The Brady Bunch
The Brady Bunch is an American sitcom created by Sherwood Schwartz that aired from September 26, 1969, to March 8, 1974, on ABC. The series revolves around a large blended family of six children, with three boys and three girls. After its cancellation in 1974, the series debuted in syndication in September 1975.[2] Though it was never a ratings hit or a critical success during its original run, the program has since become a popular syndicated staple, especially among children and teenage viewers.
The Brady Bunch
- Frank De Vol
- Sherwood Schwartz
- "The Brady Bunch" performed by:
- Peppermint Trolley Company (1969–70)
- The Brady Bunch Kids
- (1970–74)
Frank De Vol
United States
English
5
117 (list of episodes)
- Howard Leeds
- Sherwood Schwartz
- Lloyd J. Schwartz
25–26 minutes
- Redwood Productions
- Paramount Television
September 26, 1969 –
March 8, 1974
The Brady Bunch's success in syndication led to several television reunion films and spin-off series: The Brady Bunch Hour (1976–77), The Brady Girls Get Married (1981), The Brady Brides (1981), A Very Brady Christmas (1988), and The Bradys (1990). In 1995, the series was adapted into a satirical comedy theatrical film titled The Brady Bunch Movie, followed by A Very Brady Sequel in 1996. A second sequel, The Brady Bunch in the White House, aired on Fox in November 2002 as a made-for-television film.
In 1997, "Getting Davy Jones" (season three, episode 12) was ranked number 37 on TV Guide's 100 Greatest Episodes of All-Time.[3] The show's enduring popularity has resulted in its widespread recognition as an American cultural icon.
Premise[edit]
Mike Brady (Robert Reed), a widowed architect with three sons—Greg (Barry Williams), Peter (Christopher Knight), and Bobby (Mike Lookinland)—marries Carol Martin (Florence Henderson), who herself has three daughters: Marcia (Maureen McCormick), Jan (Eve Plumb), and Cindy (Susan Olsen). Mike and Carol adopt each other’s children and Carol and her daughters take the Brady surname. Included in the blended family are Mike's live-in housekeeper, Alice Nelson (Ann B. Davis), and the boys' dog, Tiger. (In the pilot episode, the girls also have a pet: a cat named Fluffy who never appears in any other episodes). The setting is a large two-story house designed by Mike, located in a Los Angeles suburb.[4] The show never addressed what happened to Carol's first husband.[5]
In the first season, awkward adjustments, accommodations, gender rivalries, and resentments inherent in blended families dominate the storylines. In an early episode, Carol tells Bobby that the only "steps" in their household lead to the second floor (in other words, that the Bradys are not a "stepfamily", only "a family"). Thereafter, episodes focus on typical teen and preteen concerns such as sibling rivalry, puppy love, self-image, character building, responsibility, dating, school grades and getting along in social company. Noticeably absent is any political commentary, especially regarding the Vietnam War, which was being waged at its largest extent during the height of the series.[6]
Production[edit]
Development[edit]
In 1966, 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 "30% of marriages [in the United States] have a child or children from a previous marriage". He set to work on a pilot script for a series tentatively titled Mine and Yours.[13] Schwartz then developed the script to include three children for each parent. While Mike Brady is depicted as being a widower, Schwartz originally wanted the character of Carol Brady to have been a divorcée, but the network objected to this. A compromise was reached whereby Carol's marital status (whether she was divorced or widowed) was never directly revealed.
Schwartz shopped the series to 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, so Schwartz shelved the project.[14] Although similarities exist between the series and two 1968 theatrical release films, United Artists' Yours, Mine and Ours (starring Henry Fonda and Lucille Ball) and CBS's With Six You Get Eggroll (starring Brian Keith and Doris Day), the original script for The Brady Bunch predated the scripts for both of these films. Nonetheless, the outstanding success of Yours, Mine and Ours (the 11th-highest-grossing film of 1968) was a factor in ABC's decision to order episodes for the series.[13]
After receiving a commitment for 13 weeks of television shows from ABC in 1968, Schwartz hired film and television director John Rich to direct the pilot, then called "The Brady Brood", cast the six children from 264 interviews during that summer, and hired the actors to play the mother, father, and housekeeper roles.[15] For the part of the father, Schwartz originally cast Bob Holiday, who was well known for portraying Superman in a Broadway musical, but since Holiday had little on-camera experience, network executives overrode Schwartz's decision and gave the role to TV veteran Robert Reed.[16] As the sets were built on Paramount Television stage 5, adjacent to the stage where H.R. Pufnstuf was filmed by Sid and Marty Krofft, who later produced The Brady Bunch Hour,[17] the production crew prepared the backyard of a home in Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles, as the exterior location for the chaotic backyard wedding scene. Filming of the pilot began on Friday, October 4, 1968, and lasted eight days.
