Sure Hope His Sharks Dig Rap
Controversial rapper ICE-T, who co-stars with Keanu Reeves and Dolph Lundgren in the upcoming sci-fi film “Johnny Mnemonic,” is expanding his Sunset Strip-area home while putting his former residence, in the Hollywood Hills, on the market.
Ice-T’s rock band Body Count, which left Warner Bros. Records last year after protests over its song “Cop Killer,” just signed with Virgin Records. A new album is due out in September.
The singer/actor (“New Jack City,” “Ricochet”), 34, also co-wrote a book, published in April, called “The Ice Opinion,” in which he defends himself against charges that his albums exacerbate racial tensions.
He is building a $250,000 recording studio as well as a solarium and a pool at the Sunset Strip-area home that he purchased in 1992 for $1.2 million, sources say. The residence is about 5 years old and 4,500 square feet in three levels.
The four-room recording studio, which is being sound-proofed, will have an 8-foot-long and 3-foot-high baby-shark tank when completed this month. John Stoddard, who designed Ice-T’s house, is working on plans for the pool, which is expected to be built within a couple of months, with city-to-ocean views on one side.
Ice-T has listed his former home, which he had leased to a record company from New York, at $499,000. He briefly had it on the market in 1992 at $798,000. “He paid $630,000 for it and added on a room with a spa, but because of the market, we had to ask less,” said listing agent Janet Factor of Nourmand & Associates, Beverly Hills.
Built in the 1950s but recently remodeled, the house, which has city views, has three bedrooms in about 2,600 square feet.
Producer FREDDIE FIELDS (“Glory,” “Crimes of the Heart,” “American Gigolo” and such TV series as “Naked Hollywood” and “The Montel Williams Show”) and his actress wife, Corinna Tsopei (“Miss Universe 1964,” from Greece), have sold their home on the Gold Coast of Santa Monica.
Fields was also a leading agent during the 1970s, representing Henry Fonda, Joanne Woodward, Peter Sellers, Barbra Streisand, Robert Redford and Liza Minnelli, to name a few.
Fields and his wife sold their four-bedroom Santa Monica home for just under its $1,975,000 asking price to Jerry Pressman, president of Billboard Entertainment Marketing, sources say. The Fieldses decided to sell, because they have another house at nearby Carbon Beach, which they have been renovating and enlarging.
Built in 1922, the Santa Monica home, on a double lot with a paddle tennis court and a pool, was once owned by Mayor Richard Riordan. Rick Hilton and Sherri Kagan, both of Hilton & Hyland, had the listing.
A house that was built in 1987 on half of the former AHMANSON estate on Harbor Island in Orange County has been sold for just under its last asking price of $8.95 million, sources say.
The sale is believed to be the second highest price ever paid for a home in Newport Beach. The highest sale, at just under $14 million, was in 1988 for the house next door, on the other half of the former Ahmanson Estate, owned at one time by late banker and arts patron Howard Ahmanson and at another time by late violinist Jascha Heifetz.
The home that just sold was once listed at $22 million, sources say. It has been on the market for about five years.
Contemporary in style with arches and a pool in front, the house is about 16,000 square feet in size, including the basement, which has parking for eight cars, an exercise room and a sauna. The home also has nearly 200 feet of bay frontage.
The seller was Richard Hausman, former vice president of Allergan Pharmaceuticals Inc. and founding president of the University of California Irvine College of Medicine Foundation, and his wife, Marilyn. He has been chairman of the Orange County chapter of the Multiple Sclerosis Society and has suffered from the disease himself since 1970.
The buyer, described as a businessman who owns a large manufacturing company, was represented by Gigi Thomas of Coast Newport Properties, Newport Beach. The Hausmans were represented by Ann Peters of Grubb & Ellis, Newport Beach.
Pop/rock singer JOHNNY RIVERS, who had 13 Top 40 hits between 1964 and 1967 (the most enduring was “Secret Agent Man,” the theme song for the British TV spy series of the mid-’60s), has put his Coldwater Canyon home of 24 years on the market at just under $1.3 million.
He wants to sell so he can spend more time at his ranch in Big Sur, where his children live, sources say.
His Coldwater Canyon estate has three bedrooms in nearly 3,400 square feet, on about three acres, behind gates, with Valley and mountain views. The house was built for actress Greta Garbo in 1938 as a country retreat, sources say. A black-bottom pool was added later.
Elaine Young of Coldwell Banker, Beverly Hills, has the listing.
UPDATE: ROSEANNE and TOM ARNOLD may be headed for divorce court, but the $3-million house they were buying through probate court has closed escrow, according to public records. The house, mentioned in the May 1 Hot Property column, is next door to the Arnold home in Brentwood and is expected to be added to the compound.
