Mary McDonald Sunburst Madness in Beverly Hills

SELLER: Efrem and Kendra Harkham
LOCATION: Beverly Hills, CA
PRICE: $7,773,077
SIZE: 5,545 square feet, 7 bedrooms, 5 full and 2 half bathrooms

NOTE: We apologize for any delays. We've been cursed some technical difficulties beyond our control that seem to be just about worked out. Onward and forward we go...

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: This week on Bravo's Million Dollar Decorator we got to see Martyn Lawrence Bullard mow through an entire box of gourmet chocolates given him by actress client Ellen Pompeo; We watched Jeffrey Alan Marks and his tough-talking tussle-haired boy-beau Ross Cassidy cope with a stink-faced beehawtcha named Lindsay who seemed–at first–determined to dislike every decorative choice they made in her parents multi-million dollar house in La Jolla; We saw the amazing Kathy Ireland who didn't decorate a damn thing but did drink white wine, talk about bras and be ridiculously charming; Nelly decorator Nathan Turner–and we say that with love, hunnies–drove his big manly man-truck to Laguna Beach or some other place down behind the proverbial Orange Curtain to install a $100,000 terrace space for a tightly-wound friend and client he described as "rich" and "divorced;" Finally we watched the inestimable, intense, snooty and deliciously quirky Mary McDonald chastise a long-time client when she attempted to cut the budget from $100,000 to $50,000 for the design and decoration of a pair of guest houses at her (now former) house in Beverly Hills, CA. Miz McDonald, hunties, does not care to to be reined in by anything as trivial as a budget.

Here's what happened, at least as it went down on the boob-toob: Miz McDonald did up the day-core for a large house in the flats of Beverly Hills, CA owned by garmento turned hotelier Efrem Harkham and his squeaky-voiced wife Kendra. Just when it came time for Miz McDonald and her opinionated team to start in on the Efrem's pair of guest houses, Miz McDonald was informed by the Missus that she and the Mister were getting a divorce. Miz McDonald, bless her well-accessorized and stylish heart, acted quite cavalier about the failure of Missus Efrem's marriage. Perhaps she thrilled inside that one high-paying client just became two high-paying clients. Oh, we tease. Surely Miz McDonald would never be so callous to think such a thing.

The house in question, a symmetrical brick Georgian originally built in 1930, was purchased by Mister and Missus Harkham in December 2004 for $2,950,000. The divorcing Harkam's house was first listed in August of 2010 with a price tag of $9,200,000, reduced 2.5 months later to $8,795,000 and two weeks after that the asking price was hacked to $7,950,000.

That last chop-chop seemed to do the trick because property records show that Mister and ex-Missus Harkham sold their once happy marital mansion in December 2010 to a business entity for the rather complicated asking price of $7,773,077. (Redfin shows the sale price as the slightly different but no less complicated $7,772,755.) According to our informant Lucy Spillerguts, the buyer is an Emmy-nominated producer/director who happens to be the son of a world-famous romance novelist.

Listing information from the time Mister and Missus Harkham had their now-former Mary McDonald decorated digs on the market shows the .56 acre mini-estate includes a main house that measures 5,545 square feet. There are a total of 7 bedrooms and 5 full and 2 half bathrooms spread throughout the main house that contains 4 bedroom suites plus a staff bedroom and bath, a detached garage with guest quarters above and a second detached structure with additional guest quarters on the lower floor and a game room/lounge on the second.

Presumably the Harkhams divvied up their home goods and took them to their respective bachelor and bachelorette pads but during their occupation the elegant but intimately-scaled mansion dripped with classic Mary McDonald decorative derring-do that bends towards courageous but very carefully curated interiors steeped in vintage Hollywood glamor, jet-setter chic and a strong vein of Chinoiserie. Miz McDonald's designs often include an unapologetically expensive high glam quotient with theatrical gestures, high contrast vibrant color punches, lots of shiny things, multi-layered collections and thick table top tableau. Miz McDonald has a thing for graphic patterns and animal prints. In fact, she once did up the sun porch in her own home with wall coverings, curtains, valances, and furniture upholstery all in the exact same leopard fabric.

It has been mentioned publicly before and was dropped as a bit of a bon mot by designer Nathan Turner on Million Dollar Listing, that Miz McDonald was the inspiration for the Karen Walker character on the sitcom Will & Grace. Although there are some similarities–including a willful dislike and total disregard for the cost of something–through one of our showbiz industry connections Your Mama was able to sort this rumor out. Suffice to say Miz McDonald was not the inspiration for Karen Walker.

The generous entry has an graceful curved staircase backed by flower-printed silver wall paper and the hardwood floor was painted with an over-scaled David Hicks-ian pattern of circles, squares and octagons that stretches right on into the Hollywood Regency-infused formal dining room that overlooks the back yard. The adjacent powder pooper goes full glitz with silver leafed walls, an ornate antique mirror and a very contemporary stainless steel vessel sink atop a squat fluted column. We're beyond thrilled that Miz McDonald–or ex-Missus Efrem or whomever–used droopy purple tulips in the powder room instead of one of those cliché orchids that we find in far too many high-end home listings.

A small sitting room off the entry makes for a more cozy conversation setting than the rigorous icy blue formal living room that includes a fireplace and claret-colored accent pillows and lamp shades. If we know Mary McDonald–and we do not actually know Mary McDonald–the pair of ivory upholstered tufted slipper chairs are original Billy Haines numbers that together likely cost more than most people earn in an entire damn year.

More family-oriented areas include a commodious and surprisingly utilitarian kitchen with not one but two large work islands. An adjacent breakfast nook has a built-in banquette slathered in red and white striped upholstery with blue and white accent pillows. On the paneled walls that may or may not be faux bois hang a boat load of mis-matched sunbursts. Sunbursts are a lovely if somewhat overplayed staple of high-end contemporary day-core, one that Miz McDonald took to the nth degree at the Harkham house. In addition to the plain but well-equipped cookery, service areas include a staff room and bath, laundry facilities and mud room.

Miz McDonald leaves no corners undone and to her credit often uses little-loved or easily over-looked spaces as an opportunity make a fearless statement that the home owners' friends and relatives will go on and on and on about. In the case of the Harkham house, the second floor landing, blessed with a tightly curled banister that gives the otherwise boxy space a sexy femininity, has dramatic dark wood floors and two competing but decoratively complimentary wall paper patterns, one the same shimmery silver floral print as in the foyer and the other a gray and silver horizontal stripe. As (melo)dramatic as the wall coverings are as far as Your Mama is concerned the upper landing's pièce de résistance is without question the whimsical and wonderful lighted wall sconce that looks like a porcupine with LED lights at the tip of each of its quills. The porcupine sconce also–yes–resembles a sunburst.

