The Brady Bunch is an American sitcom created by Sherwood Schwartz and starring Robert Reed, Florence Henderson, and Ann B. Davis. The series revolved around a large blended family. The show originally aired from September 26, 1969, to March 8, 1974, on ABC and was subsequently syndicated internationally.
In 1997, "Getting Davy Jones" (the 12th episode in the third season) was ranked #37 on TV Guide's 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time.[1]
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Mike Brady (Robert Reed), widowed architect with sons Greg (Barry Williams), Peter (Christopher Knight) and Bobby (Mike Lookinland), marries Carol Martin (née Tyler) (Florence Henderson), whose daughters are Marcia (Maureen McCormick), Jan (Eve Plumb) and Cindy (Susan Olsen). The wife and daughters take the Brady surname. Producer Schwartz wanted Carol to have been a divorcée but the network objected to this. A compromise was reached whereby no mention was made of the circumstances in which Carol's first marriage ended. The blended family, Mike's live-in housekeeper Alice (Ann B. Davis) and the boys' dog Tiger settle into a large, suburban, two-story house designed by Mike. Their specific location is not explicitly stated in the series, though numerous indications suggest they reside in Southern California.
The theme song penned by Schwartz quickly communicated to audiences that the Bradys were a blended family. In the first season this blending figured prominently in stories. These episodes chronicled the family learning to adjust to its new circumstances and become a unit, as well as typical childhood problems such as rivalries and family squabbles. Over time the episodes focused more on issues related to the kids growing up, such as dating, self-image, responsibility, and puberty.
From the second season the blending and its particular tensions were less intrinsic to stories but would sometimes be casually mentioned in dialogue, often as part of a joke. Two episodes from the third season, "Not So Rose Colored Glasses" and "Jan's Aunt Jenny", mention that Mike and Carol had been married for just three years. "Kelly's Kids" in the final season explicitly recalled Mike and Carol's adoptions ("Either way, you adopted three boys and you adopted three girls, right?") when their neighbors, the Kellys, adopted three boys of different races.
It was not the first series to show a "blended" family (two series which debuted in the 1950s, Make Room For Daddy and Bonanza, had stepsiblings and half-siblings respectively), but came at a time when divorce and remarriage in America was seeing a surge.
Contemporary issues were sometimes explored. Season two's "The Liberation of Marcia Brady" explored the equality of women, as Marcia sets out to prove a girl can do anything a boy can. The boys challenge the idea and coerce Peter into joining Marcia's club, the Sunflower Girls, to make a point.
In 1971, due to the success of the Bradys' ABC Friday night companion show The Partridge Family (about a musical family), some episodes began to feature the Brady Kids as a singing group. Though only a handful of shows actually featured them singing and performing ("Dough-Re-Mi" in the third season, "Amateur Nite" in the fourth and "Adios, Johnny Bravo" in the fifth), the Brady Bunch began to release albums. Ironically enough the LP records featured background vocals sweetening by the same session vocalists who were on The Partridge Family platters. Though the kids never charted as high as the Partridges, the cast began touring the United States during the summer hiatus from the show, headlining as The Kids from the Brady Bunch. Only Barry Williams and Maureen McCormick stayed in the music business as adults. Christopher Knight readily admits he felt he could not sing and recalls having great anxiety about performing live on stage with the cast.
| Season | Ep # | First Airdate | Last Airdate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Season 1 | 25 | September 26, 1969 | March 20, 1970 |
| Season 2 | 24 | September 27, 1970 | March 20, 1971 |
| Season 3 | 23 | September 17, 1971 | March 10, 1972 |
| Season 4 | 23 | September 22, 1972 | March 23, 1973 |
| Season 5 | 22 | September 14, 1973 | March 8, 1974 |
The regular cast appeared in an opening title sequence in which video head shots were arranged in a three-by-three grid, with each cast member appearing to look at the other cast members. In a 2010 issue of TV Guide, the show’s opening title sequence ranked #8 on a list of TV's top 10 credits sequences, as selected by readers.[2]
Although many actors who become type-cast into the roles they played on a particular series resent this, the cast of The Brady Bunch express a contrary attitude. On a TV Land documentary, the actors revealed that they all remain close friends, and most have remained in regular contact with one another. On several episodes of Christopher Knight's reality show series, My Fair Brady, Florence Henderson made guest appearances, and gave advice on Knight's ongoing relationship issues. Knight also invited Barry Williams, Susan Olsen, and Mike Lookinland to a wedding party, during which most of his time was spent hanging out with them, away from the party. He said it was important his betrothed accept that his Brady Bunch friends are an important part of his life.
