HOLLYWOOD — They rebuilt the house and stocked it with Bradys, but somehow all is not so groovy with this bunch.
Despite all this nonsense, there is cause for celebration. For the first time since Marcia and Jan's double wedding in 1981's The Brady Girls Get Married, the entire Brady bunch (minus the late Robert Reed) is back together to celebrate the show's 35th anniversary with a TV Land reunion special, Still Brady After All These Years (Sunday, 10 p.m. ET/PT).
The Brady Bunch lasted only five seasons, from 1969 to 1974, but show creator Sherwood Schwartz, 87, refuses to let the blended-family franchise die. An animated series and a variety show ran in the '70s. The '80s brought a sexy Marcia-Jan sitcom. A Christmas reunion and dramatic series came along in the '90s, plus a touring stage production and two feature film spoofs starring Shelley Long as Carol and Christine Taylor as Marcia.
And Schwartz isn't done yet. He's thinking about a reality series that would — you guessed it — place a widow with three very lovely girls into a home with a widower busy with three boys of his own.
But it's Schwartz's original Bunch we'll always adore most.
Olsen has just burst into Lookinland's dressing room. After all these years, Cindy still runs to Bobby when she has a problem. Wearing super-short denims and throwing back a Diet Coke, Olsen, at 43, looks more like a mutated Britney Spears than the youngest Brady in pigtails. Olsen is upset with the script — mainly that there even is one. The cast members have agreed to return as themselves — not as their characters — to reminisce about being the Brady Bunch.
"We were told it was going to be something different," says Olsen, sitting beside Lookinland, 43, a Utah-based cameraman for WB's Everwood and father to two sons. "I was not told there was going to be a script. I thought this was going to be the Actors Studio.
"I am not doing 'clever' banter that somebody else wrote, and the only 'pigtails' I will wear come from the carnicero (butcher) and are about 5 days old with flies buzzing around them."
Ouch!
Not really anti-Brady
It's never easy pulling off these reunions, which is why there's usually at least one Brady missing from every reunion bunch. "Inevitably, somebody was always missing," Schwartz says from his home, where he has just shot promos for his upcoming TBS Gilligan's Island reality show. "One of the kids was either in a foreign country or on a honeymoon, and once in a while, Jan, Eve Plumb, just wouldn't do it."
But black sheep Plumb, who seems out of place among the others and even remained seated while the rest of the cast rehearsed their famous descending pose on the Brady staircase, objects to her anti-Brady reputation. Sure, she skipped the 1977 variety show. But, in hindsight, nearly every other Brady, with the possible exceptions of Henderson and Williams, wishes they had, as well.
"Everybody always thinks I'm the one who doesn't show, but I think I've showed up more than I haven't," Plumb, 46, says while having her makeup applied. "I take these things one at a time, and this one seemed like it might be all right, so I gave it a shot."
Today, Plumb paints, rides horses and provides voice-overs in commercials for California's Department of Boating and Waterways. Divorced once, she is married to a computer businessman she identifies only as Ken.
McCormick, who shrewdly declined playing an alcoholic Marcia in the 1990 thirtysomething-like dramatic series The Bradys, almost missed this reunion, too. For the past three years, she cared for her cancer-stricken mother, who died just a week earlier. McCormick's protective husband, Michael, a printer salesman and the father of their 15-year-old daughter, Natalie, sits on his wife's dressing room floor reading a book as McCormick fights back tears.
"It's nice to see (the Brady cast), and I consider them friends," says McCormick, who at 48 doesn't look much different from how she did in the '70s. "But it's the people that I'm with every day that give me my strength and help me hang in there."
Still friends — mostly
Olsen, twice divorced and mother to an 8-year-old son recently diagnosed with a mild form of autism, has joined Plumb and Lookinland in the makeup room. She says she missed 1988's A Very Brady Christmas because she was on her Jamaican honeymoon and because every Brady reunion has "sucked."
"I would rather be at Reggae Sunsplash, which happens once a year, than doing some horrible Brady Bunch reunion," Olsen says.
But Knight, lounging in his dressing room and still looking buff (thanks to his recent participation with Olsen in Discovery Health Channel's Body Challenge: Hollywood), offers another explanation for Olsen's Christmas absence.
"From my recollection," says Knight, 46, "it was all contractual. Maureen had sort of sucked (the money) all out for herself, and I thought that was selfish." For that reason, Knight left McCormick off the invite list to his 1995 wedding. "(Maureen) can get away with more — literally asking for more money and so forth because she was the fantasy of many young men growing up who are now the guys running studios."
