Afternoon Tidbit: Oprah Winfrey

Real estate reporter (and former celebrity property gossip) Bob Goldsborough at The Chicago Tribune revealed today in his Elite Street column that daytime chat show hostess and media mogul Oprah Winfrey has put one of her Chicago condominiums up for sale with a $2,800,000 price tag.

Not only did Miz Winfrey pay $5,600,000 for the full-floor, lake-view spread in Chicago's upscale Streeterville 'hood in 2006, she never even moved in, put it out for lease last year at fifteen grand a month and now she's willing to take a multi-million dollar loss just to get rid of the damn thing.

The new and current price means that even if someone comes along and pays the billionairess the full $2,800,000 asking price, she's still facing a $2,800,000 loss not counting carrying costs, taxes, maintenance charges and real estate fees. Not that she can't afford such a loss, but still a multi-million dollar loss is a mulit-million dollar loss even if it is just couch-cushion change for a billionaire like Miz Winfrey.

Your Mama has dissed and discussed the 13-room sprawler that spreads out over 4,607 square feet on the sixth floor of a beauteous Beaux Arts building. Iffin yer innerested in our thoughts about the apartment you can go here (with photographs and floor plan) and/or here and/or here.

Miz Winfrey has long-owned a multi-unit combination duplex atop Water Tower Place in Chicago but since her television network (OWN) is headquartered in Los Angeles she accordingly spends more and more of her time farther west at The Promised Land, her 40-acre estate in Montecito (CA) and her farm in Hawaii.

Your Mama imagines if the lady can indeed make this network of hers work for the long haul she'll snatch up a private and pricey bolt hole in Los Angeles where she can stay when she doesn't feel like shacking up in a 5-star hotel or commuting back and forth to The Promised Land via chauffeured car or helicopter. We shall see, kittens, we shall see.

listing photo:

Joan Collins Re-Lists Manhattan Pied-a-Terre

SELLER: Joan Collins
LOCATON: New York City, NY
PRICE: $2,200,000
SIZE: 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Today, dontchyall know, is the 79th birthday of still-globe-trotting actress, author and Showbiz icon Joan Collins. In honor of her birthday—and belatedly for her 2010 award-winning, star turn in the short film FETISH—Your Mama thought we'd take a quick look see at the New York City pied-a-terre she recently put back on the market with an asking price of $2,200,000.

Miz Collins—often carefully painted up like a geisha or like no body's bizness, depending on one's point of view of these things—has been successfully shakin' her classically-trained money maker on stages, screens and tee-vees since the early 1950s. Although quite capable of nuanced character portrayal Miz Collins is arguably and may forever be most famous for her long-running boob-toob role as the filthy rich, Nat Sherman-smoking, one-dimensional villainess Alexis Colby on the iconically campy tee-vee program Dynasty.

The wildly successful night time soap story ran throughout the 1980s when women of a certain upper class and status dripped with diamonds at all times of day, wore shoulder padded and waist-nipping power suits that gave them imposing silhouettes, and lacquered their bubbled hair into armor-like helmets capable of deflecting even the sharpest of underhanded compliments from the other lunching ladies. Her character Alexis Colby—and to a certain extent she herself in real life (as well as her less-couth sister Jackie)—exemplified this sartorial trend that took on and whole-heartedly embraced a very artificial-looking notion of what constitutes chic-ness and glamor for jet-setting socialites.

Anyhoo, this is not, celebrity real estate aficionados may recall, the first time at the New York City real estate rodeo for Miz Collins who was born and bred in England but has been a citizen of the world with four far-flung residences. In May 2011 The Daily Mail quoted an article in Hello! magazine in which Miz Collins is quoted saying, "Many people have said to us, 'how on earth can you afford to keep four homes?' And the fact is, in this day and age, we can't." Now children. Use your noggins and don't jump to ugly conclusions about Miz Collins financial affairs. Just because Diva told Hello! she can no longer afford to keep four multi-million dollar private residences around the world doesn't mean she can't well afford to keep three. Okay?

The high-gloss septuagenarian—who emphatically claimed in mid-2010 in she hadn't fallen down vanity's slippery slope of Botox or plastic surgery—has had her Midtown Manhattan pied-a-terre on the market on and off for both lease and sale at a variety of different prices since 2008 when it first popped up for rent at $15,000 per month. The price was quickly lowered to $12,000 and 5 or six weeks later dropped again to $10,000.

