Behind The Scenes On ‘The Brady Bunch Variety Hour,’ The Show That’s So Bad It’s… Well, Bad

Writing the Book

Creating that sense of not being able to look away, the idea behind the book was to create a parody of coffee table books previously published about other shows and movies of significance, like Star Wars, I love Lucy, and Star Trek. “We wanted to see how far we could take this obscure, reviled show, and turn it into something actually likable and interesting,” reflects Ted. “Once we really got into it, we discovered that there really was a story, because I was starting to hit a nerve with some people regarding different things that really made them upset; and for others it reached some memory where, deep in the back of their head, there was some very fond feelings for it that no one has asked about and they hadn’t thought about it in years. It was also kind of interesting from the point of view that the show was definitely so ludicrous that you can’t help but ask, ‘How in the world did this ever happen?’”

From ‘Donny & Marie’ to ‘The Brady Bunch Variety Hour.’

The concept had its origins on an episode of the Donny & Marie variety show, which was the TV showcase for Donny and Marie Osmond, one episode of which featured Brady actors as guest stars, which resulted in high ratings. “Because of that,” says Ted, “ABC decided they wanted to do a variety special with The Brady Bunch. They called up [producers] Sid and Marty Krofft and asked them to produce this, and it was put together on a very, very short production schedule.  If you watch the first episode, it’s extremely elaborate with a giant swimming tank and all the sets and all the costumes. That episode of Donny & Marie was filmed in late September of 1976 and then it aired in the first half of October. They had this whole Brady thing all assembled and ready to go by the first part of November and they started filming the week before Thanksgiving. I forget how many people watched that first episode, but it got a 32 share of the audience or something like that, which was absolutely enormous. Well, the network at that point really wanted the show on a regular basis, but they wanted to clean things up compared to that first episode.

“They said that the Bradys looked like clowns; that their clothes were so bright and off,” he continues. “For the scenery, you basically had to wear sunglasses, because they just sprayed everything with glitter. Susan Olsen had told me that all the scenery had just been jigsaw cut on the paneling and then they just pounded it on a bunch of 2x4s and they started spraying everything with glitter. And then there was the swimming tank.”

Singing, Dancing and Swimming Bradys

Built on a small sound stage, there was actually a pool constructed to accommodate aquatic “dancers” as part of big production numbers, with windows on the side so the cameras could film the ladies in the water from that angle. “This was different from Esther Williams,” Ted says regarding the competitive swimmer and actress, “because in Esther Williams films, a lot of times they were on top of the water and doing a lot of acrobatics there, but in this case they were asking people to sit on the bottom of this tank in formations, which means that you have to completely exhale to stay down there; you’re not holding any air in your lungs. It was very difficult for these ladies to do that, and Sid Krofft had all these crazy ideas, like putting gas canisters in the pool which were going to explode and the ladies would fly out of the pool, and slide down waterslides.”

No Dolphins Were Harmed Making This Show … Or Even Featured

Ted states, “One of the writers, and this is in the book, said to me, ‘Sid was having these visions of what the Bradys are going to do,’ and Marty would just sit there with his arms across his chest saying, ‘You’re nuts!’ These people would be in the production meeting. I mean, you just don’t see this kind of stuff happening anymore. Today in Hollywood, everyone is so professional and on top of it, and here is this guy who would say these things and everyone would be, like, ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ There’s also this quote in the book, which I verified with Sid Krofft, where he said, ‘And then we’ll have dolphins and they’ll swim with dolphins in the swimming pool,’ and someone said, ‘But, Sid, the dolphins will die,’ to which Sid goes, ‘Well, how long would they live in the pool?’”

Challenges of the Bradys in the Variety Format

And that’s how crazy the show was without even factoring in The Bradys themselves. Needless to say, their appearance on this show was unlike anything the audience had seen before — and they’d seen The Brady Kids cartoon, which was a whole different kind of trip. “When they brought The Bradys back,” Ted details, “they cleaned it up and gave them a new house, and then when they would have their musical numbers, there were more uniforms, meaning that Florence Henderson would have a big gown and Robert Reed would have a tuxedo or big suit. Often he matched the boys, and although Florence’s gown was meant to be similar to the girls, the girls would have these jumpers or something like that. On that show they were really big into jumpers and bell bottoms.

“Because Robert Reed was so bad at the singing and dancing, they changed Mike Brady’s character to kind of make him out to be a buffoon, and Carol is kind of in charge of everything and making all the decisions. Whereas on the original sitcom, Mike was the leader and holding the Bunch together, lecturing them and stuff like that. Although Robert did love doing the variety show, he did have some tantrums and meltdowns. He would actually get angry at Florence, because she would get angry at the kids for being too slow. I mean, they did their Brady Kids act, but that was a short show, they had very basic choreography, and they did the same show again and again. This was doing a different show every week.”

