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 with six children. Considered one of the last of the old-style family sitcoms, the series aired for five seasons and, after its cancellation in 1974, went into syndication in September 1975. While the series was never a critical success or hit series during its original run, it has since become a popular staple in syndication, especially among children and teenaged viewers.
The Brady Bunchs success in syndication led to several television reunion films and spin-off series: The Brady Bunch Hour, The Brady Girls Get Married, The Brady Brides, A Very Brady Christmas, and The Bradys. 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" was ranked number 37 on TV Guides 100 Greatest Episodes of All-Time. The enduring popularity of the show has resulted in it becoming widely recognized as an American cultural icon.

Premise

Mike Brady, a widowed architect with three sons, Greg, Peter, and Bobby, marries Carol Martin, who herself has three daughters: Marcia, Jan, and Cindy. The wife and daughters take the Brady surname. Included in the blended family are Mike's live-in housekeeper, Alice Nelson, and the boys' dog, Tiger. The setting is a large, suburban, two-story house designed by Mike, in a Los Angeles suburb.
In the first season, awkward adjustments, accommodations, gender rivalries, and resentments inherent in blended families dominate the stories. In an early episode, Carol tells Bobby that the only "steps" in their household lead to the second floor. Thereafter, the episodes focus on typical preteen and teenaged adjustments such as sibling rivalry, puppy love, self-image, character building, and responsibility. Noticeably absent was any political commentary, especially regarding the Vietnam War, which was being waged at its largest extent during the height of the series.

Episodes

Cast and characters

Main

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. The sequence used the then-new "multi-dynamic image technique" created by Canadian filmmaker Christopher Chapman; as a result of the popular attention it garnered in this sequence, it has been referred to in the press as "the Brady Bunch effect". In a 2010 issue of TV Guide, the show's opening title sequence ranked number eight on a list of TV's top-10 credits sequences, as selected by readers.
in the 1971 The Brady Bunch episode "Getting Davy Jones"

Development

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 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. 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 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. Although similarities exist between the series and two 1968 theatrical release films, United Artists' Yours, Mine and Ours and CBS's With Six You Get Eggroll, the original script for The Brady Bunch predated the scripts for both of these films. Nonetheless, the outstanding success of Yours, Mine and Ours was a factor in ABC's decision to order episodes for the series.
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 role, the father role, and the housekeeper role. 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, the production crew prepared the back yard 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

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. As described above, the Brady family is shown in a three-by-three grid, tic-tac-toe board-style graphic with Carol on the top center, Alice in the middle block, and Mike on bottom middle. 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. 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.”
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

The house, built in 1959 and used in exterior shots, originally bore little relation to the interior layout of the Bradys' on screen home, is located in Studio City, within the city limits of Los Angeles. 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. A false window was attached to the front's A-frame section to give the illusion that it had two full stories. 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. Cable network HGTV outbid seven others for it, including NSYNC's Lance Bass. 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 while maintaining the original exterior look from the street, and to make it fully habitable. The six actors who played the TV children, and who also actively participated in the 2018/2019 renovation, posed for a photo in front on November 1, 2018.
In the series, the address of the house was given as 4222 Clinton Way. 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.
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 . In the case of Mission: Impossible, the Brady furniture was also used. A re-creation of the Brady house was constructed for the X-Files episode "Sunshine Days", which also revolved around The Brady Bunch.

Broadcast and syndication

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 day of the year. Episodes were also shown on ABC daytime from July 9, 1973 to April 18, 1975 and from June 30 to August 29, 1975, at 11:30 a.m. EST/10:30 CST.
The show was aired on TBS starting in the 1980s until 1997, Nick at Nite in 1995, and again from 1998 to 2003, The N from March to April 2004, on TV Land on and off from 2002 to 2015, Nick Jr., and Hallmark Channel from January to June 2013 and again starting September 5, 2016, until September 30, 2016.
Episodes in the syndicated version have been edited for time to allow for commercial breaks, down from the original version of 25–26 minutes.

Current airings

Since its launch as a national network in 2010, the Weigel Broadcasting owned classic TV network MeTV airs a weekly two-hour block of the show every Sunday morning/early afternoon promoted as the "Brady Bunch Brunch". In the years following, MeTV has also periodically aired the series weekday mornings. Decades - a sister network of MeTV - also occasionally airs the show.
The show is also available through the video-on-demand services Hulu and CBS All Access, though not every episode is available on either service.
In the UK the series aired on ITV in many regions from 1975 to 1982 and was later repeated on Sky One. The series was never a big hit in Britain.

