Simon Sells Turf on Surf
Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright NEIL SIMON, whose new play “London Suite” opened in Seattle last week, has sold his Malibu beachfront home of seven years for $4.5 million, sources say. The house had been on the market at $4.95 million.
Simon, whose play “Laughter on the 23rd Floor” ended its Broadway run in August, owns a home in Bel-Air and a penthouse on Park Avenue in Manhattan.
He sold his five-bedroom, nearly 5,000-square-foot Malibu home, with 80 feet of beach frontage, to Martin and Susan Loughman. Her father is Roy E. Disney, Walt Disney’s nephew.
The Loughmans, who were married in 1988, were living in a Denver suburb when he was named, two years ago, as president and chief operating officer of Shamrock Broadcasting, a unit of Burbank-based Shamrock Holdings, which is wholly owned by the Roy E. Disney family.
Simon, 67, won a Pulitzer prize and a Tony for his 1991 play “Lost in Yonkers,” which was turned into a film last year. His play “Biloxi Blues” also won a Tony.
A former staff writer on the early television comedy series “Your Show of Shows,” Simon became one of Broadway’s most prolific playwrights, with many of his plays--including “Barefoot in the Park,” “The Odd Couple” and “The Sunshine Boys”--turned into films.
The Malibu house is next door to the lot Simon sold in early September for slightly more than $2 million to actor Robert Redford, who has a home on the other side of the lot.
Computer software king PETER NORTON and his wife, EILEEN, have put their 10-bedroom, Santa Monica home overlooking the Riviera Country Club on the market at $8.5 million.
In what is believed to be the biggest single-family home sale in the history of Santa Monica, they bought the home in 1992 for $8 million, but they have expressed some misgivings.
In a June 12 feature story in The Times, Eileen Norton said, “It’s great for displaying art, and it sings when there are hundreds of people around. But there are only four of us--two adults and two kids. Who needs all this?”
She had been an elementary schoolteacher, and he had been a computer programmer before he turned a $30,000 investment into a net worth of $200 million to $400 million by creating Unerase, which allows personal computer users to retrieve lost data, and the Norton Utilities program, which is used to solve a wide range of PC problems.
Before they bought the house, they had decided to end what they called their “money acquisition phase” to become philanthropists. They held many fund-raisers in the house but felt uncomfortable living in such grandeur, according to the June article.
“We’re ordinary,” he was quoted as saying. “We’d be living in Torrance with crabgrass if it weren’t for a bit of luck.” The Nortons are moving to a smaller home near their Santa Monica estate, said listing agent Linda Janger of Pace Properties in Beverly Hills.
The Nortons’ estate includes a 13,000-square-foot main house and a 2,200-square-foot guest house, all on about 1.5 acres, with a secret garden, tree house and tennis court. The gated home also has a two-story library and a kitchen with three ovens and two refrigerators.
PAUL SIMMS, a writer and executive producer of the Emmy-winning “Larry Sanders Show,” has purchased an award-winning Bel-Air home that was designed by the late architect Charles Moore, sources say.
Moore, a Post Modernist guru who died last December, also designed the Sea Ranch redwood condos near San Francisco and the Beverly Hills Civic Center with its ornate public library.
Built in 1979, the home that Simms bought has three bedrooms and a two-story guest house. There is an ocean, canyon and city view from almost every room, and there are two wildlife pools and an organic orchard on the nearly three-acre site, registered as a wildlife preserve.
The home, once listed at $2.7 million, sold for close to $1.75 million, sources say. Steve Mirman of Fred Sands Realtor represented Simms, and Bob Hurwitz of Hurwitz & Associates represented the sellers, described as financiers based in Northern California.
The MILBANK MANSION, a Los Angeles city historical monument, has been listed at $1.2 million. The 12-bedroom, 11,300-square-foot house, which needs work, was built in 1913 for Isaac Milbank, a mill company magnate who subdivided Country Club Park, just south of Hancock Park and west of Koreatown.
The mansion, on 1.5 acres with a tennis court, is co-listed by Patricia Cross of RE/MAX, Beverly Hills, and Robert Villanueva of Fred Sands Estates, Santa Monica.
