Phil Donahue and That Girl List Westport Estate

SELLER: Phil Donahue and Marlo Thomas
LOCATION: Westport, CT
PRICE: $27,500,000
SIZE: 8,617 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 4 full and 2 half bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: We first caught wind of this a couple weeks ago from Westport Willie but didn't have any meat on the matter until yesterday when both Westport Willie and Westport Wanda let us know iconic former chat show pioneer Phil Donahue and That Girl wife Marlo Thomas heaved their very East Coast-y waterfront estate in Westport, CT on the open market with an asking price of $27,500,000.

Property records we peeped aren't entirely clear but it appears to Your Mama that Mister Donahue and Miz Thomas picked up the two (or more) parcels that make up their now-for-sale estate in February 2006 for an undisclosed amount of dough.

Listing information is somewhat slim on the details but does indicate the Donahue-Thomas's waterfront spread spans 6.56 acres and has a gated, 420-foot long driveway that cuts through the sylvan property and leads to front and rear motor courts where there's garage space for 4 cars. The main house, an 8,716 square foot cedar-shingled rambler built brand new in 2007, has 5 bedrooms, 4 full and 2 half bathrooms and at least 3 fireplaces. An octagonal guest structure up near the entry gates houses a fitness facility and a gazebo down by the water's edge is probably a nice place to sit back with a big bag of penny candy and a Percival Everett novel.

Other amenities listed on marketing materials include an elevator, security system, wet bar, multi-zoned heating and cooling systems, skylight(s), 9-plus-foot ceilings, office/computer room, partly finished full basement and second floor master suite with fireplace, hardwood floors, walk-in closet, whirlpool tub and vaulted ceiling. Taxes are shown on listing information at a mouth-drying $211,330 per year.

Mister Donahue and Miz Thomas used to live in the 17-room Tudor-style mansion next door which they sold to financial and political worlds mover and shaker Herbert M. Allison Jr. in spring 2006 for, according to property records and previous reports, $25,000,000.

Other residents of the swanky seaside lane include Harvey Weinstein, billionaire hedge funder Marc Lasry, legally embattled financier Rajat Gupta, and controversial radio shock-jock Don Imus who's had his waterfront mansion on and off the market for years with asking prices as high as $30,000,000 and as low as it's current price tag of $19,900,000.

listing photos: Nicholas Fingelly Real Estate

The Big Deals Keep Rolling In...

Buckle your real estate safety belts, butter beans...

On the heels of knee-buckling news that legally blind casino tycoon Steve Wynn dropped a staggering $70,000,000 on an almost 11,000 square foot duplex spread on New York City's swank Central Park South comes new news about an as-yet unidentified buyer agreeing to pay between ninety and $100,000,000 for the not-yet-finished, nearly 11,000 square foot duplex penthouse that sprawls across the 89th and 90th floors of One57, a gleaming 1,000-foot tall tower going up at 157 West 57th Street designed by Moroccan-born and Paris-based architect (and 1994 Pritzker Prize winner) Christian de Portzamparc.

The Midtown tower's developer Gary Barnett, president of Extell Development Corporation, told The New York Times the penthouse was not sold to someone from Russia, the Ukraine or "'any other part of the former  Soviet Union.'" He went on to hint the obviously very rich buyer is "'someone that people would recognize'" and plans to use the penthouse as a private residence for his "'very nice family.'"

Little is known about the two-floor penthouse—the developer has kept most of the details of the building's larger units out of the press—but is said to have a "grand salon" with 23-foot ceilings and extraordinarily 360-degree views.

Mister Barnett further expounded that a different buyer, a foreign buyer, was earlier this year interested in combining a 13,500 square foot lower floor duplex (with separate solarium) with another full floor apartment that would have brought the total size to around 20,000 square feet. Alas, the deal fell through but the developer said but that stomach-churner of deal would have been worth between $100-150 million.

Even with all the humongous deals that have gone done recently in New York—the $88 million purchase at 15 Central Park West by Russian billionaire, Dmitry Rybolovlev, the $52.5 million dollar deal at 740 Park and Mister Wynn's $70 million real estate bauble atop the Ritz Carlton—the numbers still pale in comparison to London where, as noted in the New York Post, Ukrainian billionaire Rinat Akhmetov reportedly paid somewhere around $230 million for his palatial pied-a-terre at the punishingly pricey One Hyde Park.
 
