Sitcom Style

What type of interior designer writes a book about television? Someone who once believed those weren't characters on the tube but real people. Someone like Diana Friedman.

"When I was watching television as a kid, my older sister used to tell me that if I could see them, then they could see me, too," says Friedman, 33, a freelance writer who, as a child in the Murray Hill section of Manhattan, fixated on "The Brady Bunch" kids as well as their four-bedroom, three-bath California split-level house.

Friedman's love for TV, especially sitcoms, and her passion for interior design meet in the new book "Sitcom Style: Inside America's Favorite TV Homes" (Clarkson Potter, $29.95). She serves up 50-plus years of pop culture with a picture-perfect tour through the sets of more than two dozen shows, from "I Love Lucy" to "Everybody Loves Raymond." Full of color photos and recollections of set designers for some of TV's most popular programs, "Sitcom Style" is a blend of obsession, confession and investigation. (It's probably just what Kramer was thinking when he pushed for that coffee-table book on coffee tables.)

Like lots of Americans, Friedman grew up watching TV - perhaps a little too much. Like lots of Americans, she found herself, as well as friends and colleagues, saying things like, "I grew up just like 'The Cosby Show'" or "My childhood was very 'Leave It to Beaver.'"

Designing woman

Unlike lots of Americans, Friedman spent two years hunting nationwide for set photographs and tidbits from the shows' designers to put into a book. (In case you're wondering, many pieces from these legendary shows now sit in the offices of those same designers.) She included interior and exterior photos; several of the latter are of New York City buildings from sitcoms such as "Sex and the City," "Friends," "The Odd Couple," "Mad About You" and "Seinfield." Building addresses, of course, are in the book.

Friedman emphasizes that sets are much more than a series of exterior TV shots and a collection of random props; they're carefully structured show pieces, built to unveil moods and to help actors create memorable characters. The sets breathe life into personalities, unwrapping mothers and fathers and siblings and friends so real that a child might actually believe she could look back at them.

How detailed are designers? Mel Cooper, set designer for "Seinfeld," made sure the cereal boxes on Jerry's kitchen shelf in his Manhattan apartment were alphabetized each week. "I love that because it identifies his obsessive-compulsive behavior," Friedman says. Melinda Ritz, the designer for "Will & Grace," another show in the city, used a framed Boys Life magazine cover to hint at Will's sexual orientation. And the cultured and sophisticated appearance of Frasier Crane's Seattle apartment came at a price - a half-million bucks - including Martin Crane's recliner, says set designer Ray Christopher.

Some decorators shopped at thrift shops and antique stores. Others at Sears and JC Penney. Some even rumbled through the garages and attics of relatives. The goals were to provide more realistic looks inside the homes.

Sometimes, designers had less influence in a show's set and subsequent style trend. The sunken living area in "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" that came to symbolize the apartment of a liberated 1970s woman was suggested by Jay Sandrich, a frequent episode director. Sandrich wanted a sunken area because it shortened the distance between the front door and kitchen; that gave characters easier entrances and exits.

A short story

Some sets had to disguise shortcomings. Furniture in the make-believe Manhattan apartment in "The Jeffersons" was built lower to the ground because actors Sherman Helmsley and Isabelle Sanford were short. Altering the furniture "made it easier for them to get in and out of," assistant art director Michael Brittain says.

The book does have its missing pieces. Because photos and tidbits for older shows were hard to come by, readers won't get a retro look at classics such as "Father Knows Best," "Ozzie and Harriet" and "The Dick Van Dyke Show" (bad news for those who'd like to know a little more about the placement of the ottoman that caused Rob Petrie's weekly "trip" across the living room carpet).

"There were issues of availability," Friedman says. "I had to track down so many photographs, that was difficult, and I was able to get to different family members who looked around in garages and attics. That wasn't always possible for some older shows." Friedman does explore campy faux residences, like the grass huts in "Gilligan's Island" and the one-room bottle in "I Dream of Jeannie." When filmed from afar, on a counter in Major Nelson's Cocoa Beach, Fla., home, the bottle was a 1964 Jim Beam Christmas decanter. But when the camera moves inside, Jeannie relaxes on a purple-velvet sectional sofa, surrounded by urns and lanterns.

There are pages devoted to "The Munsters," "The Addams Family," "The Flintstones" and "The Jetsons." At the same time, there's a reason why a sitcom like "Cheers" is excluded. While Sam Malone's bar contained excellent design features, Friedman wanted to stress family and the home. "It was important to me that the shows took place in the home," she says. While "Cheers" was a classic, "it didn't do anything to change our thinking in how we live at home."

Side tables and more

Tidbits from the new book "Sitcom Style: Inside America's Favorite TV Homes":

Martin Crane's striped recliner ("Frasier"), including duct tape, cost $1,500, as much as the glass-and-stone dining room table situated directly behind it on the set.

The chairs on "All in the Family" were purchased for less than $20 each at a secondhand store on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles. Both pieces now rest in the Smithsonian.

The living room on "Roseanne" cost production designer Garvin Eddy $5,000 to create in 1988. The plaid sofa and side chairs came from Sears. Trophies, pillows and other knickknacks came from sidewalk sales and even Eddy's own garage.

Two programs: "The Beverly Hillbillies" and "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" were originally set in New York. But producers changed their minds. It actually was cheaper to shoot the Clampetts in Beverly Hills. And Mary Richards of Minneapolis was deemed a more sympathetic character than Mary from Manhattan.