By Reed Tucker
America’s favorite dad was livid.
The man who played Mike Brady,
Robert Reed, paged through the latest script for “The Brady Bunch” and lashed
out at the show’s creator, demanding that his part be rewritten.
And what had so incensed the
actor?
The smell of strawberries. Or the
lack thereof.
In Season 4’s episode, “Jan, the
Only Child,” Brady mom, Carol, and the family’s housekeeper, Alice, hold a
competition to see who can craft the tastiest strawberry preserves.
As the competition raged in the
Brady’s formica kitchen, the script called for Mike Brady to arrive home and
remark that the house smelled like “strawberry heaven.”
Only Reed, who had a habit of
meticulously fact-checking each script, discovered while poring over the
“Encyclopedia Britannica” that strawberries supposedly give off no smell while
they’re being cooked.
So Reed went to “Brady” creator
Sherwood Schwartz and told him he would not say the line.
Attempting to placate the actor,
Schwartz invited Reed down to the set where strawberries were actually being
cooked and pointed out that the berries did indeed give off a scent.
Reed wouldn’t hear it. He’d read
that they didn’t, and he refused to say the line.
So Schwartz offered a compromise:
Mike Brady could say it “looks like strawberry heaven in here,” and Reed
reluctantly agreed.
(Although the line he ultimately
delivered in the filmed episode was, “I do believe I’ve died and gone to
strawberry heaven.”)
Reed was famous for being
difficult on set. In another episode in which youngest Brady boy, Bobby, sells
hair tonic in a get-rich-quick scheme, Reed objected because the product wasn’t
FDA-approved. In yet another, Reed whined about the implausibility of his
character slipping on a broken egg. He even once disapproved of the quality of
the fake ink that stained Alice’s uniform, prompting the actor to pen an angry,
multi-page memo to the show’s executives. Reed blasted the prop department for
its choice and called the ink scene so “unfunny that even a laugh machine would
balk” at it.
“I don’t feel like anyone thinks it’s a great
show. This is not the sitcom version of ‘Breaking Bad,’ ” author Kimberly Potts told The Post. “It’s more
that it’s a sweet show. Now so many generations have
watched it, it’s a good memory and makes
them feel good.”
Schwartz, the creator of “The
Brady Bunch,” always wanted his show to be more than a quick laugh.
In 1966, he happened across a
newspaper article stating that 29 percent of families now included a child from
a previous marriage. The stat got Schwartz, who had created 1964’s “Gilligan’s
Island,” thinking. He began crafting a show about a blended family that would
serve as a parable for his personal belief that different people could always
learn to live together.
The networks weren’t initially
wild about the idea, and the series was shelved.
Then in 1968, “Yours, Mine and
Ours,” a film about a blended family starring Lucille Ball, became a huge hit.
ABC came calling about Schwartz’s sitcom idea, and the creator set about assembling
his cast.
“Schwartz did a lot of smart
things when he cast the show,” Potts says. “He cast kids and created the
characters based on their personalities. That’s something that came through and
helped people identify with them and made the group of siblings resonate with
people.”
He also stocked the family with
six kids; a boy and a girl occupying three different age groups. A full range
of kid viewers — from young children to teens — could find someone to identify
with.
Susan Olsen was chosen out of 454
hopefuls Schwartz personally interviewed to play youngest daughter Cindy. She
won the part because of her charming lisp that had her pronouncing horse as
“horth” in her audition.
Maureen McCormick was at first
eyed to play middle daughter Jan, but when Schwartz tinkered with the ages of
the kids, McCormick became eldest daughter
Mike Lookinland got the gig of
Bobby, even though Schwartz demanded that he dye his light hair brown to match
that of his TV brothers: Christopher Knight, as Peter, and Barry Williams as
Greg.
Competition was fierce to play
parents Mike, an architect, and Carol, a stay-at-home mom with creative
pursuits. One actress vying for the matriarch role sent Schwartz nude photos.
Another, when Schwartz went to shake her hand, instead grabbed his crotch.
Neither got the part. It went to
Florence Henderson after Shirley Jones passed on the role.
Reed, who fancied himself a
Shakespearean actor, took the part simply for the money and quickly became a
distraction. The unhappy actor would frequently spend his lunch breaks getting
sloshed and when he returned to the set drunk, Schwartz would have to end
filming for the day. Luckily, the child actors were usually done at that point
and avoided witnessing most of his bad behavior and angry outbursts.
In fact, Reed had a close, almost
paternal, relationship with the Brady kids.
“He took his responsibility as
the TV dad seriously,” Potts says. “He famously took the kids on a trip to
England because he wanted to expose them to culture and Shakespeare. He also
famously gave them Super 8 cameras for Christmas. He wanted to help them the
same as a father would.”
His relationship with the show
continued to be less collegial, and he was completely absent from several
episodes, including the 1974 series finale, because of his objections to
material.
Had the series returned for a
sixth season, Schwartz was planning to kill off Mike Brady and have the plots
revolve around the kids helping Carol find love again.
Enlarge Image
But the show only lasted five
seasons. While never a critical or ratings darling (its best finish was 31st,
in Season 3), Schwartz quickly began receiving letters from real kids
threatening to run away in order to live with the Bradys.
The show had clearly struck a
chord and unlike many sitcoms of its day, it didn’t disappear after it was
canceled.
Instead, it found a new life in
syndication starting in 1975, often airing in blocks in the afternoon, which
breathed new life into the program, making it a classic.
By 1976, reruns of “The Brady
Bunch” actually beat the vice-presidential debate in ratings. At the time of
its 30th anniversary, each of the 117 episodes was estimated to have aired more
than 100,000 times around the world.
“These airings were chances for viewers
of every changing age group to memorize the show, identify with the characters
and their problems and allow ‘The Brady Bunch’ to become a permanent part of
their culture and childhood memories,” Potts writes.
Today, all six actors who played
the Brady kids continue to be defined by roles they performed half a century
ago. Just recently, they appeared on HGTV’s “A Very Brady Renovation.”
Meanwhile, Reed died at 59 in
1992, after being diagnosed with colon cancer. It was later revealed that he
had long lived a closeted gay life and was HIV-positive.
In a 2000 ABC News interview,
Henderson talked about Reed’s homosexuality, which she learned about while
filming the “Brady” pilot, and explained some of the reasons behind his bad
behavior on set.
“Here he was, the perfect father of this
wonderful little family, a perfect husband. Off camera, he was an unhappy
person — I think had Bob not been forced to live this double life, I think it
would have dissipated a lot of that anger and frustration. I never asked him. I
never challenged him. I had a lot of compassion for him because I knew how he
was suffering with keeping this secret.”