Growing Up Brady: I Was a Teenage Greg, Special Collector's Edition (18 page)

"All right, I was crazy about Joe Namath." Florence confessed.
"And I remember his last scene took place in the fake driveway,
where Joe was supposed to say goodbye to all the Bradys. So with
the cameras rolling, he said goodbye to the kids, and to Mike, and
to Alice, but when he got to me, I jumped up on him, wrapped my
thighs around his waist, and said, `Take me. Take me with you,
Joe. I can't stand this family anymore.' And he just said, `Sure, Mrs.
Brady,' and carried me off the set."

Turns out, Flo wasn't the only Brady woman to fall for a guest
star. While Marcia Brady's dream of dreams was to someday
become Mrs. Desi Arnaz, Jr., Maureen McCormick may have had
similar aspirations. She remembers that even as they met, she felt
sparks; and while their age difference loomed large enough to
effectively keep them apart in 1970 (Maureen was only thirteen at
the time), it proved a much less formidable obstacle several years
later, when she and Desi would meet again, rekindle those sparks,
and begin dating.

I should probably add that Davy Jones, Marcia's only other
celebrity flame, didn't quite have the same effect on Maureen. "He was veeeeeery nice," Mo told me, "but there were no sparks ... no
sparks." That's got to come as a shock to the "Brady" fans who
still, even to this day, ask me whether or not anything romantic
ever blossomed between the blondest Brady and the shortest
Monkee.

"Nice, but no sparks."
(©1991 Capital Cities/ABC, Inc.)

However, the vast majority of "Brady" guest-star stories aren't
romantic in nature. For example, when Imogene Coca showed up
to play Carol's eccentric aunt jenny, we were amazed to find that
she was extremely shy. I'm not talking demure-introspective shy,
I'm talking more along the lines of hide-under-the-table shy. I
mean, here was this legendary comedienne, who made her living
with her hundreds of bigger-than-life, over-the-top comic characterizations; yet every moment that she's not on camera, she's in a
corner or behind a set, sitting all alone, terrified that someone
might actually want to speak with her.

Of course, whenever the lights came up and the cameras rolled,
she'd burst forward, full of the broad bravado that breathes such incredible comic energy into whatever role she plays. That week, I
learned a lot about physical comedy and pacing simply by watching her work.

Imogene
Coca and
Florence
Henderson.
(©1991 Capital
Cities/ABC, Inc.)

On the flip side of the coin, Jim Backus was sociable, talkative,
and spent his visits with us Bradys sounding an awful lot like his
previous television incarnation Thurston Howell III. Mr. Backus
prided himself on his business acumen, and he'd dispense financial advice to anyone who'd listen, even us kids. "Barry," he'd say,
"mark my words. Before long, the price of gas is going to skyrocket, right up past [a then unheard-of] one dollar a gallon. Get into
it now, and you could do very well for yourself." That was in 1974.
And I, employing my own keen sense of business savvy, ignored
his advice completely.

I get a headache every time I think about that.

Anyway, to change the subject and spare myself a migraine, I
want to mention that not all of the celebrities who hung around
the "Brady Bunch" set actually appeared in an episode. For example, right around the time when Nelson Rockefeller was becoming
(for better or worse) a major political figure in the United States,
he attempted to soften up his image by having some publicity pic tures taken, right in the middle of the "Brady Bunch" set. To be
honest with you, the chance to meet a New York politician didn't
mean much to this California Kid (I was a lot more impressed
with Wes Parker), so I asked Lloyd Schwartz to recap Nelson's
visit:

Schwartz,
Williams, and
"Who isthat
asshole?"
(Barry Williams)

"Rockefeller was governor of New York at the time, and when
he came to the set, he had no idea of what anybody actually did.
And so, in an attempt to make sure he didn't offend anyone
`important,' he was glad-handing everybody. And finally he went
over to one of our grips, who was just sort of standing near a
reflector drinking coffee, and he says to the guy, `You are doing a
real good job, a helluva job-keep it up, keep it up.' So then the
grip comes over to me and says, `Who the fuck is that asshole?"'

Rockefeller was a big man politically, but he was by no means
the most powerful politician to visit the synthetic grass and orange
Formica of the Brady homestead. That honor goes to Henry
Kissinger. This time I was impressed, but I wasn't sure why. Lloyd
Schwartz once-again tells the story:

"He was secretary of state, and just beginning to hit his stride
as this sort of huge celebrity, so when he hit the stage, the
place went nuts, absolutely nuts. The place was crawling with
Secret Service types. And I remember one of them was trying his best to hit on our makeup girl. And so I went over to Dr.
Kissinger and I said, `Uh, sir, your Secret Service guy is putting
the moves on our makeup girl, and I think he's succeeding.'
With which Dr. Kissinger turned to me, smiled, and said, `He's
been taking lessons from the master-I taught him everything
he knows."'

Brady Bunch
meets Kissinger
Klan.
(Barry Williams)

By now you must have asked yourself, "Why on earth would
Henry Kissinger go out of his way to visit `The Brady Bunch'?" The
answer, quite simply, is that he was trying to impress his daughter. She was a big "Brady" fan, and when she asked her father if he
might arrange for her to meet us, he simply made a phone call,
blew off an afternoon full of globally significant meetings, and
arranged for the visit. I still find it nothing short of amazing that a
man who was arguably the single most powerful politician in the
world needed "The Brady Bunch" to impress his kid-sort of an
eerie commentary on the power of the tube and its significance in
the lives of American children.

An even more blatant example of the egregiously potent power
of "The Bunch" came when astronaut James McDivitt appeared
on the show in a cameo role. McDivitt had piloted both NASA's Gemini 4 and Apollo 9 missions, and had been to the moon, for
chrissake; but when he got to our set, the first words out of his
mouth were "Boy, being on `The Brady Bunch' is gonna make me
a hero at my house."

Me and "Hank."
(Barry Williams)

Scary, very scary.

fter our Hawaiian interlude, I got really nuts about
Maureen. Of course that's not unique (millions of
pubescent American boys shared my same burning
yearning), but I had an advantage: I knew her; I liked
her; and I was at all times within groping distance. Best of all, for a
while, she was nuts about me too!