Maybe the buyer at One57 is one of those very young and very rich Ecclestone heiresses who have been snatching up exorbitantly high-priced properties in both London and Los Angeles over the last couple of years and were rather reverently profiled in The Wall Street Journal this morning? We doubt it but stranger things have happened.

How's that taste with your morning coffee?

Charles Kelley Buys

BUYER: Charles Kelley
LOCATION: Nashville, TN
PRICE: $1,600,000
SIZE: 6,682 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 4 full and 2 half bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Earlier we (lightly dissed and) discussed a fairly modest, white brick traditional in Nashville's Cherokee Park neighborhood recently sold by Lady Antebellum lead singer Charles Kelley for $720,000.

Let's have a quick look-see now at the much larger red brick traditional in Nashville's more upscale Belle Meade area Your Mama hears Mister Kelley and his publicist wife Cassie McConnell purchased earlier this year for $1,600,000.

Like with the Cherokee Park place, property records conceal the identity of the home's new owner with a cutesy-named trust overseen by big-time bizness manager Julie Boos. But, once again, The Bizzy Boys at Celebrity Address Aerial tell us the bigger Belle Mead mansion was bought in February (2012) by Mister Kelley and his missus Miz McConnell.

A low, brick wall, partially covered with some sort of ivy-like vine, runs around the corner property's long perimeter. The driveway cuts through discreet break in the wall and curves around to a tree-shielded motor court at the front of the house. The driveway continues past the motor court, down the street-side of main house and wraps around to a rear motor court and detached three car garage connected to the (e)stately main house by a short breezeway. 

The recently renovated red brick mansion was originally built in 1942, stands on 1.56 acres and measures 6,682 square feet, according to listing information and various other online documentation. Listing information teased up out of the interweb also shows the two-story traditional has 4 bedrooms and 4 full and 2 half bathrooms with additional living space in the sizable pavilion out back beyond the cement pond.

A stodgy, essentially symmetrical front façade gives way to what appear in listing photographs to be some decent and dignified spaces like the 26-foot long formal living room with fireplace, wood floors and plenty of room for a (baby) grand piano. There's also a paneled library with fireplace and a 29-foot long, sun-filled family room/den with built-in entertainment cabinetry and long walls of floor-to-ceiling French doors and windows.

The house also has a few wacky spaces. The most egregious is, of course, the discombobulating gallery at the rear of the residence into which the formal dining room juts with a pair of dorky Doric columns and a fancy-scrolled wrought iron railing. We speak with no authority whatsoever but that gawd awful gallery space looks to Your Mama like maybe it was once a covered porch enclosed in glass and fluffed up with thick moldings and marble floors. The room—more accurately described as a space, maybe—probably makes for a damn convenient traffic hub between the various nooks and crannies of the substantially-scaled house. But, seriously children, that looks like the sort of faux-eleganza Your Mama would expect to find on a middle-brow luxury cruise ship iffin we were ever to be punished by The Dr. Cooter with a "vacation" on a middle-brow luxury cruise ship. It's a workable space but it needs a full architectural and decorative face lift.

Anyhoo...the house is said to have a working elevator for exertion-free access to the second floor. We're not sure if the thing drops into the basement but, really, what good is the elevator if it doesn't descend to the 1,500-plus square foot basement where, if they're not already there, there's room to install a state-of-the-art media room and temperature-controlled wine cellar.

The second floor master suite, accessed by a long corridor lined on one side with floor-to-ceiling bookcases, encompasses a bedroom large enough to have a sitting area, French doors to private balcony, fitted dressing room big enough for a mid-level clothes horse and—a delight for sure for those who believe keeping some of life's ugliest but necessary rituals private is the first key to a successful long-term relationship—a pair of bathrooms.

The breezeway that connects the garage to the mansion opens into an unexpectedly grand rear entrance hall with tile floor, double height ceiling and curved staircase with wood treads and wrought iron banisters.