The master suite has chartreuse walls that perfectly speak to the gilded Neoclassical four poster bed behind which hangs a gold sunburst. The room is warmed by fireplace with antique carved marble surround and natural light floods in through the semi-circular bay window into which was built a banquette with deliciously tactile velvet upholstery. We do not care for the puffy balloon valances–in a heavy but monotoned brocade–that always make it look to Your Mama like a bunch of ball gowns someone tacked up above the windows. The attached and master bathroom features a pair of French doors the open inward, painted hardwood floors and double sinks and vanities on opposite walls with a freestanding soaking tub in between. The children will note the wee trash can that may or may not be wrapped in pony skin.

A wide terrace runs along the back of the house where a canopied terrace overlooks the swimming pool. Miz McDonald's penchant for sunbursts strikes again in the outdoor living area. This time its a 1970s-looking black plastic and mirrored apparatus comprised of a central sunburst surrounded by seven round dots that combined make a second sunburst. A sunburst inside a sunburst, if you will.

An boxwood-lined allée joins the main house to the two fully detached back buildings and lends an air of structure, procession and formality to the long and narrow backyard. One of the back houses contains a three car garage with a guest suite above done up by Miz McDonald in a surprisingly simple Armani Casa meets sophisticated country house sort of manner. The other structure has a guest suite on the lower floor–notice the gold sunburst mirror over the bed, hunnies–with a trio of arched French doors, chocolate walls, sisal wall to wall carpeting, a zebra rug and a truck load of pottery, baskets, candlesticks and other expensive objet of one sort of another. Upstairs a game room/lounge was given a "masculine" edge with antlers, Mies van der Rohe Barcelona chairs, comfy couch potato sofa, clean-lined pool table and a silkscreen print of one of Damien Hirst's iconic (and star-bursty) Cathedral Print butterfly paintings that cost–if our interweb research is accurate–between thirty and fifty grand apiece. The children will note the quartet of spin art paintings that flank the tee-vee, which are, in their way, also star bursts.

The Harkham house, in all its sunburst glory, was featured in Miz McDonald's new book Interiors: The Allure of Style.

We don't know to where Mister Harkham decamped–he appears to own several apartment buildings in L.A. as well as a hotel or two where he could be camped out–but property records indicate that in March 2011 ex-Missus Harkham spent $2,400,000 for a more modest if still quite pricey 3,434 square foot Spanish style casa in a perfectly lovely but less exclusive area of the flats in Beverly Hills.

We're not entirely sure where Miz McDonald currently resides but we do know that for a fair number of years she was the intimate lady-friend of L.A.-based high end house flipper and property developer John Bersci who ran into some tight financial times a few years ago but is lately putting his toes back in the real estate waters. Mister Bersci and Miz McDonald used to lived in the famous and fabulous Harvey Mudd Estate in Beverly Hills originally designed in 1922 by architect Elmer Grey, the same architect responsible for the Beverly Hills Hotel and the Rose Bowl Stadium. It was here at the Mudd mansion, puppies, where Miz McDonald transformed a glassed in sun porch into the aforementioned leopard print extravaganza, which–minus the paisley-print pillows and the striped bolsters that match the striped shades–is kind of magnificent in its total disregard for animal print restraint.

Mister Bersci tried to sell the historic Mudd estate in starting in October 2008 when it was listed with an asking price of $11,495,000. But alas, the real estate gods had nothing but eyes of dagger for Mister Bersci at the time and in July 2009, according to property records, the Mudd mansion was foreclosed. By October of 2009 the bank-owned property was back on the market–as "the ultimate fixer"–and sold again in February 2010 for $6,250,000.

listing photos: Swift Pictures for Westside Estate Agency

Zsa Zsa Gabor Lists Bel Air Mansion

SELLER: Zsa Zsa Gabor
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $15,000,000
SIZE: 6,393 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Listen chickens, Your Mama is well aware we're far from the first cowboy to this celebrity real estate rodeo but we just can't resist the opportunity to discuss the Los Angeles, CA mansion of aged Hungarian hottie turned Hollywood icon Zsa Zsa Gabor and her rather eccentric publicity hound huzband Frédéric Prinz van Anhalt.

It's been a difficult few months for the ancient and increasingly infirm Miz Gabor who was crowned Miss Hungary way back in 1936 and became partially paralyzed in 2002 after a car accident. In January (2011) the beautiful and sometimes volatile Miz Gabor had one of her legs removed and a month later Prinz Freddy, bat in hand, (allegedly) chased a couple of intruders from the couple's gated mansion in Bel Air.

A few month later Z.Z.G.'s 67-year old whackadoodle ninth husband–she is his seventh wife–gabbed and yammered to the tabs and gossip glossies about how he planned to conceive a child with a surrogate and thus make his 94-year old wife a mother. Your Mama imagines that is just what every 94-year old woman with with one-leg and a feeding tube wants: a goddam infant. In mid-May Z.Z.G. was taken to a Los Angeles hospital where she slipped into an unresponsive coma. It looked like the diamond-lined road was finally at its end for Z.Z.G. but a week later the ever-feisty ol' girl came out of the coma. It is our understanding that as of this very moment Miz Gabor remains laid up in the hospital.

Some of the children will recall that back in January 2011 Prinz Freddy revealed via gossip juggernaut TMZ that the estate had become unpleasantly expensive to maintain and too large for their immediate daily needs. He planned, he said then, to list the estate for a hefty $25-28,000,000 and move into a much less expensive and simpler to maintain condo near Westwood. We're not sure about plans for a condo in Westwood but this week Z.Z.G.'s track-suit wearing "prinz" of a husband has officially foisted her frou-frou but faded Bel Air mansion on the open market with an asking price of $15,000,000.

It should be noted that Miz Gabor's daughter Francesca Gabor Hilton, who has been in a bitter and ongoing feud with Prinz Freddy, says that her mother would never want to live in a condo in Westwood and questions Prinz Freddy's legal right to sell the house due to the pre-nup he signed with her famous mother. In fact, at least one report quotes Miss Hilton as saying, "My mother is not aware that von anhalt is selling her house. I am not aware if von anhalt has the legal right to put my mother's house up for sale as he claims." She went on to add, "I am sure the Realtor has done his research (due diligence) concerning his legal right to sell my mother's house."

