John Mayer & Movie Director Buying Henson/A&M/Chaplin Studios

[Pink Freud]

I had to make sure this was the singer John Mayer and not a descendant of Louis B. Mayer:

From today's L. A. Times:

Singer-songwriter John Mayer and movie director McG have agreed to buy the Jim Henson Company Lot, a legendary studio in Hollywood founded by Charlie Chaplin.

Mayer occupies an office on the lot and has been working for months to buy it from the family of the famed Muppets creator.......Mayer and McG recently agreed to pay more than $40 million for the property, the source said. It’s unclear when the sale will close.....and what the buyers’ plans are for the property at 1416 N. La Brea Ave., which has a history as a movie and television studio but now functions primarily as a music recording studio.

Comic and actor Charlie Chaplin, who was born in London, chose the Tudor Revival style to create an ersatz English village at Sunset and La Brea when he built his own movie studio complex starting in 1917. Some of Chaplin’s best-known films were shot there, including “The Kid,” “The Gold Rush” and “The Great Dictator.” After Chaplin left the country in 1952, the studio was used for television production.

The 1950s TV series "Adventures of Superman" filmed there for one season. Its later owners included comedian Red Skelton and CBS, which shot the “Perry Mason” television series there in the 1960s.The property was declared a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument in 1969.

The property was purchased in 1966 by Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss, who converted old soundstages to luxurious recording studios and made it the headquarters of A&M Records, where "We Are the World" was recorded by 46 music stars in 1985. The Henson family purchased it in 1999 and erected a statue of Kermit the Frog dressed as Chaplin’s famous character the Tramp at the entrance.