You Can Buy the House of Jackie Gleason, Mike Tyson, Julia Roberts, Jackie Collins

“Jackie Gleason's Final Florida Home”

One of the most innovative and popular television entertainers of the 1950s and '60s,  Jackie Gleason, lovingly referred to as Mr. Saturday Night, was born 100 years ago in 1916. His final Florida home, almost unchanged since he died in 1987, is for sale.

“The Jackie Gleason Show,” with the second highest ratings in 1955, was dominated by Jackie who not only was a huge man but with an even larger and brash personality. He never rehearsed with the cast but adlibbed his way through the show making each performance a surprise to his director. His shows consisted of song, flashy dance numbers by The June Taylor Dancers, celebrity guests who enjoyed appearing in his comedy routines and his special characters such as Ralph Kramden in “The Honeymooners” skits.

Until 1964, Gleason’s variety show was recorded with live audiences at Studio 50 in New York City. But then a friend told him he could play golf all year in Florida so Jackie loaded his cast and crew onto train cars and set off for Miami. There he performed his show at the Miami Beach Auditorium, now the Jackie Gleason Theater of the Performing Arts, until 1970.

Jackie Gleason fell in love with Miami and Miami Beach, its most popular celebrity and staunchest supporter who drew tourists and new residents while spending as many hours on the golf course as possible. In 1971, Jackie moved a bit north to the Inverrary golf community near Fort Lauderdale where he hosted the PGA Jackie Gleason Inverrary Classic attracting the big name golf pros, celebrities such as Bob Hope and Joe Namath, and politicians including Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. It was his last home and where he lived with the one true love of his life, Marilyn Taylor (June Taylor’s little sister), who he fell in love with in the 1950s but couldn’t marry until 1974 due to divorce/marriage restrictions by the Catholic Church. Marilyn continued to live in the house for several years after Jackie’s death and sold it with the condition that everything in the house would remain, including furniture and Jackie’s personal mementos. The buyer agreed, and now upon his death, the house is once again for sale.

Only a few steps from Inverrary Golf Course, the 4,123-square-foot home has six bedrooms, three bathrooms and Jackie’s famous entertainment room with sunken bar and chairs that fit up to the bar “preventing one from falling off” should they enjoy a little too much. Most of Jackie’s and Marilyn’s furnishings and decor are still intact.

The Great One’s last party and golf lake home in Lauderhill, Florida is for sale, priced at $299,000. The listing agent is Andres Aguilera with Bayview Realty in Hollywood, Florida.

“Mike Tyson's Las Vegas Home”

Former world heavyweight champion Mike Tyson has made his home in the wealthy Las Vegas bedroom community of Henderson, Nevada since 2008. Retired from boxing in 2006, Mike holds a career record of 50 wins, including 44 knockouts, in 58 career bouts. Tyson traveled a long rough road from troubled Brooklyn street kid orphaned at age 16 to a brilliant boxing career and later controversy about his outrageous conduct in his personal life and in the ring. Loved by much of the media and millions of fans, Tyson has performed as an actor in “The Hangover,” a comedian and singer on late-night television, best-selling author, a one-man Broadway show and a video game character.

He has recently purchased another larger home in Henderson and has placed his current house on the market. Only 16 miles from downtown Las Vegas, Henderson is a good location for the changed Baddest Man on the Planet - a quiet, upscale family life and raising children away from the Vegas glitz and glitter. Henderson is near the top of the FBI safest cities to live in the United States, making it attractive to celebrities and Las Vegas gambling executives.

Now for sale, Tyson’s 5,800-square-foot contemporary home on a third acre has five bedrooms, six bathrooms and three fireplaces. The two-story house is industrially styled with skybridges, open ductwork and vaulted ceilings with materials of marble, wood, steel and slate. Outside is a pool with waterfall and two spas. Iron Mike’s Las Vegas area home is for sale priced at $1.5 million.