Listing information for Z.Z.G.'s somewhat threadbare crib–the the black top driveway is cracked and the vibrant yellow and red color scheme a la McDonalds is trés declassé–shows that it measures 6,393 square feet and includes 4 bedrooms and 5 bathrooms including a master suite with celebrity-size bathroom and two-room walk-in closet/dressing room. The house includes an additional staff suite with 1 bedroom and 2 bathrooms and a second floor with family room, party room and additional bedroom and bath.

A well-patinated copper mansard roof provides scant cover from rare inclement weather over the recessed front door that sings opens into an über-glam if dated oval entrance hall with custom-laid parquetry floor, over-scaled crystal chandelier and blood red walls with fluted pilasters that do not, for some strange and disturbing reason, reach all the way to the ceiling. As for the miniature Louis the Something upholstered chair in which sits some sort of doll, we refer the children to Rule No. 17 in Your Mama's Big Book of Decoratin' Dos and Don'ts that states that doing up day-core with dolls is strictly verboten in the home(s) of grown folks. Young children may have dolls in their rooms but at the age of 12, hunnies, they get shipped off to the Goodwill.

Anyhoo, the generous formal living room has inlaid hardwood floors, a black and white marble fireplace surround, a gilded console or two and a handful of blackamoors atop which balance crystal light fixtures. We recognize that these blackamoors were once decoratively de rigueur but they a chill runs up and down Your Mama's spine every time we see one. Of course Your Mama barely knows red from yellow but as far as we're concerned the banquet hall sized dining room is sort of magnificent with its long table topped by a pair of candelabra and gilded horse head, hand-painted screen, pair of card/breakfast tables near the window and cabinet filled with porcelain curios and fussy tchotchke. Since we could never afford such an decorative extravagance, Your Mama would chop off our own pinky toes toes for the then orange barrel-backed Neoclassical Bergere chairs that surround the table.

In between the living and dining rooms a paneled library room with wet bar spills into a sitting area with black and white checked floor and, regrettably, walls mirrored from floor to ceiling that visually multiply the mismatched pair of sofas and coffee tables topped with various breakable knick-knacks and paddy-whacks.

Listing photos don't show the kitchen nor any of the many bathrooms on the property so perhaps they are less than pretty and/or in need of a serious spit and polish to bring them into the 21st century.

The 1.05 acre estate has a long gated drive that curves as it climbs to the aforementioned cracked blacktop motor court and a two-car attached garage. The backyard entertainment areas, located on the view side of the house, include a swimming pool surrounded by an expansive basket weave pattern brick terrace. A sizable roof terrace ringed by a stone balustrade offers the property's best views over the rooftops and canyons towards the glittery lights of Tinseltown.

According to Z.Z.G. herself the house was built in the 1950s by billionaire recluse Howard Hughes and occupied by hound dog rock legend Elvis Presley for a number of year while he made his mark in the Hollywood movie scene.

There have been reports that Prinz Freddy has put some unusual stipulations on the sale of the mansion. One report even said that Prinz Freddy wanted to remain in residence–with the new owners–until his death, which is just ludicrous of course. Your Mama contacted listing agent Christophe Choo who assured Your Mama that this is quite simply not the case and that Z.Z.G.'s mansion will be delivered 100% vacant upon the closing.

listing photos: James Butchart for Coldwell Banker Previews International

David Charvet Lists 'Chateau Charvet' in Malibu

SELLER: David Charvet (and Brooke Burke)
LOCATION: Malibu, CA
PRICE: $12,500,000
SIZE: 6,769 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: The guard-gated and secluded Serra Retreat in Malibu, CA has long attracted high-profile peeps in The Industry who desire easy access to Hollywood and a semi-rural quasi-equestrian seaside lifestyle. Some of the uppity enclave's current residents include Kelsey Grammer's ex-wife Camille, super producer James Cameron (The Titanic) and Mel Gibson's long-suffering ex-wife Robin who has the erstwhile couple's compound listed at $11,750,000. Past residents of the exclusive and semi-rustic community include Olivia Newton John and Britney Spears and Kevin Federline who sold their erstwhile love shack to horror film writer/director Stephen Sommers in August 2007 for $10,000,000. After an extensive cleansing and renovation Mister and Missus Sommers have the renovated 8 bedroom and 8 bathroom spread back on the market with an asking price of $15,950,000.

Handsome and hunky actor (and designer denim jeans heir) David Charvet has owned a home in the Serra Retreat since March of 1998 when he paid $1,275,000 for five contiguous parcels that combined cover a couple acres and form an "L" shape.

Mister Charvet–whose father is Tunisian-born and Los Angles-based apparel business baron Paul Guez–started up his ladder of often shirtless fame in the 1990s on the hit boob-toob programs Baywatch and Melrose Place. But for a lead role in a couple of movies Your Mama has never heard of (Meet Prince Charming in 2002 and Green Flash in 2008) Mister Charvet seemed to have all but retired from showbiz in the late 1990s. In the last couple of years Mister Charvet has gotten his acting feet wet again with a tee-vee movie (The Perfect Teacher) and a couple of not yet released sci-fi-sounding films (Prisoner of the Sun and Nephilim).

We assume–which means we could be making an as of you and Your Mama–that Mister Charvet shares his Malibu mansion with long-time lady-friend and two-time baby momma Brooke Burke. Miss Burke, who also has two children from a previous relationship, started up her ladder of Hollywood fame as a nekkid model who parlayed her exposed breasts into a career as a tee-vee hostess (Wild On!, Rock Star, Miss America 2011). She appeared on and won the 7th season of the long ago jumped the shark but still somehow enormously popular program Dancing With The Stars. In 2010 Miss Burke took on the co-hosting duties on the dreadful dance contest extravaganza, which is probably, all Hollywood things considered, a damn good gig.

Mister Charvet and Miss Burke hooked up in 2005 or 2006–we can't be bothered to sort out the details–and have since made two babies with appropriately unusual names. Their Heaven joins Gwynnie Paltrow's Apple, Mariah Carey's Moroccan and Rob Morrow's Tu. Yes puppies, Rob Morrow named his daughter Tu Morrow. That man and his wife are so gonna get it from their Tu Morrow when she gets to be a snarling and sniveling teenager! Anyhoo, the good-looking baby makers in our discussion got engaged at some point–we can't be bothered to find out when–but have not, as far as Your Mama knows, tied the knot in the eyes of God and government.

