The home sold three days after it had been listed at $3.3 million; there were multiple offers.
By Ruth Ryon, Los Angeles Times • November 14, 1999
TV and film producer Michael Manheim, who won an Emmy for NBC’s “Roe vs. Wade” (1989), and his wife, screenwriter Janus Cercone, have sold a Malibu horse property that they refurbished after buying it in 1996.
The home sold three days after it had been listed at $3.3 million; there were multiple offers.
Manheim and Cercone enjoy buying, refurbishing and reselling properties; however, Cercone said, “it takes us a long time to find a project.” The couple previously redid a beach house that had belonged to a silent movie star.
At the horse property, she said, “we had taken the buildings down to the studs.” The 1.5-acre property, in Serra Retreat, was part of studio chief Darryl Zanuck’s polo-pony ranch in the ’20s. It has a main house, a riding ring, a barn and guest quarters.
The sellers are in New York, where Manheim has been working on the James Woods movie “Dirty Pictures,” scheduled to be broadcast on Showtime in May.
Cercone, who wrote the screenplay for Manheim’s co-production of the Steve Martin-Debra Winger movie “Leap of Faith” (1992), has been working on the stage play “Dead And in Person,” due to open in New York next spring.
Claudia Beck, with Coldwell Banker Previews in Brentwood, had the listing; Jeff Chertow of the same firm in Malibu was the selling agent.