The Steeple Times

Tag: lawyer

  • Tarred by Paparazzi

    Tarred by Paparazzi

    The bonfire sale of a monster of a mansion that has had a $15 million price reduction

     

    A property was first built at 10425 West Sunset Boulevard in Lower Bel Air, Los Angeles in 1936. Here, in this most exclusive of districts, the homes of the prosperous residents are hidden from view and this address, this day, is no exception.

     

    One of the original owners of a house on this site, which has a main access from the cul-de-sac Revuelta Way, was William R. Wilkerson (1890 – 1962), a nightclub owner and founder of The Hollywood Reporter. A compulsive gambler, he is also credited with contributing to Hollywood’s “Golden Era” through the venues he opened. These included Vendome, Café Tocadero, Sunset House, Ciro’s, LaRue, L’Aiglon and most famously The Flamingo Hotel. An involvement here with the ruthless gangster Ben “Bugsy” Siegel (1906 – 1947) turned sour in 1946 and resulted in him having to flee to Paris in fear of his life. Siegel’s death allowed him to return to Los Angeles in 1947 and having “quit gambling cold turkey” following the birth of a son in 1951, he led a much quieter life. He is remembered as being a man who preferred his “beloved French poodles to any wife or friend.”

     

    Media mogul William R. Wilkerson (1890 – 1962) pictured with Marilyn Monroe (1926 – 1962)
    American film personality and the publisher of “The Hollywood Reporter” Beatrice “Tichi” Wilkerson Kassel (1926 – 2004)

    Wilkerson is first recorded as living at 10425 West Sunset Boulevard in the 1940 California Census with his fourth wife, Estelle Jackson Brown. He subsequently remained there with his fifth wife, Vivian DuBois, and sixth wife Beatrice “Tichi” Noble. After his death, Tichi Wilkerson (1926 – 2004) sold first 10425 West Sunset Boulevard and then, in 1988, The Hollywood Reporter for $26,700,000.

     

    Greg Bautzer (1911 – 1987) with Ginger Rogers (1911 – 1995)

    Another famous owner of 10425 West Sunset Boulevard was a “celebrity attorney” named Greg Bautzer (1911 – 1987). Bautzer is best known for having represented not only William R. Wilkerson but also Ginger Rogers, Ingrid Bergman, Joan Crawford, Kirk Kerkorian and Howard Hughes. He is described as having been “as dashing and popular as any successful Hollywood movie star” and was engaged to but did not marry the actresses Barbara Payton, Lana Turner and Dorothy Lamour. He did, however, make the actress Dana Wynter his second wife in 1956, then Buffy Cobb Chapman and finally Nicola Dantine. This “man-about-Beverly Hills,” it seems, was indeed plainly a magnet for anything dramatic.

     

    Philanthropist and Bernini owner Yousuf Tar

    The current owner of the house, which is now somewhat ludicrously named Chateau d’Or or The House of Gold, is a man named Yousuf Tar. The president of the “faux-Italian mall fixture Bernini men’s clothing [company],” bought 10425 West Sunset Boulevard in 1992 for $6,000,000 and set about creating what his realtor, Sally Forster Jones, calls a “cross between The White House and Versailles.” The resulting remodeled residence isn’t quite either but frankly combines a mixture of one of the palaces of the deceased tyrant Colonel Gadaffi and the set of Dynasty.

     

    The gaudy gates to Chateau d’Or, 10425 West Sunset Boulevard, Bel Air, Los Angeles, California, CA 90077, USA are an indication of the “tackiness” that lies behind
    A 600ft main driveway leads to the front of the house from Revuelta Way. Secondary access comes from West Sunset Boulevard.
    The garden elevation of the Chateau d’Or
    The exterior of Chateau d’Or is anything but understated

    Decorated throughout in a white and gold, the aim of the redesign was to create the look of an 18th century palace complete with acres of marble, columns, cupolas, gold leaft and mouldings. Instead, the interpretation looks more Chigwell-esque than Parisian and has simply attracted criticism and mockery. An example, such as this from Curbed.com, gives a guide to the opinion of the majority about this ugly monstrosity:

     

    “[The mansion] houses some of the cheapest-looking French-inspired interiors ever made, highlighted (or, rather, lowlighted) by a towering, clunky fireplace and a cartoon-worthy master suite, with gilded everything. Even San Simeon’s William Randolph Hearst would object to this level of pointless expenditure.”