Current listing information shows that the existing French Country-style pile was built in 2007. That indicates to Your Mama that Mister Charvet either replaced or significantly renovated and expanded the much smaller 2,726 square foot residence built in 1961 that stood on the property when he acquired it in 1998.

The current two-story dwelling, according to listing information, measures 6,769 square feet, includes 5 bedrooms and 4.5 bathrooms and is dubbed with the pleasantly alliterative but unnecessarily grandiose Chateau Charvet.

An 18th century fountain and expansive hand-laid antique stone motor court set the stage and lead the way to the nearly new residence built and finished with materials meant to give it an immediate patina: Exterior lamps flicker old-school style with gas; The walls were plastered by hand with an antique-y finish; The floors laid with walnut and hand-carved limestone; The fireplace mantels in the living and family rooms imported from France and the doors were hand-sculpted, whatever that means.

The formality of the long "formal" living/dining room was given the ol' California architectural heave-ho with a wide bank of floor-to-ceiling wood-framed accordion glass doors that open the room to stone terraces and outdoor living areas that overlook the broad lawn and manicured grounds. Listing photos show an intimately-scaled and masculine wood-paneled office where Mister Charvet hung a striking painting of what appears to Your Mama to be a tree about to be engulfed in flames. Like the living/dining room, the open plan kitchen/breakfast/family room area spills out into the back yard through a bank of accordion-fold glass doors in the family room and graceful arched French doors in the breakfast room.

Listing information reveals that Chateau Charvet also includes a hidden screening room–why hide it?–and a 4,000 bottle wine cellar that will satiate and inebriate even the most committed of the wino-philes and booze hounds in the family. A finished lower level contains a bonus room of undefined use and what listing information called a woman's off-season closet. Now, hunnies, that really is quite a nice feature, this woman's off-season closet. But what is the man of the house supposed to do with all his winter woolens come warm weather? Put them in a garbage bag and stuff it into the rafters in the garage? And what exactly, Your Mama wonders, makes this exclusively a "woman's" off-season closet? Does it have an infrared vagina recognizing security system or something?

Anyhoodles poodles, the back of the house forms a shallow obtuse angle that gently hugs the grassy and manicured courtyard-ish backyard. A wide terrace with a variety of functional areas–eating, lounging, conversating–extends off the rear of the house. A wide flat lawn pushes off from the terrace, engulfs the infinity-edge swimming pool and spa and stretches beyond where it steps down in wide terraces lined with clipped box woods and white rose bushes. Gravel paths lined with more clipped box woods and stone stairs streak across and provide a rigorous structure to the wild tree stands and rugged mountain views that surround the property.

At one end of the house, near the swimming pool, a stone-built cabana has built-in bench seating and an outdoor fireplace for nipping the edge off misty Malibu mornings and foggy evenings. This house is not, in all honestly, Your Mama's most desired cup of real estate tea but we could happily whittle away weeks and years curled up in the corner of that cabana with a stack of gossip glossies (and The New Yorker), our trusty laptop computer, a giant bowl of penny candy and an even more giant pitcher full of gin & tonic (extra lime, please).

Listing information indicates Mister Charvet will lease the property for $75,000 per month so anyone who might like to spend some serious paper to test drive Chateau Charvet could do so before making the full commitment to purchase.

Mister Charvet is not the only Guez family member with his left foot in the real estate hokey-pokey. Your Mama hears through the Platinum Triangle real estate gossip grapevine that Mister Charvet's uncle Hubert–the current CEO of the brain freezing Ed Hardy clothing brand–is about to sell his 17,171 square foot faux-French chateau in the Holmby Hills 'hood where some of the hoitiest of Tinseltown's toitiest homes cluster together like debutantes in a biker bar. Mister Guez's extravagant mansion happens to be the very rented residence where deceased music icon Michael "The White Lady" Jackson met his maker in the summer of 2009. The house, once listed with an punishingly optimistic asking price of $38,000,000, was last listed with a $23,500,000 price tag. Your Mama hears from an informant whom we'll call Knancy Knowstheprice who snitched that the tech tycoon who's about to sign the deed's dotted line is actually getting the house for a significantly lower price...in the teens. It's just rumor and gossip now, sweeties, just rumor and gossip.

listing photos: Coldwell Banker Previews International

Let's Talk Larry Ellison: Trees and Other Things

Let's face it, children, rich people are different from other people. We're not talking about the run of the mill rich people who make half a million or two million a year, we're talkin' the super-papered and über-pampered peeps for whom money really does grow on trees.

Take for instance billionaire tech tycoon Larry Ellison, co-founder and CEO of software supernova Oracle. The bearded and buff 66-year old claims a reported net worth near forty billion dollars. Say it slowly and let that sink in, butter cups. Forty. Billion. Dollars. Sorta makes a person need a nerve pill just to contemplate that sort of money, don't it?

In 1988 Bay Area-based Mister Ellison, paid $3,900,000 for a 10,742 square foot contemporary mansion on Billionaire's Row, a particularly posh stretch of street of the supuh-swank Pacific Heights 'hood in San Francisco, CA.
The four-story residence sits high on a quintessentially steep San Francisco hill where a quartet of very old trees that include an 80-year old acacia have grown tall enough to obstruct Mister Ellioson's otherwise unobstructed panoramic view of the San Francisco Bay. (See above for actual photo of the obstructed view from Mister Ellison's third floor living room.) The tall stand of view-wrecking trees are not, alas, in Mister Ellison's backyard but rather root into the yard of his down-hill neighbors, the von Bothmers. Mister Ellison and the von Bothmers have long been in a protracted legal tangle over Mister Ellison's strong desire to top the von Bothmer's trees in a manner that preserves his panoramic view. For truly a fascinating blow by blow, the children can peruse the Wall Street Journal's recent account of the tree top dramatics that ensued between Mister Ellison and his tree-loving neighbors.
Reports surfaced that after a decade of dispute and legal wrangling Mister Ellison has become so frustrated that he planned to spend a staggering $40,000,000 to purchase the giant mansion immediately next door (rear exterior shown above at left), a spectacular and storied four-floor residence with sober exterior, magnificently ornate interiors and bays views blessedly unimpeded by any of those naughtly ol' trees. Mister Elliman later released a statement claiming he is not now nor has he any plans to purchase the mansion next door to his for $40,000,000 or any other amount of money.

