‘Odd’ Man Out of Ranch Life

Three-time Emmy-winning actor JACK KLUGMAN, who last fall reprised his 1970s TV role of Oscar Madison for the CBS TV movie “The Odd Couple: Together Again,” has put his Temecula horse ranch on the market at $5 million.

“It’s kind of behind me now,” he said of the 38.6-acre El Rancho de Jaklin, where he has kept as many as 110 horses, including his prize-winning thoroughbred Jaklin. “I bought the farm (in 1980) because of him. He was very exciting, but now I just want to keep one or two horses . . . and I want to concentrate more on acting.”

Besides portraying the sloppy roommate of fastidious Felix Unger (played by Tony Randall) in “the Odd Couple” series and TV movie, Klugman, 71, starred for seven years, until 1983, as the crusading coroner in the NBC series “Quincy.”

After that, he was a regular on sitcoms, specials and the stage until he had a vocal cord removed during 1989 surgery for throat cancer, caused by smoking. Then Klugman couldn’t speak above a whisper until he worked with a voice coach.

After months of scream therapy, Klugman appeared in one Broadway performance of “The Odd Couple” and then made the TV movie, which aired last fall. Now he is about to go on tour with “The Odd Couple” to benefit Randall’s repertory company. “It will be great fun,” Klugman said. “We’ll be hopping around, going to a number of cities. I’ll see a lot of racetracks.”

He has about a dozen horses now, including Jaklin, and he plans to board out the ones he decides to keep after he sells his ranch with its 7,500-square-foot mansion, which he had built; four smaller houses; barns, paddocks, pastures, tennis court, pool and spa.

Klugman also has a beachfront condo in Malibu, where he’ll live after he sells the ranch, listed by Gene St. Amand with Coldwell Banker Johnson & Johnson, Temecula.

“I would never move out of California,” Klugman said. “It’s a wonderful place to live, even with its fires, mudslides and earthquakes. I was evacuated during the fires . . . but there must be some risks in life. When I see the ocean here, I’m just glad to be alive.”

MADONNA has sold her former residence in the Sunset Strip area for about $2 million, sources say. Escrow closed last week.

The house, where she lived for about four years before moving last fall to her new home in the Hollywood Hills, was purchased by Madonna’s tenant, producer Dan Melnick, who leased the house last November at $10,000 a month, sources said then. Melnick was a producer of the films “L.A. Story” (1991), “Roxanne” (1987) and “Footloose” (1984).

The gated, 4,500-square-foot home, with three bedrooms, was originally listed last September at just under $3 million. Madonna paid about $3 million for the home in 1989, according to public records.

Madison Offenhauser of Jon Douglas Co., Beverly Hills, had the listing, and Barry Peele of Fred Sands’ Directors Office represented Melnick.

PAUL JUNGER WITT and SUSAN HARRIS, the married-couple partners at Witt-Thomas-Harris Productions--one of the most prolific teams of producers in television--have purchased a seven-acre estate in Montecito for slightly more than $5 million, sources say.

The estate, which had been on and off the market for five years, was originally priced at $7.2 million. The house is said to be in need of a major rehab.

“It has red-flocked, velvet wallpaper in one room, lime green wallpaper in the next, and you must go through some rooms to get to others, but the house is in a nice location,” a local realtor said.

Witt-Thomas-Harris, which includes Tony Thomas as a partner, has been responsible for such hit TV shows as “Golden Girls,” “Blossom” and “Empty Nest.”

Harris was in dire financial straits as a single mother one year short of a college degree and no job history when she wrote and sold an unsolicited sitcom episode in 1970. Since then, she created, wrote and produced “Golden Girls,” “The Golden Palace,” “Nurses” and other shows, winning an Emmy in the process.

Besides co-producing his company’s shows, Witt, who married Harris in 1983 and is the father of her second child, produced the TV movie “Blossom in Paris” (1993), “The John Larroquette Show” TV series, “Final Analysis” (1992) and “Dead Poets Society” (1989).

Former syndicated talk-show host and singer MIKE DOUGLAS has put his Beverly Hills house on the market at $2.3 million.

The 7,000-square-foot home has five bedrooms plus maid’s quarters, a pool and a five-car garage. The French Country-style home was completely rehabbed a few years ago.

Douglas and his wife have lived there for about six years but are looking for a home in the same neighborhood with a larger yard for their dogs, said listing agent Bruce Nelson of John Bruce Nelson & Associates, Beverly Hills.