Manicured gardens and brick paths weave and arch arch around a racing track-shaped lawn that slopes gently down to a wide terrace that completely surrounds an rectangular swimming pool. Behind the swimming pool, an unexpectedly formal, mansard-roofed pool pavilion invites shade-seekers with a deep covered porch lined with a whole bunch of Doric columns that make better sense in this context than the ones in the bizarre prow of the formal dining room.

Inside the pool pavilion, as best as we can tell, there's a sky-lit living/dining area with fireplace and hexagonal tile floor, an adjoining (clean but dated) kitchen(ette) and at least one bathroom. There may (or may not) be one or possibly two additional sleeping spaces in the pool house convenient for in between pool paddling naps and such.

Again, we don't know a slit from a slot but Your Mama can imagine that since she/she/they signed on the deed's dotted line several months ago Mister Kelley and his missus might have coughed up a bit more cash to put a little polish on their real estate diamond so it better suits their own particular hopes, dreams, needs and tastes. We can only hope they felt an impassioned and uncontrollable compulsion to hire a smart architect and/or nice-gay or lady decorator to oversee some important alterations to the rear gallery space.

listing photos: Fridrich & Clark

Charles Kelley Sells

SELLER: Charles Kelley and Cassie McConnell
LOCATION: Nashville, TN
PRICE: $720,000
SIZE: 2710 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: We discovered from The Bizzy Boys at Celebrity Address Aerial that Lady Antebellum's bearded lead vocalist Charles Kelley recently purchased and sold homes in Nashville, TN. Let's discuss the more modest one he and the wife sold first, shall we?

Every property record we peeped shrouds ownership of the well-maintained white brick residence in question with an oddly-named trust trustee-d by powerful country music industry insider Julie Boos. No surprise there. Miz Boos' (utterly magnificent) name appears on the deeds and documents associated with property owned by any number of high-profile Nashvillians in the inter-connected music, sports and entertainment industries. The Bizzy Boys have their mysterious ways, though, assure Your Mama the house in question, located in Nashville's Cherokee Park 'hood, was sold in April (2012) for $720,000 by the pop-country superstar and his perky-looking publicist wife Cassie McConnell in April 2012 for $720,000.

Lady Antebellum, for those not dope with the new-fangled country music scene, is one of the most popular pop-country acts doing their thing today. Since 2008 when the trio stormed the scene with number one hit Love Don't Live Here, Lady Antebellum's fame and fortune elevator has only gone up with an astonishing number of hit songs and accolades that, as of today, include (but may not be limited to) 10 ACMs, 7 Grammys, 6 CMAs, 3 TCAs, 2 CMTs, and 2 AMAs plus 1 BMA and 1 ACA.

As an aside, Mister Kelley happens to be the younger brother of (less successful) singer-songwriter Josh Kelley who is married to and adopting babies left and right with Emmy-winning hospital drama denizen turned movie star Katherine Heigl. As a second, related aside, we hear from always knowledgeable real estate insider Knancy Knowsthedish the Kelley-Heigls have been out peeping pricey properties in Los Angeles that are larger than the Los Feliz residence they bought in November 2007 for $2,550,000 and spent a pretty penny more remodeling. Also, as an only sort-of-related third aside, can anyone tell Your Mama why for the last few years every time we see Miz Heigl's photo on the blogs or in the gossip glossies she's either sucking on a ciggy—she reportedly quit a couple years ago now—or shoveling food in her gaping mouth? Do they just hate her?

But we digress...

Property records show that above mentioned trust The Bizzy Boys linked to Mister Kelley and the Missus paid $685,000 to acquire the Cherokee Park place in February 2010. Various other online resources indicate the house was originally built in 1910 and spans about 2,710 square feet with 4 bedrooms and 4 bathrooms.

The Bizzy Boys, bless their hearts, kindly pointed a bleary-eyed Your Mama to the dregs of an online listing for the former Kelly-McConnell with a cache of photographs that appear to Your Mama to show the interior spaces after being worked over by Staging Lady in a Pink Toyota. Of course, we don't know a camel from a needle's eye but at least we hope that's staging because it all looks so stiff and mannered and uncomfortable. Even the kitchen looks uncomfortably buttoned up, right down to that cockamamie metal rooster perched just so on the center island.