There’s Something About Bobby

As a bit of teen rebel, Mike Lookinland (Bobby) decided to cut out from rehearsal one day, leaving everybody else hanging. Florence confronted him in the studio’s parking lot. “She pushed him up against this car window with her finger in the middle of his chest, and was poking him, because he was not doing his fair share,” Ted explains. “She said to him, ‘Look, Mike, you’re either in or you’re out.’ But what he said to me was, ‘You know, she was right. She taught me this lesson that if you have a job, you should always do your best.’ He said it was a life-changing thing for him, because from that point forward he was always much more professional. That was something he’s never shared before.”

Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!

Maureen McCormick (Marcia) had a different problem stemming from the fact that she was, as Ted says, “at the height” of her well-documented drug addiction. He points out, “She wouldn’t show up for rehearsals, and then she would show up with bruises on her arms and legs. Well, you can’t have your pretty Brady girls with bruises, so they all had to start wearing opaque leggings. You’ll see after the pilot episode that none of the girls’ legs are showing anymore. This is something that Maureen admitted to me: They had to hire extra people to keep her corralled, because she was just a nitwit. She had someone who had to make sure that she was getting dressed, and got where she needed to go.

“One time,” he elaborates, “Maureen didn’t even show up. She showed up to do her pre-record, so they had her voice there and everything, but they couldn’t find her. They panicked, because they only had a short amount of time to film this show. They found her lying out on the beach somewhere, which is pretty good considering there was no texting or anything back in those days. But they were all sitting there in costume, and there’s actually an episode where there are two musical numbers where Maureen is missing, so they had to re-stage one of them, and you can see Susan lip syncing Maureen’s little bit of singing. She told me Maureen never showed up and they forced her to sync to it.”

What the Brady Kids Think of the Show

Overall, The Brady Bunch Variety Hour sounds like it was a miserable experience for pretty much everyone involved. Ted and his co-authors were at least in the position to gauge the actors’ memories of the show looking back at it from a modern perspective. “Barry Williams is really proud of these things, because they worked really hard, and while they seem kind of cheesy now, he said at the time that they were doing them, he thought that they did good job,” says Ted. “He was also getting a little tired of people making fun of them, because of how hard they worked on it. Now with Maureen, she was thinking that she was going to have a singing career and this was going to help her develop that. She believed Sid and Marty Krofft were really the top producers in variety television at that time, which is true, and that’s what she was thinking.”

Christopher Knight and What Happened to Eve Plumb

“Chris Knight was going to college. He was at UCLA and he wasn’t doing very well, and the show gave him an excuse to make a graceful exit out of college and say, ‘Oh, I’m busy now.’ But he didn’t really enjoy doing the show, because he was not very musical. That wasn’t his thing.  Eve Plumb’s father was a music producer and they had worked with the Kroffts on H.R. Pufnstuff Live at the Hollywood Bowl. They also had done a Saturday morning TV special with them. Her dad knew Sid and Marty were trouble, and he was not too big on Eve doing this show. She already had an option to do a TV movie of the week sequel, because she was in a movie called Dawn: Portrait of a Teenage Runaway, which got a really big rating. So there was going to be a sequel and he knew she might not be available for it because of this show. He also felt that because she had this number-one rated TV movie of the week, that she was in a different league now and the financial offer wasn’t enough.”

“Double My Pay or I Won’t Do the Show!”

“Michael didn’t want to do the show, and his mother kind of got involved a little bit. She said, ‘Why don’t you want to do this?’ and then he said, ‘Fine, tell them I’ll do it, but only if they pay me twice as much as they’re offering.’ And then the network paid them all twice as much, because of what Mike said. That’s how much ABC wanted it. Mike thought they’d never agree to pay, but they did. And then with Susan, her feeling was that Donny & Marie had done a lot of comedy sketches and Susan loves comedy. She wasn’t as much into the music part of it, but she thought that they would get to do some funny sketches, so she was really excited about that. She was just praying that she’d never have to sing anything.

“Robert Reed wanted to do it. He’s such a serious actor and thought, ‘Oh, this will be a hoot. I’m terrible at it, but, hey, I’ll give this a try.’ He was between gigs, he had been doing a bunch of TV movies and just finished Roots and was, like, ‘Hey, I don’t have anything going on. Let’s do it.’ I think that he was pretty good-natured about it, considering that he didn’t feel that way about the original Brady Bunch, because this one didn’t have [original creator] Sherwood Schwartz involved with it. He liked working with Florence and he liked working with the kids.”

