Anjelica Huston Wants Out of Venice Beach Complex

SELLER: Anjelica Huston
LOCATION: Venice, CA
SIZE: 13,796 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 2 full and 3 half bathrooms
PRICE: $18,000,000

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: We're joining this party a little late but Your Mama loves us an artist space so we're going to re-hash a Venice, CA live-work property owned by movie star and Hollywood icon Anjelica Huston that's already been well hashed in Curbed LA and the Huffington Post.

Anjelica Huston is dee-vine, hunnies. As far as we're concerned beehawtcha can just stand there looking into the camera not saying a damn word and we'd happily hand over 13 or 15 bucks to watch that movie, you know? She was flaw-less in Prizzi's Honor–for which she was awarded an Oscar–she was insanely good in The Grifters–which earned her an Oscar nomination–she was dead on target in the The Addams Family film franchise, she was delicious in The Royal Tenenbaums and even tastier in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.

More recently Miz Huston, the widow of famed and acclaimed sculptor Robert Graham, has turned in smashing performances in lesser known films such as the black comedy Choke and a cinematic adaption of Leo Tolstoy's novella The Kreutzer Sonata. The movie star has also taken on couple of boob-toob roles on Huff and Medium.

Mister Graham, most known for his obsession with the human form, particularly that of a nekkid ladee. Some of the children may have seen one of his famous female torsos in Beverly Hills, CA where a 14-foot solid aluminum hottie that stands on a chunky bronze pedestal at the intersection of Rodeo Drive and Dayton Way. Others may recall the headless and feetless über athletic male and female torsos standing atop a post and lintel structure commissioned by the Los Angles Olympic Organizing Committee and installed at the main entrance to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum to commemorate the 23rd Olympiad held in Los Angeles. New Yorkers who deign to go above East 90th Street will recognize Mister Graham's 30-foot tall cast bronze and gold leaf Duke Ellington Memorial installed in the center Duke Ellington Circle–that's Fifth Avenue and East 110th Street–at the northeast corner of Central Park.

Miz Huston and Mister Graham's contemporary complex sits on three contiguous parcels just 200 feet from the wild, wacky and high-lariously entertaining hot mess that is the Venice Beach Boardwalk and the often thickly populated sugary sand that stretches out towards the surf. The residential quarters occupy the center parcel, the massive art studio sits on the eastern parcel and the smallest third parcel on the western side is a narrow, ficus tree shaded garden with a patch of grass, a lot of potted plants, and a tiny brick terrace with a carved Balinese sofa, plant laden coffee table and one of those fire chimney things that can be purchased from any Home Despot around the country.

The entire compound is walled, gated and presumably very well secured. The blocky residential side, which presents and all but windowless fortress-like face to the street, spans 4,063 square feet over two floors and according to listing information combines French, Mediterranean and Bauhaus architectural styles. The interior spaces of the residence include 3 bedrooms and 2 full and 3 half poopers. The main living areas include a combination living and dining room with hardwood floors, fireplace and a soaring barrel vaulted ceiling , a game room down in the basement–a basement is surely a very rare thing in Venice–and a narrow book shelf lined library/den. Several balconies and French doors open the house to the side yard or the quite and exquisitely private central courtyard that separates the two buildings.

In addition tot the living quarters, the Graham-Huston's corrugated metal and glass warehouse-style complex includes a gigantic studio with 9,733 square feet of airiness designed by Robert Graham's son Steven with the assistance of avant-garde Venice, CA architecture firm Studio Vass. The studio space towers three stories tall with 2 mezzanine and offers a series of interconnected and voluminous flexible use spaces flooded with light and ocean views from the higher levels. The studio is currently configured, according to listing information and previous reports, as a gallery, offices, dance/exercise room, communal kitchen, large workshop, and top floor sitting room with vaulted ceiling, poured concrete floors, and a view of the Pacific Ocean past the palm trees and over the surrounding roof tops.

Shaded by a lovely coral tree, the quiet courtyard that separates the living quarters from the studio building including coral colored concrete hardscaping, dining terrace, a couple nooks and crannies for contemplative moments, and a raised black bottomed lap pool and party-sized spa.

Listen puppies, Your Mama can hardly tell a dog from a cat but we can easily recognize that Miz Huston and Mister Graham's leviathan live-work space this is a massive complex that sprawls across 3 contiguous lots with astronomical square footage. But we also know that it's located Venice or, as Curbed LA succinctly called it, "the corner of tourist and crazy." Don't none of your Venice Beachers misunderstand Your Mama. We loves us the nitty-gritty architecturally forward thinking city of Venice–well, not those RV people who dump there terlit waste right into the street gutters–but let's be honest, $18,000,000 is a lot of damn clams for a house in a plush zip code like 90077, 90210 or 90024 so a price that stratospheric in the 90291 makes it seem like someone got hit hard over the head a serious case of Real Estate Insanity. But then again, because of it's proximity to the beach, this property might very well be a goldmine if it can be further developed and converted to an arty-farty but freakishly expensive boho-chic condominium complex.

Your Mama doesn't know where Miz Huston plans on moving or where Mister Graham's archives will be kept if not in this building. Although it seems unlikely she'd move there full time we do know from property records and previous reports–including this one in Architectural Digest–that Miz Huston owns a 120+ acre ranch spread up in the bee-yoo-tee-ful and rugged foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in Three Rivers, CA, near where the north, south and middle forks of the Kaweah River merge. As it turns out Your Mama knows a little summin-summin about that particular neck of the California citrus groves. As a child, our tough talkin' Granny and sweet talkin' Grandpappy used to toss Your Mama and Sister Woman into the back of their Datsun pee-cup truck and take us on up to the Kaweah Chuckwagon Cafe, a smorgasbord style restaurant where we feasted on soggy chicken, dried out ham, and red Jell-O with that horrible hard skin it sometimes gets. The Chuckwagon has done went out of business but perhaps Miz Huston had the distinct if dubious pleasure of eating at the Chuckwagon before it shut its doors because we'd like to think we've had at least that one shared experience with such a creature as Miz Huston.

listing photos: Engel & Voelkers

Winona Ryder Does Not Live Here Anymore

SELLER: Winona Ryder
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
SIZE: 3,765 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms
PRICE: $4,095,000

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Thanks to the eagle eyes of our trusted snitch The Rolling Stone, Your Mama learned that actress Winona Ryder put her long time home in Los Angeles, CA on the market with an asking price of $4,095,000.

Arguably, Miss Ryder's professional salad days as an in-demand a-list actress who could pull in the sort of box office receipts that make executive producers swoon with delight were in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Back then she worked her somewhat ethereal and gauzy stuff in seriously successful films such as Beetlejuice, Heathers, Edward Scissorhands, Mermaids, The Age of Innocence, and Little Woman, the latter two earning her Academy Award nominations. Since those heady Hollywood days and except for those few years right after she was picked up for shoplifting $5,500 worth of merchandise at Saks in Beverly Hills, Miss Ryder's worked steadily even though her star status was unquestionably dimmed. Recently, the spritely and quirky actress has experienced an upsurge in her career. In 2009 she starred in 3 feature films including The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, and in 2010 she appeared in two more including Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan and she has at least two more films in the hopper including Tim Burton's next cinematic extravaganza Frankenweenie.

