Comedian Really Knows Her Trade

CAROL BURNETT has exchanged her Century City house for a Wilshire condo in what has been described as “basically an even trade.” Each home is valued at about $3 million.

The actress and comedian is redecorating the condo, a penthouse, with the help of a designer friend who did the interiors of Burnett’s new Santa Fe residence.

Burnett, who earned a Tony nomination last year for her performance in the Broadway comedy “Moon Over Buffalo,” was still awaiting the birth of her first grandchild at presstime, but she was expecting to be a presenter today at the Golden Globe Awards.

Burnett, 63, has won Golden Globe, Peabody and Emmy awards and is in the TV Hall of Fame. During a time when variety shows were disappearing from television, “The Carol Burnett Show” survived from 1967 to 1979 and even longer in reruns.

Last fall, she played Helen Hunt’s mother last November on the NBC sitcom “Mad About You.”

“Carol plans to do more of these [‘Mad About You’ segments], but we don’t know exactly when yet,” said Deborah Kelman, Burnett’s publicist.

In the meantime, Burnett is decorating her Wilshire penthouse with her friend of 20 years, designer Anita Ludovici De Domenico. “We both love creating homes. It’s really her hobby,” De Domenico said.

Burnett is anxious to move into her new space, said De Domenico, who hopes to finish it in mid-March.

Burnett owned her Century City home--a 6,000-square-foot detached villa in a gated community--for eight years.

“She had the house there for sale for quite a while, and she was beginning to get frustrated,” Kelman said. “Then she found the condo and fell in love with it. She was happy when they [the sellers] were willing to take her house in trade . . . so she swapped them.”

The penthouse is smaller but newer and “far more glamorous,” said Stephen L. Moore of the Prudential-Jon Douglas Co., who handled the deal and has represented Burnett in three other real estate transactions.

The penthouse has three bedrooms, two fireplaces and a private elevator in 3,500 square feet. Situated in a high-rise built about five years ago, the unit also has city-to-ocean views.

De Domenico is decorating the penthouse in taupes, blacks and creams, aiming for a look she describes as “Parisian chic” or “simple elegance.”

SYLVESTER STALLONE, who moved his main residence a couple of years ago to Miami, has sold his Beverly Hills-area home back to billionaire financier Kirk Kerkorian, from whom the actor had purchased the house about six years ago, sources say.

Last fall, Kerkorian, who owns a stake in the MGM Grand hotel and casino in Las Vegas and Australia’s Seven Network, successfully backed a management buyout bid for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which he previously owned, all or in part, twice earlier. Kerkorian is 79.

Stallone, 50, stars in the movie “Daylight,” released in December, and “Copland,” due out in August.

He sold his five-bedroom, 8,400-square-foot house on 11 acres to Kerkorian for about $5.2 million, sources say. Escrow closed this month.

Stallone is said to have paid Kerkorian $5.7 million for the house in December 1990. Stallone had leased the home for three years before buying it.

The Spanish-style home was then the main house on Kerkorian’s 31-acre estate, which the financier once listed at $25 million. That was after he had sold another part of the estate to entertainer-turned-U.S. congressman Sonny Bono (R-Palm Springs), who also wound up selling what he had purchased back to the financier.

When he owned the Spanish-syle house, built in 1981, Stallone added a movie theater and turned a garage into an artist’s studio, in which he often painted late into the night. The 11-acre parcel that Stallone owned also has a tennis court, eight-hole putting green, pool and gym.

Stallone had listed the property last April at $5.5 million. He paid about $6 million for his Miami home and then spent a couple of million dollars in improvements, sources say. He is also said to have a home in Malibu and some land in Kauai.

He recently expressed interest in living in England, following a foiled break-in attempt in Miami.

GLENN QUINN, who plays Mark on the ABC sitcom “Roseanne,” has purchased a Hollywood Hills house for $500,000, sources say. Quinn, 26, recently opened a piano lounge called Goldfingers in the Yucca-Wilcox area of Hollywood.

Quinn’s new home was built in 1994 and has city-to-ocean views and a stairway descending almost 40 feet from the front door into the two-story living room. The three-bedroom home is about 2,500 square feet. Quinn had been renting in Laurel Canyon.

Ron Holliman of the Prudential-Jon Douglas Co., Beverly Hills, represented the sellers, an investment banker and his wife, who moved with their two children to a larger house in Santa Monica.

A Beverly Hills house owned for only five months by the butler of late tobacco heiress Doris Duke has been listed at just under $2.5 million.

The butler, Bernard Lafferty, died in November at age 51. He had purchased the home in June for $2.4 million after settling with Duke’s estate in May for a $4.5-million executor’s fee and a $500,000 annual bequest.

Built in 1990, the house, on about 1.6 acres, has seven bedrooms in 11,000 square feet. It also has a screening room, three wet bars, an art gallery, elevator, motor court, pool and waterfall.

Proceeds from the sale will be returned to the Doris Duke Foundation, sources say. Duke died in 1993 at age 80, leaving a $1.2-billion estate.

Sid Kibrick has the listing at Fred Sands Estates, directors office, Beverly Hills.

The town of Gorman in northern Los Angeles County, a stagecoach stop in the 1800s, has come on the market again, this time at about $4.2 million.

“Neil Diamond could have gotten a whole town for what he paid for his Beverly Hills house (Hot Property, Jan. 12),” said listing broker Ron Blevins of the Gorman Real Estate Co.

The unincorporated town, along Interstate 5 near the Tejon Pass, includes a 10,000-square-foot SOMETHING, a 1.4-acre retail center, about 18 acres of other commercial properties, 77 acres with a tentative tract map for residential development and 2,700 acres of ranch land.