In the late 1950s, dedicated traditionalist architect Gerard Colcord designed a charming Cape Cod-ish Country Colonial style residence on three contiguous beachfront lots along Malibu’s perennially coveted and yet rapidly eroding and, hence, oxymoronic Broad Beach. Other Hollywood homeowners who endure the encroaching ocean behind a towering rock revetment that runs almost the entire length of the beach include Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman, Pierce Brosnan, Steven Spielberg, Steve Levitan, Dustin Hoffman, Michael Ovitz and Ray Romano.
The gated and fortified spread once belonged to Neil Simon, but for the past dozen or more years it’s been owned, per property records we peeped, by Susan Disney Lord. Her grandfather, Roy O. Disney, was Walt Disney’s brother and, in addition to running the Roy and Patricia Disney Family Foundation, she owns the freshly refurbished Bel Air Bar + Grill, where a lobster club sammie runs $24 and side of skinny fries goes for six bucks.
Miz Disney Lord first and unsuccessfully attempted to sell the property in 2009 and 2010, when it popped up on the market at $28 million. In the spring of 2013, it returned to the open market at a much lower, but in hindsight still too high, $24 million. By the fall, the price had been hacked to $19.95 million, and in May the show business royal finally quietly sold the place for $18 million. The buyer’s identity is shielded behind a trust, but well-connected real estate yenta Yolanda Yakketyyak swears it’s Mel Gibson’s long-suffering but clearly quite wealthy ex-wife Robyn Gibson, who owns another beachfront house, in a gated enclave about six miles east along the Pacific Coast Highway, which she — probably not coincidentally — put on the market in late April for a bit more than $6.5 million.
The three lots total more than three-quarters of an acre, with more than 100 feet of beachfront and, according to listing details, the 4,883-square-foot house has four bedrooms and 5.5 bathrooms plus a separate guesthouse. Glass doors along the back of the house open to salt spray-splashed living and entertainment spaces that include a double-decked terrace connected by a corkscrew staircase. Set further back from the beach, next to the red brick courtyard at the front of the house, a muscularly constructed open-air pavilion has a fireplace and a full audio-visual setup.