In The Brady Bunch Movie, after Carol tells Mike "Go get 'em, tiger" she remarks to herself, "Tiger... Tiger... whatever happened to that dog?"
At the end of A Very Brady Sequel, a dog runs through the yard where a party is occurring. Cindy and Bobby turn to each other and say, "Tiger?" Cousin Oliver chases the dog off screen, which is followed by the sound of an unseen car crash. Cindy and Bobby seem unfazed.
The series pilot featured the only appearance of another pet, Fluffy, a cat that belonged to Carol's girls prior to her marriage to Mike.
During the five seasons of the series' run, the Bradys had unusually frequent meetings with famous people, both real and fictional, typically in their own home.
American television producer Sherwood Schwartz conceived the Brady Bunch television series in 1966 and registered the idea that same year with the Writers Guild under the name "Yours & Mine" as a blended-family presentation. Schwartz then developed the pilot script to include three children for each parent, a widower, a mother whose marriage past was left open, and a housekeeper, each of whom would be introduced in the pilot in connection with the wedding between the parents. After receiving a commitment for 13-weeks of television shows from American Broadcasting-Paramount Theatres in 1968, Schwartz hired film and television director John Rich to direct the pilot, cast the six children from 264 interviews during that summer, and hired the actors to play the mother role (whose maiden name was Taylor and first married name was Martin), the father role, and the housekeeper role. As the sets were built on Paramount Television stages 2 and 3, the production crew prepared the backyard of a home in Sherman Oaks, California as the Taylor home's exterior location to shoot the chaotic backyard wedding scene. Filming of the pilot began on Friday, October 4, 1968 and lasted eight days. The original show last aired on March 8, 1974.
In 1965, following the success of his TV series Gilligan's Island, Sherwood Schwartz conceived the idea for The Brady Bunch after reading in the Los Angeles Times that "40% of marriages [in the United States] had a child or children from a previous marriage." He set to work on a pilot script called Mine and Yours[4] and passed it around the "big three" television networks of the era. ABC, CBS and NBC all liked the script but each network wanted changes before they would commit to filming and Schwartz shelved the project.[5]
There are similarities between the series and the 1968 theatrical release Yours, Mine and Ours starring Henry Fonda and Lucille Ball. The original script for The Brady Bunch predated the script for the film. The success of the film was a factor in ABC's decision to order episodes for the series.[4]
The house used in exterior shots, which bears little relation to the interior layout of the Bradys' home, is located in Studio City, within the city limits of Los Angeles, California. According to a 1994 article in the Los Angeles Times, the San Fernando Valley house was built in 1959 and selected as the Brady residence because series creator Schwartz felt it looked like a home where an architect would live.[6]
The real house is a Mid Century modern, split level. A false window was attached to the front's A-frame section to give the illusion it had two full stories during filming of the series' many establishing shots, all of which took place before the program debuted.
During the third season of The Brady Bunch, the living room of the Brady home was used as a villain's Hawaiian home in a sixth season episode of Mission: Impossible, "Double Dead" (both shows were produced by Paramount Pictures Television). The set was redressed with tropical plants and the staircase removed. All of the Brady furniture, including the television, remained in its usual place in the Mission: Impossible episode.
