhart, 62, put the home on the market about 15 months ago, after buying a seven-bedroom, Bel-Air estate for about $4 million. The Newharts’ new home, slightly larger than 6,000 square feet on nearly 1.5 acres, was designed by the late Wallace Neff and built in the 1940s.

The Newharts’ former home, just under 6,000 square feet on less than an acre, was built in 1932 and has four bedrooms, seven baths, maid’s quarters, a guest apartment, office and motor court. It sold for about $3 million, sources say.

Sohmer, 50, and Hall, 44, were married in his four-bedroom wing of a condo-ized, 17th-Century manor home 80 miles northwest of London. Hall and Sohmer have both owned other homes, but the Bel-Air house will be their first residence together.

They will redecorate it and have it ready for the holidays, said her publicist, who added, “They will have a baby in a few weeks’ time, so the first room they will start on is the nursery.” The couple is having a baby with a surrogate mother, he said.

Joan Bodensteiner of Jon Douglas Co. had the listing, and Marilyn Nelson Potts and Rose Borne of Stan Herman & Associates represented Hall, along with Jana Jones of Alvarez, Hyland & Young.

Singer/songwriter DON McLEAN, whose “American Pie” was recently reissued for its 20th anniversary, enjoys his real estate almost as much as his singing and songwriting.

“I love houses,” he said by phone a few days ago. “I like to fix them up and decorate them from the ground up.”

Over the years, he has acquired a number of houses. There’s the home on his six-acre farm in Garrison, N.Y., that he rents out at about $2,000 a month. There are three houses on his 200-acre, Camden, Me., property, which he rents out at about $700 a month each.

He also owns two other houses in Maine, one with 15 rooms and another with 20, where he, his wife and their 2-year-old daughter live.

McLean, 47, said he turned down an offer to rent his 200-acre property to actor MEL GIBSON at $25,000 a month for the summer.

“It’s one of those things,” McLean remarked. “I rent out my property in New York, but I don’t rent anyplace else except for the rentals I have in Camden.”

A spokeswoman for Gibson on location in Maine said that she was unaware of the offer but that the actor had found another place to live temporarily.

The 200-acre estate, which he bought last year, has a theater and a tennis court, and it overlooks a 20-mile lake. “You can see over the lake to the ocean,” he said.

When he’s not working on his houses, McLean writes and records songs. He just finished a video for “Headroom,” his latest album, and he wrote some songs for the Broadway-style musical “Till Tomorrow,” which will open in England in September or October.

Two Palm Springs homes owned at various times by LIBERACE are back on the market.

The house where the entertainer lived for 20 years and died in 1987 has been listed at $1.25 million, and his first Palm Springs home, which he bought in 1958 and sold in 1962, is for sale at $265,000.

“I enjoyed fixing up the place, but I’m retired and don’t want to play with it anymore,” said Larry Seaward of Palm Desert, who has owned the smaller home, with his wife Mary, since 1988.

The three-bedroom, 2,800-square-foot house has a piano-shaped pool and a mural with caricatures of Liberace, Frank Sinatra, Rudolph Valentino, Marilyn Monroe and Bob Hope, which Liberace added. Dale Erickson and Tony Amato of Tarbell Realtors have the listing.

Liberace’s seven-bedroom, 6,000-square-foot home, which a San Francisco investor has owned for 1 1/2 years, is on an acre with several fountains and pools in the old movie colony area of town.

“Fifty stars owned properties within a one-mile radius during the ‘50s,” said listing agent Donald Cannata of Prudential Hampton Realtors. Cannata also has formed a nonprofit group to try to buy the house and turn it into an attraction for downtown strollers.

The house has such Liberace memorabilia as a $40,000 chandelier over an indoor spa and a hutch from Hearst Castle that weighs 1,000 pounds, Cannata said.