All this brouhaha comes hot on the heels of another stupefyingly expensive real estate acquisition by Mister Ellison. In mid-March 2011 the property mad tycoon shelled out a gut-wrenching $42,900,000 to acquire a 249-acre high-maintenance estate in Rancho Mirage, CA with a private 18-hole golf course and an 18,000+ square foot main house plus four guest casitas and four two-bedroom guest houses of nearly 2,000 square feet apiece. Didn't we tell you that rich people are different from regular people? Presumably this is a lavish spread that Mister Ellison will use, at best, a few weeks of the year when he's in town for the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, CA and maybe a few more weeks a year when he wants to golf without the interruption of other golfers.

Anyhoodles poodles, the mansion Mister Ellison says he is definitely not buying for forty million clammers or any other amount is a fascinating piece of San Francisco history, built in 1916 and owned since 1979 by the high-society matriarch, art patroness and haute couture dynamo Dodie Rosekrans and her second husband John, an heir to the the Sprekels family sugar fortune. Mister Rosekrans–who went on to earn his own fortune manufacturing and selling Frisbees, boogie boards and hacky sacks–met his maker in November 2001 and the iconoclastic Missus Rosekrans carried on until November 2010 with the dignity of a woman of her station and a daring, horrifically expensive and sometimes wacky sense of personal style.

The glittering and glamorous Missus Rosekrans and her wealthy Mister had the Willis Polk-designed mansion done over by San Francisco's legendary decorator Michael Taylor. Many years later Missus Rosekrans claimed never to have altered a damn thing that Mister Taylor had done. And why would she? What ever would be wrong with a decorative vignette comprised of a snug arched corridor lined with meticulous mill work that bursts into a capacious living room with towering plaster pilasters that line the walls, herringbone-patterned wood floors, gilded 18th-century arm chairs upholstered in chartreuse silk-velvet and a curving sofa with fringed skirt and a leopard skin–with the head–tossed across the back? Oh, and let's not forget the Picasso that lords over the thrilling tableau. Okay, the actual leopard skin makes us feel squeamish and icky but Michael Taylor was a genius, hunties, and Missus Rosekrans's San Francisco mansion explains why he owns a high place in the pantheon of legendary decorators.
He may not be the buyer of the Rosekrans mansion (at right above) that's slammed up hard to his current crib (at left above) but, hunnies, it really wouldn't be such a surprise if had bought or did in the future buy the palatial pile; Mister Ellison has previously purchased ludicrously expensive adjacent properties in high-priced California communities. Mister Ellison owns well over $100,000,000 in Malibu real estate including a handful of homes on Carbon Beach, also known as Billionaire's Beach due to the number of high profile billionaires (Jeffrey Katzenberg, Haim Saban, David Geffens et al) who own homes along that particular stretch of sand. Three of the homes five homes Mister Ellison currently owns on Carbon Beach sit right in a row and records show they were purchased between June 2008 and August 2003 at a toe-curling total cost of $33,250,000. He also owns another small house down the beach a bit that actress Jennifer Aniston leased for some time after her bust up from Brad Pitt in the early naughts.

Anyone who follows the high-end of the real estate market in Lala Land knows that Mister Ellison's real estate apple didn't fall very far from the tree. Earlier in 2011 Mister Ellison's budding film producer daughter Megan completed the pricey purchase of a third contiguous property high above the Sunset Strip. According to property records, previous reports and Your Mama's bejeweled abacus, we figure that young Miss Ellison–presumably with money received from her property obsessed father–has spent an astonishing $32,850,000 on her three contiguous clean-lined contemporary cribs that combined have three swimming pools, 10 bedrooms and 14 full and 1 half bathrooms.

Naturally, we have no idea what Miss Ellison plans to do with the property. Given the money-is-no-object real estate attitude of the Ellison it would not surprise Your Mama in the least if Miss Ellison planned to knock one or more of her three homes down to make way for an estate designed and optimized for her precise life and life style. Stranger things have happened.

Just look what billionaire hedge hog David Tepper has done out in Southampton, NY. Last year he spent $43,500,000 to acquire the 6.45 acre ocean front estate of the ex-wife of former U.S. Senator and governor of New Jersey Jon Corzine. This year, peeved he was unable to see the ocean from the first floor of the existing house, Mister "I want what I want at any cost" Tepper demolished the existing residence and the estate's various out buildings to make way for a much more substantial mansion of around 15,000 square feet, nearly three times the size of ex-Missus Corzine's former and now no longer existing beach house.

In addition to the massive main house, Mister Tepper's new beach front getaway, according to plans filed with the town of Sagaponack Village Building Department will also include a 1,000-ish square foot 3-car garage with basement, a 550-square foot pool house and a 270-square foot tennis pavilion.

Sagaponack, once the quiet domain of potato farmers, artists and beach-going others who willfully opted out of the staid old money scene in Southampton and the glittery new money extravaganza of East Hampton, has become inundated over the last 10 or 15 years with prodigious amounts of Wall Street money that has swept in like a tidal wave and transformed the once bucolic and relaxed farming community into a crush of newly erected mega-mansions.

The current issue of Vanity Fair includes an article about the mesmerizing real estate tale of a Houston businessman engaged in a decade-long dispute with an old Sagaponack farming family that illustrates how money–really big money–has infiltrated, re-shaped and re-defined–and some might argue infected and destroyed–the once sleepy and scenic seaside enclave.

Back on the west coast showbiz mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg paid an astounding $35,000,000 in early 2010 for an 8,704 square foot mid-century modern mansion on a prominent 6.34 acre hilltop in Beverly Hills. He immediately razed the existing house to make way for something bigger and better rumored to be designed by the folks at Gwathmey Siegel, the same firm responsible for his impressive post-modern ocean front compound on Malibu's Carbon Beach.

As extraordinary as these things may seem to ordinary folks and mere financial mortals, billionaires (and near billionaires) who spend vast sums of money to acquire contiguous high-priced properties and/or purchase shockingly expensive but perceptually sub-par residences they replace with newer, bigger and shinier ones, appear to be the new normal for the super rich.

Do not, without aid of a cocktail and a mood altering substance, even begin to attempt to make sense of the capricious real estate ways of the famous and/or the filthy rich. Your Mama–under the influence of an illegal substance and with a tall gin & tonic in hand–wonders then, if some money-is-no-object buyer will snatch up Jennifer Aniston's $42,000,000 house in Beverly Hills or Ellen Degeneres and Portia de Rossi's sixty million dollar compound in the Hills of Beverly only to tear everything down and start again. Anyone care to weigh in on that bone chilling possibility?