     

    The dining hall is currently furnished with a $300,000 table capable of seating upto eighty for a formal dinner. With an entirely gold dinner service, realtor Sally Forster Jones comments: “Food tastes so much better off gold.”
    The opulent meets gaudy theme continues with a marble hallway and staircase
    A sitting room fit for Saddam Hussein
    Chateau d’Or’s double height media room is supposedly “styled like an opera house”
    The master bedroom suite is as nearly as large as most homes and is some 5,000 square foot in size
    No restraint is shown in the choice of bathroom fittings either

    Chateau d’Or, according to the listing on Forster Jones’s website, features 25,953 square foot of living space with 15 bedrooms and 16.5 bathrooms. There is a vast dining hall capable of seating upto 80 for a formal dinner which currently features a $300,000 dining table and a 1,600 square foot “oversized gourmet kitchen” complete with 800 square foot of cupboards, an “indoor sunlit gazebo” and a double Viking oven. A double height media room styled as an opera house has also been created and there’s also a cigar and wine tasting room. The Chateau d’Or is nothing other than a “home” on a lavish and ludicrous scale.

     

    The pool sits alongside a 6-bedroomed guest house
    Chateau d’Or also has it’s own championship tennis court
    One of numerous terraces

    In addition to a swimming pool, spa and gym, Chateau d’Or also has a championship tennis court, guest accommodation and 1.7 acres of grounds. Accessed by a 600ft driveway and surrounded by privacy walls plainly designed to keep prying eyes out, the house featured in Lady Gaga’s 2009 video for her song Paparazzi. Mr Tar plainly isn’t that private at all.

     

    Lady Gaga filmed the video for her 2009 song “Paparazzi” at Chateau d’Or
    Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta (AKA Lady Gaga) in one of the “cheap looking” chairs at Chateau d’Or

    Not shy of renting the house out for other purposes, it has also been used for a photoshoot for Versace, a television advert for Foot Locker and Addidas starring Ken Jeong and as a venue for a Dubai themed party for Donald Trump where Christina Aguilera performed.

     

    Ken Jeong in a 2010 advert for Foot Locker and Addidas at Chateau d’Or
    Donald Trump, Sr. with his daughter Ivanka Trump and son Donald Trump, Jr. at a party at Chateau d’Or

    Yousuf Tar put Chateau d’Or on the market in 2009 for just shy of $40,000,000 and though Michael Jackson supposedly wanted to buy it to create a “new Neverland,” his sad demise meant that this fell through. Relisted repeatedly since and despite the best efforts of Sally Forster Jones, Chateau d’Or’s gaudiness plainly hasn’t appealed to the market.

     

    You’d had to have been gaga to have paid $40,000,000 for Chateau d’Or

    Reduced by nearly $15,000,000 to $25,000,000 this month, Chateau d’Or still doesn’t look like much of a bargain. Somehow, we suspect, it’ll have to be marked down a fair bit more before anyone’s even vaguely tempted.

     

    For more information Chateau d’Or, 10425 West Sunset Boulevard, Bel Air, Los Angeles, California, CA 90077, USA contact Sally Forster Jones of the SFJ Group at +1 (310) 281 3999 or email her at: [email protected]

     

    Visit the official website for the house at: http://www.lechateaudor.com

     

    Watch a tour of Chateau d’Or by Sally Forster Jones at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjOAf_cfm0Q

     

    Watch Lady Gaga’s Paparazzi video at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2smz_1L2_0

     

    For more information about William R. Wilkerson, go to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wilkerson

     

    Read The Hollywood Reporter at: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com

     

    For more details about Bernini, go to: http://www.bernini.com

  • Goodness, gracious, gaol

    Goodness, gracious, gaol

    Matthew Steeples updates readers on John Goodman’s return to jail

     

    The conviction of John Goodman in West Palm Beach earlier this year was a tragedy for all concerned but the twists and turns that have followed have been quite something else.