The address of the house in the series was given as 4222 Clinton Way. (As read aloud by Carol from an arriving package in the first season episode entitled "Lost Locket, Found Locket".) Although no city was ever specified, it was presumed from references to the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Los Angeles Rams, and a Hollywood movie studio, among many others, that the Bradys lived in Southern California, most likely Los Angeles or one of its suburbs. In the 2002 TV movie The Brady Bunch in the White House, Cindy's map and Mike's speech state that the family lived in Santa Monica, California. The police officers depicted in the final act of The Brady Bunch Movie wore Los Angeles Police Department badges and their squad cars bore LAPD markings.
In the years since the show first aired, owners of the house have had problems with visitors trespassing to peep into the windows, or coming to the front door asking to see the fictional Bradys. As a result, the property has been extensively re-landscaped, so someone casually driving by most likely would not recognize it as the house shown in the TV show.
Contemporary establishing shots of the house were filmed with the owner's permission for the 1990 TV series The Bradys. The owner refused to restore the property to its 1969 look for The Brady Bunch Movie in 1995, so a façade resembling the original home was built around an existing house.
Robert Reed became increasingly jaded about appearing in the series, as he felt that his Shakespearean training would mean nothing if he became typecast in the "Mr. Brady" role. He frequently fought with producers to make changes in the show's scripts in order to remove what he felt were unbelievable scenes or dialogue. Despite his battles, he was allowed to direct several episodes, "The Winner" and "The Big Little Man" (1971), "How To Succeed In Business" and "Getting Greg's Goat" (1973).
Reed did not appear in a 1972 episode, "Goodbye, Alice, Hello," and his absence from this episode has never been explained. By the final season, his arguments with the producers led to his absence from the series finale, "The Hair-Brained Scheme", because he believed a key plot point – Bobby selling hair tonic from a disreputable supplier that turns Greg's hair orange – was too implausible to be believed. In addition to "The Hair-Brained Scheme," Barry Williams' autobiography, Growing Up Brady, contains two of Reed's negative critiques of the episodes "The Impractical Joker" and "And Now a Word From Our Sponsor" (1971). Williams cited in his autobiography the likelihood that Reed's character would have been killed off, or at least have his absence explained as being away on an "extended project", had The Brady Bunch been renewed for a sixth season.
Despite these tensions, Reed went on to appear in all of the subsequent Brady reunion vehicles, including the critically panned variety series.
The Brady Bunch never achieved high ratings during its primetime run (never placing in the top 30 during the five years it aired) and was canceled in 1974 after five seasons and 117 episodes. At that point in the story Greg graduated from high school and was about to enroll in college. Despite its less-than-stellar primetime ratings and having won no awards, the show would become a true cultural phenomenon, enduring in the minds of Americans and in syndication for decades. The series has spawned several sequel series on the "Big 3" U.S. networks, made-for-TV movies, and parody theatrical releases, as well as a touring stage show and countless specials and documentaries on both network and cable TV.
When the episodes were repeated in syndication, they usually appeared every weekday in late-afternoon or early-evening slots on local stations. This enabled children to watch the episodes when they came home from school, making the program widely popular and giving it iconic status among those who were too young to have seen the series during its prime time run. The show's longevity in the public mind largely owes to that phenomenon, which was a unique aberration from the traditional norm of a previously-run network program being sold to stations as schedule filler between network programming blocks.
According to Schwartz, the reason the show has become a part of Americana despite the fact that there have been other shows that ran longer, rated higher and were critically acclaimed is that the episodes were written from the standpoint of the children and addressed situations that children could understand (such as girl trouble, sibling rivalry and meeting famous people such as a rock star or baseball players). The Bradys also comprised a harmonious family (in contrast to the likes of the Bunkers, the Bundys, the Simpsons, etc.), though they did run into problems occasionally when one of the children did not cooperate with his or her parents or the other children. In fact, anticipating the likelihood that some children might "act out" some plotlines, the producers had a form letter they sent to children who wrote stating their desires to run away from their own families and live with the Bradys.
