SELLER: Richard ChamberlainLOCATION: Kihei, HI
PRICE: $19,000,000
SIZE: 6,150 square feet, 6 bedrooms, 5.5 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: This bit of bizness was first reported back in May of 2010, which means Your Mama is far from the first to arrive at this particular celebrity real estate soiree. However, since we recently received a query about this posh property from Wahini Wantstoknow and since we so rarely get to discuss dwellings owned by famous folks in Hawaii, we're going to turn back time and discuss the ocean front Hawaiian kauhale of actor Richard Chamberlain and his longtime man-friend, actor/writer/producer/director Martin Rabbett. The couple currently have their Maui manse the market with an asking price of $19,000,000.
Mister Chamberlain, a noted thespian and an actor who first found fame as the young and humpy all-American blond heartthrob Dr. (James) Kildare on the 1960s tee-vee medical drama Dr. Kildare, is perhaps best known as 'Mister Mini-Series' for his many roles in a long list of mini-series, including Centennial, Shogun, The Bourne Identity (with Jaclyn Smith!) and the feh-naw-mih-nuhl and tragic saga The Thorn Birds in which he worked his sexy stuff as a foxy priest torn between his raging ambition to rise within the church hierarchy and his ardor and concupiscence towards a young woman named Meggie.
Mister Chamberlain, a man who made both women and men sweat with desire and other lewd feelings, was outed as a homosexual in 1989 by a naughty French publication but did not officially walk himself out of the proverbial closet until 2003 in his autobiography Shattered Love. Mister Chamberlain, a long time resident of the Aloha State who has been coupled with Mister Rabbett for more than 25 years, recently left his home in Hawaii and returned to the glittering lights of Tinseltown to pursue a reignited career. His recent boob-toob appearances include Desperate Housewives, Chuck, and Leverage and the still handsome 76-year old just signed on to appear on that sappy and sometimes smarmy family melodrama Brothers & Sisters.
Property records reveal that Mister Chamberlain and Mister Rabbett purchased their ocean front spread in quiet Kihei on the western shore of Maui through a trust in October of 1999 for $3,500,000. Records also indicate that at the time of the purchase the existing residence was far smaller and less polished than the existing residence, completed after four years of design and construction in 2005. Listing information indicates the residence designed by The Wiseman Group in San Francisco and oversaw by Mason Architects in Honolulu.
Property records show that the existing two-story gated residence sits on a .57 acre parcel with more than 100 feet of beachfront overlooking Keawakapu Beach and measures a sizable 6,179 square feet. Listing information shows there are a total of 6 bedrooms and 5.5. poopers on the property divided between the main house and the carriage house. The main house, according to listing information, contains two master suites–his and his, perhaps?–two additional bedrooms with private poopers plus a powder room. The 1,980 square foot carriage house includes 2 additional bedrooms, 2 poopers, a living room, art studio and laundry facilities.
The palm tree shaded motor court opens into an impress the guests style double height entry with limestone floors, a dee-voon floating staircase composed of chunky wood blocks and a simple, barely there bronze handrail. Your Mama is totally down with the large but light as air black and red Alexander Calder mobile that hangs in the entry, and we love a Bird of Paradise, but the round table with the sextet of curvy legs and the fish shaped wood bowl/vase/planter thing make us feel squeamish. We realize everyone needs a place to drop their keys and purse on the way into their home, but Your Mama would have simply tossed an exquisite solid colored silk-woven rug on the floor and called it a decorative day in the foyer.
Opposite the front door, the limestone floors and a glimpsed view of the ocean draws a person into the large "formal" living room divided into two areas: One end of the room has game/dining table–on top of which sit a bowl full of lurid red calla lillies–and the other end acts as a sitting area all done up in a somewhat cliché and vaguely Asian/Polynesian day-core with matching freestanding cabinets that flank the clean lined fireplace. Five fab bronze-framed French doors open to the terrace and loggia that run along the backside of the house.
Just off the entry, through a spectacular pair of gleaming wood doors, a media/screening room is courageously furnished with blood red furniture and large screen tee-vee built into a smooth wall of well oiled wood. Upstairs, a library with built in bookshelves, wood ceiling, Brazilian cherry wood floors and Calder sculpture opens to a deck with panoramic views across the verdant backyard and the pristine beach to the turqwaze and azure brilliance of the Pacific Ocean. The dining room, which opens to the back yard through a pair of bronze framed French doors, sits adjacent to the gourmet kitchen kitted-out with fancy Sub-Zero, Wolf, and Meile brand appliances.
At least one of the upstairs master suites, both of which have views of the ocean though the tops of the many palm trees that dot the back yard, includes a large dressing room with custom built cedar lined walnut clothing cabinets and center island with sink topped by a greenish-colored marble counter top. We're puzzled and perplexed by that ebony disk on the counter top that we hope is not but looks to Your Mama like it might be a crazy cloisonné Lazy Susan for displaying man-perfume.
The wide terrace and loggia at the back of the house transitions the airy indoor spaces to the backyard that includes a black-bottomed spa sunk into the flat lawn that stretches towards the shrubbery line that divides the private yard from the white sands of the more public Keawakapu Beach.
At least one previous report indicate that Mister Rabbett may–or may have already–moved to the gay gay gay San Francisco while Mister Chamberlain settles in Los Angeles in order to spend his dotage on the big and small screen. Listen chickens, setting aside why these two men don't seem to want to live in the same city anymore, Your Mama can't understand why a man Mister Chamberlain's age would even want to work anymore iffin he didn't have to. We're happy to have him back in the limelight but iffin we were him we'd just marinate in our past accolades and learn to knit while sitting on the back terrace watching all the barely covered beach goers stroll by. But, c'est la vie, right?
