Locations - The Waltons

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Interiors for The Waltons were filmed on Stage 26 and Stage 20 of The Warner Bros. Studio which was known during the original series as The Burbank Studios. The exterior of the Walton house and Ike Godsey's Mercantile and Drucilla's Pond were located on the backlot just to the east of the Stages in an area known as the Jungle set.

Just to the south of the Studio is a mountainous range of the Hollywood Hills that played the role of Walton's Mountain. The infamous Hollywood Sign is located on the southern side of the same range.

1/2 a mile to the north the the main Warner Bros Studio facility in the Warner Bros. Ranch where the Baldwin sisters home is located and whichin also the current location of the Walton Farm house after is was relocated from the main lot in 1995.

Interior locations are typically built on sound stages so that there is enough space for the cameras, crew, lights, actors and action. It also allows the production to control unwanted sounds and other distractions that can interfere with the production.


The exterior of the Green Acres house which was filmed inside a studio. THe Walton house also had an exterior facade that was built on the front of the first floor set. This allowed scenes to flow from the porch into the interior of the house.	Seen above is the home that was used for The Munsters. Once again it is built inside a sound stage.

Above a studio audience can be seen during the filming of I Love Lucy. While the Waltons was a drama and didn't allow for a live audience you can see how the lack of a forth wall for each room in the house allowed for the cameras ands crew to easily film scenes.	Looking behind these sets you can see the fake walls from the back side of a interior set. Some of these walls can be removed or added to allow different camera angles and perspectives in which to tell the story.

Above is a portion of the Walton's porch that was built for the reunion movies. The porch existed on stage 26 and on the back lot. When they filmed inside the living room, a giant painted backdrop of trees might be glimpsed through the lace curtains. These photos are from the reconstructed set from the reunion show. Images courtesy of Kami Cotler.


The First Floor The Walton house interiors were filmed on Stage 26. Looking at the outside of the home you would think that the Walton home was a typical rectangular shape with a few addtions added on for the mudroom and the grandparents flat. Looking at the floorplan for the interior set and you would realize that this is not as it seems. Most likely this was not a character driven idea that John Walton had thought of when he built the home but a production motivated idea to allow more room and depth for the actors and movie camera. The unorthodox interior angles of the downstairs Kitchen and living room is sometimes apparent when the camera looks towards the 2 walls where the radio and piano are placed from the perspective of the kitchen. The Second Floor Another production irregularity is the layout of the second floor. The parent's bedroom also doubled as the girl's bedroom. John-Boy's bedroom is located behind the upper window on the left of the house. The boys bedroom (which is rarely depicted on the show) is located at the back portion of the house. The parent's room by most signs would occupy the space behind the upper window on the right. This puts the middle window into question, which room does it belong to? The obvious answer would be that the middle window belongs to the girls room. For filming and budget purposes though the the same set was used as the girl's and parents bedroom. Only the beds and dressers were changed depending on the scene. Ralph senensky, the director of "The Cradle" (s2-ep19) explains below. "The upper floor of the Walton home presented an interesting lesson in budget accountability. As you come up the stairway (in the upper left hand corner of the floor plan) into the upper hall, John-Boy’s bedroom is straight ahead; the boys’ bedroom is on the right, then the bathroom and finally the girls’ bedroom. The girls’ bedroom however also worked as John and Olivia’s bedroom. When we filmed IN the parents’ bedroom, the walls were revamped; a flat wall replaced the doorway used for the girls’ room and a doorway replaced a flat wall in the other corner. The view of the hall through the new door was also revamped when it was John and Olivia’s bedroom. The one change that could not be made: when filming entrances into the bedroom from the hall, both the entrance to the girls’ bedroom and the entrance to the parents’ bedroom were next to the bathroom." Ralph directed some of the most thought provoking and compelling episodes. You can read about his experieces of filming 12 episodes of The Waltons HERE
	Plaques have been mounted on the outside of each stage listing the Features and TV shows that were filmed on that stage. The Set

The Warner Bros. Backlot