     

    John Goodman in court prior to returning to jail on Friday 12th October 2012

    Goodman, who sold his family business, Goodman Manufacturing, for $1.43 billion in 2004 and who also founded the International Polo Club Palm Beach, was found guilty of the offences of DUI Manslaughter and vehicular homicide on 23rd March.

     

    In February 2010, Goodman had crashed his Bentley Continental GTC at speed into a Hyundai Sonata and in the process catapulted it into a canal. Whilst the driver, Scott Wilson, was left to drown, Goodman fled the scene of the accident and later claimed he did not know he’d hit another driver. On the night in question, Goodman had settled a $272 bar bill for himself and friends at The Players Club in Wellington, Florida at 12:52am and had later drunk more alcohol after the accident in a “man cave” to “alleviate [his] pain.”

     

    Scott Wilson’s Hyundai after it was retrieved from the canal into which John Goodman’s Bentley catapulted it

    In May 2012, Goodman was sentenced to 16 years in jail but shortly afterwards was released on a $7 million bond pending appeal. At exactly the same time, a juror in the case, Dennis DeMartin, self-published a “tell-all” book, Believing in the Truth, in which he revealed that he conducted drinking experiments to see if he could get drunk after three vodka and tonics. After DeMartin was called in for questioning by Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Jeffrey Colbath, he stated:

     

    “I’m only human. I made a mistake, just like John Goodman made a mistake… What can I say? I’m getting senile.”

     

    John Goodman has spent most of the year under house arrest at his hacienda at 3665 120th Avenue, Wellington with his girlfriend, whom he also adopted as his daughter to protect his wealth, Heather Laurso Hutchins (also known as Heather Colby). In a further twist, Goodman was caught at the property by two of the $2,000 a day off-duty deputies employed to monitor him at 11pm on Wednesday in an upstairs bathroom with a small mirror. He was allegedly using it to pry open his ankle monitor and disable it with water.

     

    Though Goodman claimed he had hit the monitor on a shower door accidentally, Sheriff Ric Bradshaw of West Palm Beach County commented:

     

    “I think he thought, you know, in my estimation he thought that was going to disable it. [It] doesn’t work like that… He paid the price for it because he’s back in the ‘Gun Club Hotel’ [Palm Beach County Jail]. That’s where he’s going to stay.”

     

    “Think about what’s going on in America right now. You know you’ve got celebrities and people with a lot of money, they get arrested, they break the law. And, after a while they just think the rules don’t apply to them.”

     

    “Well, guess what? That don’t happen here. He gets treated just like every other person that’s in my custody. He violates the rules, he’s back in jail.”

     

    As a result, John Goodman will now temporarily remain in jail until the 26th November.

     

    We await the next twist in this case with anticipation.

     

    Read our original report on the case against John Goodman and his subsequent conviction at: http://thesteepletimes.com/the-fog/no-thank-goodnesses-for-goodman/

  • Why pay less?

    Why pay less?

    Living life to the full Donald G. Abbey style

     

    “Why pay less when you can pay more?” is a mantra that some strangely choose to live by. In my time, I have encountered a couple with a different Ferrari for each day of the week, someone who proudly declared their home had a window for each day of the year and an heiress who insists upon the local baker feeding her dog daily with a freshly baked caviar pie.

     

    When I discovered a house in California priced at $78,000,000, I didn’t expect to subsequently find out that the same vendor is also selling another of his homes in Montana at the very same price. Having done a little research into Donald G. Abbey, the commercial real estate tycoon who owns both The Bradbury Estate and Shelter Island, I discovered that here indeed is another personality whose excess knows no bounds.

