Growing Up Brady: I Was a Teenage Greg, Special Collector's Edition (37 page)

-There were actually two Kitty Karryalls that existed on the
"Brady" set. Today, one lives at Eve Plumb's house, and the other
is kept safe and warm with Susan Olsen. Sorta heartwarming, huh?

*Nepotism Alen! Al Schwartz, who co-wrote this episode, is the
older brother of "Brady" creator Sherwood Schwartz. He's also the
guy who got Sherwood his first-ever comedy-writing job, as a "joke
man" on Bob Hope's radio show.

EPISODE 4: "KATCHOO"

Jan's sneezing like crazy, and the Bradys come to the conclusion that their beloved middle girl is suffering from a severe allergy. They have no idea what's causing the problem, but all eyes
(and noses) eventually turn toward Tiger. Jan then takes a test
whiff of the mutt and the phlegm flies big-time. Things look
mighty bad for the barking Brady until an eleventh-hour realization
that Jan's not actually allergic to Tiger but to his new brand of flea
powder! A quick change in doggie toiletries saves the poor old
pup from homelessness.

Normally whenever I'm asked "Whatever happened to Tiger?"
I'll hide the truth, fake a plastic smile, and spit out some insipid euphemism like "Well, Tiger's in doggie heaven now." That's
because the real answer to "Whatever happened to Tiger?" has
been just too gruesome to talk about-till now.

Tiger's last photo.
(Courtesy
Sherwood Schwartz)

It's July 1969, and we're sweating through filming on " Katchoo."
It's been a long, hot day on the set, and we still have to shoot the
episode's climactic scene. In it, Mike and Carol uneasily tell the
kids that the Brady house just isn't big enough for both Jan's nasal
cavities and good of Tiger. The dog has got to go.

So all six of us Brady kids prepare for the scene. We run lines,
we crank our waiflike pouts into overdrive, and a couple of us get
artificially teary-eyed by tweezing out a few nosehairs. That way,
when the camera rolls and we hang onto Tiger with maudlin fervor, we'll be able to convincingly sob goodbye forever to our faithful pet. Forget about tugging on America's heartstrings; we wanted
to yank 'em.

Fifteen minutes later, the camera's loaded and we're ready to roll.
Our bogus Brady bawling is at its zenith, and there's Kleenex aplenty
standing by. Our only problem is that Tiger, very uncharacteristically, won't sit still for the shot. He also seems unusually nervous and
keeps trying to run off the set. Finally, after several dog-flubbed
takes, Lloyd Schwartz snaps and yells at the trainer. "What the hell's
wrong with the dog? We've got a scene to shoot here!" he erupts.

The trainer hems and haws, looks down, shuffles his feet, stalls,
and finally, sensing that all is lost, fesses up. "Well, uh ... y'see ...
uh ... it's a different dog," he mumbles.

"What.?!!! !!!" yelps Lloyd.

Turns out that during the previous evening the real Tiger had
gone out for a walk, and in scouting around for a suitable location
in which to relieve himself, had managed to get run over by a loaded florist's truck.

TV superstar one day, road pizza the next. Like Mansfield and
Dean before him, Tiger had prematurely terminated his skyrocketing career, and become another one of Hollywood's tragic auto
statistics.

Now you're asking "Who's this imposter dog?" Well, shortly
after the real Tiger got squashed, his trainer, afraid of losing his
canine meal ticket went scouring the dog pounds of Los Angeles in
search of a Tiger look-alike. Miraculously, he got lucky found a reasonable facsimile, and with fingers crossed he dragged his counterfeit canine onto the set.

The only problem was that this dog couldn't act, couldn't do
tricks, couldn't follow directions, peed on the props, and absolutely, positively refused to sit still in front of the camera. He hoped no
one would notice.

