LOCATION: Beverly Hills (Post Office), CA
PRICE: $25,000/month
SIZE: 10,594 square feet, 6 bedrooms, 8 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: A month or so ago Your Mama revealed that Oscar-winning Tinseltown high priest Warren Beatty and his dee-voon, 4-time Oscar-nominated wife Annette Bening put their long-time mock-Mediterranean mansion in the 90210 on the rental market at $27,500 per month. At that time online listings only included one crappy aerial photograph of the mansion, which Mister Beatty and Miz Bening have owned since May 1996.
Since our discussion the Beatty-Benings have dropped to rent price to $25,000 and online listing(s) now include a mostly monochromatic cache of images that show both the inside and outside of the partially vine-encrusted (mc)mansion privately sited at the tail end of a long, gated drive and tucked into a thick thicket of mature trees with limb- and leaf-obstructed vistas over the pancake-flat San Fernando Valley. Listing information indicates the ready to be rented residence measures in at a considerable 10,594 square feet with a total of 6 bedrooms and 8 bathrooms.
Listing information describes the Beatty-Bening family's bulky abode as "Very light, bright and open" with "Grandly scaled rooms throughout, high ceilings, and a great flow for large scale entertaining." Certainly the entrance to this house asks for oohs and aahs from party pals and over-night guests: A tall, bougainvillea-draped arch and shallow portico frames the front door that opens into a notably spacious and even glitzy white-marble foyer with a swooping marble and wrought iron staircase that looks to Your Mama like a not unappealing but not entirely successful homage to one of the wickedly grand and extra-wide staircases a body might see in an 18th century Parisian hotel particular.
Listing photographs show the interior spaces completely empty and devoid of anything that might be taken or mistaken for actual day core. On the main floor wide arched doorways and scads of French doors open to the outdoors and connect adjoining rooms where the floors are covered in either sand-colored wall-to-wall carpeting or gleaming, high-gloss, honey-colored parquet de Versailles-style hardwood floors.
The walls, baseboards and trim work around windows and doors–but not crown moldings, since there does not appear to be a single inch of ceiling moldings in the entire house–are bathed in a buttery beige hue that somehow seems to both gobble up and reflect light. Listen kiddos, no one loves a stripped down piece of architecture more than Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter but some houses, regardless of architectural authenticity and/or integrity, just work better with a little crown molding. This house, the Beatty-Bening's old crib up off Mulholland Drive, most certainly would benefit from moldings. Unless, we dare say, the day-core was all done up in the old-school earthy-glamour of Michael Taylor with boulder-shaped poufs and pillows, a plethora of planted foliage, and a odd but balanced amount of organically shaped sofas and Louis the Something bergere chairs that together generate the correct amount of design tension (and wrongness) that shouldn't really work together but does, and perfectly. Then you could go without the moldings in a house like this.
Anyhoo, we're not sure which of the many empty rooms in the listing photos shows the master bedroom but the images do clearly reveal the master suite encompasses a bi-winged, clothes horse-friendly custom-fitted walk-in closet and a luxurious, hotel-style bathroom sheathed in ecru-colored marble with two sinks, separate shower, giant jetted soaking tub, and a private cubicle for the terlit and bee-day.
Many rooms on the second floor open to Juliet balconies with scrolled wrought iron railings and most rooms on the main floor open out to deep covered porches or other outdoor entertaining areas that include tree-shaded lawns, a sunbathing terrace, circular spa with tree-framed valley views, and a negative edge swimming pool with azure tile detailing. A glass-roofed green house tucked into the wooded hillside below the back of the house opens through a series of sliding glass doors to a broad deck that extends into the canopies of the surrounding old-growth trees.
Although we don't have any specific intel on the matter, Your Mama assumes the Beatty-Benings have relocated down the road a mile or two to a compound with multiple residences including a massive main mansion they recently completed that replaces the old house that was significantly rattled and damaged during the 1994 Northridge earthquake.
listing photos: Westside Estate Agency
