Malibu Digs of Tony Danza Goes on the Market

SELLER: Tony Danza
LOCATION: Malibu, CA
PRICE: $9,100,000
SIZE: 3,000 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Although they separated in 2006 after nearly 20 long years of marriage, actor Tony Danza and wife Tracy officially only filed for a dee-vorce earlier in the year (2011). The collapse of the erstwhile couple's connubiality may or may not have something to do with why they recently pushed their ocean front beach house in Malibu, CA on the market with an asking price of $9,100,000

In the late 1970s, after being star-spotted training in a New York City boxing gym, a young and muscled Mister Danza took on the role of a beau-hunky bonehead on the ground-breaking and dee-voon sitcom Taxi. From there he went on to Who's the Boss? on which he played a beau-hunky housekeeper. Mister's Danza's career has muddled along since Who's the Boss? came to a close in 1992; He starred on a number of short-lived sitcoms (Hudson Street, The Tony Danza Show), earned an Emmy nomination in 1998 for a guest-starring role on The Practice, briefly hosted an eponymous talk show (The Tony Danza Show), and hoofed it on Broadway (The Iceman Cometh, The Producers). Like many other Tinseltown types with a sluggish career deep in its sunset Mister Danza has most recently dipped his toe into the murky reality television waters. In 2009 he signed on to Teach: Tony Danza, in which he co-taught English classes in a large Philadelphia high school. The show lasted just seven episodes.

A peep and poke around the property records reveals that Mister and soon-to-be-ex-Missus Danza have owned their ocean front home in The Bu since July 1987 when they acquired it for $1,150,000. Lowerd people, it's enough to make a person spit like an angry camel to recall the ancient days when you could snatch up a big house on the sand in Malibu for anywhere near a million dollars.

Listing information shows the Danza dwelling was originally built in 1949, sits on 50-feet of sandy ocean frontage, measures around 3,000 square feet and includes 3 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms in the main house. Two detached guest suites, each with private pooper, offer flexible space for additional sleeping quarters, a home fitness center, media room, meditation retreat, S/M dungeon and/or home office.

A verdant courtyard separates the street from the house that, as per listing information, sits privately below street level. A wide living/dining room has hardwood floors, beamed ceiling, corner white-brick fireplace and up-close ocean views through a bank of windows and French doors. A wide corridor that connects the entry to the living/dining area does double-duty as a tee-vee watching nook with an entertainment center custom built in to the space below the stairs.

Just beyond the dining area in the main room, a center island kitchen has a combination of butcher block and granite counter tops, gleaming white cabinetry, a commercial grade range and and a head on view of the beach and craggy rocks that dramatically dot the coastline on that particular stretch of Malibu. Behind the sink, a stained glass window keeps the neighbors from peering but iffin we're being honest–and we always are–it's an ass-ugle decorative faux pas that causes Your Mama real sadness that can only be cured by a mid-morning gin & tonic.

The master bedroom encompasses the entire second floor of the main house and includes a large bedroom with sand colored wall-to-wall carpeting and wood-framed sliding glass doors that open to a private terrace. A sitting area with corner white-brick fireplace and built-in book shelves also has big ocean views and access to the sea side terrace.

The sand-colored wall-to-wall carpeting extends right on into the attached master bathroom outfitted with two sinks, a long make-up vanity, separate glassed-in shower and an over-sized soaking tub set at a cattywompus angle in the corner. Your Mama can tolerate–not like, but tolerate–the glass brick wall behind the bathtub installed, no doubt, to retain a modicum of privacy during evacuations and ablutions. However, we can not abide by wall-to-wall carpeting in this or any other bathroom. In fact, Rule Number 16 in Your Mama's Big Book of Decorating Dos and Dont's emphatically states, "No bathing or terliting facility of any kind should ever, under any circumstances have wall-to-wall carpeting installed." Imagine, hunties, the state of that carpet after the Dr. Cooter plugs up the crapper and our bull-in-a-China-shop house gurl Svetlana plunges so vigorously that–ahem–water splashes out and all over that nasty wall-to-wall carpet.

A slim deck cantilevered over the sand spans the entire width of the house and offers just barely enough room for a dining table with umbrella and a few lounge chairs for soaking up the sun. Your Mama notes that a second floor deck next door looks directly down on to Mister and soon-to-be ex-Missus Danza's ocean side deck, a situation that surely puts a damper on nude sunbathing for all but the most flagrant exhibitionists.

We're certain some of the childrens' panties are all in a twist thinking it's real estate insanity for Mister Danza to ask $9,100,000 for a perfectly ordinary house in such close quarters that a person can hear the neighbors terlits flushing and the owners bickering. Like it or not, puppies, Malibu is frightfully pricey and although there have been a scant number of sales along this particular stretch of Malibu sand in the last year, the hefty asking price on the Mister Danza's house is not entirely unrealistic given that budding mobile marketing magnate Asher Delug just paid nine million clams for a slightly larger–and admittedly more updated–three-story house a few doors down the beach.

Since splitting with the Missus in 2006, Mister Danza has been on a bit of a real estate merry-go-round. In October 2007 he coughed up $2,600,000 for a 4,978 square foot house in the Fryman Canyon area in Studio City, CA. In all honesty, we have no idea if this house is occupied by Mister or soon-to-be-ex-Missus Danza.

About the same time Mister Danza was buying a new house in Studio City, he put the long-time Danza Family Homestead on Longridge Avenue in Sherman Oaks, CA on the market with an asking price of $6,150,000. He and soon-to-be-ex-Missus Danza purchased the property in the fall of 1986 from actor Robert Urich (Vega$, Spenser: For Hire) for $1,556,180 and had the house rebuilt in the mid-1990s after it was destroyed during the 1994 Northridge Earthquake. The 6,778 square foot mansion–listing information rather speciously and optimistically called it a "Stately Cape Cod traditional"–in April 2008 for $5,000,000.

In addition to a ski-chalet in Park City, UT that Your Mama dissed and discussed back in late 2008 when it was up for lease, records and reports also show that Mister Danza continues to own a small apartment on the 27th floor of the star-packed Millennium Tower building in New York City, the same Upper West Side building where Emmy winning and Oscar nominated actor Alan Alda, big haired radio shock jock Howard Stern, Oscar-nominated Irish actor Liam Neeson and talk show host Regis Philbin also own apartments.

listing photos: Pritchett-Rapf