In fact, the next time you happen across this "Katchoo" episode, look very closely at the "Farewell, Tiger" scene. You'll
notice that our pseudo-Tiger is actually nailed to the floor! No, we
didn't hurt him (c'mon, that wouldn't be Bradylike), but the only
way we could get him to hold still through the scene was to have
the prop guys nail a dog collar to the floor of the set, and then
strap the imposter into it.

Shortly thereafter, we Bradys wisely limited Tiger's appearances
to the occasional cameo.

WRITER: William Cowley

DIRECTOR: John Rich

EPISODE 5: "EENIE MEENIE MOMMY DADDY"

This was the first story Sherwood Schwartz ever came up with
for "The Brady Bunch." Actually, that's a lie. Sherwood's daughter
Hope came up with this particular story line-or maybe I should
say "came home" with it. One day in 1966 she came home from
junior high with a dilemma. She was going to be in a school play,
but because the school had a very small auditorium, they could
only give each kid one ticket. This presented a problem for Hope,
but then she told her dad about a classmate who was really upset
about the whole thing.

Turns out there was a boy in Hope's class who's mother had
just gotten remarried, and he didn't know whether to give the ticket to his new dad, to show him that he was okay, or to give it to his
mom, and risk hurting the new father's feelings.

Bingo, a Brady episode was born.

Obviously, Sherwood took the story and ran with it, by giving
the problem of Hope's classmate to Cindy.

WRITER: Joanna Lee

DIRECTOR: John Rich

• Look closely at the elf in Cindy's play and you'll recognize him as
Brian Forster, the kid who played Chris on that show about America's
second-favorite oversized sitcom bunch, "The Partridge Family."

*By now, Robert Reed was already disgusted with the show's
scripts, was constantly at odds with John Rich, and had tried on at
least two occasions to be released from his contract.

EPISODE 6: "ALICE DOESN'T LIVE HERE
ANYMORE"

Why does a family with a full-time mom/housewife need a maid?
Good question, and it's the one that got Alice into all sorts of trouble. In an attempt to make Carol feel more needed in the Brady household, Alice stops dispensing free advice, first aid, and menial
help, and starts sending the kids and their problems to their mom.
Pretty soon, Carol's a whiz with skinned knees and bruised egos,
and Alice gets the idea that she's not needed anymore. She
decides to move out, and only a "Brady Kid scheme" wherein we
all act like helpless, completely incompetent geeks in order to
prove Alice's indispensability, convinces her to stay.

WRITER: Paul West

DIRECTOR: John Rich

• This was the last episode directed by John Rich. In addition to
directing our first seven episodes, John Rich was a profit participant in the show along with Sherwood Schwartz. Sherwood by this
time already had one genuine hit with "Gilligan's Island."
Reasoning that "lightning doesn't strike the same place twice," Mr.
Rich sold his share to Paramount for $25,000 during our first year
of production. I guess he felt it was highly unlikely that the
"Bunch" would enjoy the same success as the "Island."

I asked Sherwood what that percentage would be worth today
had John kept it, and he assured me, "A hell of a lot more than
twenty five thousand dollars!"

EPISODE Z: "FATHER OF THE YEAR"

Marcia goes gaga for Mike, decides to enter him in the local
newspaper's "Father of the Year" contest, and kooky hijinks ensue.
Marcia tries to keep it a secret and ends up sneaking out of the
house in the middle of the night (clad in her PJs and yellow fuzzy
slippers) to mail the entry. Mike, of course, finds out about
Marcia's midnight stroll, goes banshee, and when Marcia fails to
tell him why she snuck out, he grounds the gal, forbidding her to
go on the family's upcoming ski trip. Ouch!

Marcia's miserable; betrayed by the man she loves, she sadly
watches Alice flop about the backyard in her first ever ski-lesson,
and bawls her head off at the slightest mention of her grounding.
But then, just when things seem blackest, in come the newspaper
types to present Mike's award. The light dawns, all is forgiven, and
the Bradys continue happily onward.

