Living in bohemian rhapsody
Hayne House Topanga, a sophisticated bohemian retreat, is on the market, but to Oingo Boingo fans, it will forever belong to Danny Elfman.
Elfman, the composer of scores for TV shows (“The Simpsons,” “Desperate Housewives”) and movies (“Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” “Spider-Man”), was lead singer-guitarist-composer of the rock band for 11 of the 16 years he owned the home.
He bought it in 1984 and, a year later, scored “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure,” his first commercially successful film. Elfman was living in the house when he won a Grammy for the theme of the 1989 film “Batman.” After Oingo Boingo disbanded in 1995, Elfman spent even more time composing at home.
Elfman, now married to actress Bridget Fonda, worked with musicians who came visiting. Some made recordings in his studio and stayed in an adjacent house he had purchased for guests.
In 2000, Elfman sold the home to a buyer who never moved in, said interior designer Hillary Jane Hayne. She now owns the main house with her husband, Robbin, an architect. The guesthouse was sold separately.
“The house was in bad shape when we bought it,” the designer said. “The flow of the house was fragmented and funky. The grounds needed to be re-landscaped. The kitchen was hardly functional.”
Elfman, 53, had renovated the home in the ‘80s, but the kitchen looked dated to Hayne, who enlarged it and added an extra-wide Sub-Zero refrigerator, freezer drawers, a built-in espresso machine and a Viking six-burner stove with a barbecue.
There are lots of stairs inside and outside the house, some leading up to the street, others leading down to a year-round creek. An oak tree grows up through the center of the house, which had only two bedrooms and one bathroom in 2,000 square feet when it was built in 1940. It was later expanded.
“It was an odd house,” said the designer, whose changes included new uses for Elfman’s rooms. (For example, she said, the spa had been his recording studio.)
As what she termed “an ode to Danny,” Hayne left untouched a ceiling mural by a local artist.
Asking price: $3,895,000
Size: Five bedrooms and seven bathrooms in 4,680 square feet. The lot size is 32,525 square feet.
Features: Waterfalls, canyon and mountain views, a stone fireplace in the living room, another fireplace in the library, a media room, a barbecue area, a master-bedroom suite with a sitting area, fireplace, soaking tub and creek-side spa, kitchen cabinets made of salvaged tobacco-shed wood and smoked mirror, electronic gates that open to a two-car carport with separate stairs down to the house, new electrical systems and a new septic tank.
Where: Topanga Canyon
Listing agents: Sarah Sutton, (310) 463-0311, and Drew Snyder, (310) 864-7123, of Sotheby’s International Realty, Pacific Palisades; and Chris Cortazzo, (310) 589-2472, and Susan Saul, (310) 589-2487, both of Coldwell Banker, Malibu.