In March 2011 her three-unit, three-exposure, combo co-operative at The Dorchester—a mid-rise, white-brick, post-war wart of a building just two blocks from Tiffany's flag ship shop on Fifth Avenue—was put up for sale at $2,895,000. Alas, no takers even though the price was repeatedly chipped away at until February 2012 when it was $2,200,000 and taken off the market.

In late 2011 Miz Collins and her real estates team went a little creative with their real estate efforts and offered her already combined crib as a package with the almost 2,000 square foot apartment next door, a two-unit combo owned by someone else. The opening asking price for the whole kit-'n'-kaboodle was $4,775,000, a number that fell to $3,950,000 before it dropped off the market in late March 2012.

That's all a long way around to mid-April (2012) when Miz Collins re-listed her unwanted Manhattan roost with a familiar asking price of $2,200,000. Listing information (and the floor plan included with it, below) shows the approximately 2,200 square foot apartment has separate but adjoining living and dining rooms with over-sized windows; a puny, windowless kitchen stuck in the middle of the apartment; two, well-separated bedrooms plus a den convertible to a third; and 3 compact bathrooms, only one of which has an actual window.

Current listing information, which identifies Miz Collins as the owner, describes the apartment as "a soignée sanctuary high above the city's frenetic din." First of all, it's on the 8th floor and anyone who has ever lived in New York City knows you're hardly above the city's "din" on the 8th floor and in Midtown the 8th floor is unlikely to provide much in the way of a city view. Secondly, it's just not soignée, at least not as shown in listing photographs. Sure, the dining room is spacious and some of Miz Collin's things have a downtown-ish and once-again trendily au courant 1980s sleekness but the apartment itself is a fairly-ordinary and painfully featureless post-war snoozer with a slightly gawky layout—check out the confusing O-shaped entry hall—at least three different wood floor patterns and a lot of mirrored surfaces that unfortunately only reflect the numerous featureless features of the apartment.

The "formal" living room—shown furnished in listing photographs with a spare and vexing collection of comestibles that, along with other eye-crossing choices, include a zebra-stripe sofa and foot stool—connects through an extra-wide opening to the "formal" dining room where one entire, long wall is mirrored from the baseboard to almost the ceiling.

The NY Daily News ran additional photos of the Miz Collins's apartment that show a black lacquer and mirrored pedestal with a too cliché orchid on top standing against the wall in the corridor just outside the clean-looking but decidedly-dated, all-white galley kitchen fitted with—you got it—a mirrored back splash.

Behind the dining room a long, narrow den—convertible to a bedroom—doesn't appear in listing photos to have a single mirror but does have tomato red paint on the walls, white paint on the ceiling and a complete wall of built-in bookshelves with entertainment center.

In the master bedroom, Miz Collins (and her nice-gay or lady decorator) swapped the mirror motif for a sea of matching toile-like fabric used to create custom bed dressings, wall coverings and curtain swaggery. The lacquered white dressing table (with tilting mirror), side tables and credenza-thing are, quite simply, unspeakable.

The window-free master bathroom was, not surprisingly, given a glitzy, Art Deco decorative over-note with fully-mirrored cabinetry and walls mirrored from about the waist up that run just about all the way around the tiny room. This is a fun house-y space that could far-too-easily turn into a house of infinitely-reflected horrors with a single naked person brushing his teeth or trimming her nose hairs. Think about that next time you consider installing wrap-around mirrors in your bathroom.

Listing information shows Miz Collin's New York apartment carries monthly common charges of $2,915 that add to the pet-friendly building's community pot that pays for the white-glove services that include full-time doormen, concierge, package-room people and laundry facilities. Although we can't confirm Your Mama imagines the housekeeping services provided by the building cost extra.

Miz Collins and her much (much) younger theater producer fifth husband Percy Gibson maintain three other residences including a 3 bedroom and 3 bathroom, high-floor condo at the star-studded Sierra Towers building in Los Angeles purchased in December 2007 for $2,700,000.

Mister and Missus Collins-Gibson also keep a secluded villa high in the mountains of La Croix-Valmer, not so far from the impossibly haute (and kinda vulgar) yachting stop of St. Tropez in the south of France, as well as a sizable flat in London's uppity Belgravia area. A kindly gent we'll call Tom Collins—no relation to Miz Collins—helpfully pointed us in to multi-page article from 2010 in—surprise!—Hello! magazine chock full of photos of the centrally-located London apartment she's owned 20 (or so years). Your Mama might label the day-core as an elegant example of nouveau landed gentry meets Tinseltown and she herself described it as, "cosy," and "traditional English, but with a touch of 18th-century French." Y'all can call it what you will.

listing photos and floor plan: Core

Your Mama Also Hears...