In a 2010 issue of TV Guide, the show’s opening title sequence ranked #8 on a list of TV's top 10 credits sequences, as selected by readers.[2]
| Award | Year | Category | Result | Recipient |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Young Artist Award | 1989 | Former Child Star Lifetime Achievement Award | Won | Barry Williams |
| TV Land Awards | 2003 | Hippest Fashion Plate - Male | Nominated | |
| Favorite Dual-Role Character | Nominated | Christopher Knight For Peter Brady and Arthur. |
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| Funniest Food Fight The Brady Pie Fight on the Paramount Lot. |
Nominated | |||
| Favorite Guest Performance by a Musician on a TV Show | Won | Davy Jones | ||
| Most Memorable Male Guest Star in a Comedy as Himself | Won | Joe Namath | ||
| 2004 | Favorite Fashion Plate - Male | Nominated | Barry Williams | |
| Most Memorable Mane | Nominated | Susan Olsen | ||
| Favorite Made for TV Maid | Won | Ann B. Davis | ||
| 2005 | Theme Song You Just Cannot Get out of Your Head | Nominated | ||
| Best Dream Sequence For episode "Love and the Older Man," in which Marcia has a crush on her dentist. |
Nominated | |||
| Favorite Two-Parter/Cliffhanger For the Greg Brady surfboard accident. |
Nominated | |||
| Favorite Singing Siblings | Nominated | Barry Williams, Maureen McCormick, Christopher Knight, Eve Plumb, Mike Lookinland, Susan Olsen | ||
| 2006 | Best Dream Sequence For episode "Love and the Older Man" |
Nominated | ||
| Favorite Made for TV Maid | Won | Ann B. Davis | ||
| Favorite TV Food Pork chops and applesauce. |
Won | |||
| 2007 | Most Beautiful Braces | Nominated | Maureen McCormick | |
| Won | Barry Williams, Maureen McCormick, Christopher Knight, Eve Plumb, Mike Lookinland, Susan Olsen, Ann B. Davis, Florence Henderson, Lloyd J. Schwartz (producer) |
Since its first airing in syndication in September 1975, an episode of the show has been broadcast somewhere in the United States and abroad every single day of every single year through at least 2008. Reruns were also shown on ABC daytime from July 9, 1973 to August 29, 1975, at 11:30 a.m. Eastern/10:30 Central. The run was interrupted only once, between April 21 and June 27, 1975, when ABC ran a short-lived game show, Blankety Blanks, in that time slot.
The Brady Bunch has been a popular staple in syndication for decades. The show was aired on TBS starting in the 1980s until 1997, on Nick at Nite from 1998 to 2003, TeenNick (under the channel's former name The-N) from March to April 2004 and on TV Land from 2002 to 2010.
Currently (in the U.S.), the show can still be seen on some independent local stations, and nationally Me-TV airs a two hour block of episodes on Sunday mornings.[7] On cable, the show started airing on The Inspiration Network (INSP) beginning September 26, 2011.
CBS DVD (distributed by Paramount) released all five seasons (and a complete collection of the series) of The Brady Bunch on DVD in Region 1 from 2005 to 2007, as well as in other countries.
A Complete Series box set was released in 2007, which includes the TV movies A Very Brady Christmas and The Brady 500, as well as two episodes of The Brady Kids animated series. The box art for the set features shag carpeting.
The first two seasons are also available on Region 2 DVD for the Nordic countries, with audio in English and subtitle choices in Norwegian, Swedish, Danish or Finnish.[8][9]
Seasons 1 and 2 have also been released in the UK.
| DVD name | Episodes | Release dates | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Region 1 | Region 2 | Region 4 | ||
| The Complete First Season | 25 | March 1, 2005 | August 27, 2007 | September 19, 2007 |
| The Complete Second Season | 24 | July 26, 2005 | March 24, 2008 | March 6, 2008 |
| The Complete Third Season | 23 | September 13, 2005 | N/A | September 4, 2008 |
| The Complete Fourth Season | 23 | November 1, 2005 | N/A | April 2, 2009 |
| The Complete Fifth Season | 22 | March 7, 2006 | N/A | June 18, 2009 |
| The Complete Series | 117 (with extras) | April 3, 2007 | N/A | N/A |
Several spin-offs and sequels to the original series were made, featuring all or most of the original cast.
