SELLER: Blythe DannerLOCATION: Santa Monica, CA
PRICE: $1,860,000
SIZE: 1,396 square feet, 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: After some confusion and a bit of back and forth with Jimi J. Cocoapuff, it has come to Your Mama's attention that award winning actress and celebrity mom Blythe Danner recently listed her Santa Monica, CA condo with an asking price of $1,860,000.
Miz Danner, the widow of writer/producer/director Bruce Paltrow (The White Shadow, St. Elsewhere) and mother of sometime director Jake Paltrow (NYPD Blue), is the famous maw-maw of the much more famous Oscar winning ack-tress Gwyneth Paltrow (Iron Man franchise, Running With Scissors, Proof, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Shakespeare in Love and et. al). Now poodles, much as we like to dish about Gwynnie and her superstar real estate ways, we're not actually here to discuss her, her tumescent Goop blog, or even her porcine portfolio of high-priced properties in London and New York. It's Blythe Danner's fast paced real estate ways that are of interest today.
While she's known in households around the world for her roles on both the small and silver screens (Will & Grace, Huff, the Fockers film franchise) and has earned an impressive 5 Emmy nominations that resulted in two wins, Miz Danner is actually, arguably and perhaps, a more accomplished stage actress. At the dewy age of 25, she appeared to great acclaim in the Lincoln Center Rep's production of The Miser and in 1970, she received a Tony award for her role in Butterflies Are Free. Miz Danner went on to receive three more Tony nominations for treading the boards in Streetcar Named Desire, Betrayal, and Follies.
Property records reveal Miz Danner's ocean view condo was purchased in March of 2007 for $1,860,000, an amount the eagle eyed children will note is identical to the current listing price. That means even if Miz Danner's real estate people manage the unlikely real estate mitzvah of turning up a a buyer willing to cough up full price, she'll be out at least $75,000 in fees and expenses. Listing information and property records show the single story unit measures a modest 1,386 square feet and includes 2 bedrooms and 2 poopers.
Before we begin in earnest Your Mama would like to offer the caveat that although we are a fan of Miz Danner's professional abilities, we are not down with the day-core we find her nearly two million clam condo in Santa Monica. That said, we will allow that that condo is indeed done over in a manner that allows Your Mama to imagine this is actually some one's home–albeit a part time home of uninspired day-core–rather than one of those sterile, frou-frou furniture showroom like places far too many famous folk live. Okaaaay?
The smallish, but open plan main living space is a somewhat surprising and totally disappointing decorative goulash of 1980s let's-do-it-all-in-neutral day-core meets a 1995 issue of Country Living magazine meets the beach meets an uncoordinated soupçon of faux Louis. Altogether and with all due respect to the dee-voon Miz Danner, this melange gives Your Mama an awful case of the gas. We've got mixy-matchy pine pieces mixed with a glossy white Parson's table paired with an horrific fully mirrored wall on which are hung a kooky collection of clocks that mingle wearily with a duo of bergere style chairs covered in lime green fabric that coexist uncomfortably with a banal painting/print of a snow covered barn that's arguing vociferously with a director's chair that's positively punished with a puzzling floral print seat back all of which is adulterated with an elephant sized and intricately carved chestnut colored armoire. Phew! The floors, covered with oatmeal colored wall to wall carpeting except for the trapezoidal shaped wood floored entry area, and the walls that are painted an aggressive and angry shade of egg shell or ecru or some other boring beige color are not only the excruciating back drop for this condo, but also the nail in its decorative coffin.
What is nice are the giant, floor to ceiling windows that divide the interior spaces from a perfectly lovely if small ocean view terrace where Miz Danner might have sat quietly with a generous glass of a big and oaky California chardonnay and watched the waves crash and the fog retreat and/or roll in.
The kitchen appears to have been expensively renovated...in the 1990s...and includes, not surprisingly, beige raised panel cabinetry, sand and slate colored flecked granite counter tops, gray veined marble tile floors, a huge integrated Sub-Zero fridge and freezer, and one of these electric cook tops that look like they're made of shiny linoleum. It's certainly an adequately sized and set up kitchen for a relatively small high end condo, but it's just so damn dull it makes Your Mama want to prick our skin with a sharp object just so we can feel something besides beige.
The master bedroom has an entire, blood curdling wall behind the bed done up in floor to ceiling mirrors, a behemoth bed with a lot of unnecessary decorative pillows and beige linens, and a small garden view terrace. The attached bathroom is awash in gray veined marble tiles that climb the walls in the glass enclosed shower, sit atop the two-sink counter top, and wrap around the ginormous soaking tub. Although it's arguably more appropriate in the bathroom than in the living room or the bedroom, the walls above the marble tile work that surround the tub are completely covered in mirror giving the master pooper a disturbing carnival house effect that makes Your Mama's eyes cross and knees turn to jelly.
Miz Danner's digs are located within one of the better and better known high-rise condo buildings in Santa Monica where Your Mama hears through the celebrity real estate grapevine that singer Stevie Nicks shacks up even though she owns a huge house in nearby Pacific Palisades. The contemporary complex, which practically hangs over the Pacific Coast Highway and offers unobstructed and dramatic panoramic views up and down the undeniably spectacular California coastline, was built in 1963 and extensively remodeled in the mid-1990s. Some of the amenities of the full-service building include 24-hour doormen, valet parking, swimming pool, spa and a state-of-the-art fitness center. The complex also includes secured garaging and Miz Danner's condo comes complete with two deeded and covered parking spaces.
The listing of her Santa Monica pied a terre is only a small slice of the barrage of real estate activity in which Miz Danner has been involved the last few years. In the spring of 2005, Miz Danner unloaded the 29-acre lake front spread she and her now deceased huzband owned in the sleepy Westchester County community of Waccabuc, NY. The bucolic estate, comprised of two separate parcels, sold for a combined $6,000,000.
In August of 2006, Miz Danner sold an apartment in a fancy pre-war apartment tower on Manhattan's lower Fifth Avenue for $1,800,000. It was previously reported that daughter Gwynnie and former man-friend Brad Pitt–now Angelina Jolie's baby daddy/live-in beehawtcha–lived in the apartment back in the olden days when they were America's most famous and attractive Hollywood couple. A couple months later, in November of 2006, Miz Danner sold the ol' Paltrow/Danner homestead in Santa Monica for a whopping $8,600,000. Miz Danner and Mister Paltrow bought the 5,290 square foot house way back in 1976 and raised their entertainment bidness progeny there. The property next door, bought in 1999, was sold about the same time and brought in another $2,100,000.
A few, quick flicks of the well worn beads on Your Mama's bejeweled abacus shows that in under two years time Miz Danner pocketed an astounding $18,500,000–less mortgages and real estate fees–into her now bulging bank accounts. If she wasn't a rich woman before, she certainly was one by the end of 2006.
In the spring of 2007, about the same time she was laying out $1,860,000 for her now for sale condo in Santa Monica, the still blond and beautiful senior citizen turned around and dropped $3,125,000 on a 3 bedroom and 3 bathroom 17th floor unit in the very same pre-war dowager on lower Fifth Avenue in which she had only months before sold an apartment. Based on previous reports it is here in this apartment on lower Fifth Avenue where Your Mama believes Miz Danner lives most of the time, or at least when she's not catting about with her pampered daughter Gwynnie and her brood of oddly named children.
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