She’ll Get Mail at Westside Address
Actress Meg Ryan has purchased a Westside home for close to its asking price of more than $8 million.
Ryan, 38, is separated from actor Dennis Quaid, whom she married in 1991. Quaid filed for divorce in July, and Ryan counter-sued in August.
Ryan began a highly publicized relationship with actor Russell Crowe this year while both were filming “Proof of Life,” due out in December.
The New Zealand-born Crowe has a 560-acre farm in Australia, where he was raised. Ryan has been living in a house close to the Brentwood home she had shared with Quaid. They have a young son.
Ryan bought a Mediterranean-style home, recently restored, with five bedrooms, a screening room, guest house, pool and city-to-ocean views. The gated home also has a private drive.
She bought her first home in the L.A. area in 1988 for $362,000 after moving here from New York in 1984 and appearing in the movie “Top Gun” in 1986. She sold the house for $630,000 the same year she co-starred with Billy Crystal in “When Harry Met Sally. . . .” It was only one year after she had purchased and remodeled the 42-year-old house.
Since then, Ryan has had a string of movie hits, including “Sleepless in Seattle” (1993), “City of Angels” (1998), “You’ve Got Mail” (1998) and “Hanging Up” (1999).
Kurt Rappaport of Westside Estate Agency, Beverly Hills, handled the deal, sources said.
Chris Mills, a forward for the Golden State Warriors who previously played for the Cleveland Cavaliers and the New York Knicks, is buying a home that is under construction in the North Ranch area of Thousand Oaks. He has listed his home in Calabasas at just under $1.6 million.
Mills, 30, attended Fairfax High School and was a first-round draft pick out of the University of Arizona in 1993.
Mills’ new home, which is in the framing stage, is being expanded from 7,000 square feet to about 9,000 square feet. The gated estate, on slightly more than three acres, will have an infinity pool, detached pool house, five-car garage and jogging trails when completed early next year.
His Calabasas home is in a gated community and has six bedrooms in 6,600 square feet. The home also has a pool, spa and sports court.
Jordan Cohen of Re/Max Olson, Westlake Village, has the Calabasas listing and represented Mills in his purchase.
Nicki Laporta of Troop Real Estate, Thousand Oaks, had the listing on the North Ranch house.
Sandy Gallin, an executive producer of the WB series “Buffy, the Vampire Slayer” and “Angel,” has listed one of his Malibu properties, the Carbon Beach home of the late comedian-actor Flip Wilson, at $15 million.
Gallin has represented such stars as Dolly Parton and Neil Diamond, but he has become almost as well-known in the L.A. area for redoing and selling houses. Earlier this month, he listed a different Malibu property--a home on just over three acres next to movie-TV mogul Barry Diller’s former home--at $15 million. Gallin had purchased that home for an undisclosed price in April.
He bought the Wilson home a year ago. Wilson, who died in 1998 at age 64, had lived in the home for about 15 years. When Gallin bought it for about $3 million, the house was described as “a definite remodel.”
Gallin refurbished the house and expanded it from 4,300 square feet to 6,700 square feet. The home, which is being sold with furnishings, has four bedrooms plus a maid’s quarters and 60 feet of beach frontage.
June Scott of June Scott Estates, a Coldwell Banker Previews company in Beverly Hills, is co-listing the home with Chris Cortazzo of Coldwell Banker Previews, Malibu West. Scott also has Gallin’s other listing.
Verna Harrah, widow of casino magnate William F. Harrah, has sold the Beverly Hills home that she bought in 1996 from the estate of jazz great Ella Fitzgerald.
The buyer was described as a business associate of Harrah’s from the East Coast who is moving here.
Built in 1930, the 6,500-square-foot house, where Fitzgerald lived for 20 years before she died in 1996 at 78, has a room known as Ella’s Pub, where Fitzgerald held jam sessions with jazz legends.
Harrah sold the house for just under $6 million in March but took months to close escrow so she could remodel a Bel-Air house she bought in March in the $8-million range. Built in 1926, the 14,000-square-foot house is on 1.5 acres.
Harrah, who sold her Malibu home in December to Herbalife founder Mark Hughes for $25 million, also bought a Bel-Air home this year for her son and his wife, sources said. The house, a newly built Tuscan villa with five bedrooms in 7,500 square feet, sold for its $5.95-million asking price.
The seller was builder-owner Edmund O’Neill, who had built it for himself and then decided that the house was too big for him, neighbors said.
The Beverly Hills-area home of Ziegfeld girl-turned-Hollywood hostess Jean Howard, who died in March at 89, has been sold for about $1.5 million to Merton Shapiro, a former Philadelphia businessman who owned a string of movie theaters, and his wife, Barbara. They just sold their ranch in Santa Barbara in the $10-million range.
Howard, once the wife of powerful Hollywood agent Charles K. Feldman, entertained Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland and other legends at the house, which she and Feldman purchased in 1942.
Howard turned her photos into the books “Jean Howard’s Hollywood” (1989) and “Travels With Cole Porter” (1991). She was a friend of the composer and his wife.
Built in 1935, the Spanish-style house in Coldwater Canyon has three bedrooms and staff quarters in about 4,500 square feet. The house also has a large pool.
Kay Pick of Coldwell Banker Previews, Beverly Hills North, had the listing. Asher Dann of the same office represented the Shapiros in buying their new home and selling their ranch.
A Bel-Air home designed by the late architect Gordon B. Kaufmann and built in 1926 has been listed at $7.7 million.
Although Kaufman designed many homes in Southern California, it is unusual for one to come on the market, real estate sources said.
Kaufman, who died in 1949 at age 61, designed the Athenaeum at Caltech, the Palladium ballroom in Hollywood, one of the L.A. Times buildings, the grandstand and clubhouse at Santa Anita Park and the 37,000-square-foot city-owned former E.L. Doheny Jr. estate known as Greystone in Beverly Hills.
The Bel-Air home, which has been restored and updated, is on an acre with a pond, pool, guest house and original stables. The 6,500-square-foot main house has three bedrooms, a maid’s quarters, library, loggia, screening room, wine cellar and views over the Bel-Air golf course to the city and the ocean.
Jeff Hyland of Hilton & Hyland, Beverly Hills, has the listing.
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