Celebrity Homes: 'Scarface' mansion in California sells at a loss
The opulent mansion that was the fictional home of Al Pacino's character, Tony Montana, in the 1983 film “Scarface” has sold after 17 months on the market and a price drop of almost $23 million.
Although the movie portrayed it as a Miami mansion, it is actually a 109-year-old home in Montecito, Calif. Its best known scenes were Tony's wedding to the cocaine-addicted beauty queen Elvira (Michelle Pfeiffer's break-out role) and where Tony made his bloody last stand with his M-16 “little friend” killing 42 assassins.
Other than the movie, the mansion is most famous as the wedding site for 54-year-old Charlie Chaplin and 18-year-old Oona O'Neill, daughter of playwright Eugene O'Neill, in 1943.
Russian-born financier Sergey Grishin (Facebook, Groupon and Farmville) bought the Montecito estate for a reported $20 million in 2008. Grishin waited until May 2014 to put the Montecito home on the market at $35 million — but nothing happened. Months later, he dropped the price to $17.9 million. It finally sold for $12.26 million, creating a loss for Grishin of more than $7.7 million.
Known locally as El Fureidis (Tropical Paradise), the estate with its exotic Mediterranean-style villa and Persian gardens was a favorite Southern California postcard souvenir in the early 1900s and home to several species of rare palm trees. It was designed by Bertram Goodhue. He and the owner, James Waldron Gillespie, a wealthy New Yorker, traveled to the Middle East and Europe for a year looking for inspiration. They added Persian touches of gardens, fountains and accents, including a Byzantine-style sitting room with an 18-foot domed ceiling decorated with a floral hand-painted, gold and blue design in 24k gold-leaf modeled after the church of St. John Lateran in Rome.
The barreled dining room ceiling is also finished in gold leaf and depicts a scene of Alexander the Great conquering Persepolis. The mansion has four bedrooms, nine bathrooms, a library, sitting room and a lounge. A large rooftop terrace provides 360-degree views of the Pacific Ocean, mountains and Channel Islands. Because of the mild climate, the multiple terraces of the estate can be used year-round.