NOTE: This post revised late same day in light of crucial and more current information we failed to uncover during in our earlier (and inadequate) research.

photo(top): Google
photo (middle): Ellison v. Von Bothmer case file from the Wall Street Journal
photo (bottom) Google

Your Mama Keeps Hearing...

...That New York City-bound sitcom star and rom-com queen Jennifer Aniston is moments away from selling the Beverly Hills, CA mansion she dubbed Ohana.

Miss Aniston acquired the house in November 2006 for $13,500,000 from prolific contemporary art collector and art industry tour de force Rosette Delug. She spent the next four years on an expansion and complete overhaul of the 10,000-ish square foot residence originally designed in 1972 by noted modernist architect Hal Leavitt. Almost as soon as the paint was dry Miss Aniston had a real estate change of heart and listed Ohana–which means extended family or some such thing in Polynesian-speak–in March 2011 with a sky-high price tag of $42,000,000, a dizzying number that caused more than a few real estate watchers to gasp with horror and indignation at what they thought was an audacious and unrealistic asking price.

We first heard the scuttlebutt about the possible sale of Miss Aniston's Ohana from Bev Hills real estate insider Nina Knowsthedirt who snitched to Your Mama a few weeks ago that Miss Aniston had received two offers for her supah-swank city view estate, both over $35,000,000. At that point, according to Nina, Miss Aniston's top-producing Real Estate put word out to the small group of folks in Tinseltown who can and do sell forty million dollar houses that if they had any possible buyers for Ohana they should get them into the house lickety-split because Miss Aniston was eager to accept an already on the table offer. Disbelief reigned amongst all the economic Chicken Littles who insist the real estate sky is still falling.

One week after Nina dropped her celebrity real estate 411 in our inbox Your Mama received a covert communique from trusted informant Crawzuhdeen from the Shawlza who whispered that word on the Platinum Triangle Real Estate Street was that Miss Aniston's estate had been put into escrow by ridiculously rich Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich and his much younger arty-farty baby momma Dasha Zhukova, herself an heiress to a substantial oil and arms fortune. When we went back and queried Nina on the matter, she told us that the Real Estate of the notorious trophy property collector denied her Russian multi-billionaire clients are the buyers of Ohana. Make of that what you will, puppies.

This week Your Mama received additional intel from a third source, a foreign gal in the Lala Land real estate game whom we'll call Upinda Everyonesbizness. Ol' Upinda, who is not Jewish but is none-the-less a devoted real estate yenta of the highest order, swears on her momma's life that Ohana is indeed in escrow–for $38,000,000 give or take a million–and that she too hears through the gossip grapevine the buyer is, "that Russian with the big boat."

At first we thought maybe Ol' Upinda might be referring to Russian fertilizer magnate and billionaire Andrey Melnichenko who caused considerable kerfuffle and around which swirled scads of real estate prattle and chatter last fall when he had is huge and sinister-looking boat A anchored off the coast of Venice.

Given that sorting out the details of a not yet completed transaction is a lot like the telephone game where details easily become distorted and/or muddled to the point of inaccuracy in their retelling, the "Russian with the big boat" could easily be Mister Melnichenko. To complicate matters Your Mama was also told that the buyer of Ohana might be a New York City financier. However, all signs and most sources with whom we consulted continue to point directly at Mister Abramovich who, as many of the children surely know, owns a gargantuan private yacht called Eclipse about the size of a damn oil tanker.

Official listings still show Ohana as available with an asking price of $42,000,000 and while somewhat misleading we suspect the listing will remain marked as "active" and available until this (alleged) deal is done done done like a Thanksgiving turkey.

Miss Aniston, who reportedly plans to relocate to New York City, continues to own a far more modest home high above the Sunset Strip she purchased in early 1993 for $751,000 so she'll be far from west coast homeless after she sells her Bev Hills house. The actress, who grew up in the N.Y.C., recently closed on two small but hideously expensive adjacent apartments in a prime pre-war edifice in New York City's West Village. One, a high-floor one bedroom, cost her $2,069,084 and the other, an itty-bitty one-bedroom penthouse directly above, scooped another $4,950,000 from her deep pockets. Your Mama hears through the celebrity real estate gossip grapevine that Miss Aniston is also currently in contract to purchase a third one bedroom apartment in the building adjacent to the two million dollar one bedroom and listed with an asking price of $1,995,000.

The unlucky in love actress–who, quite frankly, seems far happier about her life than the tabs portray–has said in the past that a desire to simplify her life is part of the reason for her selling her big ol' Beverly Hills house and looking east. Of course it ain't none of our beeswax and certainly Miss Aniston could give a fat crap what we think about diddly squat but it just doesn't seem very damn simple to Your Mama for a person to spend nine or so million dollars for three wee apartments that will require many millions more and a couple of years to properly reconfigure and transform into a still modestly-scaled penthouse duplex outfitted and all did up proper for showbiz royalty.

Your Mama wonders where Miss Aniston with reside after she sells her house in Beverly Hills and before the completion of her new duplex in New York City. Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

Kate Hudson Buys House Next Door

BUYER: Kate Hudson (and Matt Bellamy)
LOCATION: Pacific Palisades, CA
PRICE: $5,300,000
SIZE: 7,014 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 6.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Several months ago Your Mama heard from a well-placed source we'll call Lucinda Liquidluncher who nonchalantly dropped the celebrity real estate nugget that currently preggers serial monogamist Kate Hudson and her whip-skinny British rock star baby daddy/fiancée Matt Bellamy–lead singer of Muse–were on the hunt for exceptionally expensive houses on the West Side of Los Angeles. We're talking serious mansions, my pretties, mansions in the $15-20,000,000 range. Real damn big-shitter stuff.

It was not long after that when rumors and reports ran up into our inbox that the romantically fickle Oscar-nominated actress and her Muse musician man-friend bought a four-million pound property in London and eyeballed a vintage Spanish mansion in the Los Feliz area, a world away from from their target area of the west side. We have no idea if Miss Hudson and Mister Bellamy bought a house in London or not but we do know that the soon-to-be parents' real estate trail quickly went all cotton mouth on Your Mama until yesterday when we happened upon documentation that indicates Miss Hudson splashed out $5,300,000 to purchase the 1935 Tudor Revival style pile immediately next door to her long-time residence in the insouciant but exceptionally posh and deceptively staid ocean side enclave of Pacific Palisades.

