30 Rock's Jack McBrayer Buys House in the Hills

BUYER: Jack McBrayer
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $1,975,000
SIZE: 2,594 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Emmy nominated actor/comedian Jack McBrayer began exercising his southern-accented funny bone in the mid-1990s with The Second City Theatre in Chicago where he first came into contact with comedy's reigning queen Tina Fey.

In the early- to mid-naughts, long before Miz Fey's boob-toob juggernaut 30 Rock ever hit the airwaves, Mister McBrayer created and honed his bubbly, wide-eyed and simpleminded NBC page character Kenneth Parcell on The Conan O'Brien Show. Eventually that character, a quirky half-witted hillbilly who goes to New York with stars in his eyes and a bus ticket home in his pocket, wound up on Tina Fey's tour de sitcom force, a turn of showbiz events that earned him fame, fortune and legions of fervent fans. Mister McBrayer has also appeared in the films Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby and Forgetting Sarah Marshall as well as on a number of tee-vee programs including Arrested Development and Phineas and Ferb.

Given that 30 Rock tapes in New York City it seems strange that the Macon, Georgia-born Mister McBrayer would want or need a multi-million dollar house in Tinseltown but, according to our eerily well-informed celebrity real estate whistle blower Lucy Spillerguts, Mister McBrayer recently plunked down $1,975,000 for a fully-rehabbed residence in the Hollywood Hills above the historic and charming Beachwood Canyon neighborhood.

The "contemporary" but architecturally unremarkable residence, according to listing information we cajoled from the interweb, measures 2,594 square feet over two floors and includes 3 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms. The nearly one-third acre hillside property recently underwent an extensive two-year overhaul during which the hillside at the back of the house was re-engineered and a large retaining wall added that created a flat promontory with million dollar views of the surrounding canyons, the Hollywood Sign, Griffith Observatory and downtown. Say what you will about Los Angeles but living in Lala Land with a view like this house has is akin to living in Chicago with a view of the lake or in Brooklyn with a distant view on Manhattan.

A front-facing two-car garage dominates the narrow street frontage. The somewhat awkward entry to the house is around the side through a see-through gate that swings opens to staggering views and a wide terrace that continues past the front door and wraps around the back of the house. Iffin Your Mama were to have overhauled this house we would have done this front area differently with a walled courtyard entry that would not only provide additional semi-private outdoor space but also a gratifying sense of drama and anticipation as the eye is drawn through the courtyard to the front door and the dynamic and iconic views.

The main living space, a glass-lined living/dining room with powerful city views, connects to the updated and upgraded kitchen through a wide doorway. The honey-colored hardwood floors in the living/dining room run into the cozy but well-arranged kitchen that includes a vintage range, built-in wine fridge, pantry storage, a center work island and flat-fronted cabinets with nipple-like knobs. A day-dreamy corner window that allows the dishwasher to ponder the iconic Hollywood sign as they scrub the devil out of the frying pan.

A bank of cabinets perfect for storing bongs and board games surrounds the staircase to the lower level where a celebrity-sized master suite has a hookah lounge-sized sitting area wrapped in windows with panoramic views. Mister McBrayer's new boo-dwar includes a walk-in closet and bathroom with double sinks, separate soaking tub, frameless glass shower with multiple shower heads and a separate cubby for the terlit. The walls into which the sinks are sunk in the master bathroom are papered with a shiny silver wall covering printed with over-scaled white flowers. Nobody loves shiny like Your Mama loves shiny so, in theory, silver wallpaper makes us pee with decorative glee. However this particular choice of wallpaper feels a little forced and trendy, particularly when paired with that snippet of electric apple green paint that surrounds the doorway into the closet.

Thankfully, a spiral staircase connects the second level living spaces with the lower level backyard, otherwise Mister McBrayer's pool party guests would be required to traipse through his private quaters in order to get from the kitchen to the pool and spa. A shallow covered patio directly off the master bedroom's sitting area looks like it barely provides any real shade. Pity that because it's damn sunny in Southern California and shade is a desirable feature for all but the most viciously over-tanned. The concrete patio extends halfway around the amoebic glass tiled swimming pool where it abruptly ends and becomes a narrow strip of lawn large enough only for small to mid-size pooches to do their dirty bizness. The strip of grass wraps around the remainder of the pool and the raised circular spa that can both be light in a variety of theatrical colors including lavender. To be honest, puppies, Your Mama isn't entirely positive that the spa is not at least partially visible from a couple of the nearby houses so it may not be the best place for Mister McBrayer to get romantic with whomever it is he gets romantic with. However, if your idea of relaxation is wallowing in a vat of near boiling water like you're a damn carrot in a stew than this is probably a perfectly impressive and glittery spa in which to do it.