UPDATE: This video on People.com during which Mister Kelley gives a glimpse inside (and outside) of the house would suggest the house was indeed dressed down and staged for selling.

The off-center entry, marked by an urn pediment painted olive drab, shares the same shiny wood floors and impossibly trendy dark wall covering as the formal dining room. The especially long formal living room has a bay window on one wall and a wood-burning fireplace flanked by inset book and display shelves on another. Just to the left of the front door, overlooking the side driveway, what appears to have originally been a screened porch has been glassed in. We absolutely prefer a screened porch to a glassed-in three season thingamajig but y'all say tomaytoes and we say tomahtoes, right?

Less formal, open-plan family quarters behind the dining room include a u-shaped center island kitchen with black Shaker-style cabinets, flecked tan granite counter tops, tile back splash and medium-grade stainless steel appliances. The kitchen opens over the center island snack counter to the family room outfitted with a second fireplace, tray ceiling and a long bank of wood-framed glass doors that open to a concrete and brick terrace partially shaded by a glammy black and white canopy.

The second floor master has a compact bedroom and separate sitting room with full-length interior window that allows a person at the top of the stairs to look straight into said sitting area. We're not really sure why this was a good idea, but there you have it. The attached master bath is a decent-sized but fairly ordinary affair with twin pedestal sinks, a jetted tub set into a niche tiled with some sort of tumbled stone, separate shower stall and, mercifully, a private cubicle for the crapper.

Back in the backyard, red brick raised planters thick with flowering bushes run along one side of the oddly-shaped swimming pool while the terrace extends off the back of the house and around the other side of the pool to a slightly elevated, shrubbery encircled sunbathing terrace.

In February of this year (2012), even before they sold their Cherokee Park abode, Mister Kelley and Miz McConnell splashed out on a much more significant estate in the upscale Belle Meade area of Nashville. More on that in a minute...

listing photos: Fridrich & Clark

Lindsay Lohan Leases In Beverly Hills

There's been a bit of brouhaha in the tabs, blogs and gossip glossies the last couple of days about (allegedly) back-on-track Tinseltown train wreck/starlet Lindsay Lohan coughin' up a whopping $25,000 a month to lease a secluded house tucked up into The Hills of Beverly.

Miss Lohan's antics—drinking and driving, stumbling out of clubs around the globe at all hours of the morning, purloining jewelry and etc.—clearly got the best of the once-promising actress the last few years but she's no doubt got her fingers and toes crossed her stalled career is on a bit of an upswing with recent and/or upcoming appearances on Saturday Night Live and Glee. (For what it's worth, both received mixed reviews.)

She was quite controversially recently cast as Elizabeth Taylor in an yet-to-be-taped tee-vee biopic about the iconic actress and committed philanthropist's fabled life. Well, all we'll say about that partickaler publicity-generating casting choice is that both women gained Showbiz fame and fortune very young and live—or lived in the case of now-deceased Miz Taylor—melodramatic lives littered with doomed romantic entanglements and untold numbers of sometimes ugly public scenes often (and allegedly) fueled by booze and and other illegal substances.

Anyhoo the fine folks at E! questioned the $25,000 figure yesterday and it only took a few minutes digging around the dirty murk of the interweb (and a leg up from both Mirakle Mike and Our Fairy Godmother in Beverly Hills) for Your Mama to figure out that Miss Lohan ain't paying quite that much for her impressively-gated mini-estate in Bev Hills.

A covert communique from Our Fairy Godmother in Beverly Hills included documentation that reveals the fully renovated 1937 Georgian-Colonial—or whatever—was listed for $12,500 per month a couple years ago and was leased in fall 2010 for $9,000 to an unknown tenant.

One (online) listing we located shows the all-but-hidden 1.5 acre spread was listed late last year (2011) with an asking price of $8,950 per month. We don't know a thing about a thing, of course, but we think it's probably safe to say Miss Lohan's paying somewhere near and probably less than that amount. That's obviously a lot more money than most people earn in a month but well less than half the previously reported $25,000.

