Rustic Home for ‘Wild’ One

DIANE LADD, who made Oscar history last year when she and her daughter, Laura Dern, were both nominated for Academy Awards in the film “Rambling Rose,” has purchased a rustic home in a Beverly Hills canyon area.

“I’ve been gone from L.A. for seven years, but now I’m moving back from Sedona (Ariz.). . . . It’s time, and I wanted to be near my mother.

“After my stepfather died last year, Laura and I moved my mother to an apartment . . . but she felt lonely, and I wanted her energy to be close to me.”

Ladd, who won other Oscar nominations for “Wild at Heart” (1990) and “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” (1974), stars as the brilliant geneticist Dr. Jane Tiptree in the movie “Carnosaur.” She played Lucille Rubin in “The Cemetery Club” and Rita in “Father Hood,” also released this year.

She bought a 3,000-square-foot home with three bedrooms, maid’s quarters and a den plus a guest house and a pool for almost $1 million. The home is on a heavily planted hillside.

“I bought this home because it touched my heart and because I wanted to move my mother in with me,” said Ladd, who is 49, but says she’s “a vibrant 21.” Besides her acting career, Ladd is a certified nutritional counselor with a master’s degree in psychology.

She also has a production company in Los Angeles that is working on such projects as a film, with Oliver Stone’s company, about the late Martha Mitchell and a movie called “Mrs. Munck,” which is based on Ladd’s own screenplay and will mark her directorial debut.

Ladd listed her Sedona home, on a golf course, at $425,000 and then bought the Beverly Hills-area home, which she is redecorating with the help of Karen Hartman Hess, the wife of Ladd’s realtor, Mark Hess of Jon Douglas Co., Beverly Hills. The home had been listed by Jana Jones of Prudential Rodeo Realty.

NANA VISITOR, who stars as Major Kira Nerys on the new, KCOP-Channel 13 series “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine,” and her husband, actor Nick Miscusi, have bought a Benedict Canyon home owned by Fred Roos, a producer of the movie “The Secret Garden.”

Roos, a producer of “The Godfather” and “Black Stallion” films as well as “The Outsiders” movie (1983) and TV series (1990), is a longtime business associate of Francis Ford Coppola. After Coppola filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in July, 1992, he owed Roos $71 million at one point, according to news reports.

Roos sold the three-bedroom, 2,200-square-foot house for about $435,000, according to public records. The home was built in 1948 and was later owned by actor Harrison Ford, who did all of the cabinetry work in the house, sources say.

The buyers, who recently moved to California from New York, were represented by Carol Hurwitz of the Hurwitz-James Co. The home had been listed by Maryann Musico, Prudential Rodeo Realty.

MARLENE DIETRICH’S Beverly Hills home for more than a decade has been sold for close to its latest $1.9-million asking price, sources say.

Dietrich lived there from 1931 until 1942, when she left Hollywood to entertain troops on the European front. Subsequent residents included actress Rita Hayworth and Prince Aly Khan.

Nevertheless, Dietrich left her stamp on the classic Art Deco-style home to such an extent that when she died in May, 1992, in Paris, fans left flowers and cards in her memory on the front lawn.

The five-bedroom, 8,500-square-foot house, which has lap and reflecting pools and a 5,000-bottle wine cellar, was sold to a Brentwood businessman and his wife.

The seller, a Florida businessman, had acquired the home a year ago in a trade valued then at $2.3 million. He listed the home at $3.3 million and later reduced it to $2.65 million and then to about $1.9 million. Gary Velis of Stan Herman, Stephen Shapiro & Associates was the listing agent.

A Whittier house described as having “the longest residential water slide in North America,” has come on the market at $3.35 million.

Known as “La Sierra,” the five-bedroom, 7,800-square-foot home, on two acres, has a water slide that is 300 feet long; a free-form lagoon pool with sunning rocks; a 15-foot-high diving rock; a cave and waterfalls.

Carla Ramsing Lowinger of Century 21 Beachside in Whittier has the listing.

Special effects wizard ERIC ALLARD is building a $150,000 theater in his Granada Hills home. The three-tiered theater will have an automated system that will be able to control such other functions in his house as temperature and draperies.

Allard’s Sun Valley-based All Effects Co., which built the Energizer Bunny and staged the TV commercials, has worked on such films as “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III” and “Short Circuit” (1986).