Despite her search in some of the other top-end zip codes on the west side it seems Miss Hudson couldn't escape the sentimental and familial tug of Pacific Palisades where she has not only lived in the same traditional style house since 2003 but also spent at least some of her childhood. Her magnificent mother Goldie Hawn and still-hunky step-daddy Kurt Russell are long-time residents of the quiet community and, in fact, according to The Movieland Directory, Miz Hawn and Mister Russell once owned the very house that Miss Hudson now (and again) calls home.

Miss Hudson did not, however, inherit or buy the house from her famous parents. They sold the house–we're not actually sure when–and eventually it came to be owned by screenwriter Barbara Gallagher who was also the long-time gal pal and baby momma of now-deceased (and gay) clothing designer Perry Ellis. Miss Hudson purchased the house from Miss Gallagher in December of 2003 for $5,400,000. When you're young, ridiculously rich and feeling nostalgic you can do things like that, spend more than five million bucks to buy your childhood home.

As for Miz Hawn and Mister Russell, at the latter end of the summer of 2004 they paid $4,124,591 for a 5,000-ish square foot house directly across the street from the 12,860 square foot pile they sold later in November of the same year for $12,000,000 to comedian Adam Sandler.

The property recently purchased by Miss Hudson–and presumably Mister Bellamy although we haven't any idea whatsoever of the details of what his financial involvement is or is not–was built in 1935 by an heir to a lumber fortune and was owned and expanded in the late 1980s and early 1990s by showbiz executive Brad Grey and his now ex-spouse Jill. Listing information shows the L-shaped house currently contains five bedrooms and 6.5 bathrooms in 7,014 square feet.

A double-gated drive arches around to a small but prairie-like motor court dominated by a front-facing three-car garage. The front door is tucked into a corner of the dignified brick and stone that wraps round the main floor and supports a half-timbered second floor and that steeply pitched gabled roof. While the rear of the house maintains a correct sort of quirkiness, the front façade emits not just an air of architectural authenticity but also suffers from, regrettably, the posture of a semi-suburban mcmansion.

Inside the updated residence retains original features such as a generously proportioned formal living room with fireplace, an oak-paneled dining room and mahogany-paneled library with built-in book cases, fireplace and vaulted ceiling. The fully re-worked and commodious kitchen, re-did by the seller, has all the bells and whistles that ought to be expected in a five million dollar mansion including a Mercedes-sized center island, commercial-grade appliances, butler's pantry, breakfast area and lounge that opens through French doors to a terrace that overlooks the backyard. There's not really much in the kitchen that floats Your Mama's decorative boat; It's just not our style. But it's the ominous pot rack over the center island that really has us grabbing for the gin because it looks to Your Mama's paranoia like that thing has a sinister ache in its inanimate soul to drop a copper pot or two on to the soft skull of an unsuspecting minimum wage domestic worker.

Although not original to the house a voluminous space above the expanded garage now includes a family room with vaulted ceiling and built-in entertainment cabinet, a guest bedroom, not one but two bathrooms, a loft and workout room with mirrored walls and toxin-eradicating sauna.

A wide stone patio, part of which is covered by a pergola structure, runs the length of the back of the house, has a tree-top view over the surrounding neighborhood and steps down to a small flat patch of grass hardly big enough for a celebrity child-sized jungle gym. A white picket fence and a row of tightly-planted prickly white-rose bushes surrounds the swimming pool and raised spa. Little kiddies who like to play house will adore the people-sized play house that has a wee front yard of its own.

We don't know a microwave from a moron so Your Mama really can't say what Miss Hudson and Mister Bellamy's plans are for these two adjacent properties. Perhaps they'll leave the structures separate but marry them via the landscaping. Could be they'll convert one of the large residences to an guest/entertainment pavilion with sound-proofed recording facilities. Or maybe they're hire a really smart and expensive architect to figure out a way to combine the two large houses into one super-sized celebrity-style mansion. Or perhaps, just a thought not a prediction, they'll opt to tear one of the houses down to make way for expanded grounds that could easily accommodate a lighted tennis court, guest house, recording studio and/or staff quarters. Miss Hudson is well-known among the celebrity for her annual Halloween bash so the extra space could also be utilized for additional off-street party parking with enough space to spare for a party tent to be erected at will and as needed.

We shall see, puppies, we shall see. Maybe one day Miss Hudson will invite curious little ol' Your Mama to her next Halloween party and then we'll know just what she's done with the place. Just a suggestion.

listing photos: Sotheby's International Realty / Beverly Hills

Cheech Marin Lists Second Malibu Residence

SELLER: Richard "Cheech" Marin
LOCATION: Malibu, CA
PRICE: $5,995,000
SIZE: 6 bedrooms, 6.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Since sometime in the mid-1990s pothead actor and comedian turned respected and prolific art collector Richard Marin and his second wife Patti Heid began to buy up contiguous parcels on the now very hoity-toity Encinal Bluffs in the northern reaches of Malibu, CA. Some of their nearby neighbors now include Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie although it seems that peripatetic pair and their always-expanding brood rarely visit their lonely ocean front home in Malibu anymore.

Mister Marin is perhaps best known among those over the age of 40 as Cheech of the doobie-smoking duo Cheech and Chong. Mister Marin all but put his professional bong away after 8 Cheech and Chong films but he's been a busy beaver ever since with dozens of television and film appearances and roles (Judging Amy, Nash Bridges), a couple of children's records and a number of hugely successful animated film productions such as The Lion King and Cars. He also has a line of hot sauces that bear his name and mug. That's right, hot sauces.

As popular as Cheech may have been, Mister Marin's largest contribution to the world may not be that he tacitly taught millions of of teenagers how to roll a joint and smoke weed from a bong but rather he may well be best remembered as a committed, prolific and respected collector of Latin American artwork. Mister Marin's collection includes works by well known artists like Mexico's Diego Rivera as well pieces by a laundry list of other Latino and Latina art makers such as Carlos Almaraz, George Yepes, Patssi Valdez, Leo Limón, Margaret Garcia. Mister Marin's extensive collection–portions of which have toured not just once but twice–is not limited exclusively to Latin American artists. He has at least one word painting by American über-artist–and former Malibu resident–Ed Ruscha that hangs in a guest bedrooms. Imagine for a moment, children, having a collection so thick that you can hang a famous Ruscha painting in the damn guest room.

