One Less ‘Cop’ in Beverly Hills
Actor-comedian EDDIE MURPHY has sold the Beverly Hills-area home that he bought from CHER six years ago.
Murphy, who most recently appeared in “Beverly Hills Cops III” (1994), just wrapped “Vampire in Brooklyn” and is about to start shooting a remake of Jerry Lewis’ 1963 comedy “The Nutty Professor.”
Murphy, 33, has been married to model Nicole Mitchell since March, 1993, and they have three young children.
“It was time to let go of the house, because you can look down from the second to the first floor, and the children’s bedrooms have lofts, which they could fall from. It’s not a kids’ house,” said a realty source not involved in the deal.
Murphy first put the house on the market in 1990 at $9 million, less than two years after he bought it from Cher for $6.3 million. He sold the house for about $4 million, including furnishings he bought from Cher, sources say. The last asking price was $4.9 million.
The buyer was described as a single man with a house and yacht in Florida and extensive property holdings in Mexico.
The Beverly Hills-area house, on four acres in Benedict Canyon, has six bedrooms, 10 fireplaces and a gym in 10,000 square feet. It also has a motorized roof, which opens up in the center of the house, and a large koi pond.
Cher, who decorated the house in an Egyptian motif, had the house built about 14 years ago. Murphy, who called the house Moroccan in style, added a projection room. The new owner is expected to do a complete renovation.
Murphy, who was born in Brooklyn and grew up in suburban Long Island, has had a large home in New Jersey for some years. While his Benedict Canyon home was being sold, he bought a 200-acre horse farm in Upstate New York for several million dollars, sources say.
Barbara Robinson of Prudential Rodeo Realty, Beverly Hills, represented Murphy in selling his house, and Stephen Shapiro of Stan Herman/Stephen Shapiro & Associates, Beverly Hills, represented the buyer.
Actress/model ALANA STEWART, who was once married to actor George Hamilton and later to British pop singer Rod Stewart, has put her Brentwood home of nearly 10 years on the market at just under $4 million.
Stewart, who is gearing up to co-host a talk show with Hamilton that may start airing in September, said that she may move to a smaller home “because it would be less responsibility and, besides, my kids are teen-agers now and one moved out.”
She and the pop star, married in 1979--and divorced some years ago--have two teen-aged children, and she has an older son by the actor.
The house, a Tudor, is “very English,” she said, “with a large back yard and a large front yard.” Built in the 1920s but renovated by Stewart after she bought it in 1986, the house also has five bedrooms, a maid’s quarters and a guest apartment in about 6,500 square feet.
The home is co-listed by Terri Scheid of Scheid Realty, Beverly Hills, and Billie Gold of Jon Douglas Co.’s Brentwood Court office.
Veteran Hollywood executive PETER HOFFMAN and his wife, Susan, have purchased a Hollywood Hills home for just under $2 million.
Hoffman, former president and CEO of Carolco Pictures--where he was a business associate of slain entertainment executive Jose Menendez--formed CineVisions in 1992, which is co-producing the upcoming thriller “Johnny Mnemonic,” starring Keanu Reeves.
Hoffman and two partners--former Sony Pictures chief Mike Medavoy and former Columbia/TriStar executive Arnie Messer--are also about to announce their new company, Phoenix Pictures.
Since leaving Carolco, where he earned a reputation as a financial wizard, Hoffman was known to do business off his yacht in Cannes, often barefoot and in shorts. He and his wife were renting in Malibu for the past six months, after selling their Beverly Hills-area home.
Their new home, just north of Sunset Strip, was built in the 1940s but was described as being “in pristine move-in condition.” It has five bedrooms in 4,000 square feet.
The sellers were Howard and Karen Baldwin, producers of the upcoming Jean-Claude Van Damme film “Sudden Death,” and Richard Cohen, a producer of other films with the Baldwins and husband of Barbara Grant, widow of Cary Grant.
Larry Welch and Bob Zay of Prudential Rodeo Realty, Sunset, represented the Hoffmans, and Don Robinson of the same firm’s Beverly Hills office represented the sellers.
A Pasadena house built in the early 1930s for the pioneer San Gabriel Valley Baldwin family has been sold for about $3 million in cash to a businessman from Taiwan, sources say.
The home, originally listed at $4.5 million, was designed by architect Reginald Johnson, who also designed the Biltmore Hotel in Santa Barbara.
The 10,000-square-foot house, on 1.5 acres with a tennis court, was sold by a family that lived there for 13 years after buying the home from Warner Bros. Records senior vice president and staff producer Ted Templeton.
John Tartaglione of Jon Douglas Co., Pasadena, had the listing.