...that one of Tinseltown's top talent agents is about to sell his conveniently located, two-lot estate in the flats of Beverly Hills to a writer/producer/director who fairly recently rocketed to Hollywood hotshot status with a soon-to-be-three film franchise that, do date, has worldwide box office receipts in excess of a billion dollars.

The property, just a couple painstakingly-manicured blocks from downtown Beverly Hills, was being shopped off-market, we're told, by one of Tinseltown's leading real estate ladies and we hear the deal will go down for around seventeen. We don't recommend anyone quote that number like it's the damn gospel though because it's just some real estate scuttlebutt that landed in our inbox thanks to Our Fairy Godmother in Beverly Hills.

The seller, powerful and uncommonly laid-back in the the sharp-elbowed professional water he swims, bought the multi-structure mini-compound in 2006 for $16,500,000. At that time the not-quite-an-acre estate had a fully restored and expanded 1926 Wallace Neff-designed main house with 6 bedrooms and 5 bathrooms—or 8 bedrooms and 8.5 bathrooms, depending on where online one peeps—plus a large guest house, detached studio and separate pool cabana.

The various, (mostly) red tile-roofed structures set at the estate's edges are knitted together with a patchwork of broad terraces, boxwood-lined lawns and pathways, formal gardens and a long, gated driveway that runs along the side of the main house to the rear of the property.

Property records don't yet reflect a transfer but two long-time sources who both operate at the tippy-top of the Platinum Triangle real estate world both fingered the newly very rich filmmaker as the next owner of the seasoned and well-maintained estate.

We know this one's just gonna be interesting to Angelenos, but any guesses?

Your Mama Hears...

...there's a big deal going down in the low-key but high-fallutin' seaside community of Montecito, CA.

A well-connected real estate mover and shaker—let's call him Spencer Spillinbeans—recently tattled to Your Mama that an exceptionally sumptuous estate immediately next door to Oprah Winfrey's even more aristocratic Promised Land is about to be sold for somewhere near its knee-buckling $52,000,000 asking price.

Property records show the sprawling spread in question is currently owned by Pennsylvania-based Ayn Rand acolyte and professional sports and entertainment tycoon Ed Snider who appears from property records we peeped to have owned the refined but (still quietly) showy estate since at least the mid-1990s.

In addition to his Montecito getaway, thrice-divorced Mister Snider's private residential real estate holdings include (but may not be limited to) an estate in Bryn Mawr, PA anchored—as per the Montgomery County Tax Man—by a 30 room mega-mansion with 13 terlits sitting on more than 20 (mostly landscaped) acres and a multi-acre, multi-residence family compound on scenic Cobbosseecontee Lake in Monmouth, ME. In April 2008 Mister Snider coughed up $7,340,000 for a high-floor, 2 bedroom and 2.5 bathroom condo at 15 Central Park West that he quickly flipped four months later for—are you sitting down for this?—$12,400,000, an astonishing $5,060,000 profit in just four short months.

Anyhoo, listing information available online for Mister Snider's grandiose but genteel and obviously very high-maintenance Montecito estate is slim-slim-slim. There are not—that we could find—any descriptions or details about the extensive grounds or clearly colossal Mediterranean manse. Just about all Your Mama can tell the children for sure about the property is that it encompasses two, gently sloped ocean-view parcels that span a combined 7.37 (mostly landscaped) acres.

Listing photographs shows the hulking mansion's day-core veers towards seriously sumptuous and very correct (if too stiff and traditional for our particular decorative tastes) and aerial imagery available through the computer reveal the baronial grounds have an especially long, gated, hedge-lined and tree-shaded driveway; a suburban 7-11 parking lot-sized motor court with additional (staff) parking adjacent to the garages; vast and expensively green terraced lawns; multiple water features including a monumentally-scaled T-shaped body of water with fountain; a tennis court and adjacent sport; a small cottage tucked into a secluded corner perfect for housing out-of-town guests or live-in domestic staff; and a swimming pool complex with adjacent pool cabana for relaxing, mixing cocktails, taking care of life's ugly evacuation rituals and having a late afternoon massage administered firmly by a house-calling masseur named something sufficiently exotic-sounding like Sven or Reinaldo or maybe Sithembile.