Records show that Miss Ryder picked up her soon to be former Spanish casa in Tinseltown in March of 1998. She paid $2,600,000 for the 1936 abode that was formerly owned (or occupied), according to the mens at Movieland Directory, by one time model and ack-turuss Angie Everhart and, before her, Bernie Taupin, otherwise known and Elton John's songwriting collaborator.

Listing information shows the two story house, wrapped in towering privacy hedges and dripping in wisteria vines and prickly but pretty bougainvillea, measures 3,765 square feet and includes 4 bedrooms and 4 poopers, three of which feature finely maintained vintage tile work. Although powdery pink and baby blue are hardly the colors we'd pick and choose our private master pooper, it's damn refreshing to see these old relics of pooper days gone by preserved rather than ripped out and replaced with some tumbled stone this and black granite shit that.

One need only get their eyeballs on the fake the tee-vees mounted on the walls and the reedonkulous chenille blanket tossed and draped "perfectly" across the bed in the master bedroom to know that that Staging Lady in a Pink Toyota has been up in here and removed every trace of Miss Ryder's day-core and replaced it with a bunch of bland beige crap and neutral knick-knacks that won't give any potential buyer a reason to think a person with style or taste may have actually occupied the home. Your Mama is certain that if we look hard enough we'll find an orchid or two but, seriously people, we can't stomach another orchid making a show of itself in a staged home.

Although Your Mama is not sure if he did up the now removed day-core in this house, we understand from our reading around the interweb that Miss Ryder had nice, gay decorator Kevin Haley do over at least one of her homes. Coincidentally, Mister Haley, who has worked on homes for other famous folks like Brad Pitt and Cameron Diaz, has put his casually decadent house low in the Hollywood Hills on the market too. More on that at a later date.

Anyhoo, the front door opens into a wide entry hall with stained glass windows, Spanish tile floors, dark murals that look to Your Mama like they depict the Garden of Eden or some other sordid story, and a loopy scrolled wrought iron banister that swoops down the sweeping staircase that Norma Desmond, and any other queen who likes to make an entrance, would love. Also very glam, is the downstairs powder pooper complete with burgundy colored vintage tile and an antechamber blessed built in vanity table where guests can conveniently reapply lipstick, do a few lines, and/or check to make sure their chi-chis aren't coming up out of their strapless dinner dress.

Miss Ryder's soon to be former home also has a long formal living room with picture window, hardwood floors, French doors that open to the backyard area, and corner fireplace with carved wood mantel and surround, a dining room, and a narrow paneled pub room with some built in shelves, a couple of emaciated "beams" running across the ceiling that are probably just decorative, and a built in wet bar for getting one's booze on. Somewhere in there, according to listing information is a staff room and a body torture chamber more commonly known as a home gym.

The cook friendly kitchen has an oddly rustic feeling–some might call it charm, but it is decidedly not Your Mama's brand of charming–with hardwood floors, exposed antique brick walls, white cabinetry, beige counter tops, and a venting hood over the range top so big it looks like it could hoover up anyone who might dare to turn it on and stand under it. An adjacent breakfast room opens up into the quiet courtyard that separates the main house from the garage.

The well preserved house and garage wing wrap themselves around a cozy courtyard paved with bricks laid in a herringbone pattern and warmed by an a raised outdoor fire place that could probably double as a barbecue. The courtyard opens up to a classic California kidney shaped swimming pool separated from a small flat patch of grass just large enough to exercise a couple of long bodied bitches like our Linda and Beverly.

Your Mama can't be knowing if Miss Ryder's real estate plans include a downsize, an upgrade or if she's packing up and leaving Los Angeles altogether. Property records–and the bizzy boys at Celebrity Address Aerial–show that Miss Ryder continues to own a home in her home town of San Francisco, CA. All signs and signals indicate Miss Ryder paid $1,300,000 for her 3,436 square foot single family residence in the Cow Hollow neighborhood in April of 1995.

Until June of 2008, Miss Ryder owned a New York City pied a terre in the lovely Gramercy Park neighborhood at 1 Lexington Avenue that she sold for $2,200,000. As far as we know, which is next to nothing, she hasn't purchased a new pad in Manhattan or anywhere else on the east coast.

listing photos: Westside Estate Agency

Pop Princess Kylie Minogue Lists London Flat

SELLER: Kylie Minogue
LOCATION: London, UK
PRICE: £3,950,000
SIZE: 2,730 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Thanks to one of Your Mama's butter beans across the pond in Britain we learned over the long Labor Day weekend that Grammy winning and breast cancer beating Australian singing super star Kylie Minogue has her two-floor flat in London on the market. The princess of pop first listed her South Kensington crib in the early part of the summer (2010) for £4,500,000. That's $6,933,960 at today's rates according to Your Mama's currency conversion contraption. However and alas, reportedly due to lack of buyer interest, Miss Minogue recently slashed the price tag of her apartment–which listing information calls a "maisonette"–by more than 10% to it's current asking price of £3,950,000, or $6,086,480 at today's rates.

Iffin Your Mama is being honest–and we always are–we'd confess to the kiddies that Miss Minogue's particular brand of pop music is of little interest or comfort to our ears and as such we really know little about Miss Minogue and/or her career trajectory. A perfunctory peep and poke around the interweb tells us that Miss Minogue began her long climb up the ladder of fame and fortune as a child actor turned soap actress who made a sensationally successful segue into pop music in the late 1980s. Although the sexy singer faced criticism early on that she was little more than a talent-free manufactured pop star who traded in on her celebrity as a soap star, today the Australian born singer is considered by at least one research company to be the most powerful celebrity in Britain.

Since Your Mama isn't skilled in the ways of researching property transactions in the U.K. we have to go with previous reports that indicate Miss Minogue scooped up her South Kensington pad in the early 1990s, at first sharing the flat with her brother Brendan who has since moved out of the apartment and back to Australia.

According to listing information, the 5th and 6th floor flat that's located in a small building with a resident caretaker–that's a super in New York City speak–was given a decorative overhaul four years ago by the glitzy, glammy and highly publicized interior design and property development management firm of Candy & Candy. The re-do reportedly cost the sexy singer somewhere in the neighborhood of $3,000,000. Candy & Candy is owned and operated by brothers Nick and Christian Candy who are the same suave chaps who oversaw development London's über posh One Hyde Park where a six-bedroom penthouse pad recently sold for a record breaking and jaw dropping $220,000,000.

The bespoke brothers, it might amuse and interest the children to know, share ownership of the very same (in)famous Monaco penthouse doo-plex at the La Belle Epoque building where billionaire banker Edmund Safra perished in a bizarre conflagration back in December of 1999. Naturally the Candy brothers have Candified the 30-room penthouse pad making it, we're quite certain, virtually unrecognizable to the Mister Safra's wildly wealthy widow Lily Safra.

