Is The Tara Plantation the same house used in The Big Valley?

Answer 1

I'm pretty sure. The porch of tara was actual brick columns and brick steps...the house was a typical Hollywood paper mache aplique. The door and windows were real. The set was dismantled, removing the paper mache portions along with the doors and windows; boxed and sold to a man who stored them in a North Georgia barn. This was later sold to Betty Talmadge, collector of GWTW properties including Lovejoy Plantation that Margaret Mitchell based "Twelve Oaks" on. Her son still owns them and has lent the front entry door and fanlight to the Georgia history where it is on exhibit. The other parts, I assume, are at the Lovejoy Plantation. I think in the "Big Valley, they reconstucted the windows and doors of the house and added a fifth column (after the doors and windows were removed). I visited the stuio where this was "suppose" to exist about twenty-five years ago and they told me that it had been replaced by a parking lot. Then, several years later I saw the same structure used as Blanche deVereau's house, "Twin Oaks" in the Golden Girls episode where Big Daddy dies. It was a recent shot (in the 80's) years after I was told it was gone, so I figure that the bones are still in tact somewhere on Metro's back lot.