Listing information we peeped reveals the 3 bedroom and 3.5 bathroom house measures just under 2,500 square feet and includes formal living and dining rooms with polished wood floors and numerous French doors and a recently renovated center-island kitchen with marble counter tops. The second floor master bedroom has a triple exposure, private balcony, (possibly decorative) fireplace and attached bathroom equipped with two sinks, glassed-in shower stall, separate jetted tub and a bidet for washing one's naughty bits.

The long driveway, gated with a massive iron gates, climbs up to a small motor court with two car garage. The front of the house opens to a brick terrace that wraps around to surround the oddly shaped swimming pool and spa nestled into the hillside. A deck cantilevers off the hillside to take advantage of the sliver of city views and a walled courtyard on the up-slope side of the house has a built-in barbecue.

Prior to her over to her move to Beverly Hills Miss Lohan was allegedly shacked up at the Chateau Marmont where she decamped after, so the story goes, she grew tired of living right up on the street in a very vertical, townhouse-type abode in the L.A. beach community of Venice that happens to be right next door to the almost identical townhouse-type abode leased by her former girlfriend Samantha Ronson.

listing photos: Hilton & Hyland

Media Mogul Byron Allen Buys Big Bev Hills Mansion

BUYER: Byron Allen and Jennifer Lucas
LOCATION: Beverly Hills, CA
PRICE: $17,000,000
SIZE: 12,717 square feet, 7 bedrooms, 10 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Last week a little birdie chirped in our ear that under-the-radar media mogul Byron Allen dropped a mogul-sized wad on a big, new mansion in Beverly Hills, CA. We then went away for the weekend to see Sister Woman and Your Mama's momma Goose and, well, forgot all about the matter until yesterday when another little birdie goosed Your Mama's memory and reminded us that Mister Allen and his beautiful blond missus Jennifer Lucas dropped a noteworthy $17,000,000 on their new manse set behind driveway gates and hidden by a towering hedge on a narrow street in what is arguably one of the plumiest pockets of Beverly Hills.

Mister and Missus Allen's new neighbors include Hollywood honchos and hot shots like Tom, Katie and Suri Cruise, talent agent Kevin Huvane, one of bajillionaire Kirk Kerkorian's kids, hedge funder Mitchell Julis, and playboy producer Steve Bing. And that's just the people he can practically reach out and touch. Also nearby—withing walking distance iffin anyone besides the domestics actually walked in Beverly Hills—are the mega-mansion estates of Stewart and Lynda Resnick and tool and die tycoon Eric Smidt.

Mister Allen started up his ladder of fame (and fortune) as a stand up comedian but we remember him from the early 1980s when he co-hosted a boob-toob program called Real People. In the early-1990s he hosted an eponymous late-night chat show and in the mid-1990s he began producing interview, stand-up comedy and lifestyle shows. Press releases show he now owns, operates and finances Entertainment Studios, an under-the-radar but protean production company with more than 30 syndicated programs on the air, half a dozen online channels (and counting) and annual revenue that, according to a January 2012 profile in The Hollywood Reporter, exceeds $100,000,000. His workhorse programming has earned the company three Emmy nominations and the ballsy showbiz entrepreneur just ordered an unprecedented 104 episodes of two new shows, The First Family—which reunites Jackee (Harry) and Marla Gibbs in supporting roles—and Mr. Box Office with a star-studded cast that includes Bill Bellamy, Keshia Knight Pulliam, Gary Busey, Vivica A. Fox, and Jon Lovitz. That's right, he's ordered 104 episodes per show.

Listing information Your Mama dug up out of the internets shows Mister Allen's new digs were first listed in April 2010 with a $21,000,000 price tag that was quickly cut to $19,500,000. The conveniently located mini-estate languished for nearly two years before Mister and Missus Allen came along and snatched it up for, according to calculations on our bejeweled abacus, almost 20% less than the seller originally wanted. Property records show the seller was Dallas, TX-based billionaire banker Gerald J. Ford who acquired the property in August 2007 for $15,750,000.

