And the center Brady box goes blank -- RIP Ann B. Davis

From Stuever's piece:

"The jokes they wrote for Alice had an outdated and intentionally broad and hammy quality to them, as if her prior gigs had been cleaning hotel rooms in the Catskills."

Now that would be a fun little book of photos and short stories: Hotel Maids of the Catskills.

 

I had not realized there was a movie based on "Growing Up Brady." And that Penny from Big Bang Theory played Maureen McCormick.

 

That's Seth from The O.C. too.

 

Kaley Cuoco, before the boob job...

 

That's a fantastic book. Supposedly, Mike Brady was going to be killed off-screen if the show had come back for a sixth season, because Schwartz was so tired of Reed's bitching. By the time the reunions started rolling around, I guess tensions had eased up a bit. And, for the record, Reed absolutely fucking loved being on the variety show even though he couldn't sing or dance to save his life.

 

What was he bitching about? Did he want Florence Henderson replaced with Freddie Mercury?

 

Reed won Emmy nominations for other shows, played Romeo and Puck, and trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.
I don't blame him for losing patience with the hammy material he was handed on that show.

 

I don't believe for a second that they would have killed his character off, tempting as it may have been.

That show was all about the warm and fuzzy, and they barely referenced that both had been widowed.

 

They never said anything about the girls' father. Schwartz always said he was portraying her as divorced but the network wouldn't allow the acknowledgement.

One of the movies in the '90s had her husband returning.

 

I seem to remember in one of the early episodes, Bobby or Peter made a passing reference to their mom dying. But you're right, I don't remember that happening with the girls...

I just assumed the dad coming back in the movie was a goof since those films were done in a pretty tongue-in-cheek manner.

 

I believe it was in the first episode, because it showed Bobby looking at a picture of her and Alice was trying to console him. If I remember right, it was actually a pretty sad scene.

That said, why the heck would a man and woman, each with three kids, decide to get married without all of the kids meeting each other? And if I'm also remembering right, the kids didn't even meet the other parent until the wedding.

 

Before the Bunch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WYWRduE8w8