Set change for Tori’s TV mom
Loni Anderson plays Kiki, a fictionalized version of actress Tori Spelling’s mom, in the comedy series “So noTORIous,” which debuted in April on VH1.
Anderson doesn’t look like Candy Spelling, widow of TV mogul Aaron Spelling. Anderson even said in a Knight Ridder interview that her character “bears no resemblance to the real Mrs. Spelling.” The women have this, however, in common: Both have lived in their current homes since 1991, when the houses were newly built.
But now one of their homes is on the market.
No, it’s not the Manor, the Spellings’ 56,500-square-foot Holmby Hills house rumored by bloggers to be for sale at $150 million. A family spokesman has denied that.
The house on the block is Anderson’s. The onetime blond bombshell on “WKRP in Cincinnati” moved in when her now 17-year-old son was only 2. The teen’s dad is actor Burt Reynolds, to whom Anderson was married for five years.
Ready for a change of address, the actress, 59, listed her 7,000-square-foot villa, in a gated Beverly Hills-area community, at close to $6.2 million.
The villa isn’t like the Manor, which has such unusual features as a one-lane bowling alley and a room reserved for gift-wrapping. Anderson’s five-bedroom, 6 1/2 bathroom home is more conventional and, not surprisingly, smaller.
Even so, it has much to commend it: a two-story entry, wood-paneled library, dining room, family room with a wet bar, kitchen with a butler’s pantry, and a master-bedroom suite with sitting area, two bathrooms, fireplace and a terrace with city views. And the yard has a wet bar, pool and spa.
Diane McClure of Coldwell Banker has the listing, according to the Multiple Listing Service.
‘Mr. Raider’ closes California chapter
Tim Brown, the 1987 Heisman Trophy winner who played for Notre Dame, just sold his Manhattan Beach town house for $975,000.
The 40-year-old, who had a birthday Saturday, retired last year as a wide receiver and moved to Texas, near Dallas, where he was born. He does not need a 1,937-square-foot second home in California for the occasional commentary he does for Fox Sports, he has said.
So he sold the tri-level town house he had owned since 1989. He had used the three-bedroom unit, built in 1984, for most of his 17 years in the NFL. He played for the L.A. Raiders from 1988 to 1994, then moved to Oakland with the team in 1995. After that, the town home was used primarily by extended family.
He called himself “Mr. Raider” for his many years with the L.A. and Oakland football team. He may be working now on becoming “Mr. NASCAR,” through his Tim Brown Racing team.
Brown sold the unit to Robbie Davis, a Laker trainer, and his wife, Wendy, a Clippers Spirit Dance Team member and now a realty agent who represented herself and her husband through Century 21 in Santa Monica.
Dana Wall of South Bay Brokers, Manhattan Beach, and John Corrales of Northwest Realty, Manhattan Beach, represented Brown in his sale, along with Leonard Marsaw, Brown’s brother-in-law, of the Michael Group in Texas.
Magician’s lair may reappear
What has been known as the legendary Harry Houdini estate in Laurel Canyon has been sold for $2.5 million.
It was purchased by a group of businessmen-film producers from Chile. The main buyer is interested in magic, according to the selling agents. The buyers may restore the original 40-room house, which burned down in the ‘50s during a canyon fire. The Great Houdini is thought to have lived in the 1920s house at one time.
An antiques dealer from Georgia owned the 4-acre, parklike grounds in the late ‘90s. He did considerable work cleaning up the property, which still has a tunnel leading across the street to a parcel once owned by cowboy star Tom Mix, a friend of the magician.
The Houdini estate also has a two-bedroom living quarters that was recently restored. It may have been the original guesthouse.
Patrick Norman, assistant manager of Rodeo Realty, and Cindy Reid Dart of the same firm represented the buyers.
The home court
of an Olympian
Sam Balter, the only Jewish American gold medalist at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, played on the first gold medal U.S. Olympic basketball team. A year later, the UCLA Hall of Famer and Bruin All-American basketball star bought a newly built home in Los Feliz.
He and his wife, Mildred, didn’t move into the house until 1940, but they lived there the rest of their lives. He died at age 88 in 1998; she died recently at age 98. Her death precipitated the sale of the home, where the athlete lived while becoming a radio and TV sportscaster, a sports columnist for the Los Angeles Herald Express and an actor in “The Babe Ruth Story” (1948).
The house, listed at just under $1.2 million, was designed and built by Arthur W. Hawes, who also designed eight Los Feliz apartment buildings in a similar style. The 2,300-square-foot traditional home, on a cul-de-sac, has three bedrooms, three bathrooms, a lap pool and canyon views.
There will be an open house from 2 to 5 p.m. today at 4124 Los Nietos Drive.
Richard Stanley and Hattie Ramirez have the listing at Coldwell Banker, Los Feliz.
To see previous columns on celebrity realty transactions, go to latimes.com/hotproperty.