McEnroe’s Game: Stay on the Beach

Tennis star JOHN McENROE and his wife, actress TATUM O’NEAL, have sold the Carbon Beach home in Malibu that he bought five years ago from talk-show host JOHNNY CARSON and have moved with their two young children into a Malibu Colony residence that they have just completed rehabbing.

Neither house has a tennis court.

McEnroe bought the 60-year-old Colony home, on the beach, more than a year ago. “It was in good condition even then . . . but he totally remodeled it,” a local broker said.

McEnroe also expanded the house, making it slightly larger than his 59-year-old Carbon Beach home, which is about 4,500 square feet in size.

The Carbon Beach house, which was on the market only briefly, was sold to an investment group for close to its $3.75-million asking price.

“They’ll lease it out until they decide what to do with it,” another broker said. It may be rented during the summer at about $30,000 a month.

“The house was changed a bit from when Johnny Carson had it,” the second broker said. “Part of the master suite, fronting the ocean on the second floor, was turned into a sitting area, looking down on a deck and the sand.”

And three secondary bedrooms were turned into two bedrooms, one of which McEnroe used for exercise equipment. He also installed marble and granite in the foyer and created a courtyard, the broker added.

“It has some privacy to it,” he said, “but Carbon Beach doesn’t have much privacy. When Johnny Carson had the house, he also owned one next door that he used as a guest house.”

Carson still lives in the 12,000-square-foot home in Point Dume that he bought for about $9 million just before he sold the house to McEnroe.

Sources indicated that Brian Harper at Fred Sands Realtors, Malibu, represented McEnroe in his recent sales and purchase, but Harper was unavailable for comment.

NORMAN LEAR, executive producer of the long-running “All in the Family” and a dozen other TV sitcoms and movie comedies, has put the Brentwood Park home where he has lived for the past 18 years on the market at $6.5 million.

Lear, his wife, Lyn, and their son, 2-year-old Ben, plan to move into a nearly new 12,000-square-foot house they bought in 1988 on seven view-oriented acres in the hills of Brentwood.

They have been remodeling the house there “to suit their needs,” said Phyllis Avery of the Jon Douglas Co., Brentwood. Avery, a former actress who played actor Ray Milland’s wife on “The Ray Milland Show,” a popular early sitcom, is Lear’s broker.

When Lear bought the Brentwood Park home, he and his ex-wife, Frances, were only the third owners of the property, Avery noted. Built in the 1930s, it was first owned by the late actor Henry Fonda and then by the actor Paul Henreid.

It is a two-story, New England, country-style house with six bedrooms, six baths and two staff quarters in about 10,000 square feet. Lear added an entertainment wing with a screening room and a guest suite in the 1970s.

On less than an acre, the property is gated and has gardens, a swimming pool and a pool pavilion. A north/south tennis court on a lot across the street comes with the property.

The late actress BETTE DAVIS’ West Hollywood condo has been purchased by casting director Randy Stone for about $650,000, public records show.

Until she died last October, Davis lived in the three-bedroom, two-bath unit, with 2,500 square feet, for nearly a dozen years. Lenore von Hofe of Mike Silverman & Associates, Beverly Hills, had the listing, which was at $950,000 before it was reduced to $750,000.

Actress EMMA SAMMS, co-star with John Candy and Mariel Hemingway in the movie “Delirious” and co-founder with producer Peter Samuelson of the Starlight Foundation, helped unveil a model last week of a $50-million children’s entertainment center planned by the foundation next to Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center.

The Starlight Foundation grants wishes of critically, chronically and terminally ill children.

The center, known as the Starbright Pavilion, was designed by Kaplan/McLaughlin/Diaz and Medical Planning Associates for children who are patients at county hospitals.

“We said, ‘Make us a building that looks like a smile,’ ” Samuelson said.

The center would have a 350-seat auditorium for live and multimedia performances, with room for wheelchairs and beds; trolley-like transportation from one to another of the six levels, an audiovisual library with viewing booths of various sizes, a petting zoo and streetscapes instead of corridors.

Negotiations are under way with Los Angeles County to build the 126,000-square-foot project with donations and matching funds.

TED FIELD, executive producer of “Bird on a Wire” and “Three Men and a Baby,” has closed escrow on the $11.5-million Beverly Hills home he was buying for his wife, Susie, and their two children.

He plans to move with them into the 23,000-square-foot house, despite the initiation of divorce proceedings earlier this year, says his real estate broker, Paris Moskopoulos of Paris Realty, Beverly Hills.

“They have reconciled,” said Moskopoulos, who represented Field in the purchase, “but they are still planning to sell Greenacres”--the 36,000-square-foot house nearby that Moskopoulos put on the market in May at $55 million.

Richard Swarz, who sold his Calabasas computer-device manufacturing company for $6.46 million in 1986, and his wife, Sandra, were the sellers of the Fields’ new home. They were represented by Bruce Nelson of John Bruce Nelson & Associates.