A ‘Happy Days’ Homecoming

MARION ROSS, who co-stars as Shirley MacLaine’s housekeeper and friend in the upcoming “Terms of Endearment” sequel, “Evening Star,” has just moved back into her Woodland Hills home after completing seven months of repairs of damage caused by the Northridge earthquake.

Ross, who also will appear in late March in Lifetime’s Holocaust drama “Hidden in Silence,” calls her home, on an acre in Woodland Hills, “Happy Days Farm,” because she bought it in 1980 with earnings from her long-running role as Richie Cunningham’s mother on the sitcom “Happy Days.” Ross is also known for her role as the grandmother on the TV series “Brooklyn Bridge.”

She had completed a refurbishing and expansion of her 4,000-square-foot home about six months before the January 1994 earthquake. After the quake, she thought she could make do with some minor repairs. “But then we realized that things weren’t that stable,” she said. So she moved out last July and ordered the renovation.

“I went straight to Prague to do the [Lifetime] TV movie, and from there, I went to Kansas City to be in [the stage version of] ‘Steel Magnolias,’ and from there, I was off to Houston to do ‘Evening Star.’ So, I didn’t have to go back to the house until it was finished, and that was a blessing,” she said last Monday. “Now that I’m unpacking, I realize what a mess I missed.”

The repairs cost about $200,000. “We had to take down the [two] stone fireplaces and pump concrete under the foundation, redo all of the wood floors, fortify and repaint the walls, install new kitchen cabinets. And we put in a brand-new stove,” she said.

Ross doesn’t cook, she said, “but my beau, [actor] Paul Michael, does.” Ross, in her 60s, oversaw the repairs and says her next building project will be a 24-by-12-foot conservatory next to her tennis court, with a glass ceiling “so we can look at the stars.”

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CHRIS HEMMETER, developer of five posh Hawaiian resorts, including the 3,100-acre Hilton Waikoloa on the Big Island, and his wife, Patsy, have sold their Bel-Air home for $5.7 million plus furnishings to a Chicago businessman, sources say.

The Hemmeters paid $10.25 million for the nearly 13,000-square-foot house in 1990, sources say. The six-bedroom house was newly built when they bought it. The developer, 56, has been operating casinos in Colorado and Louisiana. One of his casino companies recently filed for bankruptcy. He is now said to be working on developing a hotel in the Caribbean.

Barbara Duskin of Douglas Properties in Beverly Hills had the listing on the Bel-Air house. She also represented the Hemmeters when they bought it.

The co-founder of the Hard Rock Cafe chain, PETER MORTON, has purchased the former Holmby Hills home of Warner Bros. co-chairman ROBERT DALY for about $6.4 million, sources say.

Built in 1938 for actress Constance Bennett, the 17,430-square-foot house was later owned by actress Loretta Young and, before Daly bought it, by auto heiress Lydia Morrison. Barbra Streisand owns a home across the street.

Daly listed the home last year at $11.5 million, sources say. He bought it for $9.25 million in 1990. In 1994, he bought the Bel-Air home of clothing designers Francine Browner and Neil Afromsky for about $5 million and has been living there, sources say.

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LAURALEE BELL, who plays Cricket Romalotti on “The Young and the Restless,” has purchased producer JON PETERS’ Malibu Colony home for close to its last asking price of about $4 million, sources say.

The home actually includes two houses, one on the land side and the other with 30 feet of beachfront.

Peters (“Money Train,” “Batman,” “Rain Man”) used the land-side home as an office, projection room and staff quarters, sources say, and he turned the oceanfront house into his private quarters, with a hot tub and a pond with a bridge over it on his beachfront patio. The two houses include a total of about 4,000 square feet.

Bell is the daughter of William J. Bell Sr., executive producer of “The Bold and the Beautiful” and “The Young and the Restless,” and his wife, Lee Phillip Bell, who created “The Young and the Restless” with her husband in 1973.

Peters, 48, is said to have been leasing in Holmby Hills since his Beverly Park home sustained major damage from the Northridge earthquake. He originally listed his Malibu home in 1992 at $5.65 million. He bought the home in 1990 from entertainer Pia Zadora and her then-husband, businessman Meshulam Riklis.

Jack Pritchett and Carol Rapf of Pritchett-Rapf & Associates in Malibu represented Peters in the sale, and Marcus and Nancy Beck of the Prudential-Douglas Co.’s Malibu office represented Lauralee Bell, non-realty sources said.