Property records and other online documentation Your Mama perused don't yet show a transfer of ownership but our always impeccably informed source Spencer Spillinbeans snitched the new owners of Mister Snider's sprawling trophy estate will be Chicago-based pharmaceutical industry bigwig Jack McGinley and his wife Julie.

Keep in mind kitten-caboodles, this is just a little high-end real estate rumor and gossip right now but, when all y'all read all about it in the property gossip columns in big and legit newspapers, remember they heard about it from Your Mama just like you did.

Anyhoodles poodles, our unnecessary bitterness aside, what is not just rumor and gossip is that until very recently the very rich Mister and Missus McGinley owned another significant (if less epic) estate in Montecito, literally just a couple of driveways away.

In 2006 Mister McGinley and the missus paid $7,000,000 for Constantia, an approximately 3.5 acre estate with a nearly 10,000 square foot, architecturally authentic South African Cape Dutch-style mansion designed by Chicago architect Ambrose Cramer and built in 1930 for Chicago-based meatpacking industry executive Arthur Meeker and his wife Grace. Eventually the idiosyncratic-for-its-locale-mansion and its Lockwood de Forest Jr.-designed grounds landed in the philanthropic hands of Stewart and Katherine Abercrombie who are said to have hosted the Dalai Lama on the property and who—we read on Curbed—had the house photographed for a 1979 issue of Architectural Digest.

Mister and Missus McGinley gave the entire property a complete face lift, a real tear it all up and take it down to the studs sort of thing to update, upgrade, restore and renovate every inch of the grounds and residence. For reasons beyond our knowledge or understanding, Mister and Missus McGinley soon caught a case of The Real Estate Fickle and have had the post-rehab Constantia on and off the market since at least 2009. Listing information we dug up out of the interweb indicates the 9,771 square foot mansion has 6 bedrooms and 9 terlits divided up in 4 full and 5 half bathrooms and was last on the (open) market earlier this year with an asking price of $17,500,000 and sold, according to property records, in April for $16,800,000 to a limited liability corporation that links directly back to a posh pad in Los Angeles' Holmby Hills enclave owned by Colony Capital Principal Justin Chang. Make of that connection what you will.

So turns and churns the increasingly electric ultra-high-end real estate markets around the world and just to keep that particular pump primed, Your Mama hears through the Platinum Triangle real estate grapevine that a Hancock Park mansion owned by a sit-com star will soon be sold to another celeb and we also heard someone else just paid close to $30,000,000 for a long-vacant and woefully neglected compound on a plum, private hilltop in Bel Air.

listing photos: Coldwell Banker Previews International
listing photos (Constantia): Village Properties Realty

Josh Hutcherson Buys Tree House in Tinseltown

BUYER: Josh Hutcherson
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $2,500,000
SIZE: 1,861 square feet, 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Nineteen year old tween and teen heartthrob Josh Hutcherson—now appearing in the disturbing and dystopian film (franchise) The Hunger Games—may not yet be old enough to imbibe booze on the legal up and up but the Kentucky born and bred Showbiz up-and-comer's already got the dough-re-mi to drop $2,500,000 on a sexy, gated and well-secured crib tucked into a star-studded pocket L.A.'s Hollywood Hills.

Young Mister Hutcherson has toiled in Tinseltown since he was just knee high to Tom Cruise's knee with roles big and small in almost three dozen films and television programs. In addition to his starring role in the aforementioned The Hunger Games franchise, J-Hutch's long resume includes (but is far from limited to) RV, Bridge to Terabithia and at least two Oscar-nominated movies, American Splendor and the more recent The Kids Are All Right.

We first heard the scuttlebutt about Mister Hutcherson's real estate activities late last week from a source who identified his (or her) self as Terry Tellsitall. Property records do show a transaction, just as T.T. told us they would, but they show the property acquired through a trust. We immediately picked up our bedraggled princess phone and dialed our superlatively plugged-in pal Lucy Spillerguts who quickly seconded Terry's celebrity real estate motion. All y'all can make of that chain of events what you will.

Mister Hutcherson's newly acquired, teenage bachelor pad in Los Angeles is well known in real estate circles as The Tree House due to its sylvan roost in a thick sycamore grove near the tippy top of Laurel Canyon. The 2 bedroom and 2 bathroom house is even better known in celebrity real estate circles for its rapid succession of famous owners. More on that in a moment.

Listing information doesn't list the square footage of the relatively compact but airy interior spaces—the Los Angeles County Tax Man puts it at 1,861 square feet—but does make some hay about the 2,500 square feet of seamless outdoor living space outfitted with an "incredible movie lounge, dining/barbecue space, and multiple seating areas perched in the trees" plus integrated sound, projection and security systems.

