SELLER: Ben SavageLOCATION: West Hollywood, CA
PRICE: $1,599,000
SIZE: 2,350 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Yesterday, while doing some research in the internets for a little ditty we're preparing for next week's discussions Your Mama ran across a residence in West Hollywood, CA owned by former child-star Ben Savage and listed with an asking price of $1,599,000. Mister (Ben) Savage should not be confused, puppies, with his child-star older brother Fred.
West Hollywood, for those not schooled in the geography of Tinseltown, sits right up next to Beverly Hills on the west and Hollywood proper to the east. It is widely regarded as one of the gayest and gay friendliest cities in all the world, a place where there are more rainbow flags flapping in the breeze than there are sinners in hell. In some circles West Hollywood is known as Boystown, USA. We do not, mind y'all, recommend making use of that moniker as it's way too too much like when people call San Francisco Frisco. It's just not a good idea. Now, chickens, put on your smart hats use them brains of yours; we know not a thing of Mister (Ben) Savage's private life and do not intimate or insinuate anything whatsoever about his choice of bedroom activities partners. There are, after all, scads and scores of single heterosexual men who belonged to a frat while in college living right in the heart of gay gay gay West Hollywood.
Anyhoo, in the early 1990s, among other gigs, Mister (Ben) Savage appeared on sit-coms Dear John and A Family for Joe. Don't worry, lollipops, we'd never heard of either one of those boob-toob programs either. At just about the same time his older brother Fred's run on The Wonder Years was coming to a close in 1993, Mister (Ben) Savage catapulted to tween and teenage stardom when he took a role as a neurotic but wise sixth grader on the hokey but terrifically successful Boy Meets World. That series ran seven long years during which Mister (Ben) Savage's character grew up, dated a poor gurl saddled with the name Topanga, went to college, married Topanga and moved to New York City.
When that program wrapped itself up in 2000, Mister (Ben) Savage did what so few child actors seem to do: He all but stopped acting and went to college to get himself a proper damn education. We're sure Mister (Ben) Savage saw his fair share of teenage debauchery but he never made tabloid headlines for vomiting all over himself while dancing on the table in the VIP section of a booze lounge in Hollywood. Lots of current and former child stars could take a lesson in how to grow up with dignity from Mister (Ben) Savage. Are you listening Lindsay Lohan? Perhaps if Your Momma held your feet to fire a little more firmly perhaps you wouldn't be just getting out of rehab for the 29th time and "accidentally" moving in next door to your celebrity dj ex-gurlfriend who doesn't seem to want much from you anymore except for you to leave her string bean ass alone.
Property record show that Mister Savage scooped up his house in West Hollywood for $1,050,000 in December of 2004. This would have been just a year or so after he interned in the office of former Republican turned Democratic Senator Arlen Spector in Washington D.C. and less than a year after he graduated with a degree in political science from the Dr. Cooter's undergraduate alma mater Stanford.
We're not sure if Mister (Ben) Savage had or has any plans to put his poly-sci degree to use or if he hopes to get back into the bizness of show but the one-time child star has reignited and very slowly ramped up his showbiz career over the last four or five years. In 2007 he appeared in the well-regarded indie film Palo Alto, a role he followed up with a couple of itty-bitty parts on the tee-vee programs Chuck and Without a Trace. According to his resume on the Internet Movie Data Base he's soon to appear in two feature films, Lake Effect (with Jane Seymour and NCIS and Trauma sexpot Scottie Thompson) and Peace and Riot (with the Jake Busey, the son of the fantastically nutty actor Gary Busey).
Listing information indicates that Mister (Ben) Savage's renovated house was built in 1927, measures 2,350 square feet–the Los Angeles County Tax Man says it's actually 2,316 square feet–and includes 3 bedrooms and 2.5 poopers. The house, a rather architecturally wonky number with a puny mansard roof located in the very central and jam-packed Norma Triangle neighborhood right on the border with Bev Hills, sits hard up on the tree-lined street shielded behind a tall and thick hedge.
A small but proper foyer gives way to a living room outfitted with fireplace, high-gloss espresso-colored hardwood floors, deliciously white walls and a couple of harmless beige sofas. It's all rather innocuous but for the large graffiti-style portrait of a woman with a thick pearl necklace and a cigarette dangling from her lips. We can't fathom what makes a person buy and hang an artwork like that. It's like a new-fangled Patrick Nagel piece and we all know what happened to the value of works by Mister Nagel, don't we?
A wide archway separates the living room from the "formal" dining room where a ho-hum glass-topped dining table surrounded by six vibrant orange leather chairs that stand out bravely against a wall covered in a duo-tone grey wallpaper with an infinity symbol pattern. We're going to pretend we don't see the artwork in the dining room.
At the back of the house a pleasant and cozy family room area has French doors that open to a narrow gravel terrace and the adjacent kitchen has the most unflattering flesh colored tile counter tops and white 1970s-style raised panel cabinetry on which some misguided person attached contemporary linear handles in a sad effort to update the outdated space. These handles are a serious and unforgivable attempt to put lipstick on a pig when, let's be honest, this poor little piggy should have just been put out of its misery.
The shiny dark wood floors stretch into the main floor master bedroom that includes a walk-in closet and an all beige, depressingly banal pooper with separate soaking tub and shower. A single sliding glass door lets out to a slim courtyard barely large enough for little more than a post-coital cigarette. We're saddened by the flat screen tee-vee clinging to the wall near the ceiling but recognize that there are many reasons why a person might want or enjoy a television in the bedroom.
The second floor contains two decent-sized bedroom that share a white-tiled pooper with black tile accents. At least one of the upstairs bedrooms opens to an uncomfortably slim sun porch-like space where a long wall of floor to ceiling windows and sliders open to a 1,000 square foot roof terrace with tree-top views of the surround neighborhood.
Although the finishes in the kitchen and bathrooms are severely lacking in style–it looks like the contractor went to the Home Despot and only bought things on sale–listing information indicates the house is equipped with a few desirable amenities such as surround sound, art-gallery lighting and a high-tech security system.
With his acting career on a bit of a rise, one wonders if Mister (Ben) Savage will decamp for bigger and better digs or if he's bailing out on the entertainment industry in search of whatever sort of career one has with a political science degree from a top-notch university.
listing photos: Hilton & Hyland