Anyhoo, as best as Your Mama can surmise and sort out from the property records, the Marin's Malibu compound eventually grew to include four (and possibly five) contiguous parcels that stretch from the Pacific Coast Highway to the steep bluff that tumbles down to the sand and surf. Altogether there are three residences, one that backs up to the highway, another directly on the ocean and a third in between. The center property appears to have been originally acquired in October of 1996. Mister and Second Missus Marin wound up in the court of dee-vorce sometime in the early to mid 2000s and in early 2011 ownership of that centrally-located piece of the Marin compound puzzle was transferred directly to Second Missus Marin.

Way back in the celebrity real estate Dark Ages of March 2007, not long after Your Mama started the wee engine to our little blog enterprise, we discussed Mister Marin's highway-side residence, a Craftsman-Tudor style mini-mansion then listed on the open market with an asking price of $3,595,000. The house, built in 1979, had been purchased–it appears to Your Mama based on the documents we looked at–along with an adjacent vacant parcel in September of 1998 for $1,585,000. At the time of our first discussion, the adjacent vacant parcel was also for sale separately with an asking price of $1,695,000.

Since then the 4 bedroom and 3.5 bathroom house has been on and off the market several times. The property, according to records, remains in Mister Marin's property portfolio and is now listed with a significantly slashed asking price of $1,999,950. The adjacent vacant parcel also remains in Mister Marin's list of real estate assets and–in truth, butter beans–Your Mama has no idea if it is still available for purchase and if so at what price.

Yesterday we received a thoughtful missive from The Rolling Stone who pointed our celebrity real estate nose back out to Malibu where Mister Marin has listed the ocean front mini-compound within a compound portion of his spread with an asking price of $5,9995,000.

It not entirely clear from available online property records when Mister Marin acquired to ocean front jewel in his property crown in Malibu. However, own it he does, at least until someone comes along and pays him a fair number of millions for the hippy-dippy mini-compound that
listing information shows includes a main house with three bedrooms and a guest house with fitness room with three more sleeping chambers. A detached music room–Third and Current Missus Marin Natasha Rubin is a pianist–completes the scene. Altogether, according to listing information, there are 6.5 bathrooms split between the various structures.
The living room, while large and in possession of a staggering ocean view, seems pleasantly prosaic in comparison to much of the property's architectural melodrama and fantastical hard scaping. Rich hardwood floors provide gravity for the vaulted and beamed ceiling and at one end a brick fireplace anchors the room and at the other two banks of sliding and French doors that converge and allow the eye soar nearly unimpeded out towards the humbling view.

The ocean view dining room, tucked into a windowed bay with beamed wood ceiling and a phenomenal chandelier that looks like a suit of chain mail dripping with amber-colored glass tulips. The dining room opens into the galley-style kitchen that features floors of a notably different sort of wood than in the other areas of the main floor, slab granite counter tops, unimpressive but adequate appliances–they are asking six mil here after all–and honey-colored cabinetry with very crunchy-granola bas-relief detailing. At the far end of the kitchen a quaint but tight built-in breakfast banquette tucked into a doghouse-shaped extrusion has windows on three sides and a vaulted, beamed and sky-lit ceiling.

The high-drama cathedral-like master bedroom features vaulted double height ceiling, exposed wood beams, hardwood floors, a wacky fireplace that looks like an over-scaled piece of ancient pottery. A shallow but extra-wide a bay window lined with floral stained glass offers an ocean view, built in banquette with storage drawers for pulling on hose and lacing up sneakers. While most of the large but far from over-sized master bathroom is an out-dated hot mess that could cause a migraine if we looked at the listing photo too long there are three features Your Mama wishes to acknowledge: the skylight (always good for proper pooper ventilation), the weird but brilliant little collection of mushroom-shaped table lamps and the curvaceous all-tile sunken soaking tub. All of those things are good in their own special way. Everything else? A real damn decorative peeper punishment.

Listing information calls the estate "Carmel in Malibu" and it does sort of remind Your Mama of the ocean-side, wind-swept and cliff-top extravaganza that is Carmel (CA). Listing information also labels the multiple structures as"Craftsman" in style and maybe this is a kind of upscale Summer of Love-inspired Craftsman-ish type dwelling. However, everywhere Your Mama looks we see whimsical but deadly serious homage to the great Spanish surrealist architect Antoni Gaudí. There are droopy bent-wood window frames that look like something out of a Dalí painting, some of the tile work in the master bathroom has a random ripple that makes it appear to be slowly melting. Stacked stones and bricks arch, warp and ribbon around a table with swirling brick pedestal to create an Alice in Wonderland-like built-in dining banquette and pizza oven while brick and stone retaining walls on the terraced bluff pucker and buckle with an oddly elegant, mesmerizing and sensual sense of decay.

Lush and haphazard but well-tended gardens weave their way around the various structures and include tree shaded lawns that roll and slope towards the bluff and a raised stone dining and lounging terrace on the edge of the bluff where the property's multi-million dollar view is at its best most expensive. Pathways and staircases lined with undulating stone and brick walls meander down the bluff to the 120 linear feet of sandy beach frontage. The manner in which the bluff was hard- and landscaped reminds Your Mama of a trip we once took to España with our bawdy but cultured pal Falsetta Knockers. One afternoon while whittling away a spectacular week in Barcelona we hopped in our rented Euro-hoopdie and drove out to the flamboyant Gaudí-designed Parc Güell. As far as Your Mama is concerned there are few parks cum tourist attractions that match the unfettered and yet well-considered exuberance of Parc Güell where awe-inspiring architectural whimsy happily wallows in a happy and fanciful marriage to genius engineering.

But we digress....In addition to his real estate holdings in Malibu, it's been reported in the past that Mister Marin owns a substantial home in the snazzy Sea Cliff area of San Francisco, CA, which makes an odd counter-cultural sort of sense. He and the current Missus Marin were, reportedly, married at said home in 2009. However, despite a few minutes poking around property records we don't find any evidence of Mister Marin owning a home in The City By the Bay. We did find an address to a cliff top mansion on at least one digital document at which we peeped, but further investigation shows that Mister Marian does not currently nor does it appear he ever owned that particular house. If any of the Bueller's want to chime in on and clarify the matter, please do.

listing photos: Coldwell Banker Previews International / Malibu