Geri Reischl Was Cast As “Fake Jan”

And then, of course, there was Geri as “Fake Jan,” and she was someone who viewed The Brady Bunch Variety Hour as a positive experience. Details Ted, “She’d never done something like this before, and she was a singer and was already a dancer. So for her, none of this was really too far of a leap and they really used Geri to their advantage, because she was a strong singer, and between her and Florence Henderson, they could really lead the group, with Barry Williams as a strong singer as well. You can hear a lot of Barry, Maureen, and Geri on the show. That’s really who’s leading the sounds of The Brady Kids at that point in time.”

And Ann B. Davis As Alice

You can’t have a Brady Bunch show without Ann B. Davis as housekeeper and family caretaker Alice. Says Ted, “When they realized she wasn’t in it, that was corrected and they flew her up the next day. You’ll see her at the end of the first episode. Of course they made her a pant suit and they taught her some choreography.  I met Ann several times and she was always very nice to me about this book, but she really didn’t have a lot to say about it. She is very religious, and Rip Taylor — who is very over the top and flamboyantly gay — was cast as the romantic interest for Alice. She couldn’t figure out why they wanted to write this. She would just do the scene and would turn right around and walk away. I met with Rip Taylor on a couple of occasions and he was still extremely upset by how rude she was to him. I was kind of surprised, but Ann is very professional and Rip is sometimes not. I can see how she was being professional in the sense that she’s going to do what’s she’s being asked to do, but she had no interest in him whatsoever as a person.”

Saying Goodbye … for now.

Thanks to Love to Love You Bradys, Ted is probably one of the most knowledgeable people about The Brady Bunch Variety Hour that there is, having looked at it from virtually every perspective. The question, then, is what is the takeaway from all this?

“It’s so bad, it’s good,” he laughs. “Meaning that it’s just so terrible that you enjoy it. It’s great because of its awfulness. And The Brady Bunch Variety Hour evokes these very strong emotions in people. People who see it don’t just watch it. Their response is more like, ‘Oh my God! What the hell is this?’ or someone will say, ‘Oh, I love this.’ What’s really unique about it is the whole shock value of, ‘I can’t believe this actually happened.’ Even when I did the interviews, I would call people and some of them would practically hang up on me. They’re, like, ‘Why do you want to talk about that?’ I was always getting the sense that there was so much hostility from some people, and for other people it was the best thing that ever happened to them.

“I don’t think there’s going to be a show like this ever again,” Ted closes. “It was just this situation where all of these forces collided and the result was The Brady Bunch Variety Hour.”

For a quick episode guide to The Brady Bunch Hour, please continue scrolling down.

The Pilot

Mike is hurt when Bobby tries to recruit Tony Randall to play his dad in the family’s new variety show. Additional guest stars are Donny and Marie Osmond and Patty Maloney. Original Airdate: November 28, 1976.

Episode 1

A mix-up with moving man Mr. Merrill results in the Bradys having to put up Lee Majors and Farrah Fawcett for the night. Additional guest stars are Kaptain Kool and the Kongs (which consists of Michael Lembeck, Louise DuArt, Debra Clinger and Mickey McKee). Original Airdate: January 23, 1977

Episode 2

Bobby recruits Milton Berle to write for the show, but the headliner soon takes over and leaves his mark on every aspect of the production. Additional guest star is Tina Turner. Original Airdate: February 27, 1977

Episode 3

Greg moves into his own apartment… and Vincent Price (who had previously guest starred on The Brady Bunch) quickly warns him that it’s haunted. Additional guest stars are H.R. Pufnstuff and Kiki Bird.  Original Airdate: March 4, 1977.

Episode 4

Mike is offended when his family insults his singing, so announces plans to do a solo song on the variety show. But when he begins rehearsing with Charo, Carol becomes jealous. Additional guest stars are The Hudson Brothers (Bill, Brett and Mark Hudson). Original Airdate: March 21, 1977.

Episode 5

Cindy bumps into Rich Little and gives him amnesia, making him believe he is one of the Brady kids.  Additional guest stars are Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, Melanie Safka and Van Snowden. Original Airdate: March 28, 1977

Episode 6

Marcia announces her engagement to a free-spirited hippie. Meanwhile, Redd Foxx (from Sanford & Son) studies the Bradys in preparation for his upcoming variety show. Additional guest stars are Robert Hegyes from Welcome Back, Kotter, the Ohio Players and Sharon Baird. Original Airdate: April 4, 1977.

Episode 7

The Brady kids neglect to check with their parents before inviting the kids from What’s Happening!! (Fred Berry, Haywood Nelson, Ernest Lee Thomas and Danielle Spencer) to appear on the show. Additional guest stars are Rick Dees, Patty Maloney, Mike Kagan and Bruce Vilanch. Original Airdate: April 25, 1977.

Episode 8

Paul Williams tries to win Carol’s heart, much to Mike’s chagrin. Meanwhile, Jan fawns over guest-star Lynn Anderson. Original Airdate: May 25, 1977.