The Candy brothers are also the same fellows who were involved in an overly optimistic consortium of investors who in April of 2007 paid a ridiculously stoopid $500,000,000 for an 8-acre site in Los Angeles–at Wilshire and Santa Monica Boulevards–hoping to build a glassy and ritzy Richard Meier designed condo complex strikingly similar to the one that went up a few years ago on Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn, NY's Park Slope neighborhood. The pie in the sky investors purchased the Beverly Hills property with a shocking $365,500,000 loan from Credit Suisse a large part of which was quickly sold to Banco Inbursa, owned by Mexican telecom tycoon Carlos Slim. Señor Slim is the dude who, the children will recall, just a couple months ago paid $44,000,000 for the Duke Semans Mansion on New York City's Fifth Avenue. In large part because of collapse of the Icelandic Kaupthing Bank, the Candy brothers and their group of investors defaulted on the loan and the property now belongs to a group of investors including Mister Slim's Banco Inbursa.

As inneresting as the Candy Brother's bizness doings are, we digress and they're really neither here nor there and of little import the real estate matter at hand. Although listing information indicates Miss Minogue's "maisonette" has 4 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms a rapid review of the floor plan included with listing information shows 2 real bedrooms and 3.5 poopers plus a small study and a large dance studio that in a pinch could be used as a bedroom.

The 2,730 square foot apartment is accessed via an elevator that whisks residents and guest up to the fifth floor entrance hall with walnut floors laid in a checkerboard parquet pattern and a sensual staircase with patinated brass balustrade and black piano-lacquer handrail. Double glass doors open to the reception/dining room with baby blue paneled walls with inset mirror inlays, underfloor heating, a large bay window with views over the surrounding roof tops, and a dining room table and chandelier that both look improperly scaled for the room. We're going to give Miss Minogue–not to mention Candy & Candy–the benefit of the doubt and guess that this room and indeed the entire flat were stripped down and pared back to its bare decorating essentials in preparation for its being hoisted on to the market.

Sliding panels slip into the walls and reveal a drawing room–that's an American living room–with more baby blue walls, another bay window with roof top views, and a pair of identical Tiffany blue velvet sofa loungers flanking a fireplace with antique brown marble surround and squaring off over too small glass coffee table.

The windowed eat-in kitchen can be accessed through the drawing/living room or the entrance hall and is custom fitted with walnut cabinetry, marble counter tops, a pair of sinks, work island with breakfast bar and wine fridge, and a colossal and colossally expensive La Cornue brand stove with both electric and gas ovens, two plate warming drawers, and a cook top with griddle and two electric and 4 gas burners.

A long carpeted hall leads back from the entrance hall. To one side a small bedroom/study with custom fitted cabinetry and desk with leather counter top and on the other a privately situated powder pooper with window. A bit further down the hall a small bedroom has custom walnut cupboards and a big black marble pooper includes a steam shower, heated towel rail and underfloor heating.

A door at the end of the hall opens into the master bedroom that offers sleepers a view toward the London Eye, a fireplace with Serpegiente marble surround, satin paneled walls with crystal stud detailing, and a silk/wood carpeting with overlapping circle pattern and walnut parquet surround. Between the bedroom and Miss Minogue's dee-luxe pooper with heated marble floor, fireplace and freestanding tub is a blush colored custom fitted dressing area with two closets and scads of curved cabinetry for storing and stashing all of Miss Minogues knick-knacks and panty whacks.

The very Hollywood from the 1940s staircase leads up to the second floor landing with a utility room with stainless steel counters, laundry facilities and mini-fridge on one side and a pooper, on the other. Beyond the pooper and utility room is a large room with wood floors, six skylights in the sloped and peaked ceiling, a built-in dressing table and built in cabinetry that conceals a home entertainment system and Murphy bed, and additional shelving and storage under the eaves.

According to multiple reports, Miss Minogue wants to sell her South Kensington "maisonette" in order to purchase a larger London spread that will better accommodate visits by her family members.

Back in February of 2008, Your Mama discussed Beauciel, Miss Minogue's 221-acre eco-friendly spread on Australia's French Island that she had on the market for just under two million Aussie clams. Presumably the property has been sold, but honestly chickens, we don't know.

More recent reports from the celebrity real estate beat reveal that Miss Minogue paid around $675,000 for a luxury villa in Tossa de Mar, the hometown coastal village of her muy guapo Spanish supermodel man-friend Andrés Velencoso Segura who is well known among male mannequin watchers for posing butt-nekkid and with his wing-wang hanging out.

listing photos and floor plan: John D. Wood & Co.

Malibu Modern in The Rockaways...That's Right, the Rockaways

SELLER: Brett Morgen and Debra Eisenstadt
LOCATION: The Rockaways, Queens, NY
PRICE: $4,495,000
SIZE: 5,600 square feet, 3 bedrooms 2 full and 3 half bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Your Mama knows some people–a lot of people, actually–who have lived in New York City their entire adult lives and never made the trip down Brooklyn's fantastically diverse Flatbush Avenue to The Rockaways, a collection of mostly working class communities in Queens that line up along a narrow spit of sand barely three blocks wide at some points. For many, Manhattanites in particular, The Rockaways might as well be the moon since it seems terribly far away not to mention an entirely different socio-cultural world. Pity that. Besides having about 4-miles of gorgeous ocean frontage with wide sandy beaches–some of which are, believe it or not, pristine–The Rockaways are a fascinating slice of the amazing pie that makes up New York City.

There are basically three parts of the Rockaways: Breezy Point, the Far Rockaways, and everything in between. The Far Rockaways, at the eastern end directly south and in the flight path of J.F.K. International Airport, was once a summertime getaway for rich and famous types like W.C. Fields and Mae West. It also happens to be where big bad Bernie Madoff and his wifey Ruth grew up. Time hasn't been kind to the once chic Far Rockaways which today is a pretty rough and tumble jumble of neighborhoods that range from pretty nice to downright scary.

At the far western end of the Rockaways is Breezy Point, a small gated cooperative enclave that in 2001 the New York Times called "the whitest place in New York" due to its 98% Caucasian population. The Rockaways–and Breezy Point in particular–have long attracted a large number of members of the New York City police and fire departments and heaps and hordes of people of Irish descent, which has led to The Rockaways sometimes being referred to as the "Irish Riviera."

In between Breezy Point and the Far Rockaways are a collection of neighborhoods that range from the gang infested Hammel Houses to working class Rockaway Park to the upscale Belle Harbor made famous in November of 2001 when American Airlines flight 587 crashed into the neighborhood resulting in the deaths of more than 260 people.

