Ex-Police Chief Stakes Out Beach

STING, who has enjoyed successful music and acting careers since coming to prominence in the 1970s as singer and songwriter of the Police, has purchased a Malibu home for about $6 million, sources say.

Sting, 45, has won numerous Grammy Awards, including best male pop vocal performance in 1987 and 1993 and he has appeared in more than a dozen films as well as in the 1989 Broadway revival of “The Threepenny Opera.”

He is also a popular solo artist who regularly gives concerts and is an activist who has done concert tours benefiting Amnesty International and the Brazilian rain forest.

He has six children, including four by his current wife, Trudie, and they have a number of homes, including a 30-room manor in his native England; a place in New York; and a house in Malibu that he bought for about $1 million from Barbra Streisand in 1985.

Sting’s new Malibu home was built in the 1920s and was completely redesigned in the 1980s. The house, which faces the ocean, has six bedrooms and a projection room in 8,000 square feet plus separate guest quarters and a pool.

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BRUCE WILLIS and DEMI MOORE have leased their Malibu house at $50,000-plus a month for the summer, sources say.

Producer-director Norman Lear recently had rented the house for a month, and other tenants have signed one-month leases for July and August, sources said.

The house has been on the market for about a year. Now priced at $7 million, it was listed originally at $8 million, sources say.

Willis completely refurbished the house, built in 1948. It has a two-story living room; projection room, five bedrooms, two offices and 70 feet of beachfront with an oceanfront pool and lawn.

Willis bought the house for a bit more than $2 million in 1987, the year he and Moore were married. Since then, he bought a New York penthouse for $8 million; land and commercial buildings in Penns Grove, N.J., near his home town of Carney’s Point, and a couple of houses, a strip of stores and a theater in Hailey, Idaho, where Willis has said he wants to raise his three children. The family has a home on 40 acres outside of Hailey, and they also own 800 acres and a ski resort nearby.

Willis, 42, played himself in a guest starring role in May on the NBC sitcom “Mad About You,” and he is due to star in Disney’s upcoming $100-million sci-fi fantasy adventure, “Armageddon.” Moore, 34, became the highest-paid actress in Hollywood when she received $12.5 million for starring in “Striptease” (1996).

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BARBARA BECK, co-anchor of “The KTLA Morning News,” has purchased a house in the eastern part of the Hollywood Hills and is selling her former home, overlooking the Sunset Strip, so she can be closer to where she boards her horses, sources say.

“The KTLA Morning News” is about to celebrate its sixth birthday and during most of that time, it has ranked No. 1 in L.A. The conversational style of the program has been copied in cities throughout the U.S.

Beck, previously a news anchor in Miami and Biloxi, Miss., bought a three-bedroom 3,000-square-foot house for about $500,000 plus a park-like adjoining lot for $75,000, sources said. Built in 1946, the Tudor-style house is in a neighborhood of what have been described as “charming older homes.”

She listed her two-bedroom Sunset Strip-area home at $629,000. It’s a refurbished Mediterranean, built in 1937, with city-to-ocean views.

Rod Ostrom and Carl Romeo, both of the John Aaroe & Associates in the Pacific Design Center, had the listing on the house and lot that Beck bought, and Sharon Alden of Nourmand & Associates, Beverly Hills, represented Beck and has the listing on her former home.

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The Holmby Hills home of the late MARION NASSOUR MALOUF, a major fund-raiser for 20 charitable organizations and an heiress of the Mode O’Day clothing store fortune, has been sold for about $8.5 million, sources have said.

Malouf died in May at 82. She helped to found the ARCS (Achievement Rewards for College Scientists) Foundation, which has raised nearly $20 million for college scholarships, and she was a founding member of the Los Angeles County Music Center.

Born in Colorado Springs, Colo., she moved to Los Angeles as a teenager. One of her sisters married her husband’s brother and another married his cousin, and the three women became well known in L.A. charitable circles as “the Maloufs.” The Malouf family had founded Mode O’Day in 1935.

Marion Malouf was also known for growing prized cymbidium orchids on half an acre in the backyard of her two-acre home. She regularly provided 800 blooms for table decorations for the annual Orchid Ball, a fund-raiser for the National Arts Assn., which she helped to found.

Built in 1949, Malouf’s 9,200-square-foot house has five bedrooms plus a guest house, reached by way of a long drive. The new owner, a Beverly Hills businessman, plans to restore the house and build a tennis court.

Bruce Nelson of John Bruce Nelson & Associates and Joe Coons of Hilton & Hyland Real Estate represented the estate, and June Scott and Richard Minchenberg of June Scott Estates, a Jon Douglas Co., represented the buyer.

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SHEL STARKMAN was a production designer working on the sets of 1950s MGM movies when he started planning his castle in Bel-Air. Now his castle is completed and is on the market at $3.7 million.

Starkman, in his 60s and retired from the movie business, started work on the project about 1990. It was going to be his personal residence, but he lost it, half built, through foreclosure during the recession. Because it was his design, the new owners hired him to finish the job.

The French Normandy-style house, which has elements of castles that Starkman saw on his European travels, sits on more than an acre with views of the city, ocean and the new Getty Museum. The five-level 8,000-square-foot house has a screening room, slate roof, stone walls, a rotunda and guest house.

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JALEN ROSE, a point guard with the Indiana Pacers, and CHRIS WEBBER, a forward with the Washington Bullets, have leased a five-bedroom Hollywood Hills house for five months at $7,500 a month. The house has city views and a pool.

Rose and Webber, both 24, were roommates at the University of Michigan. They plan to work out together during summer training in Los Angeles, sources said.

Jocelyn Johnson of Fred Sands’ Brentwood office represented the basketball players.