She Knows What Friends Are For

DIONNE WARWICK, who just completed a new album with songs by the legendary team of Burt Bacharach and Hal David, has put her finishing touches on the decor of a little girl’s bedroom in a Bel-Air design house, which opens this weekend as a benefit for the Venice Family Clinic.

The Grammy-winning singer, who has had such mega-hits as “Do You Know the Way to San Jose?” and “That’s What Friends Are For,” has juggled careers as a recording artist and an interior designer for the past nine years.

Despite her busy schedule as an entertainer, she heads a Beverly Hills-based design firm bearing her name and operates it with her partner, Bruce Garrick. “I’m a hands-on person,” she said.

About her new album, she said, “There are a lot of firsts in it.” The album features the first song in 17 years written for her by Bacharach and David, who wrote Warwick’s first big song, “Don’t Make Me Over,” in 1962 and followed that with a string of her other hits.

“My son, David (Elliott), also has two songs on the album, and there is a duet with Whitney (Houston) and a song written by Sting,” she said. She is planning a national tour with Gladys Knight and Patti LaBelle.

She and Garrick are also among more than 50 designers and architects who have donated their time and talents to the “Sweet Chairity” Design House, open now through Oct. 31.

Tickets may be purchased at $20 each through Ticketmaster or the Venice Family Clinic, which the showcase will benefit. The clinic provides free medical care to low-income and homeless people.

“Bruce did the sun porch and I did the room,” Warwick said of their project at the Design House, a turn-of-the-century mansion that was once the home of silent film star Clara Bow. “It’s gorgeous,” Warwick said. “I’m going to want to stay there myself.”

Although most of her firm’s work has been for private homes, the company is designing interiors of a Honolulu retirement complex, which will have more than 400 units when completed.

“We’ve done offices, yachts and some preliminaries on an airline,” Garrick said. They’ve done work for Burt Reynolds, Tom Jones and other celebrities.

Warwick got into interior decorating, she said, because “it’s another extension of an artistic impression.” Her design partnership was an offshoot of a pastime she developed at home. She owns a six-bedroom, 12,000-square-foot Mediterranean, built for Max Factor.

“I practically restored my house to the way it was originally, but I opened it up and put the tennis court back in order,” she said. “I’m going on 23 years in my house, and it was 60 years old when I moved there.” Now she’s ready to move again, either to Washington state or the East Coast, where she was born and raised.

“I’ve done my time here in L.A.,” she said. “Both of my boys are grown and out, and I don’t need the space, but I’ll have to keep something here because of my businesses.” She’s asking $6 million for her home.

Pop singer TIFFANY, who got lots of media attention for her performances in malls when she surfaced in 1987 at the age of 17, has put her Santa Ana home, owned at one time by actor Chuck Norris, on the market at $1,499,000.

“I’m planning to move to the mountains,” she said. “I picked out a smaller, more family-like house with my husband.” She and her husband, hairdresser/makeup artist Bulmaro Garcia, 23, just had their first child, a boy.

They found a home in the mountains with enough room for themselves, her eight dogs and her recording studio, which she plans to move to from her Santa Ana residence.

“It’s a beautiful house,” Tiffany said of the Santa Ana home, which she’s owned for nearly three years, “but I lived there with my girlfriend. Now that I’m married, we wanted to pick something together.”

Her Santa Ana home, which was built in 1977, has four bedrooms and a guest house on 1.9 acres of wooded grounds with a lake, lagoon-style pool and spa. The glass and brick home, reached by way of a brick and wood bridge, also has a walk-in vault. Roni Werk of Coldwell Banker, Yorba Linda, has the listing.

New Age guru MARIANNE WILLIAMSON--who has attracted standing-room-only audiences in West Hollywood, Santa Monica and New York at lectures drawn from a work known as “A Course in Miracles”--has purchased late actor/author Tom Tryon’s Sunset Strip-area home.

Williamson, whose “A Return to Love” was published earlier this year, had been living in a two-bedroom apartment in Hollywood before buying the three-bedroom home, with guest house, at slightly under $1,532,000, its assessed valuation.

The nearly 5,000-square-foot house was built in 1936 but was recently refurbished and expanded to include garden and spa rooms with brick floors. The property has a city view.

A Hancock Park house, owned once by the late financier/philanthropist/art collector HOWARD F. AHMANSON, has come on the market at $4.25 million.

Built in 1929, the 14,000-square-foot mansion, on 1.5 gated acres, has six bedroom suites plus chauffeur’s quarters; a two-story, oak-paneled great hall; walnut-paneled library, mahogany-paneled living room, hand-painted music room, and office with 30-foot high ceilings. Natalie Janger at Mike Silverman & Associates, Beverly Hills, has the listing.