Cricket Buys Family Retreat
CONNIE STEVENS, who first gained fame as singer/photographer Cricket in the 1960s TV series “Hawaiian Eye” but now heads a $65-million skin-care company and tours eight weeks a year with her band, has purchased 100 acres near Jackson Hole, Wyo., where she plans to build a retreat.
She also just completed a re-design of a five-bedroom Puerto Vallarta beachfront getaway that she bought about a year ago, and she recently added a wing to her seven-bedroom Holmby Hills home.
Stevens, 54, who has starred on Broadway and had hit songs, guests periodically on such TV shows as “Murder, She Wrote” and makes regular appearances on the Home Shopping Network for her firm, Forever Spring.
She is planning to make some movies and home videos through her own production company. “I have three films ready to roll that I’ve written,” she said in her Holmby Hills home. “Maybe I’ll focus on them in Jackson Hole.”
She bought the land, Stevens said, partly because of what her grandfather told her when she left home at 15: “He told me that if I was to go into show business . . . it would not be a regular living . . . so I should save my money and buy some land.”
She’s also looking at the property, which she bought for about $100,000 an acre, as a place for her future grandchildren to run and play. She was drawn to Jackson Hole through Project Windfeather, which she founded in 1982 to help Native Americans.
“I’ll probably build a beautiful home as natural as can be with all the nice things I like but with a salt lick in the back for the animals and no motorboats on the lakes or rivers,” she said. She and her large, extended family plan to camp there this summer.
Stevens, who was honored Friday as “Mother of the Year” at a luncheon for 1,000 to benefit Cedars-Sinai Hospital, is one of five children but only has two herself: Joely, 25, and Tricia Leigh, 24, both by ex-husband, singer Eddie Fisher.
Her daughters are also actresses and singers. With them in mind, Stevens designed the addition to her 8,400-square-foot Holmby Hills home to include two townhouses, where they now live, and a recording studio/rehearsal hall, which they all use.
Stevens has owned the 2.5-acre estate, which was in the 1990 film “Postcards From the Edge” (based on the book by Carrie Fisher, daughter of Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher), since 1974. But she still has some plans for it.
“This is going to be the gym,” she said, as she walked across the grounds. “I think I was an architect in a former life.”
Best-selling suspense novelist DEAN KOONTZ and his wife, GERDA, have purchased several adjacent custom lots, totaling about 2.5 acres, in the Newport Coast development between Corona del Mar and Laguna Beach, where they plan to build a three-level, Italian-style home, sources say.
The 47-year-old author, who has been dubbed the “Titan of Terror” and “Master of Menace” for such novels as “Cold Fire” (1991) and “Strangers” (1986), set a string of his novels, including “Hideaway” (1992), in Orange County, where he and his wife already live.
They had been watching the development of Pelican Hill, in the Irvine Co.’s 9,500-acre Newport Coast development and decided to buy there for the views and privacy, sources said. Their property overlooks Newport Harbor and has a view of Catalina Island.
Although busy writing another novel, Koontz and his wife plan to be active in the design and construction of their new estate. They are believed to have paid a bit more than $5 million for the lots. Half-acre home sites at Pelican Hill start at $700,000.
The Hollywood house used for the opening shots of the “Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet” TV shows (1952-1966), which was actually the starring Nelsons’ family home for many years, has been sold for about $1 million, sources say.
Plastic surgeon Richard Ellenbogen sold the home to music producer Ron Fair, who is moving here from New York. The house, which was built in the 1920s, still has a recording studio on its half-acre site, which the Nelsons’ younger son Ricky used when he became a teen-age heartthrob. Joy Hudson of Re/Max, Beverly Hills represented Fair in the purchase.
IAN McSHANE, who stars on the mystery series “Lovejoy” (on A&E;), has put his penthouse condo adjacent to Beverly Hills on the market, because he and his wife, actress Gwen Humble, spend most of the year filming in England and the Continent.
“He’s only been here two months in the past three years,” said listing agent Michael Dickson of Fred Sands’ Hollywood Hills office. The couple has a home in London.
McShane, who also played Sue Ellen’s lover in “Dallas” and is now producing and directing some episodes of “Lovejoy,” has listed the 1,000-square-foot condo, with a 37-foot-long balcony and views from Beverly Hills to the ocean, at $289,000, furnished.