Nowadays, mixed in with all the fire people, po-po, Irish, and working class locals who flock to the beach in the summertime to escape the crushing humidity are city folks and scads of arty farty hipster types who have discovered that it's a hell of a lot easier and cheaper to get to The Rockaways on the A-train than it is to get to the Hamptons, Fire Island, or even Robert Moses State Park on Long Island.

Straddling the border between the upscale Belle Harbor and the even more upscale Neponsit neighborhoods at the western end of The Rockaways, a somewhat out of its element ocean front glass and cedar sided contemporary is currently on the market with an asking price of $4,495,000. The owners of the house, which was designed and completed in 2008 by New York City architect Edward Mills, is Oscar nominated (documentary) filmmaker Brett Morgen (The Kid Stays in the Picture, Chicago 10, Say It Loud: A Celebration of Black Music in America, On the Ropes) and his wife Debra Eisenstadt who in addition to being an actor, director, producer, and writer (Oleanna, The Limbo Room) also happens to be the granddaughter Benjamin Eisenstadt, the food condiment packaging tycoon who developed the formula for and designed the pink packet for the sugar substitute Sweet & Low.

The movie making couple picked up their Belle Harbor house in September of 2006 for $3,400,000 according to property records. The Morgen-Eisenstadts are the peeps responsible for the current contemporary architectural iteration of the residence that stylistically speaking could be picked up and happily plunked down in Malibu, CA or the gay gay gay Pines community on Fire Island, NY. Listing information indicates the modern house, a collection of solid masses, transparent planes and unexpected voids fitted together like an intricate puzzle, measures around 5,600 square feet spread over 4 floors and includes 3-4 bedrooms–depending on what one considers a bedroom–and 2 full and 3 half poopers.

The home is entered via an exterior staircase that climbs up to the first floor from the street level. Just beyond the front door is a small but proper entrance hall with coat closet and powder pooper. Several steps down from the entrance hall a long and sort of narrow living/dining room has over-sized windows that looks out onto dune, beach and ocean views. The floors are bee-yoo-tee-fully distressed French oak and the fireplace is a mass of sand colored stacked stone. Since the view is the undisputed star of the show here, artworks in the room are nil and furnishings include little more than a charcoal colored sectional sofa, that like the house is a collection of masses and voids in furniture form, and sculptural rough-edged wooden coffee and dining tables in the stunning style of master woodworker George Nakashima.

The clean lined kitchen/family room has stainless steel counter tops and back splash, concrete floors, and high grade stainless steel appliances wisely juxtaposed against more organic feeling wood cabinetry with flat fronts, visually textured exposed grain, and an ashy/bleached finish. A work island with Wolf range and raised breakfast counter separates the kitchen from the small family room area where a second fireplace with sand colored stacked stone surround is flanked by wood-framed glass doors that slide open to a blue stone terrace with outdoor fireplace and a small but heated ocean view swimming pool.

The lower level of the home, a basement sort of space that's actually on grade with the street, is comprised of a single car garage, large play room, half-pooper, a trio of large storage rooms and a small but state of the art media room with blood red walls, a titanic 12' x 7' screen, and cozy, red velvet covered sectional sofas.

A steep stair rises from behind the kitchen to an airy and light infused second floor hall where there hangs a portrait of Edward Kennedy by Andy Warhol and off of which open the three primary bedrooms. There are two smaller ocean view bedrooms that share a Jack and Jill style pooper with an ocean side window, and a master suite with vaulted ceiling, fireplace, huge walk in closet, and small but dee-luxe sky lit and ocean view pooper with separate tub and frameless glass shower. A wall of sliders opens the bedroom to a semi-private ocean side deck with glass railing.

Another steep stair case with glass rail and open treads leads to the third and top floor where a narrow "L" shaped room opens to a small terrace, the floor of which is punched by two sky lights that look directly down into the master pooper, a situation that could get a little ugly and embarrassing. The top level also includes another half-pooper and glassed in office area that gives way to a large roof terrace where the Morgen-Eisenstadt's managed–no doubt at considerable expense–to hoist up a free standing hot tub. While this hot tub on the roof is making the ocean and hot tub loving Dr. Cooter wet his pants with glee and envy, Your Mama would like to have seen the sellers spend a few more clams enclosing the hot tub in materials more in line with the gray cedar vertical that clads the exterior of the house. None the less, the roof deck has 360 degree views that in addition to unobstructed and mesmerizing vista of the Atlantic Ocean there are great views of the twinkling lights of New York City, planes landing at J.F.K., and the Verrazano Bridge.

When the house was renovated, the current owners, that would be Mister Morgen and Miz Eisenstadt, spent big to install a 9-zone central air and radiant heat system, a security system that includes six surveillance cameras, and a 13-zone Crestron home automation system through which discreet panels on the walls of each room control the home's lighting, audio and video systems, as well as the iPod and Sirius radio set ups.

Perhaps Mister Morgan and Miz Eisenstadt have realistically responded to a still sagging real estate market, or maybe because they recognize that in this stiff market the financially qualified buying pool for a house like this in a location like The Rockaways is slim at best, or possibly just because they're eager to move on to wherever they're going next, the asking price was recently chopped a couple of times from $5,379,000 to it's current price tag of $4,995,000.

No offense to the fire, po-po, and hipster people who love it there, but we're not convinced that for 4 and some million clams The Rockaways is the location of our ocean front dreams. Plus we're certain our imperious house gurl Svetlana would sooner slit our wrists than contend with the fingerprints and pooch nose juice that stainless steel and exterior glass railings tend to attract in Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter's home. But dah-uhm children, this house is right up Your Mama's architectural alley. We're a bit iffy on a few things such as the tee-vee mounted above the sliders in the master and the switch to a different kind of wood floor in the upstairs poopers is awkward at best, but we're swooning over the glittering white walls that provide a barely there backdrop for the mix of hard edged and organic elements that play themselves out throughout the house and, of course, that speck-tack-u-lar view of the ocean across the undulating grassy dunes.

listing photos: Corcoran

ScarJo and RyRey Snatch Up a Mid-Century Modern

BUYER: Scarlett Johansson and Ryan Reynolds
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $2,900,000
SIZE: 2,835 square feet, 2 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Last month all the celebrity real estate gossips were a-twitter and agog about how ever more unlucky in real estate actress Scarlett Johansson (Iron Man, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Lost In Translation) lost her shirt, her skirt and her Agent Provocateur panties when she sold her big 0l' Mediterranean style bachelorette pad in Los Angeles at a loss in excess of $3,000,000.

That's right puppies, Miss Johansson had a perfectly good if not great 7 bedroom and 7 pooper mansion in Los Angeles, CA that she bought in May of 2007 for $7,000,000. Two years later the curvy actress caught a case of The Real Estate Fickle so bad that she was compelled to sell the house for an even-steven $4,000,000, a stunning three million dollar bang to her bank accounts not counting renovation costs and the fat real estate fees. Of course Your Mama don't know a lemon from a coffee pot but given that this wasn't the first time Miss Johansson sold a property at a loss Your Mama has to wonder if the woman is just a financial fruit bat or if there something more purposeful and clever at play like maybe she needed the gigantic write off for her her taxes.