Home media

released all five seasons on DVD in Region 1 from 2005 to 2006, before CBS Home Entertainment took over DVD rights to the Paramount Television library. Paramount/CBS has released the series on DVD in other countries as well.
On April 3, 2007, CBS Home Entertainment and Paramount Home Entertainment released the complete series box set, 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 this set features green shag carpeting and 1970s-style wood paneling.
8 years later on April 7, 2015, CBS Home Entertainment and Paramount Home Entertainment re-released the complete series box set, a repackaged version at a lower price, but it does not include the bonus disc that was part of the original complete series release.
The TV movie A Very Brady Christmas was released as a stand-alone DVD in Region 1 on October 10, 2017.
In conjunction with the 50th anniversary of the original series, CBS/Paramount released The Brady-est Brady Bunch TV & Movie Collection in Region 1 on June 4, 2019. The collection contains every episode of The Brady Bunch, The Brady Kids, The Brady Brides, and The Bradys, as well as the movies A Very Brady Christmas, The Brady Bunch Movie, A Very Brady Sequel, The Brady Bunch in the White House, and Growing Up Brady.
The first two seasons are also available on Region 2 DVD for the UK, with audio in English and subtitle choices in Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, or Finnish.
The series has also been released on VHS.

Reception

U.S. television ratings


Ratings data prior to 1972 is scarce for shows that did not place in the Top 30. Beginning in 2017, The TV Ratings Guide began publishing vintage television ratings as they became readily available from old newspaper publishings. Season 4 ratings came from Variety year-end rankings dated May 30, 1973. The Brady Bunch earned steady ratings during its primetime run and was cancelled in 1974 after five seasons and 117 episodes; it was cancelled shortly after the series crossed the minimum threshold for syndication. At that point in the storyline, Greg graduated from high school and was about to enroll in college.

Awards and honors

The Brady Bunch was not an award-winning show at the time of its original broadcast in the 1970s. The series and its cast and crew were not nominated for an award until 1989, when Barry Williams was honored with the Former Child Star Lifetime Achievement Award at the 10th Youth in Film Awards.
All other awards and nominations for the series have come from the TV Land Awards:
YearCategoryRecipientResult
2003Hippest Fashion Plate – MaleBarry Williams
2003Favorite Dual-Role CharacterChristopher Knight
2003Funniest Food FightThe Brady Pie Fight on the Paramount Lot
2003Favorite Guest Performance by a Musician on a TV ShowDavy Jones
2003Joe Namath
2004Favorite Fashion Plate – MaleBarry Williams
2004Most Memorable ManeSusan Olsen
2004Favorite Made-for-TV MaidAnn B. Davis
2005Theme Song You Just Cannot Get out of Your HeadThe Brady Bunch theme
2005Best Dream Sequence
Episode: "Love and the Older Man", in which Marcia has a crush on her dentist.
2005Favorite Two-Parter/CliffhangerFor the Greg Brady surfboard accident.
2005Favorite Singing SiblingsWilliams, McCormick, Knight, Plumb, Lookinland, Olsen
2006Best Dream SequenceEpisode: "Love and the Older Man", in which Marcia has a crush on her dentist.
2006Favorite Made-for-TV MaidAnn B. Davis
2006Favorite TV FoodPork chops and applesauce.
2007Most Beautiful BracesMaureen McCormick
2007Pop Culture AwardWilliams, McCormick, Knight, Plumb, Lookinland, Olsen, Davis, Henderson, Lloyd J. Schwartz

Discography

During the series' original run, the six Brady kids recorded several albums on Paramount's record label, all credited to "The Brady Bunch". Note that Florence Henderson and Robert Reed did not participate in these recordings, and are not pictured on the album sleeves.
While session musicians provided backing, the actors from the series provided their own singing voices. In addition, Chris Knight & Maureen McCormick issued a duet LP in 1973, and five of the six Brady kids also released solo singles between 1970 and 1974; only Susan Olsen did not. None of the singles from The Brady Bunch, or any single or album from the assorted spin-off acts, ever became hits on any national music charts. The group's 1972 album Meet The Brady Bunch was their only charting release, hitting #108 on Billboard's album charts.

Studio albums

Compilation albums

Singles

Also includes solo singles as indicated.
YearSingleAlbum
1970"Frosty the Snowman"Merry Christmas from the Brady Bunch
1970"How Will It Be?"
1971"Sweet Sweetheart"
1972"Time to Change"Meet the Brady Bunch
1972"We'll Always Be Friends"Meet the Brady Bunch
1972"Over and Over"
1972"Candy "The Kids from the Brady Bunch
1973"Zuckerman's Famous Pig"The Brady Bunch Phonographic Album
1973"Truckin' Back To You"
1973"Everything I Do"The Brady Bunch Phonographic Album
1973"Little Bird " Chris Knight & Maureen McCormick
1974"Love's in the Roses"
1974"Love Doesn't Care Who's in It"

Spin-offs, sequels, and reunions

Several spin-offs and sequels and reality series, to the original series have been made, featuring all or most of the original cast. These include another sitcom, an animated series, a variety show, television movies, a dramatic series, a stage play, theatrical movies, and a reality series:

''Kelly's Kids''

A final-season Brady Bunch episode, "Kelly's Kids", was intended as a pilot for a prospective spin-off series of the same name. Ken Berry starred as Ken Kelly, a friend and neighbor of the Bradys, who with his wife Kathy 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 reworked the basic premise for the short-lived 1980s sitcom Together We Stand starring Elliott Gould and Dee Wallace.

''The Brady Kids''

A 22-episode animated Saturday morning cartoon series, produced by Filmation and airing on ABC from September 1972 to August 1974, is 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, a talking bird which could do magic, and an ordinary pet dog. The first 17 episodes featured the voices of all six of the original child actors from the show, but Barry Williams, Maureen McCormick, and Christopher Knight were replaced for the last five episodes due to a contract dispute.