Theme song and credits sequence[edit]
The theme song, written by Schwartz and Frank De Vol, and originally arranged, sung, and performed by Paul Parrish, Lois Fletcher, and John Beland under the name the Peppermint Trolley Company, quickly communicated to audiences that the Bradys were a blended family.[18] As described above, the Brady family is shown in a three-by-three grid, tic-tac-toe board-style graphic with Carol in the top center, Alice in the middle block, and Mike in the bottom center. To the right are three blocks with the boys from the oldest on top to the youngest. To the left are three blocks with the girls from the oldest to the youngest. In season two, the Brady kids took over singing the theme song. In season three, the boys sing the first verse, girls sing the second verse, and all sing together for the third and last verse. In season four, a new version is recorded with the same structure as the season three version, but in season five, the season three version returns. Utilizing Christopher Chapman's "multi-dynamic image technique", a version of which had famously appeared in the 1968 film The Thomas Crown Affair, the sequence was created and filmed by Howard A. Anderson Jr., a visual effects pioneer who worked on the title sequences for many popular television series.[19] The use of this innovation here became so familiar through the sitcom's popularity that it was referred to in the press as the "Brady Bunch effect".[7][8]
The end credits feature an instrumental version of the theme song's third verse. In season one, it was recorded by the Peppermint Trolley Company. From season two on, the theme was recorded in-house by Paramount musicians.
The Brady house[edit]
The house built in 1959, by Harry M. Londelius Jr., and used in exterior shots, is located in Studio City, within the city limits of Los Angeles. It originally bore little relation to the interior of the Bradys' on-screen home, but was gutted and renovated in 2018 to match the layout of the soundstage sets. 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.[20] A false window was attached to the front's A-frame section to give the illusion that it had two full stories (the 2018/19 renovation installed a real window where the false one was in the TV show footage).[21] Contemporary establishing shots of the house were filmed with the owner's permission for the 1990 TV series The Bradys. The owner refused to allow Paramount to restore the property to its 1969 look for The Brady Bunch Movie in 1995, so a facade resembling the original home was built around an existing house.
The house was put up for sale, for the first time since 1973, in the summer of 2018 with an asking price of $1.885 million.[22] Cable network HGTV outbid seven others for it, including NSYNC's Lance Bass.[23] HGTV has expanded the home for its original series A Very Brady Renovation, with the goal of recreating each of the interior rooms used in the TV series (which had only existed as a Paramount Studios set) while maintaining the original exterior look from the street, and to make it fully habitable (unlike the sets made on Paramount soundstage #5). The six actors who played the TV children, and who also actively participated in the 2018/19 renovation, posed for a photo in front on November 1 the same year.[24] In May 2023, it was announced that HGTV was selling the house for $5.5 million.[25][26][27][28]
In the series, the address of the house 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", and "Clinton Way" is clearly legible on Marcia's driver permit in the fifth-season episode "The Driver's Seat").[29] Although no city was ever specified, it was presumed from references to the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Los Angeles Rams, and a Hollywood film studio, among many others, that the Bradys lived in Southern California, most likely Los Angeles or one of its suburbs.[30][31]
The interior sets of the Brady house were used at least three times for other Paramount TV shows while The Brady Bunch was still in production: twice for Mannix and once for Mission: Impossible. In the case of Mission: Impossible, the Brady furniture was also used.[32][33][34] A re-creation of the Brady house was constructed for the X-Files episode "Sunshine Days", which also revolved around The Brady Bunch.
The Brady Bunch
The Brady Brides
Maureen McCormick
Eve Plumb
Jerry Houser
Ron Kuhlman
Florence Henderson
Ann B. Davis
Keland Love
United States
English
1
10
John Thomas Lenox
Paramount Studios, Hollywood, Los Angeles, California
25 minutes
Redwood Productions
Paramount Television
February 6 –
April 17, 1981
Film adaptations[edit]
Twenty years following the conclusion of the original series, a film adaptation, The Brady Bunch Movie, went into production and was released in 1995 from Paramount Pictures. The film is set in the present day (1990s) and the Bradys, still living their lives as if it were the 1970s, are unfamiliar with their surroundings. It stars Gary Cole and Shelley Long as Mike and Carol Brady, with Christopher Daniel Barnes (Greg), Christine Taylor (Marcia), Paul Sutera (Peter), Jennifer Elise Cox (Jan), Jesse Lee (Bobby), Olivia Hack (Cindy), Henriette Mantel (Alice), and cameo appearances from Ann B. Davis as a long-haul truck driver, Barry Williams as a record label executive, Christopher Knight as a Westdale High gym teacher, Rupaul as a guidance counselor, and Florence Henderson as Carol's mother. Mike Lookinland, Susan Olsen and Maureen McCormick appear in deleted scenes.
A sequel, A Very Brady Sequel, was released in 1996. The cast of the first film returned for the sequel. Another sequel, The Brady Bunch in the White House, was made-for-television and aired on Fox in 2002. Gary Cole and Shelley Long returned for the third film, while the Brady kids and Alice were recast.
The third episode of the Disney+ miniseries WandaVision, "Now in Color", pays homage to 1970s sitcoms, including The Brady Bunch, and uses a similar intro for the virtual WandaVision in-show program.[84]