     

    I suppose when people sell homes of this worth, the asking price they set is quite irrelevant. “What,” I’m sure they ask, “is $5 million between friends?” Equally, when it comes to developing such properties, characters of this nature do not show any reserve. Bling is most definitely the order of the day and the larger and flashier one can build, I guess, the better.

     

    An aerial shot of The Bradbury Estate, 172 Bliss Canyon Road, Bradbury, California, CA 91008, USA
    The front elevation of the main house
    The owner and his guests need not get wet on arrival in their limousines

     

    Abbey’s Bradbury Estate is a case in point. This vast property consists of a 33,000 square foot main house with 7 bedrooms and 10 bathrooms. It is almost entirely made of French limestone and includes a chef’s kitchen with a pizza oven, a 2,000 bottle wine cellar, an oak paneled elevator and a leather paneled poker room. Bedrooms include domes with hand painted frescos and in addition there is a detached 6,700 square foot guest house above a 10 car garage and a 5,700 square foot pool house with a catering kitchen, gym, massage room and a subterranean EPA certified 25 yard rifle shooting range complete with a gun storage room and 2 large safes.

     

    The hall of the main residence comes complete with a gallery and bar
    A vast library provides the perfect space to enjoy a good book
    The library’s glazed ceiling
    Another palatial reception room
    The house features a rather impressive kitchen
    Mr Abbey’s copper bath tub comes complete with a mat displaying his initials in front of it

     

    Within the 8 acre grounds there is a cross shaped infinity-edged pool – perhaps Mr Abbey is religious – that is “just a few feet short of Olympic length.” It requires 350,000 gallons of water if it is to be filled to capacity. Adjoining this is something even more ludicrous: a 1,000,000 gallon, temperature-controlled rainbow trout pond that cost some $8,000,000 to construct. The pond is said to be “adorned with perennials,” is heated by a custom gravity separator with UV filters and is “chilled for the trout by a 300-tonne central cooling plant.” At Bradbury, thoughts of water crisis in Sudan and Ethiopia come way behind the needs of Abbey’s rainbows.

     

    The rear of the house viewed from above The Bradbury Estate’s $8,000,000 trout pond
    The estate’s 350,000 gallon near Olympic length cross shaped infinity edged swimming pool
    The property’s EPA certified 25 yard rifle range

     

    For those wanting to avoid California’s UV rays, Bradbury also boasts an acre of porches, decks, loggia and walkways. A 600ft blue stone driveway completes this “once in a lifetime trophy property” that “belongs in the portfolio of the most astute collector” and it has space for “60 foot truck access or multiple limousines.”

     

    When Mr Abbey has tired of California, he is able to retreat to his own island in Montana. The 24 acre Shelter Island on Flathead Lake includes 7,000 feet of frontage to the water, a world class sporting clay course and 3 computer controlled tracks and docking systems that allow boats to be landed in the dry dock without riders ever leaving the craft or handling a line. The island is powered via an underground armoured utility cable that carry 12,000 amps to it along with CAT-5 computer cable and phonelines and the main entertaining space features a mammoth television of some 120-inches in size.

     

    An aerial view of Donald G. Abbey’s Shelter Island
    Mr Abbey’s passion for copper continues with a conservatory made out of the metal on the lakeside elevation of the main residence on Shelter Island
    The Great Room of the main residence on Shelter Island
    Mr Abbey’s passion for fine wines is displayed in a bar and tasting room in the property
    The owner and his guests can access their boats without having to go anywhere near the water

     

    Abbey has built over 44,000 square foot of accommodation on his island. The main house has 5 bedrooms and 8 bathrooms. His “Great Room” features ceilings of some 45 foot in height and in addition to yet another indoor shooting range, there is a kitchen that woudn’t look out of place in The Savoy hotel.

