Jerry Buss, the owner of the Los Angeles Lakers, who died this morning Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles at age 80, plays only a cameo role in Unreal Estate: Money, Ambition and the Lust for Land in Los Angeles, but it’s a fun one. Buss bought Pickfair, the 42-room Beverly Hills estate built by Douglas Fairbanks for his lover actress Mary Pickford (at right) from the latter’s estate in 1979 for $5.3 million and sold it to actress Pia Zadora and her husband Meshulam Riklis for $6.7 million in 1988. Now in other hands, the house has been so altered and degraded, I chose not to feature it in the book. But Buss pushed his way into the story anyway, as one of “five million dollar mansion boys.” They were Kenny Rogers, Hugh Hefner, Bernie Cornfeld, and Ghazi Aita, who are featured in the book, as well as producer Bob Evans, businessman Leonard Ross, Wilt Chamberlain, agent turned network head Jerry Perenchio, and the investor and casino and studio boss Kirk Kerkorian. All of their homes were the home of a moveable party through the 1970s and 1980s, where the most beautiful women in L.A. met and mingled with its richest, most powerful men.