Anyhoo and whatever the case, sell at a huge loss she did and now word is starting to slip-slide down the real estate gossip grapevine that Miss Johansson and her well-formed if a bit too ripped actor man-mate Ryan Reynolds have shelled out a few million smackers for a new house just a couple hills over from the one she just sold at an airplane hangar sized loss.

According to several of Your Mama's better connected sources ScarJo and RyRey recently closed on a mid-century modern style house designed in 1968 by noted southern California architects Buff & Hensman. The deal for the single story contemporary located in the hills of Los Feliz with big views across the twinkling lights of Tinseltown went down last week, according to property records, for $2,900,000. That a person would pay a few thousand clams more than the asking price for a house in today's topsy turvy market is a bit of rarity, but according to property records they did indeed pay $51,000 more than the last known asking price of $2,849,000.

If Your Mama hauls out our bejeweled abacus and flicks and clicks the well worn beads we figure that when the $3,0000,000+ loss of Missus Reynold's bacherlorette pad on Senalda Road is added to the purchase price of the lovebirds' new nest, the real price of their new digs is more than $5,900,000. Let's be honest chickens, these two lookers could have easily opted to stay put in the house on Senalda Road and waited out the market hoping and praying for better real estate days. But if we've said it once Your Mama has said it four million times, who are we to question or understand the wacky real estate ways of the rich and famous?

Listing information for the well preserved property we hear ScarJo and RyRey just bought shows that the low profile pad measures 2,835 square feet and includes just 2 bedrooms and 3 poopers. In addition to the guest bedroom and private master suite that features its own walled mini-garden, listing information also indicates that when originally built the house had a total of 4 bedrooms but two of the secondary bedrooms were subsequently combined and put into service as a library/office space.

The front of the property has an un-gated black-top motor court with front facing two-car garage all of which, Your Mama imagines will soon be protected by high hedges, an electronically controlled access gate, and a state of the art surveillance system. A covered walk from the driveway leads through a small planted courtyard to the front door. The home's primary living spaces face the back yard and the panoramic view. The large living room retains much of the home's original features such as hardwood floors, a clean lined brick fireplace, and wood beamed ceiling. A long wall of floor to ceiling glazing allows for a "seamless" visual flow between the indoors and the outdoors, which of course was a primary objective with many of the architects who operated in what we now consider the mid-century modern milieu.

Situated on the same axis as the living room along the back side of the house is the renovated kitchen that manages to maintain a style dialogue with the original house while incorporating all the modern conveniences expected in a multi-million dollar home such as high quality cabinetry and high grade stainless steel appliances that include double ovens and a side-by-side fridge and freezer combo that probably cost more than a Mini Cooper. The kitchen is open not only to the wall of glass that sucks up the view on the back side of the house, but also the dining area and adequately sized corner family room that, like the living room, is wrapped in floor to ceiling glass panes that open to the backyard and the view that, on a good day, extends all the way to the Pacific Ocean.

Extra deep overhangs help to modulate light and shade part of the deck that runs along the back of the back of the house and steps down to a flat grassy yard, many sided swimming pool, and adjacent sunbathing deck where ScarJo and RyRey can tan their slender movie camera friendly bodies. There does not appear to be a spa attached to the pool which is a bit of a problem. Your Mama does not care to sit in a boiling vat of water like some sort of damn lobster about to be cooked and eaten, but the Dr. Cooter does and a yard like this with a view like that is calling out for a hot tub, perhaps even one of those round old-school redwood types surrounded by ferns and candles like it was 19 damn 72.

Anyhoodles, what if any renovation plans ScarJo and RyRey have for their newly acquired mid-century modern remains to be seen but Your Mama hopes that they'll choose to retain and maintain what architectural integrity the house has. We just think it's kind of nice when people show some residential restraint and leave architectural well enough alone. Before all you architecture snobs get your panties in a kerfuffle recognize that Your Mama understands that the house isn't exactly a stellar example of mid-century modern style or, frankly, even one of Buff & Hensman's better projects. However, in a city where too many people don't seem to think twice about swinging the wrecking ball at a multi-million dollar house in order to make way for a monstrous beast of a mansion–just look what Jeffrey Katzenberg is doing over there in Beverly Hills where he paid a bone chilling $35,000,000 for an 8,704 square foot house built in 1965 that he's knocking down in order to build his own gargantuan Barbie Dream House–it's just nice to preserve some properties for the architectural record books.

Property records and about a bazillion reports reveal that prior to Miss Johansson becoming Missus Reynolds, she laid out $2,100,000 for a midtown Manhattan penthouse pied a terre that measures a modest 1,270 square feet and includes 2 bedrooms, 2 poopers, and a large terrace with glittery city views. At the time of the purchase it was was widely rumored and oft reported that ScarJo went prowling for a penthouse apartment because the immediate neighbors around the West Village apartment she was leasing at the time were all bent out of shape about her constant cigarette smoking.

There have been a myriad of recent reports that ScarJo and RyRey bought a cruddy little farmette somewhere in Louisiana that they're renovating with an eye towards eco-friendly things like a solar electrical system but honestly butter beans, we don't know nuthin' about that. Maybe they did and maybe they didn't.

listing photos: Deasy Penner & Partners

Keith and Kidman Get a New Krib in Manhattan

BUYER: Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban
LOCATION: New York City, NY
PRICE: $10,000,000
SIZE: 3,248 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Word on the celebrity real estate street is that bizzy as a beaver Oscar winning Aussie actress Nicole Kidman (Nine, Bewitched, Cold Mountain, The Hours) and her Grammy award winning country-pop music crooning huzband Keith Urban are moving into the same high profile New York City building as the Dolce and Gabbana boys.

Last fall it was widely reported here, there, and everywhere that smooth pated Italian fashion queen Domenico Dolce, through a trust, forked over a blistering $29,500,000 to purchase two doo-plex penthouse units of the critically acclaimed Annabelle Selldorf designed building recently erected on the corner of 11th Avenue and West 24th Street, at the edge of the heart of the Chelsea Arts District and across the street from the Gagosian Gallery. 14 of the building's 16 apartments, some of the children may recall, comes with a private 300 square foot "En-Suite Sky Garage™", accessed by driving one's luxury automobile into a giant key-lock elevator that magically lifts the car up to the same level as the the apartment to which it's deeded.

According to the most recent reports, the Australian born Kidman-Urbans plunked down some big American bucks for a doo-plex unit that measures 3,248 square feet and includes 3 bedrooms, 3.5 poopers, and two city view loggias. Miz Kidman and Mister Urban appear to have drove a hard real estate bargain because the puffy lipped actress and her flat iron loving husband reportedly snatched up their new doo-plex pied a terre in the Big Apple for $10,000,000, a figure that our bejeweled abacus indicates is a 20% reduction off the $12,500,000 asking price.

