LOCATION: Beverly Hills, CA
PRICE: $7,300,000
SIZE: 7,513 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 6.5 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Your Mama gets loads of emails and phone calls from all-kinda folks who want know who bought what, where and for how much. Over the last few months we've received an unexpected and unusual number of queries about the real estate activities of later-in-life lovebirds Richard Perry and Jane Fonda.
Mister Perry is an accomplished music producer of the highest magnitude with more than a dozen gold records and a slew of A-grade credits with superstars like Rod Stewart, Carly Simon, Diana Ross, the divine Martha Reeves, Babs herself, Percy Faith, the Pointer Sisters, Leo Sayer, Donna Summer, Neil Diamond and Andy Williams, to name just a handful or two. Miz Fonda is, natch, the Jane Fonda, the snappy, smart and sassy two-time Oscar winning actress/activist/aerobics instructor once, best and still known in many circles as the campy but preposterously sexy Barbarella and/or the political lightening rod Hanoi Jane.
The queries began almost immediately after our June 2012 (dis and) discussion of the celebrity pedigreed Sunset Strip home Mister Perry then owned, unofficially but openly shared with Miz Fonda and had up for sale for nearly $13 million. Finally for the curious, there's an answer via the long-legged gal at Trulia Luxe Living. Mister Perry and Miz Fonda have decamped the lower Sunset Strip for the stylishly au courant Trousdale Estates 'hood at the very eastern edge of Beverly Hills (CA). Property records show the gated and completely renovated residence was actually acquired by Mister Perry at the tail end of June 2012 for $7,300,000.*
Listing information still available on the internets shows the original residence was built in 1961, had not been on the market in 44 years and had been the long-time home of a "legendary TV & film director." That Tinseltown legend turns out to have been recently deceased and wildly prolific three-time Emmy winner John Rich. Although Mister Rich worked regularly well into the late 1990 he started out way back in the middle 50s (I Married Joan, Where's Raymond). His Showbiz Salad Days were, arguably, the early 1960s to the early 1980s when he directed and/or produced numerous episodes of a long list of iconic sitcoms and westerns that include The Dick Van Dyke Show, Bonanza, Gunsmoke, the Brady Bunch, That Girl, All in the Family and Benson.
Anyhoo, listing information goes on to indicate the spacious and re-conceived mid-century modern has four bedrooms and 6.5 bathrooms in 7,513 square feet.
The jagged, angular exterior opens to an airy, multi-level interior with long expanses of crisp white walls, vaulted and beamed ceilings, glass-railed staircases and long ribbons of windows and sliding doors. In addition to some of the more (melo)dramatic flourishes such as an all-glass elevator, the house is chock full of fancy-pants eco-friendly features such as bamboo floors, photovoltaic solar panels, three ventless bio-ethanol fueled fireplaces and double-glazed thermal windows with motorized shades.
The foyer flows into a reception lounge large enough to accommodate a baby grand piano. A short but wide set of steps descends into the formal living room proper that's anchored by a sturdy stacked stone fireplace and visually open to the outdoors through a towering wall of windows that extend from the knees to the ceiling.
The open-concept dining room and kitchen has a second (bio fuel) fireplace exotically set into a wall of glass that allows the fire to be seen and enjoyed both inside and outside. It's an undeniably extraordinary and architecturally arresting visual feature, a real-live, more is more WOW! moment. Howevuh, not that it matters a lick and just between us chickens here, Your Mama thinks that fireplace conceit is a bit too too, you know? Especially in a residence that already has a glass-walled elevator.
Anyhoo, the expensively equipped kitchen and adjoining butler's pantry orbits around a massive center island with lowered snack counter. The streamlined but still organic-minded kitchen has all the expected upscale finishes and swank accoutrement that includes what may or may not be walnut cabinetry, mossy green quartz counter tops, top-quality commercial style appliances and a flat screen t.v. that lifts up out of the counter top at the touch of a button.**
The master suite includes a walled sunken sitting room with another one of those (bio fuel) fireplaces set into a wall of glass—once really is enough when it comes to a showstopper like this—and a pair of large bathrooms with steam showers, soaking tubs and radiant heated floors. There's also at least one to-die-for-sized walk-in closet with icky tan wall-to-wall carpeting, walls lined with miles of hanging racks and a nipple-high built-in dresser stuck smack in the center of the room.
A separate lower-level media/game room, accessible via a glass-railed stairway or that painstakingly engineered glass-elevator, has cork floors and plenty of space for a pool table, television/movie viewing lounge, and a booze-hound's dream bar with sink, dishwasher, ice maker and under-counter wine fridge.
Multiple outdoor living areas include a couple of dining decks directly off the kitchen that overlook the swimming pool, a serene side terrace with stone fountain and a lounging nook set high enough in a concrete wall as to be difficult to climb into without a stepping stool and a flat grassy pad with outdoor fireplace and views that extend down the canyons and across the city.
A deep overhang shades the lower level rooms and runs around two sides of the dark bottomed rectangular swimming pool. Sunbathing terraces run along either side of the pool, away from the house to a slightly raised deck that pushes out over the canyon.
Back in late June (2012), right about the time Mister Perry closed on his and Miz Fonda's new love nest in Trousdale Estates, Your Mama discussed the much more traditional mini-mansion in the lower Sunset Strip area that Mister Perry owned and and had on the open market with an idealistic but ultimately unrealistic $12,750,000 price tag. The asking price for the 5 bedroom and 8 bathroom knoll-top house, originally built for Ronald Reagan and Jane Wyman, eventually plunged to $10,000,000 before a somewhat mysterious corporate entity came along and purchased the property for $8,500,000.
Miz Fonda, who may or may not still maintain a one bedroom and 1.5 bathroom rental apartment at the star-studded Sierra Towers building, also long-maintained a 4,764 square foot multi-unit combination penthouse in Atlanta, GA that she unsuccessfully first attempted to sell for $4,500,000 in May 2010. By June 2012 the asking price had crashed to just $1,195,000. As far as we can tell, the penthouse has yet to sell but does not appear to currently be listed for sale on the open market.
*Miz Fonda's name does not appear on any of the property records documents we peeped but that does not mean she does not have some sort of stake in the place.
**It could be a press of a button that causes the t.v. to rise up out of the counter top but it could also be a flip of the switch or the swipe of a hand-held touch screen or some other action our caffeine starved brain can't even conceive right now.
listing photos: Coldwell Banker / Beverly Hills South