     

    In the UK, the property most similar to anything Abbey has built has to be Updown Court at Windlesham in Surrey. Developed by a former bricklayer named Leslie Allen-Vercoe, the house was described by him as being: “The most important residence to be built in England since the 19th century.” Architectural critics did not agree and some went as far as to say that it looked like: “A cross between a Tesco superstore and Center Parcs.”

     

    Allen-Vercoe’s behemoth of a house is gargantuan in size. With 103 rooms it includes 24 bedrooms, 5 swimming pools, a 2-lane bowling alley, a squash court, a floodlit tennis court, a 50-seat cinema and a panic room. The heated driveway that led to the house is entirely made of marble and cost some £2.5 million to construct but plainly none of this appealed to the market as it languished for sale at a price of £70,000,000 from 2006 to 2011 before being repossessed by the Irish National Asset Management Agency (NAMA). Updown Court was sold for half the original asking price to a foreign buyer in October 2011 and is, I believe, due to undergo extensive remodeling.

     

    Updown Court, Chertsey Road, Windlesham, Surrey, GU20 6HY, UK

     

    Allen Vercoe once stated: “If Elton John were a house, he’d be Updown Court.” Equally, I imagine if Mr Abbey’s residences were to be compared to any celebrities they’d be the vulgar car crash that is Donatella Versace and the ludicrous money obsessed singer with a dollar sign in her name, Ke$ha.

     

    Updown Court, Shelter Island and The Bradbury Estate all illustrate that money cannot buy you good taste. I suppose, though, that those who ultimately come to live in them will have plenty of space to choose how and where to enjoy their own form of misery.

     

    For more information about Donald G. Abbey, go to: http://www.theabbeyco.com

     

    For information on both The Bradbury Estate and Shelter Island, contact Bob Hurwitz of the Hurwitz James Company on +1 310-477-8865. Website: http://www.hurwitzjamesco.com

     

    A website devoted to The Bradbury Estate can be viewed at: http://www.bradburyestate.com

     

    A video of Shelter Island can be watched at: http://vimeo.com/11404637

     

    For more details on Updown Court, go to: http://www.updowncourt.com/

     

  • Leonid Rozhetskin

    Leonid Rozhetskin

    He co-founded City AM and was executive producer of the 2009 film Boogie Woogie. This Russian financier and lawyer led a closeted life and disappeared in March 2008. Elements of the Russian press suggest he’s living in California under the Federal Witness Protection Program but others argue that he was the victim of foul play at the hands of the KGB. A credit card belonging to Rozhetskin, whose favoured haunts numbered The Wolseley and Nobu, was found next to a body found in woods in Latvia in August 2012.

  • Winging it

    Winging it

    Sarah Tucker gives an update on goings on at the resort where Madeleine McCann vanished

     

    Four hundred and thirty euros, one bedroom apartment, one week at the height of season at a luxury family resort in Portugal. And oh yes, it’s the Ocean Club at Praia da Luz. There’s availability with two and three bedroom apartments as well. I asked about apartment 5a where Madeleine disappeared but the PR is coming back to me on that one. That was four days ago.

     

    The Ocean Club entrance and Apartment 5A at the top of the street

    I checked this out because having looked at the comments on The Steeple Times McCann roll call entry, I wanted to know what became of the resort where she disappeared.  Last year the lady who owned the property itself couldn’t sell it because women buyers were put off by it’s history.  I don’t blame them. I would never recommend buying from a divorcing couple, no matter how good the deal, so buying somewhere where a child has been allegedly kidnapped is a no no. Estate agents will say nonsense, but that’s a woman’s superstition for you. Or a mother’s superstition.