The main living spaces are located on the doo-plex unit's upper floor and include a 20-foot by 22-foot living room with western views over the Hudson River towards New Jersey, and a combination dining room and a gore-may kitchen with folding oiled teak panels that when closed conceal the kitchen equipment. Just beyond the kitchen/dining room, a large study/bedroom with walk-in closet and private pooper has Hudson River views to the west and opens to one of the two covered covered loggias that anchor the eastern corners of the doo-plex . A breezeway–a hallway really–with built in storage closets and a powder pooper links the two loggias and opens into the kitchen as well as to the single car garage in the sky.

The lower floor is accessed by a dramatic staircase that descends from the living room down into a double height great room with two walls of floor to ceiling glass with double glass doors that slide open to glass balustrades that obliterate any visual barrier between the interior spaces and the glittering and enviable views. A guest bedroom with en-suite pooper sits in the north east corner and the master bedroom includes a wall of closets, dressing area and large windowless pooper with teak cabinetry and floors, double sinks sitting on a counter top of imported French glazed lavastone Pyrolave, acid etched mirrors, separate glass enclosed shower, and freestanding honed granite soaking tub.

Amenities in the sleek stainless steel and cast gunmetal glazed terra cotta clad tower that was carefully designed to maintain an architectural dialogue with the industrial lofts and buildings that surround it include a 24/7 attended lobby, key-lock elevators, cold storage for food deliveries, a second floor fitness center with treatment room, Hudson River views, and terraces, and, of course, those private garages.

In addition to Domenico Dolce and the Kidman-Urbans, other owners of residences in the state of the art building include interior designer Jamie Drake, a man blessedly unafraid of color who sold his exuberant Flatiron District loft last year for $2,945,000, and real estate agent extraordinaire Leonard Steinberg.

Prior to coughing up the cash for this new doo-plex condo, Miz Kidman leased a number of high profile apartments including the old Lenny Kravtiz penthouse in SoHo just picked up by Alicia Keyes and Swiz Beatz, another penthouse in SoHo formerly owned by tennis ace Boris Becker and now owned by chat queen Kelly Ripa and her hunky man-mate Mark Consuelos, and another large apartment in the same Chelsea building that Your Mama and the Doctor Cooter once called home.

The alabaster skinned actress and her diminutive huzband own several luxurious residences around the world including a contemporary pile in the same Beverly Hills neighborhood as Cameron Diaz, Penelope Cruz, and Jessica Simpson and a 10,925 square foot beast with 7 bedrooms, 8 full and 2 half poopers in Nashville, TN that originally all us real estate gossips thought was purchased by Jessica Simpson.

Miz Kidman and Mister Urban also own a few plum and pricey properties Down Under. In the summer of 2008 it was widely reported that Mister and Missus Kidman-Urban dropped around $6,500,000 (AUS) for a 110 acre spread called Bunya Hill in Sutton Forest, a sleepy and swank enclave in the Southern Highlands about 1.5 hours outside of Sydney.

In the spring of 2009 Miz Kidman dumped her digs in the Darling Point area for $13,200,000 (AUS) after first listing the 4 bedroom waterfront villa a year before with the rumored asking price for $20,000,000 (AUS). The Kidman-Urbans subsequently scooped up a $6,500,000 (AUS) doo-plex penthouse apartment on the 21st floor of a converted office building with panoramic views of the scenic Sydney Harbor.

listing photos and floor plan: Prudential Elliman

Screenwriter Nicholas Meyer Lists Cliff May Ranch

SELLER: Nicholas Meyer
LOCATION: Pacific Palisades, CA
PRICE: $7,300,000
SIZE: 6,976 square feet, 6 bedrooms, 8.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Screenwriter, novelist, and director Nicholas Meyer is that rare breed of Tinseltown cat that stays put in a house for more than just a few years. However, after fifteen years in his Pacific Palisades, CA pad, he's recently hoisted it on the market with an asking price of $7,300,000.

Mister Meyer, for those who don't know or are too damn lazy to Google his ass, is an Emmy and Oscar nominated novelist, screenwriter, and director. His first foray into the entertainment business, according to the Internet Movie Data Base, was with the screenplay for the 1973 sci-fi bomb The Invasion of the Bee Girls in which an insane ladee scientist creates a cabal of women who seduce men to death. He went on to write the screenplay for The Seven-Per-Cent-Solution based his Sherlock Holmes novel of the same name that earned an Oscar nod. More recently he's had his pen laying ink on films like Sommersby with Jodie Foster and Richard Gere, The Human Stain–adapted from the great Philip Roth's novel of the same name, and he's currently teamed up with Marty Scorsese on the not yet released Leo Dicaprio vehicle The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. He is, however, perhaps best known for his extensive involvement as a writer and director of a number of the more successful Star Trek films in the 1980s and early 90s.

Property records show that Mister Meyer purchased his walled and gated mini-estate in the Palisades Riviera area for $1,841,000 in April of 1995. The two-story ranch-style house–we know, we know, ranch style houses are generally 1 story affairs–was built in 1938, according to the tax man, and designed by the much lauded and applauded architect Cliff May who many consider to be the father of the classic California ranch house. Property records indicate the main house measures 6,976 square feet and as best as Your Mama can surmise from listing information there are a total of 6 bedrooms and 8 full and 2 half poopers, some of which are situated in outbuildings such as the guest house that has its own kitchen and terliting facilities.

A gated walk leads to a narrow but very long front porch with chunky worn brick pillars that support the wide roof overhang that spans much of the width of the front of the house. The front door opens into a large entrance hall that acts as a traffic hub for the sprawling house as it wraps around a courtyard that reminds Your Mama of a plaza one might find in the center of a small village in Mexico.

To one side of the entry is the formal dining room outfitted with a big ol' wall of casement windows that look out over the front yard, and on the other side a not very formal formal living room with hardwood floors, a pitched and exposed beam wood ceiling, a large window seat in the corner, and one of the home's three wood burning fireplaces. Beyond the living room a small library has a painted brick fireplace, hardwood floors, and green built-in bookshelves that overflow with books and other tchotchke. There are, it seems, books, books, and more books everywhere in Mister Meyer's Pacific Palisades pad.

Clearly Mister Meyer did not hire a nice, gay decorator or any other kind of decorator to work over the interiors of his Cliff May manse. While in many ways, decoratively speaking, it looks dusty and hodge-podgey and slapped together by someone who spends a lot of time purchasing knick-knacks and paddywhacks in a willy-nilly fashion at flea markets and antique stores, there is a none the less a pleasant vibe of a disheveled intellectual who discusses books and art and not the weekend box office receipts, although we're sure Mister Meyer is at least somewhat concerned with those too.

Listen children, we'll take a funky, off-kilter and not quite right house stuffed with books and imbued with soul over some sexy and super sleek contemporary thing that may look 12 kinds of striking but often leave us feeling a little cold. Here in this house, Your Mama can imagine curling up in the library on a cozy couch in front of the lit fireplace with our long bodied bitches, a tall pitcher of gin & tonics, a stack of the latest gossip glossies, Richard Russo's latest novel, and the New York Times crossword puzzle because that, children, is how Your Mama rolls.