Based on a few short minutes of entirely unscientific research and a leg up from a New York City-based editor, Your Mama is pretty sure that Mister McBrayer's New York City crib, a one bedroom and one bathroom condo in a fairly new and architecturally undistinguished building near Lincoln Center, was purchased in August of 2008 for $1,350,000.

listing photos: Everett Fenton Gidley for Teles Properties

Dan Castellaneta Double Whammy II

BUYER: Dan Castellaneta and Deb Lacusta
LOCATION: Pacific Palisades, CA
PRICE: $5,700,000
SIZE: 5 bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: We were first alerted to the Castellaneta-Lacusta's latest real estate acquisition by The Bizzy Boys at Celebrity Address Aerial. We next consulted a wise oracle in the chit-chatty celebrity real estate gossip grapevine, let's call her Chatty Cathy, who whispered to Your Mama that Mister Castellaneta and Miz Lacusta found their new home, a glassy contemporary just a few blocks away from their Colcord crib, by attending an open house.

Property records show the couple closed on the property in late April 2011, paying $5,700,000 for the multi-winged single-story sprawler that includes a 4 bedroom main house plus a 1 bedroom guest house and a total of 4.5 bathrooms.

Like many of the large homes in the hoity-toity 'hood, the Castellanetta-Lacusta's new digs are hidden behind thick foliage and electronically-controlled gates. The double-gated circular driveway rises to a cramped-looking motor court with three car garage points the way to the front entry. A wide stone stair and walkway connects the motor court to the front door. Inside smooth wood floors–they look like white oak to Your Mama but may very well be some other type of wood–spread out through the main living spaces that include a casual "formal" living room with sky-lit ceiling and flat-screen tee-vee built into a wood wall panel. The formal dining room, separated from the entry by a trio of floating panels fitted with opaque ribbed glass, has a wall of floor to ceiling windows and another full wall of sleek cabinetry with both open and closed storage and display areas.

Another trio of floating panels fitted with opaque ribbed glass separate the dining room from the L-shaped open plan family area of the house that includes a high-ceilinged family/dining area with stone and stainless steel fireplace flanked by a massive built-in entertainment cabinet with open and closet storage and display space. We could do without the stainless steel detail above the fireplace. We'd much prefer to set all that crisp and clean modernism with a heavily saturated and perhaps sinister photograph like, say, one of artist Gregory Crewdson's thickly detailed and cinematic but uncomfortably bleak pictures. Just a thought. Anyhoo, at opposite ends of the room walls of glass slide open, one end of the room spills out to a covered dining terrace that overlooks the flat lawn and motor court at the front of the house and the other opens to marry the room to the courtyard-like backyard.

The angular kitchen has both stainless steel and smooth flat-fronted wood cabinetry, a massive center island with breakfast bar, sea foam green glass back splash and top-grade commercial-style appliances that include a Mercedes-sized range with six burners and a damn griddle. A full wall of floor-to-ceiling sliding glass doors merges the kitchen with the backyard.

A dark-bottomed rectangular swimming pool with narrow sunbathing terrace anchors the extreme rear of the property. A small piazza-like space with built in barbecue and outdoor fireplace both separates and joins the main house to the detached one-bedroom guest house adjacent to and situated just higher than the swimming pool.

Mister Castellaneta and Miz Lacusta's new neighbors include a number of very high-profile peeps. Retired boxer Sugar Ray Leonard owns the house next door, much awarded comedienne/actor/gab-fest hostess Whoopi Goldberg owns a large house around the corner as does increasing mouthy and opinionated comedian Bill Cosby and the massive resort-hotel style hillside compound of Hollywood super-heavyweight Steven Spielberg is directly across the street.

listing photos (new house, bottom): Prudential California / Brentwood

Dan Castellaneta Double Whammy I

SELLER: Dan Castellaneta and Deb Lacusta
LOCATION: Pacific Palisades, CA
PRICE: $5,750,000
SIZE: 4,415 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Comedian and voice over king Dan Castelleneta–otherwise known as the Emmy-winning voice of Homer Simpson, Krusty the Clown, Mayor Quimby et al on The Simpsons–must miss him some modern architecture, hunties.

Back in September 2007 Your Mama discussed the quite contemporary residence of Mister Castellaneta and his sometimes writer wife Deb Lacusta, who also plies her trade for The Simpsons program. At that time, the comedy tee-vee royals had their 3,891 square foot abode in Santa Monica, CA on the market with an asking price of $3,295,000; The five bedroom and 5 bathroom house sold slightly over asking in early 2008 for $3,305,000.