Interior features include polished concrete floors, a living room with fireplace and pitched wood ceiling and a dining room with vaulted wood-beamed ceiling and over-sized glass doors that merge the room with the the exterior living areas. The narrowness of the sleek, galley kitchen gets off-set by a high-pitched wood-beamed ceiling with clerestory windows and wood-framed glass doors. At least one of the two bathrooms has an over-sized shower with built-in bench and two huge panels of glass that probably make for a fine showering experience except for when Juan the gardener shows up unexpectedly at shower time.

Now then, let's jump back to the low-key but high-quality residence's celebrity history. The house—a small California ranch originally built in 1951 and discreetly-sited on .43 hillside acres set well below the street behind remote-controlled gates and a high fence that may (or may not) fry a fingertip were anyone be moronic enough to try to put a fingertip on them—was one of several contiguous properties owned in the mid-Aughts by real estate serial compound-creating comedienne cum chat show queen Ellen DeGeneres.

As a slight but amusing celebrity real estate aside...Miz Degeneres bought the centerpiece of her current compound in Beverly Hills—the one Ryan Seacrest just snatched up for $37M—from Will & Grace co-creator Max Mutchnick in 2007 for nearly $30,000,000. In April 2003, according to property records, she purchased the centerpiece of her former compound atop Laurel Canyon from the same Mister Mutchnick for an undisclosed amount. She sold off the Laurel Canyon compound in parts with the main house and grounds going in 2006 to SNL alum turned money minting movie star Will Ferrell for an undisclosed amount. (It was last listed for $9,900,000.)

Anyhoo, Miz DeGeneres acquired The Tree House in March 2004 from flamboyant and now deceased furniture designer Guy Levalley Chaddock. She paid $1,275,000 for the tree-shrouded residence.

A quickie face-lift that gave the classically Californian ranch a distinctly Zen-modern make-over was followed by the swift onset of what we call The Real Estate Fickle and Miz DeGeneres flipped The Tree House in April 2005 to noted film poster designer and producer David Weissman who coughed up, according to property records we peeped, $2,100,000.

Mister Weissman also quickly caught a case of The Real Estate Fickle and in June 2006 sold The Tree House for $2,300,000 to a trust known to be affiliated with Australian actor Heath Ledger, at that time shacked up with girlfriend, baby momma and three-time Oscar-nominated actress Michelle Williams. In January 2008 Mister Ledger tragically turned up dead of a drug overdose in a rented loft apartment in downtown New York City and six months later the executors of Mister Ledger's estate sold The Tree House for $2,500,000 to a Miami (FL)-based concern connected to a man named Gerardo Celasco. As it turns out, that happens to be the very same name accomplished equestrian and volleyball player turned tight-bodied actor Adrian Bellani (Passions, Moneyball, RPM Miami) was born with.

Mister Celasco/Bellani, also quickly stricken with screaming case of The Real Estate Fickle, first attempted to sell The Tree House just four months after signing on the deed's dotted line. In September 2011 Your Mama discussed the property when it was (re-)listed for $2,995,000. A couple of price cuts followed and in February of this year (2012) it briefly popped back up on the market with a $2,595,000 price tag before young Mister Hutcherson came along and snapped it up for $2,500,000.

Given it's frequent turnover of high-profile owners, anyone want to guess how long young Mister Hutcherson hangs on to his new house before he too catches an incurable case of The Real Estate Fickle?

Several years ago, when Mister Hutcherson was just 16, he opened the doors to his family's primary residence in Union, KY for the Cribs cameras. At that point he was holed up in a bedroom in the basement where custom-built, floor-to-ceiling shelves stored and displayed his rather extensive sneaker collection.

Mister Celasco/Bellani, as a final aside, also owns the 2,267 square foot house next door to The Tree House he bought from—you got it—Ellen DeGeneres back in September 2007 for $1,995,000. Although the updated and upgraded 1964 contemporary was on the (open) market in both 2009 and 2010, property records show the chisel-chinned Mister Celasco/Bellani still owns the property.

listing photos: Rodeo Realty

Terry Semel Lists Malibu Compound for Fifty Million

SELLERS: Terry and Jane Semel
LOCATION: Malibu, CA
PRICE: $50,000,000
SIZE: 10,317 square feet, 9 bedrooms, 13 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: A little weekend birdie came chirp-chirpin' along late last night to tell us former chairman/co-CEO of Warner Bros. and exceedingly well-compensated former Yahoo! CEO Terry Semel and his wife Jane have heaved and hoed their oceanfront compound in Malibu, CA on the market with an elephantine $50,000,000 price tag.

