Watching old sitcoms is enough to make any person feel like they were robbed of having a perfect childhood. Family based shows from the 50s, 60s and 70s were filled with happy families, simple conflicts resolved in thirty minutes and beautifully landscaped homes. While some properties only existed on the back lots of movie studious, others were real homes purchased with mortgages by real people. Here are a few of Mortgage Marvel's favorites.
Ozzie and Harriet
From October 3, 1952 to September 3, 1966 countless American viewers were invited to view and experience the "Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet." The show starred a real life husband and wife team and their two real sons with authentic Hollywood star power. However, on the show they portrayed the "typical" American nuclear family unit of the day. The program was popular with audiences and the realism of the family banter and home setting was part of the success.
While the show was actually filmed on a sound stage, the home used was a replica of the family's real home located at 1822 Camino Palmero Street in Los Angeles, California. Both the real home and scene double were 2 story colonials. Although the set has long been put on ice, the authentic home situated at the base of the Hollywood Hills is real and apparently haunted.
Unlike other haunted homes, this one does not have a gruesome back-story making it a horror home. Ozzie himself reportedly haunts the property. Legend has it that the patriarch of the real family was not ready to leave his family upon his passing at age 68, so instead his spirit lingers on. A variety of people have reported seeing an apparition of the star hanging about the home.
The Brady Bunch
The sitcom "Brady Bunch" featured a blended family as patriarch Mike Brady, was a widower and Carol was single, although the show never addressed what happened to her first husband. This particular family featured the merging of three boys from Mike and three girls from Carol and the addition of wisecracking housekeeper Alice. The nine of them lived in a home, designed by Mike Brady as he was an architect. The show never made mention of exactly where the Brady home was located, although it was assumed to be somewhere in Los Angeles.
While the show was filmed primarily on lots on sets in Paramount Studios, the exterior shots of the house were from a real property, located in San Fernando Valley with the Los Angeles River as the backyard. The interior sets of the Brady home no way reflected the actual design of the real property, which is a one level ranch home.
The Partridge Family
"The Partridge Family" was a television sitcom loosely based on the real life adventures of The Cowsills, an American singing group from Newport, Rhode Island. Unlike their real counterparts, the Partridge Family lived in the fictional town of San Pueblo, California. The matriarch of this family was Shirley Jones, a widow with five children.
The children were musically inclined, got their mom involved in the act and drove their psychedelically painted school bus to their first gig together in Las Vegas, Nevada. In between road tripping, the gang would lead a normal suburban life courtesy of their modest two-story wooden house. Although the house itself is a real structure, the property is located on the Warner Brothers back lot at 3701 West Oak Street, Burbank, California. Aside from providing shelter for the musical clan, Mrs. Kravitz, the nosy neighbor from "Bewitched" resided in the digs.
