Diamond Head Estate of Late Actor/Entertainer Jim Nabors Comes to Market at $15 Million
By Mark David
LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Alabama born actor and entertainer Jim Nabors, for better and probably worse best known as the kind-hearted if irritatingly dimwitted Gomer Pyle on the 1960s sitcoms “The Andy Griffith Show” and “Gomer Pyle: USMC,” passed in late 2017 at 87 years old so it’s not too much of a surprise to celebrity property watchers his longtime oceanfront home on the affluent outskirts of Honolulu, Hawaii, has come for sale at $14.888 million. Depending on where one reads, the baritone-voiced Nabors, a frequent and popular guest on a slew of 1970s variety shows, traded in Hollywood , where he once presided over a grand Mediterranean mansion in the prestigious East Gate area of Bel Air, for Hawaii sometime in the 1960s or 1970s. Property records suggest he purchased this property in 1992 for $480,000.
Listing details make no secret of the home’s last occupant and additionally note the beachfront spread, in the scenic southeastern shadow of Diamond Head overlooking picturesque if not always particularly sandy Cromwell’s Beach, is just a couple of doors down from American heiress Doris Duke’s magnificently idiosyncratic Shangri La estate. Secured behind gates and hidden behind a tall, flowering hedge on a .58-acre parcel with 170-feet of ocean frontage, the 5,877-square-foot residence was built in 1950 and contains five bedrooms and six bathrooms plus an attached guest apartment.
The breezy and amply proportioned if somewhat dated and decoratively fussy open-plan interior spaces feature blandly beige stone floor tiles polished to a mirror-like finish, an odd assemblage of cloying gewgaws that include carved crystal swans nesting atop the dining room table and a variety of opulent flourishes such as a glitzy crystal chandelier recessed into a shallow dome in the otherwise flat-ceilinged living room. A wide bank of glass sliders opens the living room to a deep lanai with postcard-perfect ocean views. The floors switch to elegant if old-fashioned parquet in the sprawling master suite that’s plenty large enough to accommodate an office area as well as a private lounge wrapped in floor-to-ceiling glass sliders and a marble and brass accented bathroom hung floor to ceiling with framed photos of Nabors and his famous friends. Tucked under the main residence and facing the ocean, the studio-style guest apartment, with full kitchen and bathroom, spills out to a flagstone paved loggia/sleeping porch next to a dark-bottom swimming pool decadently positioned just a few feet from the ocean. An open-air cabana houses a pool-side wet bar and a secured gated leads directly out to the rocky shoreline.
Listing photos: Hawaii Life
