SELLER: Sir Alan Parker
LOCATION: Los Angeles, Calif.
PRICE: $4.25 million
SIZE: 2,525 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms
YOUR MAMA’S NOTES: An English Country-style cottage just above L.A.’s always swinging Sunset Strip and owned per property records by esteemed filmmaker Alan Parker has popped up for sale on the open market with an asking price of $4.25 million. Property records show Sir Parker purchased the property way back in late 1987 for $840,000 from the actress Loretta Swit, best known as the steely and sultry “Hot Lips” Houlihan in the long-running 1970s and early ’80s series “MASH.”
Set behind a tall red brick wall and a towering thicket of trees and shrubs on an essentially triangular-shaped parcel on a celeb-lined street just above the Sunset Strip, the traditionally dressed two-bathroom house measures in at a fairly modest 2,525 square feet, according to online marketing materials, and includes a living room with beam-lined ceilings, fireplace, hardwood floors and French doors. A large and fully carpeted home office could easily be converted to another use like, say, a media room, and there are four bedrooms including a master with second fireplace and a paltry sliver of a city view seen through a teardrop shaped opening in a dense clump of trees.
Some of the other homes in Sir Parker’s immediate vicinity are owned by high-profile showbiz peeps who include ever-fabulous entertainer and all-around international icon Diana Ross, Red Hot Chili Pepper frontman Anthony Kiedis — whose quirky pad is currently up for grabs at $4.295 million — and music manager and producer Scooter Braun, whose sleek and contemporary mansion is currently listed at $10.9 million. (Mister B. and his young family decamped for a gated compound in Brentwood bought last year for a hair more than $13 million from showbiz bigwig Stacey Snider.)
The English writer-director-producer — a former advertising copy writer, commercial director and occasional novelist who was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2002 — may not be a tip-of-the-tongue name for traditional gossip glossy and tabloid blog readers, but make no mistake, butter beans, Mister Parker is an accomplished and respected filmmaker whose films have raked in almost 20 BAFTAS and nearly two dozen Oscars and Golden Globes. In addition to a slew of cinematic musical classics such as “Bugsy Malone,” “Fame,” “Pink Floyd The Wall,” and “Evita” — the latter of which he wrote — he’s also directed a good number of acclaimed real-life dramas that include “Midnight Express,” “Mississippi Burning” and “Angela’s Ashes.”
Listing photos: Hilton & Hyland