[Joe_Pinney]

(not exactly on topic, but not exactly off-topic either; this forum was closest in spirit to this article's)

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Historic Hollywood studio finds a new owner
LOS ANGELES (AFP) - The historic Hollywood studio where movie classics such as 1939's "Gone With the Wind" and 1941's "Citizen Kane" were filmed has been sold for 125 million dollars, the buyers said.

The Culver Studios in Los Angeles have been sold by Japanese-owned Sony Pictures Entertainment to a private investment group called Studio City Los Angeles (SCLA), the buyer said in a statement.

"Our goal at SCLA is to make The Culver Studios the first choice of producers when they begin evaluating their production needs," said Ron Lynch, who will run the 85-year-old studio for SCLA.

The studios were originally built in 1919 by Hollywood pioneer Thomas Ince and was where cinema standards such as the original "King Kong" (1933) and Alfred Hitchcock (news)'s first American film, "Rebecca" (1940) were filmed.

After Ince died in mysterious circumstances in 1924 aboard newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst's yacht, on which Charlie Chaplin (news) was also a guest, the studios were purchased by legendary filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille (news).

They lie next to the former Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer lot, now owned by Sony, and feature an imposing facade of a southern colonial mansion that was built as a movie set and became the on-screen trademark in "Gone With the Wind" producer David O. Selznick's opening sequences when he owned the studio.

According to Hollywood legend, it was on the Culver Studios lot during the filming of the famed scene of the burning of Atlanta in "Gone With the Wind," that Selznick met his star Vivienne Leigh for the first time and cast her in the film after a years-long talent search.

Selznick burned old sets on the lot, including that of "King Kong," to recreate the sacking of Atlanta.

In its heyday, the studio commissary fed such stars as Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant, also has been owned in the past by billionaire aviator Howard Hughes when he became a movie mogul and US comedienne Lucille Ball.

The movie lot has also been home to such legendary cinematic names as RKO Pictures when it was controlled by Joseph Kennedy, the father of future US president John F. Kennedy, in the early 1930s.

Other movies made at the studios during what is now known as Hollywood's golden era included 1937's "A Star Is Born" and Hitchcock's 1945 thriller "Spellbound."

The lot, now a major television production facility, comprises about 41,000 square meters (450,000 square feet), includes 14 sound stages, the DeMille screening room and the commissary as well as the colonial-style office building.

Sony acquired Culver Studios in 1991, a year after it also bought the nearby MGM studios and announced in 2002 it was looking to sell the Culver Studios because it no longer needed as much studio space for TV production.

SCLA is a partnership created by the investment bank Lehman Bros., Los Angeles-based Pacific Coast Capital Partners and Pacifica Ventures, another Los Angeles-based firm specialising in entertainment industry production, management, finance and company acquisition.

Pacifica Ventures and Lehman Bros. are also partners in Studio City New York, a studio complex currently being developed in Manhattan.