Listing information shows the hulky-bulky two-story residence—originally built, we were told, in the late 1980s by Hollywood power player turned high-end house flipper Sandy Gallin—measures in at a massive but not mega 12,717 square feet and contains 6 bedrooms, 9 bathrooms (plus an additional staff room with bathroom), 6 or 7 fireplaces (one outdoors) and airy, 13-foot ceilings on the main floor.

A short, gated drive curves around to a circular (or maybe oval), tree-ringed motor court that balloons out in front of the front-facing garage and front door. A double-height entrance hall guaranteed to impress the guests and the FedEx delivery people has a soaring wall of glass panels and superstar-style staircase that starts off as a single, extra-wide flight before it splits in two and double backs to create a second level gallery with contemporary, wood and glass railing.

Gleaming, high-drama ebony wood floors in the entrance hall sweep into the public room that include a light-flooded, formal living room with fireplace, thickly layered moldings and a wide bank of floor-to-ceiling wood-framed glass panels that slide open and expose the room to the elements, backyard dining and lounging terrace and swimming pool.

The formal dining room, a rather thrilling, oval shaped space, seats 18 according to listing information and has wood-paneled walls coated in lush and lustrous, deep blue lacquer that somehow comes off for Your Mama as both admirably bold and tsk-tksy foul at the same time. Of course, we don't know the moon from a raccoon so we can't say with any authority whatsoever if Mister and Missus Allen plan to retain the deep blue glacé wall treatment in the dining room once their nice-gay or lady decorator gets finished doing up the day-core and installing a state-of-the-art home automation system.

Both the library and a home office connect to a quiet and private garden. Less formal family quarters center around the eat-in kitchen where the polished ebony wood floors go mano-a-mano with articulated, matte-finish ebony wood cabinetry topped with grey-veined white marble counter tops. The cooker comes equipped with all the top-grade stainless steel appliances one should expects to find in a $17 million dollar mansion in Beverly Hills. The kitchen adjoins a family room that, naturally, opens up in classic and casual southern California-style to the backyard.

Upstairs five family/guest bedrooms each have a private pooper and the spacious, south-facing master suite encompasses a separate sitting area with built-in window seat, direct terrace access with over-the-tree-top views of Beverly Hills, multiple closets, his and her bathing and terliting facilities and an attached gym area.

Outdoor areas include (but are not limited to) a patch of grass where Mister and Missus Allen could, if they wanted, install a really expensive jungle gym for their two tots, a covered patio space for escaping the scorching soCal sunshine, and an arched stone terrace that stretches out towards the  black-bottom swimming pool and spa. A fancy, modern metal and glass child-safety fence separate the terrace from the slender, infinity-edge swimming pool that arches gently over the hillside into the tree tops.

We seriously appreciate that real effort was made with the design and execution of the metal and glass child-safety fence. We recognize their necessity but most of those awful mesh or iron fences that tightly girdle so many small-child-gobbling swimming pools are abominations as far as we're concerned. We can't help but wonder, though, if Mister and Missus Allen will need a part-time, minimum wager worker whose sole responsibility will be to squeegee the glass panels every time some small child or topsy-turvy adult splashes a little pool water up on them.

As far as we know Mister Byron currently and still resides in a relatively modest—if hardly inexpensive—Richard Landry-designed contemporary above the Sunset Strip in what's known as The Bird Streets where all the streets are named after—you got it—birds. Speaking of birds, the same little birdie that goosed our memory about Mister Allen's recent real estate acquisition also snitched that Mister and Missus Allen's current crib has been quietly shown off-market but will soon hit the open market with an asking price somewhere around nine or $10,000,000.

aerial image: Bing
listing images: Hilton & Hyland

Rumor Has It...

...comedienne cum daytime chat show queen Ellen DeGeneres and actress wife Portia (de Rossi) DeGeneres are downsizing in Beverly Hills, CA.

Well, sort of.

All us celebrity and property gossips spun like dervishes on crack yesterday over the sensational scuttlebutt about the legally married Tinseltown ladies selling their multi-residence Beverly Hills, CA compound to American Idol host and reality tee-vee tycoon Ryan Seacrest for a skin-peeling (and still alleged) 37 or so million dollars.

