‘Dream’ Home in Brentwood

Actress Michelle Pfeiffer and her husband, writer-producer-director David E. Kelley, have purchased a Brentwood home for $15 million, Realtors say.

Designed by architect Paul Williams for a Kansas City oilman and built in the 1940s, the traditional-style home, on slightly more than two acres, has six bedrooms in an estimated 7,500 square feet.

The selling price was high because the estate, which was not officially listed, is on one of the most desirable streets in Brentwood and the property is large for the Westside.

Pfeiffer, 42, co-starred with Bruce Willis in “The Story of Us” (1999). She played Titania in the movie “William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (1999). In 1996, she co-starred with Robert Redford in “Up Close and Personal,” co-starred with George Clooney in “One Fine Day” and played a ghost in “To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday,” written and produced by Kelley.

He and Pfeiffer were married in 1993.

The multiple Emmy-winning Kelley recently signed a deal, said to be worth as much as $300 million, with Fox Broadcasting and Fox Television. Fox hopes to get up to four new series from Kelley on the air during the next five years.

Kelley, 44, has announced one new series for which he will be the writer, executive producer and creator. Called “Boston Public,” the comedy-drama about high school teachers will air this fall.

Kelley also created, writes and produces the TV series “Ally McBeal,” “The Practice” and “Chicago Hope.” He created, wrote and produced “Picket Fences” (1992-96), and he wrote the hockey movie “Mystery, Alaska” (1999).

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Prominent L.A. developer Rob Maguire has purchased a Westside home designed by architect A. Quincy Jones for about $9 million.

Maguire, who developed some of the largest office buildings in Los Angeles before suffering a setback during the recession, just started construction on his first new office project in eight years: a four-story building on Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica.

Using his $100-million share of the proceeds from the $360-million MGM Plaza sale in March, Maguire also plans to increase his ownership stake in Playa Vista, the massive West Los Angeles project that he spearheaded in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s before becoming a minority partner, and he plans to increase his interest in some buildings in downtown L.A.

Maguire, 65, bought a 7,400-square-foot house that is on slightly more than three acres and has a master suite plus four bedrooms and two guest suites. The home also has a screening room, gardens, a pool and city views. The house was built in 1965.

Maguire is hiring architect Frederick Fisher, a self-described “huge fan” of the late A. Quincy Jones, to design the remodel. Fisher’s offices are in a West L.A. building designed and built as offices for Jones almost 45 years ago.

Constance Chesnut of Coldwell Banker’s Beverly Hills North office had the listing on Maguire’s new home.

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Actress Ellen Barkin, who has headed east to spend more time with her fiance, Revlon mogul Ronald O. Perelman, has sold her Beverly Hills-area home for slightly more than its $2-million asking price.

Barkin next appears in “Crime + Punishment in Suburbia,” due out in September.

The Emmy-winning actress, 45, co-starred in the HBO movie “Mercy,” which aired in February, and was featured this month at the 24th San Francisco International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival. She played a heterosexual detective who teams up with a lesbian. Barkin played the mother of a beauty contestant in “Drop Dead Gorgeous” (1999).

Barkin owned her Beverly Hills-area home for several years. Built in 1941, the Cape Cod-style house had been remodeled.

It has three bedrooms, 4.5 baths, three fireplaces, rolling lawns and a pool.

Ed Fitz of Nourmand & Associates, Beverly Hills, had the listing.

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Ian White-Thomson, Los Angeles Opera’s newly appointed executive director, and his wife, Barbara, have put their South Pasadena home on the market at just under $2.2 million.

White-Thomson, 64, is former chairman and chief executive of U.S. Borax Inc.

“People may well wonder what a retired mining executive is doing running an opera company,” he has said. “[However,] the experience I bring from my days with Borax in terms of strategic planning, relationship building and management is exactly what this job entails.”

White-Thomson, a native of England who was graduated from Oxford before he became a U.S. citizen in 1983, and his wife decided to sell their home because their four children are grown, and the couple wants to downsize, they have said. They also have a retreat in Santa Fe.

Known as Wynyate (Welsh for vineyard), their South Pasadena home, on two acres, stands on a hill that once looked over grapevines and apricot and peach trees. There is a lemon eucalyptus in the yard that was planted by naturalist John Muir.

The Queen Anne Victorian was built of redwood in 1887, one year before incorporation of the city of South Pasadena, for Donald M. Graham, who became the first mayor of South Pasadena.

The 2.5-story, 3,500-square-foot house has four bedrooms, two baths and a library. The grounds have a pool, tennis court, guest house and detached three-car garage. The house also has fish-scale shingles, chimneys of contrasting designs, curved balconies and bay windows.

The home is available through Garrison Key, Key Properties, West Hollywood.

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Ken Zahner, founder and co-owner of Academy Records (which produces and distributes classical-piano CDs and accompanying music books) and co-founder of Cardwood Bolt Productions (a theatrical producer), couldn’t find exactly what he wanted in a house, so he bought an interim place in West Hollywood for $725,000.

The day after escrow closed, the entrepreneur, in his 30s, found the house he wanted above the Sunset Strip and bought it for just under $1.1 million.

That house was built in the 1950s and has four bedrooms, a guest house, den, office, pool and city views.

Zahner is also an executive of a commercial real estate development and property management company in Burbank whose tenants include Universal MCA Records, Walt Disney Co. and Time Warner Communications.

The West Hollywood house was sold by Fujiko Yamashita, chief financial officer of SimEX Digital Studios in Santa Monica, founded in 1994 by her son, Allen Yamashita, and Nick Bates. It is a computer-animation, graphics and digital-imagery studio.

Rick Chimienti of DBL Estates, Beverly Hills, represented Zahner in his purchases, and he represented Yamashita in selling the West Hollywood house.

Annie Constantinesco of Westside Estate Agency, Beverly Hills, had the listing on the Sunset Strip-area home.

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Did you miss Thursday’s Hot Property column in Southern California Living? Want to see previous columns on celebrity real estate transactions? Visit https://www.latimes.com/hotproperty on the Internet for more Hot Properties.