Comedian Plays to Larger House
STEVE MARTIN, who co-stars with Goldie Hawn in the upcoming Paramount remake of Neil Simon’s comedy “The Out-of-Towners,” has sold one of his two Beverly Hills homes for about $2 million, sources say.
The actor-comedian-playwright bought a larger house in the area for $3 million in 1995, but he continued to live in the smaller house while remodeling his new place.
Martin, 52, may soon reprise his role as George Banks in “Father of the Bride III,” a sequel to the 1995 and 1991 movies in which he also starred.
He may also play Schmendiman in the movie of his play “Picasso at the Lapin Agile,” which opened off-Broadway in 1995 after a successful run in Los Angeles. It was presented again in L.A. this year and is now on stage in South Florida.
The Emmy- and Grammy-winning actor also wrote “WASP and Other Plays” and three original short sketches being performed at the fourth annual U.S. Comedy Arts Festival, which ends today, in Aspen, Colo.
“The Out-of-Towners,” a remake of the 1970 film starring Jack Lemmon and Sandy Dennis, is being filmed in Los Angeles and New York through May.
The house that Martin just sold has five bedrooms and three bathrooms in a little less than 4,500 square feet. He had owned the house since he starred in and co-wrote the movie “The Jerk” (1979).
Built in the 1920s, the house has skylights, a master bedroom with a spa, two guest bedrooms and a separate studio-office or staff quarters. There is also a swimming pool on the property.
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FESS PARKER, who played Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone in TV series during the 1950s and 1960s, and his wife, Marcy, have sold a Montecito home for close to its $1.2-million asking price, sources say.
The Parkers decided to sell the house last year after buying a larger one in the same community.
The house they just sold is 3,000 square feet and has a guest house. The house they bought is 5,000 square feet with three bedrooms and a pool pavilion.
The Parkers also have had a home for many years at their winery and vineyard in Los Olivos.
Besides working at his winery, the actor is hoping to develop a 150-room hotel in Santa Barbara. He built the 360-room Doubletree there in 1987.
Paul O’Keeffe of Montecito had the co-listing with Dan Encell of Fred Sands’ Montecito office on the house they sold. Skip Harkson of Pitts & Bachmann, Montecito, was the selling agent.
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BRENDA HAMPTON, creator and executive producer of the critically acclaimed WB series “7th Heaven,” has purchased the longtime West Los Angeles home of basketball-star-turned-minister Willie Naulls.
There were a couple of offers on the house, but Naulls decided to sell to Hampton, a source said, because of the religious aspects of “7th Heaven,” which is about a minister and his family.
Hampton, in her 30s, was a writer and supervising producer of “Mad About You” and executive story consultant on “Blossom.” She was renting a smaller home nearby. She bought the West L.A. house for about $1.5 million, sources say.
Naulls, 63, was the first all-American coached by John Wooden at UCLA. Naulls became an all-star forward with the New York Knicks and played for the Boston Celtics before retiring from basketball and buying an auto dealership in Los Angeles.
After developing the dealership, he earned a master’s degree in theology, was ordained and established a ministry to show underprivileged children in neighborhoods like Watts, where he grew up, that there are options to gangs.
Naulls leased some buildings that had been part of a defense plant and turned them into six gyms with basketball hoops so youngsters could learn to focus, first on shooting baskets, then on other positive endeavors.
He and his wife, Ann, have put most of their savings into their Hawthorne-area ministry and nonprofit Concerned Parents of America, which he founded and heads.
The home they sold was Spanish in style, built in 1928, with three bedrooms plus maid’s quarters in a bit less than 4,000 square feet.
The couple had lived in the house, where they raised their four children, for more than 20 years. They haven’t decided yet where they will make their new home, sources said.
Kay Pick of Mike Silverman Estates, a Coldwell Banker-Jon Douglas Co., represented Hampton. Linda Janger of Pace Properties in Beverly Hills had the listing.
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A Del Mar home that the late comedian-actor JIMMY DURANTE rented every summer for 15 years has come on the market at $10.6 million.
Susie Stevenson, owner of the property, remembers Durante’s renting the house during the 1960s and 1970s from her parents, both of whom are now dead.
Durante, who died at 86 in 1980, liked to surf-fish in front of the house while his wife, Marge, and daughter, Ceci, relaxed on the beach, two doors away from a home of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, Stevenson said.
Durante was so loved by the townsfolk that they named a street after him and once made him the Del Mar honorary mayor, she added.
Stevenson’s grandmother bought the property in the early ‘30s and built two houses there, one during the 1930s, the other in 1951. “My family lived there, on the beach, all these years,” she said.
The site consists of three lots with 105 feet of beach frontage. It is listed with Chiquita Abbot Realty and Wendy Ramp of Coldwell Banker Residential Real Estate in Del Mar.
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SID KIBRICK, who played Woim in the “Our Gang” movies of the 1930s, and his wife, Greta, have sold their Beverly Hills home of 36 years at close to its last asking price of about $2 million, sources say. The couple plan to move to a condo on the Wilshire corridor.
Kibrick played Woim for Hal Roach and the MGM studios for nine years, until he was 13. In the 1950s, some episodes of the comedies were replayed on TV as “The Little Rascals.” As an adult, Kibrick became a real estate developer and then a broker with Fred Sands Estates. He had the listing on his house sale.
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LYMAN VAN VLIET, the aerospace physicist who invented the tennis- and running-shoe repair material known as Shoe Goo, and his wife, Sandy, have listed their Laguna Beach house at $3.25 million. The Van Vliets built the home in 1992 after selling their company, Eclectic Products Inc. of San Pedro, the manufacturer of Shoe Goo.
The three-level house on the beach won an Architectural Guild award for its state-of-the-art look. The four-bedroom 5,200-square-foot house has a media level with projection booth and 10-foot screen, a card and game room, wine cellar, computer room and electronic window coverings.
The Van Vliets, in their 60s, are selling the house because they want to get a home that is “more grandchildren-friendly,” they say. The walled and gated home has many open and covered decks, white marble floors and a 7-by-13-foot indoor spa with a two-story water cascade.
Jim Welham of Coldwell Banker Residential Real Estate in Laguna Beach has the listing.