Anyhoo, our goodwill towards the eclectic, rumpled professor style of day-core comes to a screeching halt with the family room where we find an unholy collection of unhappily mismatched upholstered furniture, a oval shaped coffee table of dizzying and distressing multi-colored swirls, and a built in entertainment center stained a seriously unfortunate shade of azure where a massive boob toob is flanked by both open and closed shelving.

The commodious and updated eat in kitchen has tumbled stone tile flooring, a wall of windows and French doors that open out into the pleasantly rough around the edges gardens, a window lined breakfast area, and a full complement of Viking brand appliances. We are somewhat perplexed by that pot rack sort of rail thingamabob that runs around the exhaust hood. As if overhead pot racks weren't bad enough, then we get this thing that puts the pots and pans right and eyeball level and closer to the range top where they can better catch and collect the grease and splatter off what's cooking on the range top. Your Mama knows from personal experience how filthy an exhaust hood can be and how much time our tough talking house gurl Svetlana spends scrubbing the thing down so we can only imagine that every single one of those pots and pans hanging over Mister Meyer's stove is plain ol' filthy and need to be scrubbed down before using.

The backyard consists of a series of outdoor rooms and spaces that include a covered porch that runs along the backside of the house, a covered dining terrace that divides the huge flagstone paved courtyard with gurgling fountain from the 45-foot long solar heated swimming pool, spa, and cabana with cooking area and two changing rooms. The grounds, which stretch across a flat, .82 acre lot that's approximately twice the size of most of the surrounding parcels, also includes a raised bed vegetable garden and green house for the green thumbs, a children's play are, volleyball area, flat lawns, and large mature shade trees.

It's not known what Mister Meyer's future real estate plans are but Your Mama hopes that someone like Diane Keaton, someone with a genu-wine appreciation of historic California style architecture will be the new owner otherwise we may get one of those over-wrought and architecturally specious monster mansions that seem to pop up whenever a pretty, older house gets knocked down.

listing photos: Engel & Volkers

Dennis Hopper's Venice Compound on the Block

SELLER: Estate of Dennis Hopper
LOCATION: Venice, CA
PRICE: estimated at around $6,200,000
SIZE: 6 structures on 5 parcels

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Intense, gifted, and kinda freaky 2-time Oscar nominated actor Dennis Hopper perished from prostate cancer at the end of May 2010.

Hopper is believed to have left the bulk of his fortune estimated at around thirty million clams, to his three adult children, his 7-year old daughter, and two grandchildren but by mid-June the family was locked in a bitter battle over Mister Hopper's estate because his estranged 5th wife Victoria Duffy–Hopper had filed for divorce just months before he died–was contesting the will claiming that a 1996 pre-nup entitled her to a one-time payout of $250,000 from his life insurance policy plus 25% of the estate that includes a modern art collection and homes in both Los Angeles and Taos, NM.

Amid that turmoil and barely 6 weeks after Mister Hopper went to meet his great producer in the sky, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles' controversial new director Jeffrey Deitch launched a controversial survey exhibition of the late actor and artist's work curated by pajama wearing art superstar Julian Schnabel who, the arty-farty children might find amusing to know, deigned to travel to the art world hinterland of Tinseltown for the opening. In Your Mama's ignorant and utterly meaningless opinion, the photographs are fantastic, the paintings no so much.

Anyhoo, now word slips down the celebrity real estate grapevine and out through a gazillion online portals that Mister Hopper's long time compound in Venice, CA is scheduled to go on the market at the end of the week for somewhere around $6,200,000.

The compound, located a few short blocks from the beach, covers a total of five parcels and includes 4 tightly packed but separate residences plus a swimming pool and small grassy yard. Property records show that the first piece of Mister Hoppers real estate puzzle was purchased in July of 1985 for just $21,000. Mister Hopper hired architect Brian Murphy who designed an chunky, industrial looking mass with a corrugated metal skin and an undulating roof dotted with large skylights. Property records show the structure measures 4,896 square feet and includes 4 bedrooms and 2 poopers. At that time Venice was a nitty-gritty outpost where most celebrities and real estate snobs would not have dreamed of going let along living. Nowadays Venice is still a bit rough around the edges–Beverly Hills types Your Mama knows still insist on referring to it as an oceanside ghetto–but it's none-the-less chockablock with celebrities and progressive architectural statements and experiments.

In his last interview for Vanity Fair magazine, writer Bob Colacello described the interior of Mister Hopper's house as having a "loft-like living room" in which, "There were artworks everywhere–on the wall, on the floor, on tables–including a painting of eyeglasses by John Baldessari" who, coincidentally, also currently has a large and much acclaimed retrospective of his work going on only it's at the Los Angeles Contemporary Museum of Art (LACMA).

In March of 1999, according to property records, Mister Hopper purchased an adjacent property that currently contains two wee cottages separated by a grassy yard with a long, lap-like swimming pool (below).

On the other side of Mister Hopper's big corrugated metal box, which presents a formidable and windowless facade has an incongruous and humorous white picket fence that runs along the sidewalk, are three similar looking houses designed and built in the early 1980s by Venice-based maverick architect Frank Gehry and two of Hoppers friends who referred to them as the "three little pigs." One is made of concrete, another plywood and the third is sheathed in green roofing shingles. Eventually Mister Hopper came to own all three of Mister Gehry's little pigs.

The first one he bought was in October of 1997 when he paid $325,000 for a 1 bedroom and 1 pooper house that measures 1,401 square feet.

It's unclear to Your Mama when Mister Hopper purchased the second little pig and how much he paid but records do indicate the 1,143 square foot structure was in his property portfolio before September of 2000.

He finally snagged the third of the little pigs in February of 2008 paying $1,300,000 for a 1 bedroom and 1 pooper house with 1,330 square feet according to property records.

According to Mister Colacello in Vanity Fair, Mister Hopper used one of the little pigs as an office, one is occupied by his 19 year old son by his 4th wife, dancer Katherine LaNasa, and after Mister Hopper and his 5th wife Victoria Duffy went splitsville she and the couple's 7 year old daughter moved into the the third little pig.

Based on previous reports it's not clear if the entire compound–all five parcels and 6 structures–is to be sold or if the family plans to retain the parcel with the pool and/or all or some of three little pigs. However, according according to the listing agent, the Brian Murphy designed main residence can be purchased separately from the rest of the compound.

Mister Hopper was buried in Taos. Hollywood lost a great one with Mister Hopper's passing.

aerial photo: Pacific Coast News
swimming pool photo: AP/Coldwell Banker Previews International via Housing Watch

Patrick Dempsey Does It Up in the Bu

BUYER: Patrick Dempsey
LOCATION: Malibu, CA
PRICE: $7,000,000
SIZE: 5,547 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: The children regularly question Your Mama about the real estate doings of a lot different famous people as if we are the damn Oracle of Delphi and know everything about everyone's bizness. Much as we'd love to promote that illusion, it simply isn't true. Our powers, we're not eager to confess, are far less potent than many of the children seem to believe.

