Was First House the Practice One?
Kelli Williams, who plays Lindsay Dole on “The Practice,” and her husband, writer Ajay Sahgal, have sold their three-bedroom Los Feliz home for $765,000 and purchased a newly built, larger and more expensive home on the Westside.
Williams, 30, is entering her fourth season on the hit ABC legal drama. The long-awaited wedding of her character to Bobby Donnell (Dylan McDermott) was aired in May. Williams made her film debut in “There Goes My Baby” (1994) and became a series regular for the first time in “New York News” (1995).
Sahgal, 35, wrote the novel “Pool” (Grove/Atlantic Press, 1994), about the emptiness of celebrity. He is also a TV-film writer and journalist who has written book reviews and other pieces for The Times.
The couple had owned their Los Feliz home, with canyon and city views, for three years. Under Sahgal’s direction, they doubled its size to 3,000 square feet, added a 900-square-foot master suite with a walk-in closet and a steam shower, created a media room, and expanded and renovated the kitchen.
They sold their home to landscape designer Sarah Blakely and her husband, film editor Adam Pertofsky.
Howard Stevens and Shyrl Lorino of Prudential John Aaroe, Los Feliz, represented Williams and Sahgal in selling their Los Feliz home; Arnon Raphael of Fred Sands’ Hollywood Hills office represented the buyers.
The Malibu beachfront home of the late Mark Hughes, founder of Herbalife International, has come on the market at $31 million.
Hughes, who died in May at 44, had purchased the two-story Mediterranean-style home in December from Verna Harrah, widow of the late casino magnate William F. Harrah.
Verna Harrah had the 18,000-square-foot main house, designed by architect Robert Offenhauser, built in 1993 on about 7.5 acres in the Encinal Bluffs area. The estate, on a low bluff with a gentle slope to the beach, has about 300 feet of shoreline.
After he bought the home for a Malibu record of $25 million, Hughes purchased about 2.5 adjacent acres, which are expected to be available separately at $6.5 million.
Hughes collaborated with designer Joanna Shimkus Poitier on the interiors. Poitier, wife of actor Sidney Poitier, designed the original interiors for Harrah.
A bridge over a large koi pond leads to the main entrance of the house, which has a screening room, library, breakfast room, two-bedroom guest apartment, two-bedroom staff wing and seven-room master suite, including an office and an exercise room. There are two additional bedrooms and an elevator in the main house. The ocean-view home also has a caretaker’s house.
The grounds have a tennis court; pool terrace with sauna and cabanas; an outdoor eating area with a grill, pizza oven and fireplace; a rose garden, and a circular courtyard.
Jerry Jolton of Coldwell Banker Previews, Beverly Hills South, has the listing with Jeff Hyland and Rick Hilton of Hilton & Hyland, Beverly Hills.
Mark Willes, former chief executive of Times Mirror Co.--purchased by Tribune Co. this year--has sold his La Can~ada Flintridge home for $5 million, a record single-family home sale for the area.
Willes, 59, agreed to resign from The Times this year with salary, severance and stock payments amounting to a reported $64.5 million. He had been with The Times for five years. Although he will have an office in Glendale for seven years as part of his bonus package from The Times, Willis agreed recently to become a distinguished professor at Brigham Young University in Utah.
He and his wife, Laura, sold their La Can~ada Flintridge home to Gordon Crawford, the influential media money manager at Capital Research & Management Co. A key advisor to major entertainment moguls, Crawford, 53, has been the matchmaker in such media mergers as Time Warner’s purchase of Turner Broadcasting.
Crawford, who was already living in La Can~ada Flintridge, has listed his former home, on more than an acre, at about $2.6 million. The four-bedroom, 3,500-square-foot home has mountain views, a pool and a tennis court. It also has a small guest house.
The Willeses built their home in 1996 for $1.15 million. The six-bedroom, nearly 10,000-square-foot residence is on slightly more than an acre.
The house also has seven baths, a pool and an emergency generator so large that it was flown in by helicopter. The house, which has been on local home tours, has been described as “gorgeous,” “gracious” and “elegant.”
Trudy McKay of Dilbeck Realtors represented the Willeses in their sale, and Chris Duryee and Brenda Hilde of the same realty firm have Crawford’s listing, other sources said.
David H. Murdock, Castle & Cook’s chief executive, has sold his Bel-Air home to Gary Winnick, founder of the telecommunications company Global Crossing, in a complex transaction that could be worth as much as $95 million.
News of the negotiations surfaced in early September, when the value was estimated in the $60-million range. Escrow closed Sept. 27.
The deal includes an exchange of real estate owned by Winnick and furnishings owned by Murdock, sources said. Winnick is including his 5-acre Bel-Air property, worth about $25 million.
Four of those acres had been the site of the Paul Williams-designed home owned for years by the late Henry Salvatori, a confidant of Ronald Reagan. Winnick razed the 12,000-square-foot house last year, when he had plans to build a 30,000-square-foot home in its place.
Besides heading Castle & Cook, Murdock is a real estate developer, known most recently for developing the Thousand Oaks-area upscale community of Lake Sherwood.
Murdock had owned his Bel-Air home since 1980, when he bought it from the late hotelier Conrad Hilton’s estate. Built in 1938, the 23,000-square-foot home, on about 7.5 acres, is adjacent to the Bel-Air Country Club.
No Realtors were involved in the deal.
A 2.1-acre Beverly Hills-area croquet court belonging at one time to the late movie mogul Sam Goldwyn has been sold for the third time in a year, this time for just under $6 million.
The last seller, a local businessman, owned the croquet court, across the street from Goldwyn’s former estate, for three months and made a profit of $1 million, Realtors said.
The former owners had all had plans to build but changed their minds.
Raymond Bekeris of John Bruce Nelson & Associates represented the buyers and sellers all three times.
Actress Sue Ann Langdon, who was a regular on the Jackie Gleason Show on CBS during the ‘60s and later appeared on such other hit shows as “Bonanza” and “Gunsmoke,” and her husband, writer-director-producer Jack Emrek, have listed their Hidden Hills home at about $1.5 million.
Langdon also starred on Broadway in the 1967 musical “The Apple Tree,” and she appeared in such movies as “Guide for a Married Man” (1969), with Walter Matthau.
The couple, married since 1959, have spent 30 years in the house, and now they have such a large collection of Monterey-style furnishings, dating to 1929, that they need more room to accommodate it.
Monterey-style furnishings, such as those in the late Will Rogers’ house at Will Rogers State Historic Park in Pacific Palisades, have become popular again. Among newer collectors are Diane Keaton and Julia Roberts. Clark Gable and Walt Disney collected them in the past.
The Hidden Hills ranch, on 1.75 acres, includes a four-bedroom, 3,000-square-foot ranch-style home, built in 1953. The property also has a circular driveway, a pool and stables.
Bernie Uechtritz and Peter Radd of Frontgate Coldwell Banker Real Estate, Hidden Hills, have the listing.
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