At the very tail of Your Mama's discussion on the matter we dropped a quick nugget about the Beverly Hills, CA house that word on the real estate street is the famously peripatetic scissor sisters—now in need of a new home—have acquired or are in the process of acquiring.

Your Mama has now been told by three separate and well-connected sources from deep inside the Platinum Triangle real estate game that the Ellen DeGeneres and her Missus coughed up between 17 and 18 million dollars for an approximately 8,500 square foot, single-story mid-century modern mansion in the exceedingly trendy and uncommonly expensive lower Trousdale Estates area of Beverly Hills.

The house in question was originally designed for in 1958 for Diane and Charles Skouras Jr. by renowned architect Hal Levitt. Mister Levitt, many of the children may already know, is the man responsible for a number of architectural tour de forces in and around Beverly Hills including a residence reworked by architect Larry Totah sold by recently deceased hair honcho Vidal Sassoon in September 2010 to an unknown buyer for $10,000,000. The original design for the Bev Hills house Jennifer Aniston sold last year to mutual fund mogul Bill Gross for $35,000,000 was by Hal Levitt and Jenny Aniston and man-friend Justin Theroux are said to be shacked up in a $40,000 per month rental originally designed by Mister Levitt.

In 2001 photographer Steven Meisel (with super-stylist Lori Goldstein) used the Skouros crib for his iconic (and beyond-fab) Versace ad campaign Four Days in L.A.

Mister and Missus Skouras—or their heirs, we're not sure—sold the nearly one acre mini-estate in August 2002 to prolific property developer/hotelier Brad Korzen and decorator wife Kelly Wearstler for, according to property records we peeped, $4,025,000.

Miz Wearstler, a lightening rod in the cut-throat decorating world, did what decorators with dough do, she gave the low-slung sprawler a do-over in her freaky-deaky signature style that takes more than a few cues from the playbook of soo-blime maximalist decorator Tony Duquette. Miz Wearstler had every square inch of the over-the-top house photographed for and featured in her 2006 coffee table book Domicilium Decoratus.

The Korzen-Wearstlers listed the gated estate (shown above in listing photos from the time) in May 2005 for $13,395,000 and sold it, according to the documents we perused, in April 2006 for $9,900,000. The buyer, according to a well-connected source and some two-headed sleuthing with aide de camp Heidi Hightower was former CIA analyst turned Emmy winning film and television producer Bob Cort (Jumanji, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, Runaway Bride) and his top-tier literary talent agent turned media executive wife Rosalie Swedlin.

Online information we dug up out of the interweb shows the Swedlin-Corts engaged a top-flight Beverly Hills broker to shop the property off-market with an inexplicably vague asking price of "From $20,000,000," whatever that means

Our chit-chatty sources say the Missus DeGeneres paid somewhere in the neighborhood of 17 or 18 million dollars for the glassy house that listing information we teased out of the interweb shows has 4 bedrooms, 6 bathrooms, spacious "formal" living and dining areas with loads of white marble, a colossal "commercial kitchen" with two center work islands, and a sun-drenched family room with built-in entertainment cabinet. Walls of sliding glass doors glide open to various terraces and patios—one with outdoor fireplace—transition the interior spaces to the thickly planted private gardens and rectilinear swimming pool with marble surround.

While it might appear that the Missus Degeneres are downsizing—the Bev Hills compound they just sold to Ryan Seacrest for $37,000,000 has a main house, guest house, pool pavilion, additional staff quaters/gym and two more residences—by Your Mama's rudimentary (and not necessarily accurate) calculations the property-mad Sapphic sisters have paid out (around) forty million dollars for their three high-priced and high-maintenance properties SoCal properties. That's 17 or eighteen million for the new one in Bev Hills, somewhere around $10,000,000 for a 26-care horsey compound in Hidden Valley near Thousand Oaks, CA bought in June 2009 and briefly on the market last year for $16,500,000, and $12,000,000 for a sleek and sexy bluff-top contemporary in Malibu, CA they bought last year from fellow property-addict Brad Pitt.

listing photos (top group): Sotheby's International Realty
listing photos (bottom group): Westside Estate Agency