A final-season Brady Bunch episode, "Kelly's Kids", was intended as a pilot for a prospective spinoff series of the same name. Ken Berry starred as Ken Kelly, a friend and neighbor of the Bradys', who with his wife Kathy (Brooke Bundy) adopted three orphaned boys of different racial backgrounds. One of the adopted sons was played by Todd Lookinland, the younger brother of Mike Lookinland. While Kelly's Kids was not subsequently picked up as a full series, producer Sherwood Schwartz would rework the basic premise for the short-lived 1980s sitcom Together We Stand starring Elliot Gould and Dee Wallace.
A 22-episode animated Saturday morning cartoon series, produced by Filmation and airing on ABC from 1972–74, about the Brady kids having various adventures. The family's adults were never seen or mentioned, and the "home" scenes were in a very large well-appointed tree house. Several animals were regular characters, including two non-English speaking pandas (Ping and Pong), a talking bird (Marlon) who could do magic, and an ordinary pet dog (Mop Top, not Tiger). The first 17 episodes featured the voices of all six of the original child actors from the show, but Barry Williams and Christopher Knight were replaced for the last five episodes due to a contract dispute.
A variety show called The Brady Bunch Variety Hour was spun off in 1977. It was canceled after only nine episodes. Eve Plumb was the only regular cast member from the original show who declined to be in the series and the role of Jan was recast with Geri Reischl. Produced by Sid and Marty Krofft, the sibling team behind H.R. Pufnstuf, Donny and Marie and other glitzy variety shows and children's series of the era, the show was intended to air every fifth week in the same slot as The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries, but ended up being scheduled sporadically throughout the season, leading to inconsistent ratings and its inevitable cancellation. In 2009, Susan Olsen published an artsy coffee table book, Love to Love You Bradys, which dissects and celebrates the Variety Hour as a cult classic.
| The Brady Brides | |
|---|---|
| Genre | Sitcom |
| Directed by | Peter Baldwin |
| Starring | Maureen McCormick Eve Plumb Jerry Houser Ron Kuhlman Ann B. Davis Florence Henderson Keland Love |
| Theme music composer | Frank De Vol |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Language(s) | English |
| No. of seasons | 1 |
| No. of episodes | 10 |
| Production | |
| Executive producer(s) | Lloyd J. Schwartz Sherwood Schwartz |
| Producer(s) | John Thomas Lenox |
| Location(s) | Paramount Studios (5555 Melrose Avenue, Hollywood, Los Angeles, California) |
| Cinematography | Lester Shorr |
| Running time | 30 min. |
| Production company(s) | Paramount Television |
| Distributor | CBS Television Distribution |
| Broadcast | |
| Original channel | NBC |
| Original run | February 6, 1981 – April 17, 1981 |
| Chronology | |
| Preceded by | The Brady Bunch Hour |
| Followed by | The Bradys |
| Related shows | The Brady Bunch |
A TV reunion movie called The Brady Girls Get Married was produced in 1981. TV Guide indicated the movie would be shown in one evening, but at the last minute NBC divided it into half hour segments and showed one part a week for three weeks, and the fourth week debuted a spin-off sitcom, titled The Brady Brides. The reunion movie featured the entire original cast; this would prove to be the only time the entire cast worked together on a single project following the cancellation of the original series. The movie's opening credits featured the Season One "Grid" and theme song, with the addition of the "Brady Girls Get Married" title.[10] The movie shows what the kids had been doing since the original series ended (and Alice living elsewhere, finally having married Sam), and eventually they all reunite to see Jan and Marcia both marry in a double wedding.
