Palisades Has Nice Ring to It

Former boxing champ SUGAR RAY LEONARD, who has produced an aerobic boxing-workout video for women and is featured in a soon-to-be-released video game called “Legends of the Ring,” has purchased a two-acre estate in Pacific Palisades.

The purchase price was not disclosed, but the estate was initially listed at $10.5 million, and real estate sources not involved in the transaction say that the home probably sold for just under $7 million. The most recent asking price was $8.75 million.

The 37-year-old Leonard, who is on Gov. Wilson’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, won an Olympic Gold Medal and was a professional welterweight and middleweight champion, with total career gross earnings estimated at more than $90 million before he retired from boxing for the third time in 1991.

Since then, Leonard has been living in a Santa Monica condo and a home in Potomac, Md., which has been his primary residence. He bought in the Palisades because he has been spending more time in Southern California, pursuing professional and personal interests.

The former boxer signed with ICM to represent him, as Ray Charles Leonard, in his acting career, and he plans to marry actress/model Bernadette Robi, daughter of singer Paul Robi, one of the original “Platters.”

The Los Angeles wedding is being scheduled in August, when Leonard’s aerobic boxing video, “Boxout,” is also due to be released.

Leonard bought a 10,000-square-foot house with six bedrooms, a solarium, game room, wine cellar and sauna. The gated site, which has ocean and mountain views, also has orchid houses, a tennis court, pool and spa with a lighted fountain.

The Georgian-style mansion was built in 1952 but was expanded by about 6,500 square feet by the former owners, the Douglas Pardee family, who are moving to Rancho Santa Fe. Pardee is one of three brothers who started Pardee Construction, a major California home builder.

Barbara Robinson of Rodeo Realty, Beverly Hills, represented Leonard. Cindy Pardee, whose in-laws are the sellers and who is an agent with Jon Douglas Co., Westlake Village, and Steve Durbin, of the firm’s Brentwood office, represented the Pardee family.

CARY GRANT’S longtime Beverly Hills home is up for lease now that his widow, Barbara, has remarried. The asking price is $40,000 a month, say realtors not involved in the deal.

The actor, who died in 1986, had lived in the contemporary Moroccan-style house for about 30 years, but it was recently refurbished.

The gated, 4,000-square-foot home has a tennis court, pool and view from downtown to Malibu, according to leasing broker Paris Moskopoulos of Paris Realty, Beverly Hills.

Singer and actress LORNA LUFT, Judy Garland’s middle child and Liza Minnelli’s younger sister, and Luft’s husband, music producer and composer Jake Hooker, have put their Nichols Canyon home on the market.

“They’re selling it because they’re getting a divorce,” said Rory Barish, who shares the listing with Jeanine Sales, both with Stan Herman/Stephen Shapiro & Associates, Beverly Hills.

Luft and Hooker, who have been married 16 years and have two young children, bought the house in April, 1990, for $1,025,000, according to public records. The home is listed at $895,000. “They’re motivated to move,” Barish said.

Luft, who made her Broadway debut in 1967 at the age of 15 with her mother, was a series regular on the TV show “Trapper John, M.D.,” but she has been on the road a lot through the years, recently in the national tour of “Guys and Dolls.”

Hooker--who wrote songs for such movies as “Top Gun,” “Rocky IV” and “Flashdance”--has been living in the house with their children since he and his wife were officially separated last year.

The gated contemporary has three bedrooms plus maid’s quarters in about 3,000 square feet. It was built in 1950 but was completely rehabbed about 1989 by a former owner, who was a builder. The home also has a pool, waterfall and city and canyon views.

Composer RICHARD DeBENEDICTIS and his wife, Lori, have purchased an Italian-style villa in Montecito for $1.9 million, sources say.

He has earned nine Emmy nominations for his work on such TV shows as “Perry Mason,” “Matlock,” “Father Dowling” and the telefilm “Ziegfeld, the Man and His Women.”

The 5,000-square-foot home is on 1.5 acres. The couple will maintain their Santa Monica residence, which he bought in 1975.

DALE C. OLSON, who was Rock Hudson’s spokesman when the late actor was diagnosed with AIDS, is having a kitchen installed in his new offices so he can prepare home-cooked meals for his clients during meetings.

Shirley MacLaine, James Earl Jones, Tony Curtis, Marion Ross, Robert Blake and Mitzi Gaynor are a few of the clients whom the chef/publicist expects to feed there.

He will move offices July 1 from his Beverly Hills penthouse to one of the twin Carthay Circle buildings, built at 6310 San Vicente Blvd., on the site of the historic Carthay Circle Theatre, where many of the film industry’s major films of the past were premiered.