Mister Marciano, for any of y'all who may not know, is a colorful character to be sure, one who lives unapologetically large. He and his three brothers founded the Guess? jeans empire that launched into the retail stratosphere in the 1990s with its long and lucrative association with bodacious, deeply troubled and now deceased model Anna Nicole Smith. he sold his 40 percent stake in the wildly successful clothing empire to his brothers Paul, Armand and Maurice for nearly a quarter billion dollars. He took his mountain of money and branched out into real estate development, amassed a fleet of Ferraris, spent $16,189,769 to purchase an 84.37-carat white diamond, made strange run for the governorship of California and opened the LHotel boo-teek hotel in Old Montreal–that's Canada kids–filled to the gills with prime pieces of his massive post-war art collection.
In 2007 Mister Marciano accused five former employees of conspiring to embezzle nearly half a billion bucks worth of his assets including a plethora of blue chip contemporary artworks by artists like Ed Ruscha, Jim Dine and Roy Lichtenstein. The case was tossed out but the five former employees counter-sued for defamation and in mid-2009 won a titanic $370,000,000 judgment against Mister Marciano for his wrongful allegations and accusations.
Property records show Mister Marciano acquired the stately estate in October 1988 for an unknown amount of money and Your Mama discussed the supremely located, 2-plus acre estate back in January 2007 when Mister Marciano unsuccessfully attempted to unload his humongous Italianate pile just up the street from the Beverly Hills Hotel with a much lower asking price of $28,000,000. We'll let the more savvy real estate children decide if the current marketplace for extremely swank high-maintenance estates in Los Angeles can bear the four million dollar bump to the price tag.
Since the house is not officially on the market–and since, technically, its just real estate rumor and gossip that it will be listed at all–no online listing is currently available. However, we managed to scare up some marketing materials from when it was on the open market in 2007. (Redfin shows the deluxe estate was also listed in 2005 but we don't know at what number.)
The Los Angeles County Tax Man shows the double-gated mansion was built in 1927 and measures 14,055 square feet with 9 bedrooms and 8 bathrooms while 2007 listing information shows and approximate square footage of 23,306 with a total of 10 bedrooms and 14 bathrooms. We're not sure why the wild discrepancies in stats but it may (or may not) have something to do with the u-shaped mini-mansion sized detached guest house with separate gated driveway and motor court tucked into eastern corner of the property between the swimming pool complex and lighted tennis court.
The house was once owned by Showbiz pioneer and pasha Harry Cohn and later, in the early to mid-1980s, we're told, by television talk show host Mike Douglas. Current nearby neighbors include real estate showboaters Stewart and Lynda Resnick, Tom Cruise, and Christina Aguilera and former residents of the hoity-toity 'hood include recently passed über-agent blue-eyed crooner Frank Sinatra, Sue Mengers, entertainment industry legend Lew Wasserman, cigar smoker Groucho Marx, diminutive superstar Tom Cruise, chat show host Phil McGraw, and airplane mogul Lou Gonda.
aerial photo: Google
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