Growing Up Brady: I Was a Teenage Greg, Special Collector's Edition (23 page)

Finally, they just settled on a permanent color. Twenty-two
years after his first dye job, Michael still remembers that the coloring was Miss Clairol #43, jet Black, and that he hated it.

Florence Henderson and her hair suffered through multiple
traumas as well, and for her they began right off the bat. As we
began shooting "Brady Bunch" episodes, Flo had just finished production on a film called Song of Norway. In it she sported a very
short, sort of combed-over hairdo, not unlike the one you see
today on ... uh ... Pat Sajak.

Obviously, that kind of hairdo wasn't gonna work for Carol
Brady. And so, with tight shooting schedules breathing down their
necks, the producers decided to forget about waiting for Flo's hair
to grow out and instead slapped a wig on her head. The only problem was that the wig they chose for Carol may have been the
biggest, ugliest phony-hair mass in the history of prosthetic coifs.

Take a look at any of the first dozen episodes of "The Brady
Bunch" and you'll find that Florence Henderson's petite head is
squashed under an absolute avalanche of stiff platinum-blond beehive-style hair. It was (and remains today) a hideous hairdo.
Shaped like an astronaut's helmet, the wig came off as soon as
Flo's real hair got even close to normal length.

Once the big bubble-do wig had met its maker and Flo's hair
was once again allowed to see the light of day, the producers
immediately began experimenting with it. For a while they tried
out every shade of blond in the book, dyeing, dyeing, and redyeing
the Henderson hair until it nearly fell out. After that, they settled in
with the subtly frosted and highlighted look Flo maintained for the
bulk of her "Brady" years.

Florence also is quick to take credit for popularizing the famous
Carol Brady flip Do-you know, short in front, long in back. Even
today you can spy Carol Brady wannabes wandering through any
supermarket in the country, and Flo attests, "I still have women
running up to me with that hairdo and telling me that after they
saw it on Carol, they just had to have it too."

Of us all, Eve Plumb had the most natural, beautiful hair. Long,
blond, full of bounce and shine, hers was one gorgeous head, and
not for one moment did her mom let us forget it. Mrs. Plumb was
an omnipresent figure on the "Brady" set and was never without
brush in hand. I mean, I've heard of people who give their hair
one hundred strokes per day, but this woman gave Eve's hair at least a hundred before each and every take! This behavior was
politely tolerated, if never fully understood, throughout all five
years of "The Bunch."

Maureen McCormick had that oh so California blond hair, and
for the most part she was quite happy with it. Her face, on the
other hand, drove her nuts. Always she was working on a plan to
make her pretty round face appear more angular, and narrower,
with pronounced cheekbones. With that in mind I should tell you
that it wasn't at all unusual to find Mo walking around the set, and
even shooting whole scenes, while sucking her cheeks together.
Look closely at some of the later "Brady Bunch" episodes and
you'll find her doing just that.

Chris Knight was the real exception in the group. He just plain
didn't care what his hair looked like. He'd just kinda run his hands
through it before each take and let his waves fall wherever they'd
choose. Naturally, Chris's laissez-faire hair policy meant that Peter
Brady is often found sporting truly heinous dos. I used to bust
Chris about that a lot, but I think deep down I really envied his
comfortable self-image.

Which brings us to my own hair. First of all, let me take this
opportunity to say that I have never-ever-permed my hair.

Throughout my first two years on "The Bunch," I could get
away with simply washing and blow-drying my hair. That way I
could stretch it out a bit with my brush and let the blower's heat
put an end to the unsightly natural curl that my parents had so callously bestowed upon me. I used no hair spray, no special spritzes,
nothing. I'd just blow it, comb it, and go.

Then I turned sixteen, and my hair went insane. The first thing
it did was to completely dry out until it was as coarse and wiry as a
Brillo pad. Suddenly mere mortal shampoos and conditioners
were unable to whip it back into a hairlike state, so I brought in the
big guns-super-conditioning packs. You know the type: you heat
'em up, blob em all over your head, and sometimes even top off
the concoction with a plastic-bag hat.

They didn't work, either; and then as my hair desperation
deepened, the cures got more desperate. I started letting five
days go by between each shampoo, hoping that the ensuing
dirt/grease buildup might make my hair easier to manage. That
didn't last long, thanks to Florence Henderson, who grimaced at
me, asking, "What's that mess on your head?" I explained my
dirty hair/nice hairdo theory, but she wasn't buying it. "It just
looks dirty," she bluntly but honestly replied. Time for a new
plan.