WRITER: Skip Webster

DIRECTOR: George Cahan

EPISODE 8: "THE GRASS IS ALWAYS GREENER"

This one plays up the old husband-versus-wife "Let's switch
places and prove who's got the harder job" cliche. Variations on this theme predate the episode at least as far back as "I Love Lucy,"
but somehow it always seems to work. Our version had Carol, with
bouffant firmly shellacked into place over a dingy gray sweat suit,
clumsily takes over coaching the boys' baseball practice, while
Mike works with his daughters on Marcia's Girl Scout cooking project (he drops a dozen eggs, falls down no less than three times,
and ultimately ends up with his head in a sudsy mop bucket). It's a
1970s victory for women's lib.

WRITER: David P. Harmon

DIRECTOR: George Cahan

• Watch Bob Reed's first fall in the Brady kitchen. You'll notice
that it looks a little slow and overly cautious. The reason, as Ann B.
Davis tells it, is that in rehearsing the fall, Bob took a genuine
header and nearly brained himself:

"The script called for Bob to drop an egg on the floor, step on
it, and fall, which he asserted was ridiculous, asinine, totally unbelievable, and the worst kind of hack slapstick-the usual tirade.
But he did consent to rehearse it once, and when he did, he really
did slip on the egg, and I swear he hit the floor so hard that the
walls shook.

"Then, after I'd ascertained that he hadn't killed himself, I asked
him, `Do you think you can play the scene realistically now?' At
which point he looked up at me, smiled, and said, `You know,
Annie, the whole way down, I was thinking to myself, `I deserve
this.'"

EPISODE 9: "SORRY, RIGHT NUMBER"

Six kids, one phone: HUGE problem. This week, we kids are
fighting over phone calls, the bills are astronomical (Mike says
they're "over thirty dollars a month!"-wow!); so when Alice jokes
that they oughta install a pay phone, Mike snaps, and gleefully
does just that.

In the years since this episode first aired, I've met numerous
real families who've tried the same thing.

WRITER: Ruth Brooks Flippen

DIRECTOR: George Cahan

Alice gets a boyfriend-Hooray! This episode marks the birth
of Sam Franklin (I bet you thought his last name was "Da
Butcher"). Played by Allan Melvin, he'd show up in seven more
"Brady Bunch" episodes, and come reunion time, he'd own the
distinction of being married to our pal Alice Nelson (yep, she had a
last name too).

EPISODE 10: "IS THERE A DOCTOR IN THE
HOUSE?"

Yikes! Everybody's sick! Peter gets the measles, then Jan, and
pretty soon those little red spots are everywhere! Problem is,
whose doctor gets to heal the Bunch? The boys vote for their doctor, Dr. Cameron, a man; but the girls insist upon being treated by
Dr. Porter, a woman. In the end, the Bradys solve the problem by
employing both doctors, and that's that. Why we spent a half-hour
reaching that obvious compromise, I have no idea.

WRITER: Ruth Brooks Flippen

DIRECTOR: Oscar Rudolph

•This episode is jam-packed with visiting TV parents. A guy
named Herbert Anderson plays Dr. Cameron, but take one look at
his face and you'll immediately recognize him as the father of
Dennis the Menace. On the flip side of the doctor dilemma, you'll find Marion Ross. She plays Dr. Porter, but she's about to become
Richie Cunningham's Mom, Mrs. C.

Reed,
Henderson,
Ross, and
Anderson.
(©1991 Capital
Cities/ABC, Inc.)

EPISODE 11: "54-40 AND FIGHT"

This episode is full of weird hobbies, weird activities, and really
weird parenting. In it, you're asked to believe that all six Brady kids
are fanatically into collecting trading stamps-like, the old "Green
Stamps" that your mother might have saved. Once you've bought
that, you discover that the trading stamp company is going out of
business and that the kids have to cash in their booty soon, or lose
it forever. The monkey wrench in all this is that the girls have forty
books of stamps, the boys have fifty four, and neither individual
amount will get you anything that's even worth the trip to the store.