Paris Is Belle’s Current Love
Emmy-winning actress RUE McCLANAHAN--who played man-crazy Southern belle Blanche Devereaux in “The Golden Girls” and “The Golden Palace” sitcoms--has purchased a getaway apartment overlooking the Seine in Paris for slightly more than $1 million.
McClanahan, who was also a regular for years on the TV series “Mama’s Family” and “Maud,” appeared as the ruler-brandishing Mother Superior in the musical-comedy “Nunsense,” which premiered Jan. 6 on A&E.;
The Oklahoma-born actress is writing a book, described as an autobiographical comedy that will be titled “My First Five Husbands,” and she has agreed to star in the Harbor Lights Entertainment comedy movie “Lisdoonvarna,” which will be filmed next summer in Ireland.
“She loves France--Paris is her favorite city,” said a spokesman for McClanahan. “That’s why she bought an apartment there as a place to get away from it all.” She purchased the 3,000-square-foot unit from a Dutch financier.
McClanahan also owns a small, three-bedroom Victorian farmhouse at Lake Arrowhead.
Her primary residence is in Encino, on three acres she bought in 1988 for $2.5 million, including a house she then tore down. In its place, she built a 5,000-square-foot California ranch-style home at an estimated cost of $1 million.
Asked if McClanahan’s Encino home suffered any damage from the Northridge earthquake, her spokesman said, “The house itself is OK. She just had some crystal glasses break.”
Comedian YAKOV SMIRNOFF has moved from Los Angeles to Branson, Mo., and he has put his Pacific Palisades home on the market.
The house, which is on the Riviera Golf Course, is listed at $2,295,000 with Joan McGoohan of Jon Douglas Co.’s Pacific Palisades office. Built in 1951, the ranch-style house has three bedrooms plus maid’s quarters in 3,300 square feet.
“We put in . . . a sandbox that looks like a sand trap in the back, so it looks like the yard is part of the golf course,” Smirnoff said.
Last week, he was relieved to find that the house had sustained no damage from the Northridge earthquake. “Because it’s on the 18th hole, I was afraid it would be in the 18th hole,” he said with a chuckle.
He and his wife, Linda, bought the house for $2.4 million when the first of their two children was born three years ago. They put another $150,000 into it, he noted.
“I wish I could move the house back here,” he sighed. Since moving to Missouri before Christmas, the Smirnoffs have been leasing out their Pacific Palisades house and renting in Branson, where he appears regularly at the Osmond Family Theater, which he jokingly calls “The What-a-Country Theater.”
The longtime, Bel-Air home of the Hormel meat-packing family has been sold for close to $4 million, sources say.
The two-acre property had been in the family for 67 years, since family patriarch/company founder GEORGE A. HORMEL, called “The King of Spam,” bought the site. His daughter-in-law, Germaine Hormel, tore down the original home and built a contemporary, 9,200-square-foot house, with four bedrooms and an indoor pool, in 1959.
The home has wooded pathways, a small rose garden and a 180-degree view, from the San Gabriel Mountains to the ocean. “On a clear day, you can see Catalina,” a source said.
Financier Robert Day and his wife, Kelly, bought the house, and they plan to tear it down and build a new residence on the site, sources say.
The sale was precipitated by the death of Germaine Hormel in 1991 at the age of 94. The sellers are Hormel family heirs.
Irene Tsu and Parveen Knighton of Fred Sands Estates, Beverly Hills, had the listing, most recently at $5.25 million. The home was originally on the market in 1991 in the $9-million range, other sources said.
An oceanfront home built in 1928 by the late DICK LOYNES, a legendary Long Beach yachtsman and philanthropist, has come on the market at $1.1 million.
Loynes skippered the 106-foot yacht “Contender” in 1939 from San Francisco to Honolulu to win the Golden Gate International Exposition trophy.
He was a founder and first commodore, in 1929, of the Long Beach Yacht Club. He was also an internationally renowned speedboat racer, with 16 world records. A Long Beach street and the yacht club’s race-committee boat are named for him.
Loynes built his 3,700-square-foot house in Long Beach with a Baccarat chandelier in the living room, inlaid gold trim around much of the interior and etched-glass windows, each with a nautical theme.
The house, which also has portholes on the second floor, was one of five on Ocean Boulevard that had a tunnel to the beach. The tunnels were all filled in during the 1940s when there was fear of a Japanese invasion.
Alton Hess, owner of a rare-book bookstore, acquired the home from Loynes’ estate in 1979, when Loynes’ widow died. Loynes died on his yacht in 1956.
Hess added a guest house, lap pool, spa and fountain to the home, which is listed with Adam Feldman of Coldwell Banker Residential Real Estate in Long Beach.
CLARIFICATION: The Beverly Hills home of actress/singer Shirley Jones and comedian Marty Ingels is listed with Mike Silverman and Kay Pick of Mike Silverman Estates, a Jon Douglas Co. The realtors’ names were inadvertently omitted in last week’s Hot Property column.