Then I began asking anyone and everyone for help. I thought
that maybe the Paramount hairdressers could help, and they all had suggestions, with each one just slightly more demented than
the next. However, as desperate as I was, I tried 'em all. Among
them were:

1. Hot oil

2. Placenta (from goats, I think)

3. Mayonnaise (one-half jar: leave on for thirty minutes, rinse,
repeat)

4. Beer shampoo

5. Curling irons

As I said, nothing really worked-until I desperately took a shot
at having my curls chemically straightened. That was the biggest
disaster of all, and for several full episodes (early in the fourth season) you'll find that my hair's not just it's usual dry-and-brittle, but
flat as a pancake as well.

I did learn something from all this ado about hair, and to sum it
all up in one neat platitude, "Ya can't fool Mother Nature." Finally,
when everything failed to fix my hair, I simply gave up, let it curl
up-and that's what started those persistent "perm" rumors.

And speaking of perm rumors ... that leaves us with Robert
Reed. He too suffered from allegations of phony curls, but all I can
say on the subject is "I dont know." You'll have to draw your own
conclusions. I asked Bob for the real scoop on his hair, his answer
was a little terse, and made up of three statements. First, his hair
has always been naturally curly. Second, that when we started the
show, he used a blow drier to stretch and straighten it out. And
third, he said that when the Bradys got to Hawaii, the humidity
was so intense that no matter what he did with his hair, it would
just plain stay curly. He saw it in the dailies, liked it, and left it that
way.

Now, I personally think that either Bob had the single most perfect head of symmetrical curls God ever put onto a human head,
or he did indeed get chemical assistance. Okay, perhaps I am jealous over the preponderance of big, bushy locks on his head; but
I've also seen the man arrive for work at six a.m. with every hair in
place, and I find it very hard to believe that anyone has a head of
hair that perfect. Still, only his hairdresser knows for sure.

efore I can even begin this story, I have to explain a couple of things. First of all, up until now, every time Robert
Reed has showed up in a reminiscence, he's been mad
about something, causing trouble on the Paramount lot,
or fighting with the Schwartzes. But that's not the whole picture.

Robert Reed may have detested "The Brady Bunch," but he
adored the six of us Brady kids. From day one, he was warm, and
very supportive. His affection for us kids was genuine, and at times
far beyond the call of duty.

Christmas 1971: Bob's unhappy with the show, butting heads
with the Schwartzes, and still he goes out of his way to present
each of us kids with our own Super-8 movie cameras, the equivalent of today's camcorder. Come summertime, he chartered a
yacht and treated all of us to a full-blown fishing excursion, wherein our cagey ship's captain zeroed in upon a huge school of mackerel, allowing Susan and Michael to spend the better part of the
day yanking the scaly little buggers out of the sea.

But Bob's most extraordinary outpouring of generosity came
when he took us Brady kids-all of us, lock, stock, and barrel-to
London, on the QE 2. Sounds completely crazy, right? I thought
so too, and so I asked Bob what possessed him to undertake such
an ambitious, logistical, and supervisory nightmare.

"I think it came about because I was trying to think of something for all of us to do together," he said. `I was about to set sail
for London, and I'd gone to school there, and loved it, so I
thought, `My God, why not take the kids, expose them to it, and
see if it's as intriguing to them, or as sparking to them, as it was to
me. And even if it isn't, it's still a pretty nice vacation.' Well, I
stepped into that puddle without ever realizing how deep it was."

I must interrupt Bob's story here to bring up the second thing I need to explain. Y'see, while Robert's hopes for the trip were absolutely noble, we kids, knowing that we'd be away from home, and
free at last from parental supervision, had a less virtuous agenda.
Essentially, we made Bob's vacation a living, breathing hell.

On the 0E2
From left, Me, Bob
Reed's dad,
Frances Whitfield
(our teacher/
guardian), Susan,
Bob Reed's mom,
Mo, Mike, Chris,
Robert, and Eve.
(Barry Williams)

"I remember finding Mo and Eve out on the fantail smoking,"
he continued. "But far worse than that, we had a system wherein
each night, just before each kid would go to bed, they'd slip a note
under my door saying that they were safe, sound, and sleeping.
Once I had six notes, I could sack out myself.

"Well, on one particular night, we're docked in London, it's four
A.M., and the only notes I've got are from Susan and Michael. So
there's four of you out there somewhere, and I was really upset. I
mean, it turns out that it was just a really late night with the kids
running around the ship, but still I was frantic, and absolutely positive that you'd all gone out someplace and gotten into something
over your heads."