But all that is ancient Brady history. Knight, divorced for the second time in 2000 and diagnosed with attention deficit disorder, now calls McCormick "the sweetest person alive."
"I don't come back because (Brady reunions) are great pieces of art. It's because these are friends, and it's fun being around them."
Putting on the years
Never one to miss a Brady reunion, Williams, who turns the big 5-0 on Thursday, is in his dressing room trying on different outfits. Pulling off a Hawaiian shirt, he reveals white body hairs that curiously contrast with the black hairs on his head.
"I think some of us are more comfortable with our Brady legacy than others," says Williams, the father of an 18-month-old son with wife No. 2 and probably best known in recent years for getting clobbered in the ring by The Partridge Family's Danny Bonaduce on Fox's Celebrity Boxing.
Farther down the hall, Henderson can be heard on the phone singing Happy Birthday to her son. Still a hot mama at 70, Henderson prefers applying her own makeup but has left her bag at her Marina del Rey home, which, she says, now seems empty since lung cancer claimed the life of her husband, hypnotist John Kappas, in 2002.
"I was privileged to be able to help him in the end," says Henderson, herself a licensed hypnotherapist. "He never allowed himself to be hypnotized, but in the end, he taught me his formula, and that has made all the difference."
Henderson, host of Lifetime's Speaking of Women's Health and longtime Polident pitchwoman, recently has started dating again. "It takes a lot of courage to be happy, but I've got courage, so I think I will be happy again."
'Alice' still cares
The last Brady we're trying to track down is Ann B., who has been avoiding us all day. We finally find her alone in the back of the studio autographing posters that will be auctioned for charity.
"Hi, Ann; can we ask you a few questions?" a TV Land rep politely requests.
"Not now!" she says. "I'm on lunch."
We watch her march off into the darkness without another word but later catch up with her in the makeup room.
We learn that the never-married Davis, 78, is happily retired and living in a Christian community in San Antonio, where she sings in her church's choir, watches baseball on TV, plays computer games and takes frequent naps. The only thing that disturbs her peaceful existence: Brady Bunch reunions. "This lady's trying to get retired," she grumbles, "and the phone keeps ringing with new things to do with The Brady Bunch."
As she's about to march off again, Davis pauses, softening just enough to offer a quick reminder of that sweet housekeeper who was always there for her beloved Bradys: "How," Davis asks, "could I not be part of a Brady Bunch special?"
Despite all this nonsense, there is cause for celebration. For the first time since Marcia and Jan's double wedding in 1981's The Brady Girls Get Married, the entire Brady bunch (minus the late Robert Reed) is back together to celebrate the show's 35th anniversary with a TV Land reunion special, Still Brady After All These Years (Sunday, 10 p.m. ET/PT).
The Brady Bunch lasted only five seasons, from 1969 to 1974, but show creator Sherwood Schwartz, 87, refuses to let the blended-family franchise die. An animated series and a variety show ran in the '70s. The '80s brought a sexy Marcia-Jan sitcom. A Christmas reunion and dramatic series came along in the '90s, plus a touring stage production and two feature film spoofs starring Shelley Long as Carol and Christine Taylor as Marcia.
And Schwartz isn't done yet. He's thinking about a reality series that would — you guessed it — place a widow with three very lovely girls into a home with a widower busy with three boys of his own.
But it's Schwartz's original Bunch we'll always adore most.
Olsen has just burst into Lookinland's dressing room. After all these years, Cindy still runs to Bobby when she has a problem. Wearing super-short denims and throwing back a Diet Coke, Olsen, at 43, looks more like a mutated Britney Spears than the youngest Brady in pigtails. Olsen is upset with the script — mainly that there even is one. The cast members have agreed to return as themselves — not as their characters — to reminisce about being the Brady Bunch.
"We were told it was going to be something different," says Olsen, sitting beside Lookinland, 43, a Utah-based cameraman for WB's Everwood and father to two sons. "I was not told there was going to be a script. I thought this was going to be the Actors Studio.
"I am not doing 'clever' banter that somebody else wrote, and the only 'pigtails' I will wear come from the carnicero (butcher) and are about 5 days old with flies buzzing around them."
Ouch!
Not really anti-Brady
It's never easy pulling off these reunions, which is why there's usually at least one Brady missing from every reunion bunch. "Inevitably, somebody was always missing," Schwartz says from his home, where he has just shot promos for his upcoming TBS Gilligan's Island reality show. "One of the kids was either in a foreign country or on a honeymoon, and once in a while, Jan, Eve Plumb, just wouldn't do it."