We did not at the time of our first discussion of Mister Castellaneta's real estate doings have any knowledge about where he and the Missus planned to decamp. As it turns out, according to The Bizzy Boys at Celebrity Address Aerial, the laugh riots relocated to a somewhat larger but far more traditional mock Tudor on a high-hedge-lined street in the ritzy Riviera neighborhood at the eastern edge of the posh Pacific Palisades community in Los Angeles. Records we peeped at for the property show it was purchased in late December 2006 for $5,750,000.

Last week the Castellaneta-Lacustas pushed their gated mock Tudor on the open market with an asking price of $5,750,000. Someone, it seems, has learned a valuable real estate lesson in regards to current price thresholds in the middle of the high-end market in Los Angeles.

Anyhoo, the Castellaneta-Lacustas no longer want or need their residence in the Riviera 'hood because according to The Bizzy Boys, they've already acquired their next home, a far more modern dwelling, also in the Riviera, just a couple of blocks away. More on the new house later.

Listing information for the mock Tudor Mister Castellaneta and Miz Lacusta currently have on the market show it was built in 1928. The architecturally historically-minded house was designed by respected and beloved but too little lauded California traditionalist Gerard Colcord who designed a number of delicious homes in southern California for a number of high-profile people including Alan Ladd, Norton Simon and Henry Fonda. For better or worse, Mister Colcord is perhaps best known as the architect responsible for the original iteration of the somber but grand Bel Air mansion once owned by financially embattled actor Nic Cage and Las Vegas-y crooners Tom Jones and Dean Martin. Colcord cribs remain popular among showbiz types like Harrison Ford who has long owned a Colcord-designed residence in Brentwood just below The Getty museum complex.

Although Mister Colcord's traditionalist concoctions may have been mostly commissioned by and for the well to do they maintained a mostly relaxed, unpretentious and family-friendly aspect even as they flipped the bird at a local architectural vernacular that then and now skews more towards ranchy-hacienda than a English country house. The Castellaneta-Lacusta's comfortably large but far from over-sized Colcord measures 4,415 square feet–downright tiny by the current steroidal standards of today's mcmansions–and contains 4 bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms.

A wide flat lawn provides a park-like buffer between the public street and the fully restored and updated private residence. The staircase in the impressive but somehow still intimately-scaled entrance hall winds around to a vaulted and sky-lit landing with a wall of built-in bookshelves filled with books...real damn books.

We don't know Mister Castellaneta nor Miz Lacusta but we love that they remain loyal to books. We're all for new-fangled technology, people; Read on your computers and Kindles all you want. It is, without question, the future of literacy. Call us old-fashioned–and we've been called way worse–but as far as Your Mama is concerned a home without books looks and feels sterile, shallow and–yes, puppies–sad. Books are magnificent windows into the psyches and interests of a home's inhabitants. A bookshelf lined with science fiction novels and self-help manuals reveals something very different about a residence's resident than does a bookshelf full of historical biographies, cookbooks and Richard Russo novels.

With that in mind Your Mama's Decorating Rule Number 11 states that all well- and properly-dressed and dwellings must feature at least a small collection of books the owner has actually read. Formal libraries curated by a paid professional and full of first editions that the homeowner never has nor never will crack are only barely acceptable under Rule Number 11.

Anyhoodles poodles, let's push on, shall we? Pointed arch doorways lead from the entrance hall into the sunken formal living room on the right and the shiny formal dining room on the left that glistens and glimmers with a chrome and glass dining table, an antique crystal chandelier, reflective silver ceiling treatment and a wide credenza with shimmery Mother of Pearl panels.

Those like Your Mama who still read books–actual books not e-books–will appreciate the cozy windowed reading niche next to the fireplace in the living room and the intimate reading room/den with built in banquette, beamed ceiling and fireplace.

The well-equipped and newly-fitted but tight-squeezy-looking all black-and-white kitchen doesn't do a damn thing for Your Mama but we are rather smitten with the adjacent breakfast room where an oval marble-topped Eero Saarinen Tulip Dining Table and a pair of Tulip Chairs make a tingly and taut decorative counter point to the very trad many-paned bay window and original built-in corner cabinetry.

A nearby family room, painted a deep and not entirely pleasant shade of cornflower, has more bookshelves filled with books and opens to the wide stone terrace that runs along the back of the house. A studio/media room with separate entrance has a soaring loft-like ceiling, dark hardwood floors and a full bathroom. The children will note there are even more books in the studio/media room.

Entertainment spaces in the terraced backyard include stone patios and wood decks, a curtained gazebo-lounge and a couple of generous expanses of green green grass. The yard slopes gently down the back of the property and towards a heated saltwater swimming pool with electronic cover.

listing photos: Sotheby's International Realty / Pacific Palisades