Grand Moves Ankas Away

PAUL ANKA, who had his first hit at age 15 with the song “Diana” and went on to become one of rock ‘n’ roll’s most prolific singer-songwriters with nearly 700 songs, and his wife, Anne, are house hunting in Las Vegas.

Their longtime home there was bulldozed to make way for the entrance and parking lot of the world’s largest hotel, the 5,005-room MGM Grand and 33-acre theme park, which open this weekend. The Ankas sold their home, reportedly for $1.75 million, last spring.

Anka, 52, and his wife had owned the home since 1971. The house, on an acre overlooking the Tropicana Country Club golf course, had a recording studio and four bedrooms in about 5,000 square feet.

The Ankas have five daughters, 16 to 26 years in age. “The oldest just got married,” he said.

Anka, who is in the art film “Ordinary Magic” and is working on an album that is about to be released, will open at Bally’s in Las Vegas on Jan. 20.

He appears in Las Vegas three to four times a year. “So we’re looking for a place (to buy) there,” he said. He and his wife have homes in Beverly Hills and Pebble Beach.

“I just bought into the Ottawa Senators, a new NHL franchise from my hometown,” he added.

Actor MICKEY ROURKE’s Benedict Canyon house, which was taken over by a bank through foreclosure in September, has been sold at about $1.2 million, according to public records.

Stan Rogow, executive producer of the short-run CBS series “South of Sunset,” bought the house.

Rourke, who has a sideline as a boxer and opened the restaurant/club Mickey’s in Miami Beach earlier this month, has appeared in such diverse films as “The Pope of Greenwich Village” (1984) and “Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man” (1991). He was in the 1993 TV movie “The Last Outlaw.”

Rourke bought the 5,300-square-foot house in 1988. He put $350,000 into it, sources say, gutting and turning it into what some realtors describe as “a real cowboy home” with log ceilings and pine floor. The house was built in 1928.

Rourke tried to sell it for $2 million before the bank foreclosed. The bank’s asking price was slightly under $1.5 million. Bob Murphy and Lind Best of Douglas Properties, Beverly Hills, represented the bank in the sale.

MADAM ALEX, Heidi Fleiss’ purported mentor and the so-called “godmother” of Hollywood madams, has put her house in West Hollywood on the market at $390,000.

The two-bedroom home, with guest house, doesn’t have a large enough kitchen to accommodate Madam Alex’s expanding catering business, she says.

Madam Alex, 60, has co-written a biography titled “Madam 90210” under the name Alex Adams. She has been retired since her pandering conviction in 1991.

She has owned the 1,000-square-foot home for five years. Built in 1924, the home, which has a large garden between the main house and guest cottage, is listed by Elaine Young and Paul Czako at Coldwell Banker, Beverly Hills.

The late CLIFF MAY, known as “the father of the California ranch-style house,” lived for 30 years in a 7,500-square-foot, Sullivan Canyon house that was sold recently for $7 million, sources say. Sullivan Canyon is due west of Mandeville Canyon.

The buyer was described as a local software entrepreneur. The one-story home, on 25 acres, was in escrow at $10.5 million two years ago, and the potential buyer then was actor Dustin Hoffman, sources say. The home had been on the market since February, 1991, originally at $17 million.

Jeff Hyland of Hilton & Hyland and Melany Bourdon and Marilyn Phillips of Coldwell Banker, Brentwood, shared the listing. Phillips and Bourdon were May’s daughters. He died in 1989.

The former Santa Monica home of one-time tennis champ GUSSIE MORAN, whose lace panties caused a stir at Wimbledon in 1949 because they were designed to show periodically beneath her tennis skirt, has been put on the market at $2.79 million.

Moran, 70, lived in the home most of her life until she lost it in foreclosure in 1986. “I know nothing about business, and I was badly advised,” she said by phone from her one-room apartment. Three generations of her family lived in the house after it was built in 1887.

Kevork Momdjian, who owned the home after Moran, restored it and its gardens to their Victorian style with the help of architect William Ellinger III of Pasadena. Momdjian completed the four-year project shortly before he died recently at age 72.

Momdjian, who was born in western Armenia and fled to Syria and Lebanon before coming to Los Angeles in 1986, announced to his family that the renovation would be his “last venture in life,” said his son, Viken, whose family businesses include Politix men’s clothing stores.

The house, on Ocean Avenue, is listed for commercial or residential use with Jeff Pion of CB Commercial, Century City, and David Offer of Douglas Properties, Brentwood.