Home on Range for Karate Star

Martial arts movie star CHUCK NORRIS has put his California home on the market, because he has been living for the past two years in Texas, where he is filming his new CBS series “Walker, Texas Ranger,” which starts its fall schedule this Saturday night.

In the series, Norris, a former professional world middleweight karate champion who once operated 32 karate schools, plays a ranger who was a kick-boxing champion in the Marines.

Norris, 53, appears in the 1993 films “Sidekicks” and “Hellbound.” He starred in two “Delta Force” and three “Missing in Action” movies as well as “Code of Silence” and “Invasion U.S.A,” both released in 1985.

Besides working on his new series in Texas, Norris, a divorced father of two grown sons, also spends time there on his nonprofit Kick Drugs Out of America Foundation, which is teaching the martial arts to 650 grade-school students in Houston.

The privately funded pilot program includes karate as a physical education requirement. The aim, besides providing physical conditioning, is to use martial arts as a vehicle to teach inner-city youngsters about positive role models, authority figures, self-discipline and goal setting.

Norris started the foundation in August, 1990. Shortly afterward, he bought a 600-acre ranch just outside of Houston. The ranch has a main house, guest quarters, several other buildings and a large pond, as well as horses, cattle and buffalo.

His California home, in Tarzana, is a bit more than 2.2 acres in size and has a recently remodeled main house, slightly larger than 5,000 square feet, on a knoll overlooking a tennis court, pool, guest cottage and equestrian riding ring.

Norris has owned the Tarzana property for five years. He has lived in California since he was 12, when he came to Torrance from Oklahoma with his family.

“Chuck loves California, and he’s certainly not deserting it,” said Lillian Wall of Wall Street Properties in Tarzana, who has the listing, at just under $2.6 million. “He didn’t want to give up (his Tarzana property), but it’s a big place to keep up from such a distance. He plans to keep a smaller home here for when he is in town.”

ELIZABETH TAYLOR has apparently changed her mind about going through with her purchase of a house near Laguna Beach for $5 million.

“The deal is off,” an Orange County realtor said, “and the house is back on the market at $5,995,000.” No statements were issued by the actress explaining why she decided not to close escrow.

Taylor, 61, and her husband, Larry Fortensky, 41, had been looking for a home in Orange County for some time. Fortensky is from Stanton.

RICK SCHRODER--who starred in the CBS movie version of Jack London’s “Call of the Wild” in April and is working on the CBS movie “Return to Lonesome Dove,” due to air in November--has sold his Beverly Hills home for nearly $3 million, including furnishings.

The 22-year-old actor, who starred in “The Champ” when he was 7 and later appeared regularly on the sitcom “Silver Spoons,” has been living for several years on a 17,000-acre ranch in Colorado. He and his wife have two young children.

He and his parents owned the Beverly Hills house. His parents, Diane and Richard Schroder, are leasing a condo in Scottsdale, Ariz., and are thinking of building in Sedona, Ariz.

They had a garage sale before moving and sold “$8,500 worth of junk in about half an hour after a tour bus rolled up,” said listing agent Adrian Grant, with a chuckle. “I guess the tourists were amazed to see a garage sale at a movie star’s house.”

The elder Schroders built the Beverly Hills home after they bought the property in 1987 and tore down the existing house. The 9,300-square-foot, Mediterranean-style home has five bedroom suites, a three-story gallery, a billiard room and two kitchens, one of them outdoors.

The buyers were described as a family from Taiwan who paid cash, with a two-week escrow. The home was listed a year ago at $4.7 million after being off the market for awhile. It was originally listed at $6.7 million.

“There were higher offers but with 60-day escrows. When we saw a two-week deal and no loan contingencies, we thought that was the better way to go,” said Grant, who shared the listing with Yves Meiszala and Joyce Essex, all with Fred Sands’ Beverly Hills offices.

ROCKY POINT, a four-bedroom, 11,000-square-foot house designed by John Lautner on Broad Beach in Malibu, has been listed at $16.5 million with Stephen Shapiro of Stan Herman/Stephen Shapiro & Associates, Beverly Hills.

Lautner, who apprenticed with Frank Lloyd Wright, spent 11 years planning and building the home for the seller, a businessman who is moving to the south of France, Shapiro said.

The house--which has a 90-foot, single-span roof--was completed in 1984 on a pie-shaped site at the water’s edge. The home has 320 feet of beach front.