‘The Brady Bunch’ House Ransacked By Burglars

The infamous Brady Bunch house in Studio City, California, was ransacked by burglars late Wednesday night. The exterior of the house on Dilling Street was featured on The Brady Bunch as the home of Mike and Carol Brady and their blended family of his three boys and her three girls.

According to People, the Los Angeles Police Department responded to a break-in call at around 10:28 p.m. The real-life elderly occupant of the Brady home was unharmed after burglars smashed the sliding glass doors and ransacked the main floor of the house. Though the current home owner might have benefited from the Brady’s dog Tiger in the backyard to ward off the burglars, it appears she was able to scare them off on her own by flipping on a light switch.

Though the interior scenes of The Brady Bunch actually took place in a studio, the iconic exterior shots of the house have made it a prominent tourist attraction for more than four decades. According to insiders, the Brady home looked much different and had a completely different layout than the actual real-life home.

Sherwood Schwartz, the creator of The Brady Bunch, said the exterior of that particular house was chosen because it seemed befitting of Mike Brady’s occupation as an architect. Through television magic, The Brady Bunch home real-life exterior seemed to mesh with its studio created interior, making it one of the most recognizable places in television history where fans could imagine potato sack races in the backyard and family dinners being served by Alice.

The Brady Bunch house isn’t the only home to suffer from being a famous residence. Walter White’s home from Breaking Bad is still frequently attacked with pizzas in Albuquerque, and the owners of the home from Goonies got so fed up with over zealous fans, at one point they covered the home with a tarp. Of course it sounds like those who entered the Brady house weren’t fans at all if they shattered a door and ransacked the place.

While this Brady house didn’t fair so well this week, another Brady house scored big. According to ABC News, former Brady kid Eve Plumb sold her home in Malibu for a whopping $3.9 million this week. Plumb, who played the oft-forgotten Jan Brady, bought the home when she was 11-years-old in the late 1960s with her Brady Bunch earnings for $55,000.

The Brady Bunch aired for five seasons from 1969 to 1974, but became a television icon as it persisted through decades of reruns. The show revolved around Mike and Carol Brady as they tried to navigate being newlyweds who were helping raise each other’s children. The show resonated with viewers as divorce, which was formerly so taboo in society, had become more normalized.

The resurgence of The Brady Bunch’s popularity in reruns led to several made-for-tv movies and attempts to resurrect the show in spinoffs that often featured almost the entire original cast. Though the spinoffs of The Brady Brides in the 1980s and an attempt at turning the bunch from comedy to drama in The Bradys in the 1990s did poorly in ratings, the made-for-tv movies usually held a fairly large audience. Parody movies, including The Brady Bunch Movie and A Very Brady Sequel starring Shelley Long and Gary Cole, also made it to the big screen and featured cameos of the original cast.

Though it is unknown what, if anything, was taken from The Brady Bunch home last Wednesday, fans no doubt know that there were a few things that the burglars didn’t get. The burglars didn’t get mom’s favorite vase. It was smashed by a basketball tossed around by the Brady boys. She always said “don’t play ball in the house.” Cindy Brady’s missing Kitty Carryall doll was found by a sleuthing Bobby. And of all of the items in the Brady house, those burglars definitely didn’t make off with a toilet.

In truth, even if it is a fictional place, it’s a little bit disturbing to know that even the Brady Bunch house was broken into and ransacked. After all, if one of the shining examples of clean cut goodness isn’t safe anymore, are any of us?

[Image by Jason Duplissea/Shutterstock]