Spacious Enough for His Friends

Actor David Schwimmer has purchased a Hancock Park house for $5.5 million.

The home, on slightly more than an acre, has nine bedrooms in 11,000 square feet.

Built in 1926 but recently remodeled, the home also has a sitting room, dressing room, two fireplaces, a tennis court, pool/spa and grounds with a guest house and three-car garage.

Schwimmer, 34, just finished his seventh season playing Ross Geller on the NBC comedy series “Friends.” He and the other five stars of the sitcom negotiated a salary of $750,000 each per episode, plus additional profit-sharing for the seventh and eighth seasons.

He appears in the HBO miniseries “Band of Brothers,” due to air in September, and he co-starred in the movie “Picking Up the Pieces,” which aired on TV in May.

He also co-starred in the movies “Kissing a Fool” (1998) and “The Pallbearer” (1996).

A stage actor as well, Schwimmer co-founded the Lookingglass Theatre Company in Chicago.

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Singer-actress Courtney Love has purchased a Westside home for about $2.3 million.

Built in the ‘20s, the Spanish-style house has four bedrooms in 3,700 square feet. The property, about two-thirds of an acre, is hidden by shrubs and trees.

Love sold her former home, in the Hollywood Hills, for about $4 million in April. At the time, she decided to buy a smaller home in L.A., because she planned to spend more time in New York. She bought a $2.8-million, 4,200-square-foot loft there in November.

Love, 36, stars in the upcoming movie “Julie Johnson,” shot in New York. She previously co-starred in the movies “Man on the Moon” (1999) and “The People vs. Larry Flynt” (1996). She founded the rock band Hole and this year put together a new all-female band.

In May, Love was suing her record label, Vivendi Universal. She contends that Vivendi and other big record companies skirt a law limiting contracts to seven years by obligating musicians to produce more records than they can complete during that period. This spring she also called for the music community to join her in forming a recording artists union.

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Barbara Sinatra, widow of legendary singer Frank Sinatra, has purchased a Westwood penthouse for $3 million.

The unit has four bedrooms in 5,600 square feet and city views. The high-rise, built in the ‘80s, has a pool.

The sellers were Marilyn and Harry Lewis, owners of the Beverly Hills restaurant Kate Mantilini. The Lewises own two other penthouses in the area.

Sinatra was prompted to buy in the security building after a 1998 encounter with four robbers on a residential street in Beverly Hills. She was walking at the time with her son, Robert Marx, and veteran producer-director George Schlatter and his wife, Jolene.

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Democrat Jane Harman, who defeated Republican Rep. Steve Kuykendall in November for the South Bay’s 36th Congressional District seat, and her husband, Sidney, have sold their home in Rolling Hills for $4.25 million.

Built in 1956, the home, on 6.2 acres with a pool, has four bedrooms in 3,700 square feet.

Earlier this year, the Harmans bought a three-bedroom, 4,200-square-foot home, built in 1999 in the Marina Del Rey area, for $3 million. That home also has a pool.

The fall congressional race was one of the state’s most hotly contested and most expensive. Harman, 55, previously served three terms in the office before she stepped down in an unsuccessful run for governor in 1998.

The Harmans moved to Rolling Hills in 1991 for her to run for Congress. They have continued to maintain a home in Washington, D.C.

Sidney Harman, in his early 80s, is the founder of Harman International, a business empire with sales, in 1998, of $1.6 billion. The Washington-based company sells stereo loudspeakers and consumer electronics.

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Paul Ben-Victor, who plays federal agent Bobby Hobbes in the Sci-Fi Channel’s original series “The Invisible Man,” has listed his Encino home at just under $1.4 million.

Ben-Victor, who also played Moe Howard in the ABC movie “The Three Stooges” (2000), bought a condo five blocks from the beach in Santa Monica that he plans to remodel. He has owned the house since 1996.

Built in the ‘40s, the renovated Spanish hacienda-style home has five bedrooms in about 4,700 square feet. The master bedroom has a fireplace and a bath with handmade Spanish tile. The home also has a media room/gym; one-bedroom guest apartment with a private entrance; lighted, gallery-type wall for art; and a pool.

Ben-Victor has appeared in such TV shows as “The Practice” and “The X-Files.” He played Steve Richards on “NYPD Blue,” and he has been in such movies as “Drowning Mona” (2000) and “Crazy in Alabama” (1999).

He co-stars in the upcoming movie “Very Mean Men” with Martin Landau, Ben Gazzara and Matthew Modine.

Ralph and Cathy Stevens of Real Value Properties, Burbank, have the listing.

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Screenwriters-producers Mark Levin and Jennifer Flackett have listed their Sunset Strip-area home, redesigned in 1978 by architect Frank O. Gehry, at just under $1.4 million. The couple is looking to buy a larger house for their family.

The three-story, 3,400-square-foot house was built in 1935. Gehry, who designed the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain and the rising Walt Disney Concert Hall, wrapped the existing stucco box with a modern shell featuring a new stairwell and front hall. The floors are linked by sculpture-like staircases.

After they bought the house in 1997, Levin and Flackett hired architect John Dutton to build a pergola near the pool and redesign the kitchen, breakfast area and master bathroom.

The home has four bedrooms, including the master, which has city views. The master bedroom was added as the third floor by a Gehry associate hired by a former owner.

Levin and Flackett are known to work on their laptop computers in bed.

A sliding door separates the bed from a sitting area, where they also have a desktop computer.

Together, they wrote the movie “Madeline” (1998), and they are co-executive producers of pilots for the sitcom “Born in Brooklyn” and the drama “3rd Degree,” both for Studios USA Television.

He worked on “The Wonder Years”; she worked on “L.A. Law” and “Civil Wars.”

Barry Sloane, specializing in historic and architecturally significant properties at Sotheby’s International Realty, Beverly Hills, has the listing.

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