SELLER: Estate of Sid Caesar
LOCATION: Beverly Hills, Calif.
PRICE: $4.25 million
SIZE: 4,667 square feet, 3-4 bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMA’S NOTES: Thanks to Our Fairy Godmother in Bel Air, it’s come to our attention that the longtime Beverly Hills home of late, great comedian Sid Caesar has come up for sale on the open market with an asking price of $4.25 million. The pioneering and deliciously provocative comedian, who at 91 years of age went to meet the great joke writer in the sky early last year, owned the Trousdale Estates residence since at least 1980, according to our perusal of property records, and current listing details show the once-swinging but now sadly bedraggled, 1960s single-story residence has four bedrooms and 4.5 bathrooms in 4,667 square feet.

The property is priced and marketed, per listing details, as an “unprecedented opportunity” with “unlimited potential and outstanding possibilities.” And, certainly, from the looks of things the house and grounds clearly need significantly more than a bit of spit and polish; there’s peeling paint on the exterior, nappy wall-to-wall carpeting throughout much of the house, bumpy popcorn ceilings, cheap-looking wood veneered cabinetry in the kitchen and a slew of jalousie windows with not very decorative and, indeed, rather forbidding iron bars.

Given the current state of affairs at the upper tiers of the Los Angeles real estate marketplace, this admittedly somewhat jaded property gossip thinks the target market for this property is high-end developers who — if recent real estate history repeats itself — will likely raze the existing home and build the exact sort of louche, super-luxe and almost preposterously photogenic albeit nowadays woefully cookie-cutter contemporaries that have come to dominate the Trousdale Estates landscape. Think, children, of electronically operated walls of glass, a retinal recognition security system, kitchen cabinets that open and close by foot swipes and voice command, a professional screening room with candy bar in a newly dug basement, and — natch — a zero-edge swimming pool cantilevered over the hillside and decked out with multiple fire features and a discotheque-esque LED lighting system. Are we right? We also don’t have any trouble imagining the newly sexed-up residence, which may or may not be described in future marketing materials as “emotional” and “one-of-a-kind” with “jetliner views,” will appeal to the small but profoundly profligate pool of a largely absentee homeowners who already maintain three, four, six or more other $10 million houses sprinkled around the globe.

As some of y’all may have already noticed, the property is already in escrow after just seven days on market with an unknown buyer for an unknown amount. So we shall soon see, buckaroos and button willows, just what’s to become of Mister Caesar’s house, won’t we?

Listing photos: John Aaroe Group