Pia’s Plans for Pickfair
Actress-singer PIA ZADORA and her husband, financier Meshulam Riklis, are planning to move in March to the home they have been building since 1989 at Pickfair, the famed Beverly Hills estate of Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford.
Zadora, who is now making TV commercials, starred in her musical autobiography, “Too Short to Be a Rockette,” in San Diego and Miami last summer. Riklis, who made a fortune in corporate takeovers, counted the once-venerable McCrory dime-store chain and the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas among his holdings until they filed for bankruptcy last year.
Riklis, 68, and Zadora, 38, were also the subject of a lawsuit filed last year by Donald Trump over nonpayment of rent at the couple’s $100,750-a-month home at Trump Tower in Manhattan.
“But neither the recession nor any troubles they may have had financially has had any apparent effect on Pickfair; the work keeps roaring ahead up there,” a neighbor said. The work has involved a major re-do and expansion of Pickfair, which had been a hunting lodge before architect Wallace Neff turned it into a mansion for the film stars in 1932.
Zadora bought the 3.1-acre estate in 1988 from Lakers’ owner Jerry Buss for just under $7 million. She planned to spend about $2 million, adding 3,000 square feet to the house, before contractors discovered termites there in 1990. Early last year, Riklis estimated that he already had spent $10 million on the house.
The old mansion has been almost totally demolished, and a new, European-style villa, with 15 bedrooms and 21 baths in 35,000 square feet, including a poolhouse and other buildings, has been rising in its place. There will be a playroom for the two Riklis children that will have a stage and state-of-the-art lighting and sound systems, and there also will be a 3,000-square-foot sound studio; a hair salon, massage room and three-level guest wing.
A large letter “P,” for Pia and Pickfair, will be made of bronze and embedded in marble inside the main entrance, according to Vicki Firestone of Firestone-James, the luxury residential division of Design One, which is coordinating the design.
Zadora and Riklis also plan to build a second house, which they refer to as Pickfair II, on an acre of the estate that is now partially occupied by an old tennis court. Zadora’s secretary will live in the 12,750-square-foot house, sources say.
After Pickford and Fairbanks were divorced in 1936, Pickford lived at Pickfair until she died in 1979. Through the years, she subdivided and sold most of the 15-acre property.
Actor Buddy Rogers, whom she married in 1937, still lives on part of the original estate. In a telephone interview, Rogers recalled how he told the ailing Pickford that he couldn’t continue to live in the mansion after her death.
“When she got ill, I said, ‘I don’t want to stay at Pickfair, honey, when you go to heaven,’ and she said, ‘Just take some acres and build yourself a house on them.’ So I did, but I only took one acre.” He lives there now with his current wife, Beverly.
The Beverly Hills home of the late EARL SCHEIB, the king of low-cost auto painting, has been sold for close to its last asking price of $3.95 million.
The one-story, nearly 5,000-square-foot home, on slightly more than an acre, was put on the market last May, three months after Scheib died, at $5.95 million. Built in 1951, the house had been refurbished a couple of years ago and had three bedrooms plus two guest houses.
Ruth Hoffman of Mike Silverman & Associates represented Scheib’s estate, and Judy Ross, Jon Douglas Co., represented the buyer, an entrepreneur.
Despite the poor economy, 19 Westside homes sold at $5 million or more last year, in contrast with 14 in 1991, says Rodeo Realty broker Cecelia Waeschle, who has tracked high-end residential sales for five years and just completed a 1992 tally.
The reason there were more $5-million-plus sales: “Prices have been discounted in some cases by more than 50%,” she said. An example was Rod Stewart’s Bel-Air home, which sold in August for slightly more than $6 million. It was originally listed in 1990 at $14.5 million.
There were several sales in the $8-million range last year but nothing to match the $47.5-million purchase of the late movie mogul Jack Warner’s Beverly Hills estate in 1990 by producer David Geffen or even the $20.25-million sale of singer Kenny Rogers’ Beverly Hills house in the mid-1980s to oil baron/real estate developer and investor Marvin Davis.
SIMON POTTS, a senior vice president with Capitol Records in Hollywood who came to the United States from England in 1987, has purchased a lot in Kauai from wealthy Saudi Arabian financier Essam Khashoggi and plans to build a plantation-style house there.
The lot was the last of three parcels in a subdivision known as Seacliff that Khashoggi had owned, but he still has a 178-acre ranch nearby. Pat Harrington of Harrington’s Paradise Properties handled the $875,000 lot sale and has the $11.5-million listing on the ranch.
