BUYER: Simon Helberg and Jocelyn Towne
SELLER: Charlie Sheen and Brooke Mueller
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $2,900,000
SIZE: 4,179 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Exactly one week ago today–on the dreaded All Hallows Eve, when children don elaborate costumes and roam around in droves to beg their neighbors for free sweet treats–Your Mama (somewhat) briefly discussed a Los Angeles, CA residence located in the un-celebrified Koreatown neighborhood, listed at $849,000 and owned through a trust by actor Simon Helberg and his dancer turned thespian wife Jocelyn Towne.
Mister Helberg grew up up "in the business," as they say. His father Sandy Helberg is and actor and his mother Harriet Helberg a noted casting director. In the early Noughts Mister Helberg the Younger began to snag small and recurring roles in various television projects that eventually came to include Popular, MADtv, Joey and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Thanks to his current long-running and lucrative gig on the geek-fest sitcom The Big Bang Theory, Mister Helberg earned himself 2010 Teen Choice Award nominee.
Last week when we (sort of briefly) discussed Mister Helberg's house in Koreatown Your Mama had no idea to where Mister Helberg Miz Towne planned to decamp. Then, as we sometimes do, we received an unexpected and short missive from The Bizzy Boys at Celebrity Address Aerial that revealed Mister Helberg and his missus, through the same unusually named trust named on the deeds and docs for their Craftsman-style Koreatown crib, spent $2,900,000 to buy a walled and gated Mediterranean style residence tucked into the hills below Griffith Park Observatory in a low-key but upscale section of the star-stocked Los Feliz neighborhood.
Mister Helberg and Miz Towne purchased their new nestfrom none other than that wacky, "winning" actor Charlie Sheen and his third ex-wife Brooke Mueller, the also troubled-seeming mother of the youngest two of Mister Sheen's five children.*
*An anonymous tipster (Frick) and a kindly commenter (Frack) both tell us now that Mister Sheen had no financial stake in the house. The house was owned, according to Frick and Frack, by Miz Mueller and her very wealthy Palm Beach-based family who sometimes invest in real estate together.
This is not, the children should keep in mind, Mister Sheen's House of Bat Shit Crazy up in the Mulholland Estates enclave above Sherman Oaks (CA), but rather a lovely 1927 Mediterranean mini-mansion purchased for $2,575,000 and unknown purposes in November 2007, about half a year before Miss Mueller became third Missus Sheen. Much moolah was put into updating and upgrading the property. Your Mama does not know a bee knee from a camel toe so we really haven't any idea just how much they spent on the renovations but we have seen the before pictures and it's quite obvious from those photos that a significant amount of cash to have the place nipped, tucked and neatly worked over while retaining much of the original architectural ambiance.
In May 2011, not long after Mister Sheen completely lost his shit in early 2011, was fired from Two and a Half Men and replaced by Twittering actor Ashton Kutcher, the Los Feliz property was taken off the (open) market. Eventually Mister Helberg and Missus Helberg came sniffing around and property records show they purchased the house in mid-October (2011) for $2,900,000.
Listing information Your Mama teased out of out of the interweb shows the two-story house was built in 1927, measures a generous but not bloated 4,179 square feet and includes a total of 4 bedrooms and 4.5 bathrooms that include a powder pooper where at least one wall and the floor are covered in poo-colored crocodile skin or perhaps poo-colored leather stamped with a crocodile skin pattern.
Anyhoo, a double-height entrance hall with magnificent antique wood ceiling steps down to the formal living room with fireplace, wood-beamed ceiling and raised library/reading nook. Later listing photos (top) show Miz Mueller utilized the elevated reading nook/library as an ad hoc play space for her children with a zebra striped carpet, copious amounts of toys and, instead of actual sofas, scads of sofa cushions propped up against the walls. Other rooms include a formal dining room with gold patterned bordello worthy wall coverings, a sun porch/office with tree top views through a series of high arched windows, and a second floor family room with decorative tiles set into the floor like a built-in area rug.
The eat-in kitchen has a flag stone floor, large center work island with snack counter, top-grade commercial-style stainless steel appliances, and an adjoining butler's pantry/utility room. In the part of the kitchen probably intended and best suited to a breakfast table, Miz Mueller fashioned a zoo-like enclosure to contain her children and filled it with (another) zebra-print rug and a flotilla of stuffed animals.
The back of the house opens to a number terraces, patios and balconies, at least one of them covered. The terraced yard steps down to a substantial (and almost flat) lawn and a plunge-sized swimming pool surrounded by a tree-shaded sunbathing terrace and outfitted with stacked stone wall down which a thin drizzle of water trickles and simulates, we imagine, the sound of a person using the potty.
Your Mama applauds Mister Helberg's fine taste in real estate–we find the the house a smart merger between the old and the new–and we wish he and the missus a happy first holiday season in there new digs.