We're not quite sure exactly when or for how much Mister and Missus Semel bought their beach properties. What we do know is the multi-structure, post-modernist compound was designed and built in the early-1990s for the Showbiz bigwig turned tech industry tycoon by East Coast-based architect Michael Graves. The Semel compound comprises three separate but architecturally-related structures: a bulky, two story main house; a tall and thin, barrel-vaulted screening room; and a somewhat low-slung, two-story guest/pool house.

Listing information shows the two-parcel property encompasses .73 very valuable acres with 151 bulk-headed feet of frontage on Carbon Beach, colloquially called Billionaire's Beach for the number of billionaires who maintain homes on what is arguably Malibu's most desirable and expensive stretch of sand. The three post-modern pavilions combined measure 10,317 square feet, as per listing information, and between them contain a total of 9 bedrooms and an unlucky 13 bathrooms.When we mentioned to our highly superstitious house gurl Svetlana that Mister and Missus Semel's Malibu compound has 13 bathrooms she let out a screech that curled our toes and self-assuredly said, "Well no wonder those people are selling!" Anyhoo....

Parking can be an major issue in Malibu—there's just not enough of it really—and Mister and Missus Semel's spread offers an unusual and coveted amount of off-street parking for up to 9 cars, according to listing information. In addition to a narrow strip wedged between the guest house and often traffic-clogged Pacific Coast Highway, a pair of discreet gates set into a tall, concrete privacy wall swing open to a compact, tree-shaded motor court in front of the main house with an attached two-car garage.

Mister Graves—the architect—made a decidedly (melo)dramatic statement with a voluminous, rotunda entry (above, top left and right) that soars three stories high with a sky light overhead and inlaid wood flooring under foot. A series of port hole-like openings with wavy metal railings run around the second floor gallery and provide a no-so-subtle nautical nod property's the sea-side location.

A glimpsed ocean view pulls residents and visitors through the show-stopping rotunda entry to an especially spacious (if decoratively ho-hum) living/dining room (above, bottom left and right) that grandly spans the full width of the main pavilion. There's a fireplace in the living area, very pale blond wood floors throughout, a shallow coffered ceiling and two wall lined with banks of French doors that open on one side to an ocean view veranda.

The adjoining, tile-floored eat-in kitchen (above) looks to be equipped all the necessary appliances (including a pair of dishwashers) but looks to Your Mama a bit wee for a house of this magnitude. Listing information indicates the compound contains a staff suite and we'd bet both our long bodied bitches it's just steps from the kitchen.

The impossibly pale blond wood floors in the living room show up again in the second floor master suite that has an over-scale circular window and French doors that connect to a covered veranda that runs the full-length of the main house. The attached bathroom has his and her sinks, a party-sized jetted tub, and glass and steel shower cubicle with ocean view and multiple shower heads.

As best as Your Mama can tell from listing information and photographs the free-standing middle pavilion—which may or may not have interior access to the main pavilion—contains only a den/screening room topped with a soaring, copper-roofed barrel-vaulted ceiling punctuated with a series of very post-modern circular windows. The wide-screen drops from a soffit in the ceiling at the touch of a button and half a dozen (or more) French doors open the slender but airy, bi-level room to the grassy beach-side backyard. We'd be shocked if the screening room pavilion did not have a wet bar/kitchenette and/or a bathroom but we have no specific knowledge of such.

Beyond the screening room, a two story guest/pool house has a spacious sitting area with wet bar (and pool table) and three bedrooms each with attached bathroom. One of the two downstairs bedrooms is used by Mister and Missus Semel as a half-assed fitness room with only a paltry few pieces of exercise equipment and the lone upstairs bedroom open through a long row of windows to a private sunbathing terrace tucked up behind the cornice.

Just outside the guest/pool house a heated, rectangular pool with inset spa and stone coping was simply sunk into a broad swathe of well-watered and bright green lawn that stretches out toward a low hedge atop the bulkhead that sets the house slightly above sand-level and thwarts the prying eyes of looky-looing beach goers.

Some of Mister and Missus Semel's nearest neighbors in Malibu include hotelier/restaurateur Peter Morton (who has a Richard Meier-designed compound) and entertainment industry mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg (who has a Gwathmey Siegel-designed compound). Some of y'all may think fifty million is a bold and optimistic asking price but immediately next door is the traditional (but architecturally insignificant) 12,785 square foot beach-manse formerly owned by now-deceased philanthropist Nancy Riorden Daly and sold in October 2010 to an unknown buyer for $36,969,000.

