Mogul.com @ $20-Million Site

Billionaire PAUL ALLEN, co-founder of Microsoft Corp., has purchased a 120-acre Beverly Hills-area estate for about $20 million, sources say.

Allen, 44, has offices in Bellevue, Wash., across Lake Washington from Seattle, and he is a major investor in DreamWorks SKG, the Hollywood studio founded by entertainment moguls Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen.

Allen is on the DreamWorks board of directors and is expected to have a say in company strategy as it develops multimedia and interactive entertainment projects.

He left Microsoft, which he founded 22 years ago with Bill Gates, in 1983, after being found to have Hodgkin’s disease. Two years later, after the disease went into remission, Allen started his own software company, Asymetrix, and then made a number of other investments, including a stake in the NBA’s Portland Trail Blazers.

A guitar player, Allen broke ground in June on his $60-million interactive music museum in Seattle, focusing on the late rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix.

Allen, a bachelor, owns a six-acre estate on Mercer Island in Washington state, where he built an 1,800-square-foot house for his mother and a mansion for himself, complete with a $6-million sports complex including a full-size basketball court, 20-seat theater and art gallery.

He plans to renovate an existing 10,000-square-foot house on the Beverly Hills-area property he just purchased, sources say. The house has a library, butler’s pantry, three-bedroom staff quarters, second bedroom, den, sewing room and master suite with a deck with city and canyon views. The site also has a guest house, stables and chauffeur’s quarters.

Designed by the late architect Wallace Neff, the Spanish Colonial Revival-style home was built in the 1920s for cowboy actor Fred Thomson and his Oscar-winning screenwriter wife, Francis Marion. The estate has had an absentee owner for many years.

Allen bought producer-director John Landis’ Beverly Hills home in April for $9 million, sources have said. That house is expected to be his local quarters until he completes work on his larger Beverly Hills-area estate. Landis’ house was formerly owned by actor Rock Hudson.

Jeff Hyland of Hilton & Hyland, Beverly Hills, had the listing, and Julie Jones and Christine Tittel, both of the Prudential-Jon Douglas Co. office on Sunset Strip, represented Allen, other sources said.

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Actor CARY GRANT’S longtime Palm Springs home has been listed at about $900,000.

It has been owned for the last nine years by FRANK ZANE, several times a former Mr. Olympia and Mr. Universe, and his wife, Christine, also a multi-title body-builder. He is in his early 50s; she is in her 40s.

The home is being sold partly furnished, including movie posters and photos said to have been left when Grant sold the house. Grant, who died in 1986, owned the home from 1964 to 1972, sources say. It was built in 1930.

After the Zanes bought it, they used the Spanish-style home on 1.5 acres as a residence and to promote their weight-training sessions and seminars on topics ranging from nutrition to stress management and meditation.

They turned a recreation room into a gym and, for a while, offered some guest accommodations. “Now they’re ready to go to a new area,” said listing broker Scott Lyle of Palm Springs.

The Spanish-style home has six bedrooms, five baths and five fireplaces in 5,000 square feet. There is a pool with a spa in the courtyard between the main house and two guest houses.

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The Bel-Air home of the late DAVID VICTOR, the Emmy-winning producer of the popular TV series “Marcus Welby, M.D.” (1970s) and “Dr. Kildare” (1960s), has been sold for slightly more than $1 million, sources say.

Victor, who died in 1989 at 79, was also a TV writer and a producer of such other well-known series as “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” and “Owen Marshall, Counselor at Law.” He was survived by his wife, Florence, who has moved to smaller quarters.

The Victors had owned the home for 32 years. Built in 1951, the house is 3,400 square feet and has a large swimming pool and a cabana.

Linda Schermer of the Prudential-Jon Douglas Co., Beverly Hills, had the listing, and Evelyne Bostok of John Aaroe & Associates, Pacific Design Center, represented the buyer, a Westside businessman.

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Panacea Entertainment chief ERIC GARDNER and his wife, Janis, have put their Los Feliz home of about 15 years on the market at just under $2.7 million. They are planning to move to the Hidden Hills area.

As a graduate student at Columbia University, Gardner founded Panacea in 1971 as a rock ‘n’ roll tour coordination company, with such clients as the Grateful Dead. Later, Panacea shifted to artist management. The company also now represents multimedia rights to such TV properties as “The Ed Sullivan Show” and is planning to produce a movie based on Timothy Leary’s autobiography.

The three-story, walled and gated Los Feliz house has seven bedrooms, a solarium, music room and four fireplaces in 9,500 square feet. Built in the 1920s on a hill with city-to-ocean views, the home also has a 2,000-square-foot guest apartment, a fish pond and fountains.

Jodi Hodges of Fred Sands Realtors, Hillhurst office, has the listing.

A seven-bedroom 15,000-square-foot Malibu home has been listed at $29.5 million.

It is owned by Karen and Bill O’Connor. She is one of five children of the late Charles King, who founded the syndication company King World in 1964.

Built under Bill O’Connor’s supervision in 1991, the Mediterranean-style home is on a bit more than an acre and has two gate houses, a 2,800-square-foot guest house, a bass pond, a nine-hole putting green and an infinity pool that appears to flow into the ocean.

Betty Lethe of Sotheby’s International Realty, Beverly Hills, has the listing.