“Julia Roberts' Beach Home”

“Pretty Woman” star Julia Roberts purchased a beachfront property on Hanalei Bay, Kauai in 2011, the original vacation property owned in 1915 by the family of sugar plantation manager H.P. Fayé. Fayé built a large beachfront home for his family of ten and a small house for the servants they would bring with them. Their summers were filled with fishing, games, relaxation and enjoyable socializing with other sugar executive families who also had vacation homes on the bay. In 1957, a tidal wave washed the main home to the back of the property but the top floor was left intact. 

The family decided that instead of reconstructing the original, they would instead turn the top floor into a house and continued using the property until 2011, when it was finally put up for sale. Julia Roberts was the buyer, and although the property is permitted for up to 9,000 square feet of living space on the two acres allowing for additional buildings and a swimming pool, Julia left the historic property in its original form. Existing structures consist of 3,792 square feet with seven bedrooms and four bathrooms on two acres with approximately 200 feet of beach.

With Julia’s attention focused on her new Malibu beach house, she put her Hawaiian retreat back on the market in 2015 for $29.85 million. Yet without a buyer, she recently reduced the price to $21.95 million.

“Jackie Collins’ Beverly Hills Mansion”

Queen of Hollywood romance, steamy sex and scandal novels, author Jackie Collins, took her readers to Hollywood behind the celebrity scenes. Though born and raised in London, Jackie followed her older sister, actress Joan Collins, to Tinseltown in the 1960s. At first, Jackie had tried acting but after a number of B-rated films and television series, she realized it wasn’t her talent. However, what she had learned about celebrities behind closed doors inspired her to start writing books about what she knew.

Jackie’s mother was a nightclub hostess and father a show-business manager whose clients included the Beatles and Tom Jones. In her teen years, Jackie was expelled from an all-girls London prep school amid rumors of an affair with 29-year-old Marlon Brando. Her second husband of 26 years (her first husband died of a drug overdose soon after their divorce) was Oscar Lerman, a nightclub owner who convinced Jackie to give up acting and become a writer. Her first novel, “The World Is Full of Married Men,” about a married London middle-aged advertising executive who falls for a much younger woman was published in 1968 and made the “New York Times” bestseller list. The content was so hot that it was banned in Australia and South Africa. 

Collins went on to write 32 novels garnering 500 million in sales worldwide. Several of her novels and screenplays were made into films and television mini-series. Her most successful book was 1983’s “Hollywood Wives” that hit #1 on the “New York Times” bestseller list, sold over 15 million copies and became a hit television series starring Candice Bergen and Suzanne Somers. Jackie updated the format in 2001 to “Hollywood Wives: The New Generation,” also made into a television movie starring Farrah Fawcett.

Jackie’s last novel was “The Santangelos,” the last of a series, published in 2015. She died that same year after a six-year battle with breast cancer. It is said that only her three daughters knew about the cancer and that she finally told her sister about it two weeks before she died. Her family has recently put her custom-designed Beverly Hills mansion on the market.

Jackie purchased the land for her dream home in the late 1980s for $3 million, but it wasn’t until 1991 that the contemporary mansion was built. By that time, Jackie had been inside practically every star-studded mansion at Hollywood parties and knew exactly what she wanted. The Collins sisters thrived on glamour and Jackie wanted to be surrounded by it.

Sited on a prime gated lot of just under an acre, the 21,784-square-foot home has eight bedrooms, fifteen baths and a dramatic two-story entry art gallery that connects to major rooms. Included is a guest apartment, offices, gym, screening room and a large chef’s kitchen with three islands. The master suite attests to Jackie’s glamorous lifestyle with living room, office, his-and-her baths and large walk-in closets. The balconies overlook the grounds with views of the Hollywood Hills.

The perfect setting for a Jackie Collins novel, her custom Hollywood mansion is priced at $24.5 million. Susan Smith and Brett Lawyer of Hilton & Hyland, an affiliate of Christie’s International Real Estate, hold the listing.

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