Other Richie Riches and Richettes who own property on Carbon Beach include filmmaker Jerry Bruckheimer; Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen; media billionaire David Geffen; media investor Haim Saban; home builder and art world kingpin Eli Broad, Canadian media baron Gerry Schwartz who knocked down two ocean front houses to build his Malibu Barbie Dreamhouse; and bitterly divorced Jamie McCourt who owns a John Lautner-designed place she and her ex bought from Courtney Cox in July 2007 for $27,250,000 and the itty-bitty beach shack next door she and ex-hubby Frank bought the following year for $18,975,000. Then, of course, there's real estate baller Larry Ellison who owns at least $150,000,000 worth of Malibu real estate including at least half a dozen houses on Carbon Beach.

Like many of the most well-heeled homeowners on Carbon Beach, Mister and Missus Semel maintain primary residences in the Platinum Triangle (Bel Air, Holmby Hills and Beverly Hills). Between July 1982 and October 2003 Mister and Missus Semel assembled a 2.75 acre three-parcel estate in prime lower East Gate Bel Air. Sometime in the mid-Aughts they began a full-scale renovation/expansion that appears to have been recently completed.

Like in Malibu, in Bel Air Mister and Missus Semel are surrounded by show business bigwigs and other high profile types who include, just to name a few: divorcing actress Debra Messing; producer and music executive Freddy DeMann; real estate executive David P. Margulies; philanthropist Lynn Booth, widow of L.A. Times muckety-muck Franklin Otis Booth Jr.; and entertainment industry power player Michael Eisner.

In December 2011 the Semels sold a nearly 9,000 square foot mansion in Beverly Hills they bought in June 2005 for $8,300,000 in which to live during the renovation/construction of their big new crib in Bel Air.

listing photos: Hilton & Hyland and Partners Trust

Live Just Exactly Like Celine Dion

SELLER: Celine Dion and René Angélil
LOCATION: Ile Gagon, Laval, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
PRICE: $29,655,500 (Canadian)
SIZE: approximately 24,000 square feet, 6 bedrooms, 6 full and 3 half bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Thanks to a kind Canuck we'll call Jeremy Justthoughtyoushouldknow Your Mama has come to understand that booming song stylist Celine Dion and her husband-manager René Angélil have put their unabashedly baronial private island estate on the suburban outskirts of Montreal on the market with an asking price of $29,655,500. That's $29,655,500, Canadian.

A quick few clicks on Your Mama's currency conversion contraption indicates that's $29,248,900 (American), £18,428,200, €22,995,700 and—just in case—₯7,835,790,000.

We're not sure when Mister and Missus Dion acquired the 19-ish acre island retreat, but listing information indicates the imposing, four-floor stone mega-hoose was, "custom built in 2001 by one of the worlds most illustrious entertainers and her family." Listing information goes on to show the approximately 24,000 square foot French Normandy-style chateau contains total of 6 bedrooms and 6 full and 3 half bathrooms, just enough terlits to require employment of a part-time terlit-gurl.

Miz Dion and Mister Angélil may not actually be members of the royal family but their aspirations to live like they are seem quite clear to Your Mama's boozy eyeballs from the downright palatial, high school gym-sized entrance hall complete with soaring, double-height ceiling; heavy-duty moldings and towering pilasters; inlaid marble floors; and a monumentally-scaled, high-drama staircase that wraps around the room and up to a second floor gallery.

Can any one else besides Your Mama perfectly envision Dolly Parton coming down that winding staircase in Best Little Whorehouse in Texas and/or Celine Dion gliding down in a beaded frock, pounding on her chest and belting out that swooning and ballooning theme song to Titanic?

Public rooms are many and include, according to listing information, a large formal living room with floor-to-ceiling windows on two opposite walls and a ceiling partially and, in our meaningless opinion, unwisely painted like a cloudy sky; a banquet hall-like formal dining room that seats 18; wood-paneled library and family room with fireplaces and built-ins; a sun room; and elongated office completely paneled with some sort of expensive-looking burled wood and lined with built-in display cabinets where Miz Dion may (or may not) stash her 5 Grammys, 12 World Music Awards, 7 American Music Awards, 7 Billboard Music Awards and on and on and on....