''The Brady Bunch Variety Hour''

On November 28, 1976, a one-hour television special entitled The Brady Bunch Variety Hour aired on ABC. 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 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, Brady Bunch cast member Susan Olsen, with Lisa Sutton, published a book, Love to Love You Bradys, which dissects and celebrates the Variety Hour as a cult classic.

''The Brady Girls Get Married'' / ''The Brady Brides''

A TV reunion movie called The Brady Girls Get Married was produced in 1981. Although scheduled to be shown in its original full-length movie format, NBC at the last minute 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 proved 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. The movie shows what the characters had been doing since the original series ended: Mike is still an architect, Carol is a real-estate agent, Greg is a doctor, Marcia is a fashion designer, Peter is in the Air Force, Jan is also an architect, Bobby and Cindy are in college, and Alice has married Sam. Eventually, they all reunite for Marcia and Jan's double wedding.
The Brady Brides features Maureen McCormick and Eve Plumb reprising their respective roles as Marcia and Jan Brady. The series begins with Marcia and Jan and their new husbands buying a house and living together. The clashes between Jan's uptight and conservative husband, Philip Covington III and Marcia's slovenly and more bohemian husband, Wally Logan, were the pivot on which many of the stories were based, not unlike The Odd Couple. Florence Henderson and Ann B. Davis also appeared regularly. 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.
Throughout the late 1980s and 1990s, The Brady Girls Get Married was rerun on various networks in its original full-length movie format.
In 2019, the series was released on DVD for the first time as a part of The Brady-est Brady Bunch TV & Movie Collection.

Episodes (1981)

''A Very Brady Christmas''

A second TV reunion movie, A Very Brady Christmas, aired in December 1988 on CBS and featured most of the regular cast, as well as three grandchildren, Peter's girlfriend, Valerie, and the spouses of Greg, Marcia, and Jan. The Nielsen ratings for A Very Brady Christmas were the highest of any television movie that season for CBS.

''The Bradys''

Due to the success of A Very Brady Christmas, CBS asked Brady Bunch creator Sherwood Schwartz and his son Lloyd to create a new series for the network. According to Lloyd Schwartz, his father and he initially balked at the idea because they felt a new series would harm the Brady franchise. They finally relented because CBS was "desperate for programming". A new series featuring the Brady clan was created entitled The Bradys. All the original Brady Bunch cast members returned for the series, except for Maureen McCormick, who was replaced with Leah Ayres.
As with A Very Brady Christmas, The Bradys also featured elements of comedy and drama and featured storylines that were of a more serious nature than that of the original series and its subsequent spin-offs. Lloyd Schwartz later said he compared The Bradys to another dramedy of the time, thirtysomething. The two-hour series premiere episode aired on February 9, 1990, at 9 pm on CBS and initially drew respectable ratings. Subsequent episodes were moved to 8 pm, where ratings quickly declined. Due to the decline, CBS cancelled the series after six episodes.

''Bradymania: A Very Brady Special''

A one-hour TV special retrospective of The Brady Bunch hosted by Florence Henderson who introduces a montage of various episodes of the original series, and also examines the show's phenomenal after-life, illustrated by clips from spin-offs and other incarnations of the series. Also, cast members Christopher Knight, Susan Olsen, Mike Lookinland, Barry Williams, Ann B. Davis, and creator Sherwood Schwartz reflect on the impact of the show on their lives. Directed by Malcolm Leo, the special was originally broadcast on ABC on May 19, 1993.

''Day by Day'': "A Very Brady Episode"

The Day by Day episode titled "A Very Brady Episode", on NBC, reunited six of the original The Brady Bunch cast members: Robert Reed, Florence Henderson, Ann B. Davis, Christopher Knight, Mike Lookinland and Maureen McCormick.

''A Very Brady Renovation''

In November 2018, it was announced that Christopher Knight, Mike Lookinland, Maureen McCormick, Susan Olsen, Eve Plumb, and Barry Williams were reuniting for the 2019 HGTV series A Very Brady Renovation, which follows a full renovation of the real house, used for the sitcom's exterior shots, into the fictional Brady house.

''Chopped''

In conjunction with the Renovation series, in the autumn of 2019, The Food Network aired two episodes of their program Chopped with the siblings as guest judges. Season 43, episode 3 - "Brady Bunch Bash" featured Williams, Plumb, and Lookinland judging meals made from Hawaiian ingredients. Season 43, episode 4 - "A Very Brady Chopped" featured McCormick, Knight, and Olsen judging meals from "groovy" ingredients of the 70's.

Film adaptations

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 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, Christine Taylor, Paul Sutera, Jennifer Elise Cox, Jesse Lee, Olivia Hack, Henriette Mantel, and cameo appearances from Ann B. Davis as a long-haul truck driver, Barry Williams as a record label executive, Christopher Knight as a gym teacher at Westdale High, and Florence Henderson as Carol's mother. Mike Lookinland, Susan Olsen and Maureen McCormick appeared 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.