“That’s ridiculous,” Bob protested. “It’s so obvious.”
I replied, “It’s our scene, and we don’t have trouble imagining this is strawberry jam.”
A lot of the time, I understood Bob’s frustration, but blurting out, “This is crap” didn’t win him a lot of sympathy.
As complex and sometimes difficult as Bob could be, it was balanced by his genuine love for the kids. It was fairly obvious to me that he treated the kids as though they were his real family. During a hiatus, he even took them all on a trip to Europe. He did have a real daughter, Karen, from a short-lived marriage, whom he rarely saw. We got to meet her once when she did a small guest role in one of the episodes. It’s hard to imagine what it must have been like in that era to be an actor in fear of losing his career if his sexual orientation were to become public. Being in that closet had to be a very stressful place.
I know that he found real solace being around his fictional family. It was something he carried close to his heart to the very end of his life. In 1991, I got a call from Bob. He was teaching Shakespeare at UCLA. He was supposed to give a speech in Little Rock.
“Florence, I’m not feeling well. Could you go for me and give my speech for me?” It was ironically for a cancer research hospital. I told him I’d be happy to go.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes, I have colon cancer, but I’m going to be okay.”
When I got back from Arkansas, I called him and asked if we could have lunch together. I told him I’d come out to Pasadena where he had a lovely mansion.
“That would be great,” he said enthusiastically. But it didn’t happen that time and a few attempts after. We would set something up, and then he’d call and cancel. I waited a few weeks and then called him again to see how he was doing. Everything seemed fine, but he called me one day out of the blue.
“Florence, you know what, I’m not doing well. It’s not going to be very long. Can you call the kids for me? Would you tell them?”
I get cold chills and cry every time I think of this conversation. “Oh my God. Of course, Bob. I’ll do it.” When I did so, each of them was devastated to hear the news. Telling each of the kids was one of the toughest things I’ve had to do.
I wanted to visit him, but I respected his wish that he didn’t want me to see him in his condition because he had lost a tremendous amount of weight. He died very shortly after this last phone call. Along with his real daughter, Karen, the kids and I were just about the only ones there at his private funeral. He was able to keep the veil of privacy and dignity up to that point, but all hell broke loose once one of the tabloid newspapers printed his death certificate on the front page!
AIDS was a new thing in the American public consciousness, a deadly, scary disease that carried a fearmongering stigma. “The father of America has died of AIDS” was picked up and projected like a scandal by the gossip traders. All the newspapers wanted to interview the kids and me. Soon thereafter, Bob’s image and likeness started to disappear little by little from Brady Bunch promotional materials and merchandising.
But even from the start, it was evident that Carol and the children were focused on as more the essence of the show. Playing her for me was hardly a stretch. As an actor, you have to draw upon your own feelings and emotions to somehow find a way to relate to the character you are portraying. I think it must have come through in my performance that I understood that character. I drew on my real life as a mother of four children. But there was something else charging the character, as if Carol Brady were some magical antidote to Florence Henderson’s childhood. It was as though the trauma and turmoil, the lack of real parental affection or attention, and the material deprivation that happened to me ultimately had a positive purpose once it was channeled into Carol Brady.
It is quite unfathomable to me how this character of Carol Brady could have had the kind of impact she did. To think that a sitcom mother could give comfort and support to children who were parentless, abused, ignored, or unloved. It was almost otherworldly how the latchkey child living in the housing project in some lower-income community or another who writes in a language I don’t understand from a place with a name that I cannot pronounce feels a kinship. I’ve always felt tremendous compassion for children who are lonely and suffering.
It may all be based in illusion, but hopefully one with an overwhelmingly positive impact. Truthfully, I would have played the character a lot stricter and harsher than the TV codes would allow at that time. Situations sometimes dictated a sharp reprimand that wasn’t permitted as part of Carol’s arsenal. Maybe instead of shrugging my shoulders and being so understanding, I would have given her a little slap on the fanny. I also wanted Carol to be a little more realistic, like have an actual job, for God’s sake. But Sherwood wanted her to be always available, and I became akin to those Father Knows Best and Leave It to Beaver parents who didn’t have to work for a living yet somehow kept a nice middle-class life afloat in grand style.
Bob was not alone in having some dissatisfaction with the scripts. After the first season, I went on the record to point out that I thought there were times when I felt that we sometimes came off like a bunch of cardboard characters. “Does the scriptwriter have kids?” I remember questioning. But when the scripts were