     

    I remember writing at the time about Mark Warner, a company synonymous with a reputation for keeping parents who treated parenting as a subject to be studied to A*, not as something to leave to instinct, God forbid.  Perhaps that’s an exaggeration, but having recently vox popped over 500 parents* asking if they would leave their children in their hotel room unsupervised while they ate in a restaurant on site, none of them, not one, said they would do so. I never mentioned the McCann case. The question about childcare was mixed in with other family travel related stuff, but some even mentioned the McCann’s case when they responded.  And all claimed they would take advantage of a babysitting service if it was offered or eat earlier and with the kids if it wasn’t.

     

    I was asked at the time if I would ever leave my son alone. I never have. Too risky and having lost him for ten minutes in the salubrious area that is East Sheen high street at five in the afternoon five years ago, because I refused to wait for him to tie up his shoe lace for the nth time, and getting no less than eighteen other men and women, all who had been either waiting for buses, serving or being served in shops, or in several cases drinking in the local pub, to run up and down, shouting his name, I understand the McCann’s need to go to the end of the earth, the prime minister, the Pope, to find their daughter. I completely understand this. What I never understood was their emotional reaction or rather lack of it.    In the meantime babysitting services are still offered at the Ocean Club.

     

    * Using social media (parents of three to six year olds).

     

  • Leona Helmsley (1920 – 2007)

    Leona Helmsley (1920 – 2007)

    “The Queen of Mean” was a chain-smoking hotelier and real estate tycoon with a reputation for tyrannical behaviour. She took the view that “only the little people pay taxes” but was investigated and convicted of federal income tax evasion in 1989. Sentenced to 16 years, she served just 19 months in prison and 2 months under house arrest. Worth some $8 billion, Helmsley left her Maltese dog, Trouble, $12 million in trust.

  • John B. Goodman

    John B. Goodman

    John B. Goodman sold his family business, Goodman Manufacturing, for $1.43 billion in 2004 and founded the International Polo Club Palm Beach. This socialite and protégé of the $7 billion Ponzi-schemer Sir Allan Stanford, claimed: “I don’t know what happened” when put on trial for smashing his Bentley into a Hyundai driven by Scott Wilson in 2010. Bizarrely, he attempted to adopt his girlfriend as his daughter to save his fortune and after spending years under house, John Goodman was finally jailed for 16 years for killing Wilson in December 2014. Here is a case of an individual some called a “generous and decent man” who truly screwed up.

     

  • Benjamin McKenzie (born Benjamin McKenzie Schenkkan)

    Benjamin McKenzie (born Benjamin McKenzie Schenkkan)

    The nephew of Pulitzer-Prize winning playright Robert Schenkkan is best known for having played The O.C.’s Ryan Attwood, a troubled teenager and outcast who is given a second chance and a life of luxury in Newport, California by the rich Cohen family. One of his best lines in the series, which concluded in 2007, was: “You know what I like about rich kids? [punches another character] Nothing.” He’s since excelled as a rookie police officer in the NBC drama Southland and is most definitely one to watch.

  • Gerry & Kate McCann

    Gerry & Kate McCann

    Their daughter Madeleine disappeared on the evening 3rd May 2007 from a holiday apartment whilst they sat enjoying tapas with a bunch of friends. Some believe the poor child was kidnapped. Others have alternative theories. A public fund to find “Maddie” raised hundreds of thousands of pounds but Mrs McCann’s book, Madeleine, contains so many references to trips on private jets and meeting famous people that it makes one question whether the search for the child or fame has become the focus.

  • Gina Rinehart

    Gina Rinehart

    Whatever she does, “The House of Hancock comes first.” This little known Australian daughter of a bush pilot and prospector is now the world’s richest woman with a worth of some £18 billion. Known as the “Iron Lady,” twice-married Rinehart’s fortune is expanding at a rate of £21,000 a second and if this continues this larger than life lady will be the richest person on the planet. When Prince Philip met her he asked if she’d been invited simply because she had “the largest hat in Western Australia.” Her father called her his “right-hand man” and “young fella” and she’s even taken on three of her own children in court. The Hancock Mountain Range is named after her and commemorates her family’s contribution to mining in the Pilbara region.