Over the last year one of the persons we've been queried about more than anyone else is the much lusted after actor Patrick Dempsey who plays Dr. Derek Shepherd on the enormously popular hospital drama Gray's Anatomy. Not being a fan of the hospital drama genre of boob-toob fare–we do not even want to think about our aged internist schtupping his nubile nurse at work–we can't say that we know all too much about this Mister Dempsey or his Doctor character other than the poor man is saddled with the rather embarrassing nickname McDreamy by a lot of horny and under-sexed, middle-aged ladees whose huzbands probably stopped humping them 45 pounds ago.

Anyhoo, for the 6 months or so the real estate whereabouts of Mister Dempsey were a mystery to Your Mama, a real god damn sixty four thousand dollar question. Yes, we'd heard the rumors about him living in Malee-boo and we'd heard through the real estate grapevine that he was shacking up in the Sunset Strip area, but until recently we had no real intelligence about where the faux-doctor was hanging his scrubs.

In July of 2006 Mister and Missus Dempsey forked over $3,100,000 for a 3,841 square foot New England-y style domicile on Chantilly Road in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles. In early 2009 they listed the property with an asking price of $3,595,000 and decamped for a rented residence on N. Bundy Drive in the Brentwood area of Los Angeles. After several prodigious price chops, the Chantilly Road property finally sold in late 2009 for $2,571,500, a stunning $529,000 loss not counting the fat real estate fees that the Dempseys surely paid to their real estate people. The last we knew about the Dempsey's was in early 2010 when we heard from a reliable informant that they'd done left from their leased crib in Brentwood with their trio of youngins and headed to parts unknown.

Fast forward to this very week when we received a clandestine dispatch from Franny Francophile who directed Your Mama's limited attentions to some hard evidence as to the real estate transactions of Patty Dempsey and, as it turns, out he and the family are indeed making a nest in hills above Zuma Beach in Malibu, CA.

A little peep and poke around the property records revealed to Your Mama that back in June of 2009 Mister and Missus Dempsey dumped $7,000,000 on a 3.24 acre property that includes multi-level contemporary residence originally designed in 1972 by maverick architect Frank Gehry as the home and studio for abstract artist Ron Davis. Mister Davis sold the property in the early 1990s and it eventually landed in the hands of architecturally minded and suggestively named investor Alex Glasscock and his wife Sue who, property records reveal, paid $1,900,000 for the property in March of 2003.

Listing information provided to Your Mama by Franny Francophile shows the vaguely wedge shaped, barn-like residence measures 5,547 square feet with 3 bedrooms and 3.5 poopers including the master suite that contains dual poopers and closets, a fireplace, plasma screen tee-vee and a wide, wood framed sliding glass door that provides access to a private relaxation garden.

What's inneresting to Your Mama is that unless some sort of expansion is planned, Mister and Missus Dempsey spent seven million clams to buy a house in which two of their three shorties will need to double up in one of the secondary bedrooms. About that situation Your Mama can only tell the children that iffin we were one of Mister Dempsey's off-spring, we would most certainly grow up to be deeply resentful of having to share a damn bedroom with a sibling given that, clearly, there's plenty of dough-ray-me for all of the Dempsey children to be provided with their own private bedroom if not their own private pooper too, you know?

Anyoo, a long, gated cobblestone drive leads up to the main house where a wall of glass tucked into the chunky structure marks the front entry, a small lofted area that overlooks the voluminous, airy and maze like interior spaces that are unified by a gigantic, 20-foot by 20-foot central sky light that pierces ceiling. A staircase winds down from the entry to the "formal" living area that has reclaimed wide plank wood floors, a double height ceiling with behemoth beams, and a fireplace flanked by shelving set into the crisp, white plaster walls. The living area spills into the "formal" dining area where a wall of windows looks out onto the drought tolerant gardens all did up and done over by soo-blime landscape architect Scott Shrader who specializes in merging the vibe of a home's interior spaces with its exterior environment resulting in a seamless integration of classic California style indoor and outdoor living.

Although there really aren't any "formal" areas of the house, the more casual, family areas consist of a v-shaped galley style kitchen with thick, polished concrete counter tops and the usual coterie of high grade stainless steel appliances–including a built in Miele brand cappuccino maker–usually found in multi-million dollar dwellings. The kitchen opens into a large breakfast area and a large, elevated den that hovers over the breakfast area has built in shelving, a long wall of pane free windows, and a wall-mounted flat screen tee-vee. There are, in addition to the 3 bedrooms, two offices.

Mister Gehry clad the exterior of the house with corrugated metal and exposed wood, a combination that allows the house to both set apart and comingle with the quasi-natural landscaped environment that surrounds the house. The south side of the house opens to a colossal cobblestone terrace that meanders though the shaded and rustic landscape and a sun-bleached wooden deck that surrounds the massive swimming pool inserts a rigid order into an otherwise tangled landscape. There are tree-shaded banquettes around the swimming pool and an outdoor rain shower.

The sprawling property also includes an existing barn with three stalls, tack room and wash racks, a riding ring, two irrigated pastures, a chicken coop, and established raised bed vegetable and herb gardens accented with rose bushes and flowering vines that wrap around a long pergola. Listing information indicates the previous owners, the unfortunately named Glasscocks, submitted plans to the city of Malibu for a 3,343 square foot Laura Burkhalter designed barn with a 2nd story loft.

At the time the Mister and Missus Dempsey bought their new house in the Bu the interior day-core have been exquisitely done up and worked over by accomplished Malibu, CA and Sag Harbor, NY based decorator Michael Lee who, Your Mama thinks, owes a debt of decorative gratitude to another Michael, the late, great Michael Taylor. For those not edgumuhcated in the history of interior day-core Mister Taylor is widely and frequently credited as the creator of the "California Look," a glam meets rustic style characterized by a neutral but intricately and interestingly textured palette, huge, white upholstered pieces, stone and rough hewn wood accents, indoor trees, and sleek, sexy and clean lined elements in all the right places such as the kitchen and pooper.

Now children, before y'all start praising or dissin' on Mister Dempsey's day-core please keep in mind that the listing photos show the interior spaces as they looked when the pornographically named Mister and Missus Glasscock occupied the premises. Presumably Mister and Missus Dempsey have put their own decorative stamp on the day-core. We don't know what decorative plans the Dempsey's have (or have instituted) for their new house but Your Mama can only hope they had the good sense to hire someone with a similarly deft hand as Mister Lee. What we do know is that the Dempseys are committed to an organic Malibu lifestyle and that they employed Scott Shrader to re-work some of his original landscape design to incorporate outdoor cooking facilities and a number of sustainable elements for food-production.

Another celebrity real estate mystery solved.

photographer: Nick Springett