17th-Century Villa for Diva

Singer/actress ANNA MARIA ALBERGHETTI has sold her Benedict Canyon home of 25 years and is in Italy, making plans to restore a 17th-Century home there that she bought a few months ago.

Alberghetti, who won a best-actress Tony in 1961 for her performance in “Carnival,” has appeared frequently with symphony orchestras and on national TV since she made her debut at Carnegie Hall at the age of 13, when she and her family moved to Beverly Hills.

Born in Italy, the operatic soprano also made several movies, including “10,000 Bedrooms” with Dean Martin in 1956 and “Cinderfella” with Jerry Lewis in 1960. Most of her films were made before she was married in 1964.

Now, at 56 and the divorced mother of two grown daughters, Alberghetti will play the diva who loses her voice in the Maury Yestin/Arthur Kopit version of “Phantom,” to open Aug. 25 at the Casa Manana theater in Fort Worth, Tex.

She sold her Beverly Hills area home for about $1.5 million, according to a longtime friend, Faye Nuell Mayo. The 6,800-square-foot, red brick home is about 50 years old.

“She put her stuff in storage and is meeting with architects about doing a serious restoration of the home just outside of Rome,” Mayo said. “She hasn’t made any decisions about buying anything here, but this will still be her home base.”

Her younger daughter, Pilar, is a student in Italy, and her older daughter, Alexandra, is an assistant director in the Los Angeles area, where Alberghetti’s mother, brother and sister also live.

Actress JACLYN SMITH--who just finished filming the NBC movie “Kindred Spirits,” to be aired in the fall--has put her Bel-Air home on the market at $3,695,000.

The home, which she bought in 1980, has about six bedrooms, including two maids’ suites and a guest wing with a living room and bath. There is also a room with a bath and a kitchenette below the first level.

The home, which is on an acre behind gates and has a view from downtown Los Angeles to the ocean, was built in 1936 for stand-up comic Phil Baker. It was later owned by Air Force Chief of Staff, General Curtis LeMay.

After she bought it in 1980, Smith totally refurbished and expanded it, from 5,400 to about 7,000 square feet.

Last month, she bought another Bel-Air home, which is better equipped--with such features as a tennis court--for her two children, born after she had acquired the house that is for sale.

That home is co-listed with Barbara Ostrow of Asher Dann & Associates and Constance Chestnut and Chris Forest of Jack Hupp & Associates, who represented Smith in the purchase of her new home.

The Holmby Hills home of the late IRENE DUNNE, one of the top film stars of the 1930s and 1940s--who died in 1990, has been sold for about $3 million, and the house directly next door, owned since the 1940s by the Ohrbach department-story family, has been sold for about half of its original $10.5-million asking price, sources say.

Both houses were on the market for about a year, and both houses were built in the 1930s, though the Ohrbach house was gutted in 1968 and remodeled at an estimated cost of $2 million.

The Ohrbach house, which had the first tennis court in Holmby Hills, was built for actress Barbara Stanwyck and actor Robert Taylor.

The Dunne house had been listed by Gertrude Key and Phyllis Avery, Jon Douglas Co.; its buyers were represented by Judy Leach and Scarlet Nunes, with the same firm.

The Ohrbach home had been listed by Cecelia Waeschle and Joyce Rey, Prudential Rodeo Realty; its buyers were represented by Lea Lipman and Alexandra Kalin of Fred Sands’ Beverly Hills Estates office.

A Brentwood home built in the 1940s but totally refurbished in the past few months by its former owner, designer/developer LINDA TATUM, has been sold for close to its $4.69 asking price.

Tatum not only remodeled the home but added on nearly 8,000 square feet. When she was finished, the house had close to 11,000 square feet of interior space, including a cabana, and it’s on an acre, with a tennis court.

Linda Curie and Greysha Gordon-Love, with Jon Douglas Co.’s Brentwood office, had the listing.

The former BING CROSBY estate in Rancho Santa Fe has come on the market at $7.5 million.

Crosby and his first family spent time there mainly during the 1930s, when he and a few of his Hollywood cronies built the race track at Del Mar, and his name is written in the cement of the pool house.

The 12.22-acre property also has a two-bedroom guest house, which was the original Osuna Ranch house. It has some walls that are almost 3 feet thick and 150 years old.

It has a 6,600-square-foot house that was built in the 1920s but was recently remodeled to include a sauna and two fireplaces in the master suite.

And it has a caretaker’s cottage, 5,750-square-foot stable, tennis court and black-bottom pool. Nancy Layne of Coldwell Banker, Rancho Santa Fe, has the listing.