The Brady Brides series features Maureen McCormick (Marcia) and Eve Plumb (Jan) in regular roles. The series begins with Marcia, Jan and their new husbands buying a house and living together. The clashes between Jan's uptight husband, Phillip Covington III (a college professor in science who is several years older than Jan), and Marcia's slovenly husband, Wally Logan (a fun-loving salesman for a large toy company, played by Jerry Houser), were the pivot on which many of the stories were based, not unlike The Odd Couple. Ten episodes were aired before the sitcom was cancelled. This was the only Brady show in sitcom form to be filmed in front of a live studio audience. Bob Eubanks guest-starred as himself in an episode where the two couples appear on The Newlywed Game.
In the 1990s, The Brady Girls Get Married, including the pilot of The Brady Brides, was rerun as a single two-hour movie on Nick at Nite, to celebrate the release of The Brady Bunch Movie in 1995.
| № | Title | Original Airdate |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | "The Brady Girls Get Married (Part 1)" | February 6, 1981 |
| 2 | "The Brady Girls Get Married (Part 2)" | February 13, 1981 |
| 3 | "The Brady Girls Get Married (Part 3)" | February 20, 1981 |
| 4 | "Living Together" | March 6, 1981 |
| 5 | "Gorilla of My Dreams" | March 13, 1981 |
| 6 | "The Newlywed Game" | March 20, 1981 |
| 7 | "The Mom Who Came to Dinner" | March 27, 1981 |
| 8 | "The Siege" | April 3, 1981 |
| 9 | "Cool Hand Phil" | April 10, 1981 |
| 10 | "A Pretty Boy Is Like a Melody" | April 17, 1981 |
A second TV reunion movie, A Very Brady Christmas, featured all the regular cast (except Susan Olsen; the role of Cindy was played by Jennifer Runyon), as well as three grandchildren, Peter's girlfriend, Valerie, and the spouses of Greg, Marcia and Jan (Nora, Wally and Phillip, respectively).
Mike is still an architect and Jan has followed in his footsteps to become one herself; Carol is a realtor; Greg is a physician; Marcia is a stay-at-home mom with two kids; Peter works in an office; Cindy is in her last year of college; Bobby was in graduate school studying for business but dropped out to drive race cars.
After a series of pratfalls to get the family together, everyone comes home harboring various secrets (e.g., Jan and Phillip are considering separation; Wally is out of work again, having lost his job in a merger at his toy company; Greg's wife Nora wants to spend Christmas with her family; Cindy felt pressured to come home in lieu of a skiing trip with her college friends; Peter feels inferior to his girlfriend, who is also his boss; and Bobby hasn't revealed his leaving graduate school for a racing career). Alice, meanwhile, temporarily moves back in with Mike and Carol after her husband, Sam, runs off with another woman. (Allan Melvin did not reprise the role; he had retired from acting and was replaced in a single scene by Lewis Arquette.)
Even Mike has problems: Contractor Ted Roberts, wanting to save money on a downtown office complex project (at 34th Street and Oak) where Mike is the architect, demands that he redesign the building to omit important safety specifications. Mike advises against it and causes his firm to lose Roberts' services. On Christmas Day, the building crumbles, and Roberts, unable to contact anyone at the new firm he hired, must rely on Mike to find what caused the building's structure to become unstable. While inside, the building continues to crumble, trapping Mike and two security guards inside. Of course, everyone turns out to be okay, and Alice and Sam reunite.
The movie, which aired on CBS in December 1988 to high ratings, renewed interest in the Brady clan and set out the current careers and family situations which were continued in The Bradys.
The fact that this movie aired on CBS gave the Bradys a rare feat: the original show and reunions aired on all of the "Big 3" networks — ABC, CBS and NBC.
The dramedy series The Bradys was produced in 1989 and premiered on February 6, 1990.
The theme music used an instrumental version for the (CBS) network run and a lyrical version for reruns. The theme lyrics no longer featured the "That's the way we all became The Brady Bunch" lyrics, and the theme was no longer sung by The Brady Kids — it was performed by the Brady mom Florence Henderson.
The Brady Bunch has met with a remarkable amount of television coverage, although most of this did not happen until the original series had been out of production for more than 20 years.
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