In one scene, one of the kids brought home two friends after school. I had to put my foot down when I learned that these two young actors were not given a line of dialogue in the script. They were just standing there in silence as they were introduced to me. “No kids visiting my house would do that,” I told the director. “They would say, ‘Hi, Mrs. Brady.’” Then I realized what the problem was. It was going to cost extra if the two kids spoke. I called up to Sherwood and told him that I would pay the additional cost, but he had to give them something to say. He agreed, but I never got the bill.
I know that when I go in public and people stop and want to have a photograph taken with me, it is because of a heartfelt relationship they have with Carol Brady. I make the time for that, as well for answering each and every e-mail and letter that I have received over these four decades, for one big reason: I have the deepest gratitude that I was given this opportunity.
Late into what proved to be our last season of shooting The Brady Bunch, Bob started to get into one of his usual arguments with Sherwood, but it soon heated up. “I won’t do this,” he complained about something that was obviously highly objectionable to him in the script. The discussion was futile, and Bob was asked to leave the set. Sherwood asked Ann B. and me if we would stay and do a couple of extra scenes to effectively write Bob out of that episode. We said sure, and we stayed late to get it done. They asked Bob to go home, but he refused and got very testy. He stayed in the back, observing. It was such a bizarre situation.
As we left the studio late that night, none of us knew that we had just finished the 117th and final episode of The Brady Bunch. The show was canceled. But it was hardly the end of the story.
CHAPTER 17Good Help Is Hard to Find…
On the home front, things were in a holding pattern during much of the Brady years and the immediate aftermath. There was more than a legitimate excuse to maintain the status quo: an active parent dealing with the demanding schedule of a weekly series, plus performance engagements sandwiched in the downtime. I was running a tight ship, and it was not the time to rock the boat. Unfortunately, the climate had not really changed for the positive in terms of my overall happiness in the marriage over those years. Don’t get me wrong, there were some good times mixed in, so it was hardly all doom and gloom.
The first order of business once we knew that The Brady Bunch was not going to be a flash in the pan was to make the move to Los Angeles. I can’t say that I was thrilled with the prospect of leaving New York at the time. I was a New Yorker as far as I was concerned—it had been my home from the time I was barely seventeen. Admittedly, I shared the somewhat snobbish attitude that L.A. just didn’t measure up to what New York had to offer, the cultural life and the quality of the education for the children included.
Woody Allen once said something to the effect that the major cultural advantage to living in L.A. was that you could make a right-hand turn against a red light. Well, maybe he should have included some other advantages about the car-driving lifestyle. Gone were the jostling over cabs and swimming upstream against the sidewalk crowds on Fifth Avenue. Gone was the constant vigilance over who might be walking too closely behind you or breathing down your neck in elevators. Mercifully gone were those layers of winter clothes, the constant taking on and off. The change for the better in the weather was a good cure for homesickness.
My sister Pauline, who was living with us and helping out with child care, took charge of the move. The kids were a little upset because she gave away a number of things they wished she hadn’t. She was very organized, and I, on the other hand, probably would have brought out far too much stuff.
When we arrived at the new house, we were waiting for the moving van that was running late. It was cold both inside and out, as the heater wasn’t working. Leaving a world where the building superintendent took care of everything, I was a duck out of water. I didn’t know the first thing about the pilot light on the furnace and how it could have been blown out by the wind. But as the hours, days, and weeks went by, the house on top of the hills of Beverly Hills slowly began to feel like home. Ira purchased any furniture we needed in his usual careful and deliberate manner. Some of the crew from The Brady Bunch offered to come and wallpaper a few rooms, which was a wonderful perk.
The Trousdale Estates area where we lived was carved out of the hills of Beverly Hills and offered a panoramic view from downtown Los Angeles to Catalina Island on the occasional smog-free days. It was quite the neighborhood to go trick-or-treating on Halloween, with more show business folk per square mile than anyplace else in the world. But otherwise, without an adult willing to drive them somewhere, a kid growing up atop the steep hills felt imprisoned until that magic day of emancipation—getting a driver’s license on the sixteenth birthday.
Many a long day and
