The Riverside Press-Enterprise
$40M mansion has ties to the real-life ‘Ozzie and Harriet’
A Laguna Beach mansion on the site of where the real-life Nelson family behind “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet” went to escape the limelight is for sale.
The Wall Street Journal first reported that the three-level, 8,700-square-foot residence in gate-guarded Lagunita is listed for $40 million.
Designed by architect Brion Jeannette, the home was completed in the early aughts. It combines Italian coastal-style architecture with luxury amenities like a home theater with a concession stand, ticket booth and marquis featuring movie quotes like “Go Ahead … Make My Day,” Clint Eastwood’s famous catchphrase from “Sudden Impact.”
There’s a game room with a bar and a wine cellar.
Other highlights include five bedrooms, a gourmet kitchen and a central living area. Floor-to-ceiling glass doors open to oceanfacing decks and grotto pool overlooking Victoria Beach. A private staircase offers direct access to the sand.
Josh and Matt Altman of Douglas Elliman hold the listing. The luxury home dwarfs its modest predecessor. According to archival news stories, Ozzie and Harriet Nelson built the threebedroom, single-story cottage in the mid-1950s. The family used it mostly on weekends.
Two years after Ozzie Nelson died in 1975 at 69, Harriet Nelson permanently moved to the beach. She died there in 1994 at 85.
The home remained in the Nelson family until 1997. Surviving son David Nelson and the adult children of his younger brother, the one-time teen idol Ricky Nelson, who died in a plane crash in 1985 at 45, sold it for $1.85 million to Tony and Jane Ciabattoni.
They had been renting and were in the process of buying the house two doors down that the Harmon family once owned, and it, too, had links to the Nelsons.
Ricky Nelson married the late actress and painter Kristin Harmon, the sister of actor Mark Harmon and daughter of the late Los Angeles Ram star-turned-sportscaster Tom Harmon.and the late actress Elyse Knox. Their children include actress Tracy Nelson
and twins Gunnar and Matt Nelson of the band Nelson.
“Here I am two weeks away from closing on the Harmon house, when I picked up the phone and called David,” said Tony Ciabattoni, who had become friends with the “Ozzie and Harriet” star. “It was the most serendipitous thing I’d ever done. I said, ‘David, don’t let me buy 18 if you think you’re going to sell 16.’ ”
Sure enough. According to Tony Ciabattoni, David Nelson liked to reminisce about his family’s beach days.
Laguna Beach is where Ozzie Nelson often wrote “Ozzie and Harriet” scripts. It was also where the Nelson brothers passed the time playing beach volleyball, and then word got out.
“Planeloads of girls would fly into Orange County and find a way to get to the beach just to see my kid brother, Ricky,” David Nelson told Tony Ciabbatoni, who recalled it with a chuckle.
“Adam-12” star Kent Mccord, a friend of the Nelson brothers who had an occasional role on “Ozzie and Harriet,” later honeymooned at the beach house.
And Tracy Nelson told The Wall Street Journal that Ozzie Nelson used to swim from Victoria Beach to Blue Lagoon and back. As he made the 2-mile-plus circuit, Harriet Nelson would stand at the window with binoculars and watch him.
Given the family’s emotional attachment, Tony Ciabattoni told David Nelson before taking ownership that he planned to raze the old house and replace it with a new one.
As he put it, “I didn’t want him to be surprised or disappointed.”
But David Nelson’s response was, “Do what you’ve got to do.”
Before it was demolished, Tony Ciabattoni hired a Laguna Beach artist to create an oil painting of the old cottage. The original painting went to David Nelson as a gift, with Giclee copies for Ricky Nelson’s
children and Mccord, who also lives in the neighborhood and has blogged about his time on “Ozzie and Harriet” and shared a photo of the artwork.
Tony Ciabattoni also kept a copy for himself.
David Nelson, who died in 2011 at 74, gave the Ciabattonis the family photos that Ozzie Nelson kept on his desk in the original trifold frame. A Hotpoint refrigerator, once a prop on “The Adventure of Ozzie and Harriet,” also remains in use. It’s not included in the sale.
“There was such a warmth about the old house that carried to the new house,” Tony Ciabattoni said. “Building a house in Laguna Beach is not easy, but Brion Jeannette did a good job of shepherding the project through the city and the community. And during construction, I was here every day torturing Jeannette and my contractor, Tony Valentine, and I got a chance to do some of the little things.”
An example is in the living room, where the underside of the steps is exposed.
“They were getting ready to cover them up with drywall, and I said, ‘No, no, no. Leave it open,’ because that’s what you see in Italy,” he said.
The interior’s wroughtiron railing was another idea picked up along his travels to Italy.
“It was a labor of love, and it was a lot of fun,” added Tony Ciabattoni, who lost his wife last year to glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer.
He established the Jane Ciabattoni Brain Research Initiative at Providence Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo with a $1 million pledge in her memory.
“Since my wife died, the house now feels a lot bigger than it is and it’s very lonely at night,” he added. “I’ve always embraced change so I’m going to move on. But right now, I’ve made the decision to sell.”
His hope for his home’s future?
“This may sound a little corny,” he said, “but I hope that whoever buys this place understands and feels the Nelson legacy that was passed onto me.”