The kitchen, colossal and decidedly dramatic, has dark wood cabinets with La Cornue insets and plenty of carved corbels and other details; three Chevy-sized, floating work islands; a pair of menacing pot racks dripping with copper pots; some sort of old-timey espresso making contraption that probably cost more than your car; a very chic and expensive La Cornue range; and beige marble floors set on the bias with black market insets. It looks like the sort of kitchen two chefs, three sous chefs and one minimum wage dish washer could concurrently and comfortably work.

The master suite—more aptly described perhaps as a multi-pronged complex—somewhat curiously comprises his and her master bedroom suites. We're not talking separate bathing and dressing facilities like in an ordinary mega-mansion, we're talking connected but completely separate his and her suites, each with "sumptuous ensuite bathrooms, spacious walk-in closets, Juliette balconies and oversized doors and windows overlooking the water."

The lady's suite—that would be C.D.'s innermost domestic sanctum—has a bedroom with canopy bed; separate, double-height boo-dwar; a "vaulted marble shower"; and a soaking tub set privately in a wrought iron railed loft overlooking the boo-dwar. We'd stake our fat ass that Miz Dion's "ultimate walk-in closet" is bigger than Your Mama and The Dr. Cooter's entire house.

The 2-bedroom children's wing contains a separate contempo-styled den (above, upper left) with "integrated media components and custom hi-lacquers built-ins." A "spacious guest suite" and fitness facility with state-of-the-art equipment are tucked up under the roof on the third floor and down in the basement there's a wood-paneled games room (above, upper right) with built-in wet bar and stone-vaulted wine cellar with tasting room (above, bottom left).

Stone terraces and balconies extend off all sides of multi-winged megamansion and most take advantage of the all-around water views and "natural forested environment." Set well away from the main house there's an in-ground swimming pool with nearby pool house "equipped with its own kitchen and built-in grill." Although listing information doesn't specify, we imagine (and hope) the pool house also has a changing room and bathroom or two otherwise you know at least some of the pool users would tuck behind a tree for a tinkle before they'd make the trek across the lawn to the main house.

The private island, accessible only by helicopter or gated bridge, is wired to the gills for sure with fully integrated sound, satellite and lighting systems and a high-tech "surveillance system throughout within and around the house."

Marketing materials state the price includes "almost all of its contents" including "all the furniture (most antiques); artwork; decorative accessories; Persian rugs; linens; china; glassware; flatware and more (a full list will be provided to the prospective purchasers)."

That means, of course, that some person with somewhere close to thirty million dollars can live out their fantasy of living exactly like Celine Dion. That's all fine and fantastic and we imagine there are bajillions of Celine Dion fans (and fanatics) that would choke a defenseless animal for the opportunity to touch her hem or own a tiny piece of Miz Dion's decorative opulence. But, seriously, how many people with thirty million to spend on a fully-furnished and high-maintenance mega-mansion in suburban Montreal do the children think there really are? We're not knocking Montreal. We think it's a fantastic city. We're just sayin'...


 Marketing materials also include a YouTube accessible video of the property appropriately set to operatic music. 

Mister and Missus Dion reportedly plan to look for another house in their native Canada but circumstances have them spending more time at their homes in the United States. Since the early 2000s Miz Dion has had a seriously lucrative gig singing her heart out at some casino-resort in Las Vegas where she and her Mister own a 2(ish)-acre, three-parcel estate that backs up to a golf course in an upscale, gated development in Henderson near Lake Las Vegas.

The first two parcels were purchased, according to property records we peeped, in two separate transactions in 2002 and 2003 for a combined $6,231,256. The slightly smaller .75 acre parcel has a gated, single-story mansion with 5 bedrooms and 6 bathrooms in just more than 6,600 square feet; swimming pool, and deep shaded terraces. The larger, .79-acre parcel has an almost 2,000 square foot structure of undetermined utility set in a large large area and a gated, tennis court-sized parking pad with 4-car carport. Just last month (April 2012) Miz Dion and Mister Angélil added to their desert spread with the $150,000 shelled out to buy an adjacent, .55 acre vacant lot.

It wasn't so long ago Miz Dion and Mister Angélil were cat nip with all the property gossips and mouthy real estate magpies over the water park-like swimming pool they installed on their multi-acre, ocean front compound in Hobe Sound, FL that also, baller style, has a separate, very simply rectangular swimming pool on the ocean side of the house.

listing photos: Sotheby's International Realty
aerial photo (Montreal): Bing 
aerial photo (Hobe Sound): Pacific Coast News