But black sheep Plumb, who seems out of place among the others and even remained seated while the rest of the cast rehearsed their famous descending pose on the Brady staircase, objects to her anti-Brady reputation. Sure, she skipped the 1977 variety show. But, in hindsight, nearly every other Brady, with the possible exceptions of Henderson and Williams, wishes they had, as well.
"Everybody always thinks I'm the one who doesn't show, but I think I've showed up more than I haven't," Plumb, 46, says while having her makeup applied. "I take these things one at a time, and this one seemed like it might be all right, so I gave it a shot."
Today, Plumb paints, rides horses and provides voice-overs in commercials for California's Department of Boating and Waterways. Divorced once, she is married to a computer businessman she identifies only as Ken.
McCormick, who shrewdly declined playing an alcoholic Marcia in the 1990 thirtysomething-like dramatic series The Bradys, almost missed this reunion, too. For the past three years, she cared for her cancer-stricken mother, who died just a week earlier. McCormick's protective husband, Michael, a printer salesman and the father of their 15-year-old daughter, Natalie, sits on his wife's dressing room floor reading a book as McCormick fights back tears.
"It's nice to see (the Brady cast), and I consider them friends," says McCormick, who at 48 doesn't look much different from how she did in the '70s. "But it's the people that I'm with every day that give me my strength and help me hang in there."
Still friends — mostly
Olsen, twice divorced and mother to an 8-year-old son recently diagnosed with a mild form of autism, has joined Plumb and Lookinland in the makeup room. She says she missed 1988's A Very Brady Christmas because she was on her Jamaican honeymoon and because every Brady reunion has "sucked."
"I would rather be at Reggae Sunsplash, which happens once a year, than doing some horrible Brady Bunch reunion," Olsen says.
But Knight, lounging in his dressing room and still looking buff (thanks to his recent participation with Olsen in Discovery Health Channel's Body Challenge: Hollywood), offers another explanation for Olsen's Christmas absence.
"From my recollection," says Knight, 46, "it was all contractual. Maureen had sort of sucked (the money) all out for herself, and I thought that was selfish." For that reason, Knight left McCormick off the invite list to his 1995 wedding. "(Maureen) can get away with more — literally asking for more money and so forth because she was the fantasy of many young men growing up who are now the guys running studios."
But all that is ancient Brady history. Knight, divorced for the second time in 2000 and diagnosed with attention deficit disorder, now calls McCormick "the sweetest person alive."
"I don't come back because (Brady reunions) are great pieces of art. It's because these are friends, and it's fun being around them."
Putting on the years
Never one to miss a Brady reunion, Williams, who turns the big 5-0 on Thursday, is in his dressing room trying on different outfits. Pulling off a Hawaiian shirt, he reveals white body hairs that curiously contrast with the black hairs on his head.
"I think some of us are more comfortable with our Brady legacy than others," says Williams, the father of an 18-month-old son with wife No. 2 and probably best known in recent years for getting clobbered in the ring by The Partridge Family's Danny Bonaduce on Fox's Celebrity Boxing.
Farther down the hall, Henderson can be heard on the phone singing Happy Birthday to her son. Still a hot mama at 70, Henderson prefers applying her own makeup but has left her bag at her Marina del Rey home, which, she says, now seems empty since lung cancer claimed the life of her husband, hypnotist John Kappas, in 2002.
"I was privileged to be able to help him in the end," says Henderson, herself a licensed hypnotherapist. "He never allowed himself to be hypnotized, but in the end, he taught me his formula, and that has made all the difference."
Henderson, host of Lifetime's Speaking of Women's Health and longtime Polident pitchwoman, recently has started dating again. "It takes a lot of courage to be happy, but I've got courage, so I think I will be happy again."
'Alice' still cares
The last Brady we're trying to track down is Ann B., who has been avoiding us all day. We finally find her alone in the back of the studio autographing posters that will be auctioned for charity.
"Hi, Ann; can we ask you a few questions?" a TV Land rep politely requests.
"Not now!" she says. "I'm on lunch."
We watch her march off into the darkness without another word but later catch up with her in the makeup room.
We learn that the never-married Davis, 78, is happily retired and living in a Christian community in San Antonio, where she sings in her church's choir, watches baseball on TV, plays computer games and takes frequent naps. The only thing that disturbs her peaceful existence: Brady Bunch reunions. "This lady's trying to get retired," she grumbles, "and the phone keeps ringing with new things to do with The Brady Bunch."
As she's about to march off again, Davis pauses, softening just enough to offer a quick reminder of that sweet housekeeper who was always there for her beloved Bradys: "How," Davis asks, "could I not be part of a Brady Bunch special?"
Well, everyone grows up. 
I was shocked when I heard that he died of AIDS in 1992.