Growing Up Brady: I Was a Teenage Greg, Special Collector's Edition (4 page)

So, with bags packed and stories straight, we hit every talk and
news show that would have us. We put on our best Brady faces,
told the truth about each other, and lied about the show. We said
it was "a lot like `thirtysomething'," "terrific," and "a return to good
solid family entertainment." We answered the same old questions
a hundred times each, and soon, as you might expect, we were
exhausted-and more depressed than ever.

Finally, there was a light at the end of the tunnel, and we had
just one more TV appearance to sit through, "The Sally Jessy
Raphael Show."

Little did we know, the worst was yet to come.

Sally was on location for a week, having abandoned the show's
comfortable New York studios for a large converted outdoor parking lot in Miami. The set was simple, consisting of an uncovered
stage, equipped with one folding chair for each "Brady." I remember arriving and thinking that even though we were exhausted, it
might be relaxing to close out the week by fielding Sally's questions, sitting in the sun and dreaming about a nap on the flight
home to L.A.

We got dressed, made up, miked, and walked onstage to find
about three thousand people cramming the parking lot, overflowing the portable bleachers of the audience area, and waiting anxiously to see us. The sight was simply overwhelming, and really
seemed to recharge our batteries. I can even remember thinking
to myself that this one last "chore" might actually turn out to be
fun.

We took our places, started taping-and it was fun. The audience was packed with fans, some expert in the area of Brady trivia;
and as Sally passed her mike among them, we Bradys had a great
time together, meeting our fans, talking with them, and of course
doing our best to answer their questions.

Twenty minutes later, as things were really starting to roll along, the weather stopped cooperating. All at once, with a meteorological fury unique to Florida, our blue sky passed right by gray and
turned black. The winds picked up and it started to rain-hard.

It quickly became obvious that this was no spring mist and that
we were fast approaching full-blown typhoon status. So what do
we do? You guessed it: in that age-old show-business tradition of
"the show must go on," we defied logic and sanity by continuing
to roll tape. Sally's big red glasses were fogging up, and her hair
spray was melting into a congealed mass of sticky goo. Chris
Knight's brand-new snakeskin boots got soaked, and Florence
Henderson's mascara began etching a smudgy black trail down the
left side of her face.

At the same time, the microphones clipped onto our now soaking shirts were beginning to short out, and the tech crew was frantically replacing them whenever they could sneak onto the set
without being seen by the cameras. Production assistants seemed
to rise up out of nowhere, handing us umbrellas that they hoped
might shield us from the deluge.

Now it gets weird, because while we probably should have been
irritated, we were instead somehow taken with the absurdity of
our sopping-wet situation and started getting giddy, laughing in
the downpour, and going with the flow, so to speak.

Gamely, we kept right on taping ... that is, until a coupla quick
cracks of lightning scared us into sprinting toward the nearest trailer. Time to call it a wrap? No way. Y'see, all of us were due back on
the Brady set in less than twenty-four hours, and in order for that
to happen, our travel schedule was very tight. In fact, even before
our "rain delay," we had been slated to go directly from the "Sally"
set to the airport. With that in mind, we couldn't rearrange our
flight plans, and simply had to huddle together, shiver, and wait
the storm out.

After a few moments, another merciful contingent of PAs
arrived, bearing towels and dry T-shirts. Hoping the storm might
pass quickly, we changed, and cranked our blow-dryers into overdrive, aiming them not only at our hair but at our pants, shoes,
socks, and various body parts as well. Finally, after about thirty
minutes, we were able to roll the cameras once more. The sky was
still a threatening gray, and it was still raining, but now at least the
downpour had been downgraded to a moderate rain.

With a plane to catch, we agreed to leave the relative comfort
and safety of our trailer and finish taping. That's when we noticed
an amazing thing: those three thousand Brady fans were still in
place! They had withstood the buckets of rain, the wind, and the
lightning, just to see us return! I was astonished, and simultaneously touched. The crowd cheered loudly as we resumed our posi tions, and as we dripped our way through the rest of the taping,
we found ourselves having a terrific time. In the end, the afternoon
had reaffirmed my belief that while most of our little seventies sitcom may have been trivial, it had somehow managed to strike a
chord, touching the hearts of a lot of people-so much so that this
particular group was willing to show their appreciation by enduring a monsoon.

Once finished, we Bradys soggily trudged toward the airport,
boarded our plane, and took off. Punchy, tired, cold, and still
damp, we were determined to get some transcontinental shut-eye
but try as we might, none of us could sleep.

Perhaps due to the close quarters of a six-hour flight, perhaps
due to fatigue, and perhaps due to the fact that our defenses had
been worn down, we began to really open up with each other and
share our experiences, not just of the past few hours but also about
our more than a lifetime's worth of communal experiences.

We started talking, laughing out loud, and sharing the stories
and feelings about each other that we'd either never before told,
long since forgotten, or simply denied. There was plenty to share,
and it wasn't long before we got a bit rowdy, unruly, and just plain
"un-Brady-like." Susan "Cindy" Olsen (who never minces words)
remembers it this way:

"Basically, we got smashed. So here's little Cindy and Bobby
swilling Jack Daniel's and Jim Beam, and taking complete advantage of the fact that we were in first class, so it was free. We were
lucky that the National Enquirer wasn't there to get pictures of
the tragic adulthood of TV's cute little Bobby and Cindy Brady.

"But can you imagine seeing the whole Brady family together
on your airplane? People were looking at us like `Wow, they must
really be related!' And here's little Bobby and Cindy kinda challenging each other to see who could get the drunkest, and just like
when we were kids giving each other a dare, we were giggling and
going `Yeah, let's do it,' and driving that poor stewardess insane
asking for full glasses of 'Jack' and Jim.'

"Soon the stuff starts to kick in, and Michael and I start saying
things like `Oh, jeeesh, I reeeeally used to looooove you.' And I
told him how I'd had like a million crushes on him, and he just
kinda went `Huh?"'

So here we are, thirty-two thousand feet up, significantly years
older than we were when we shot the pilot episode of "The Brady
Bunch," and we're using the cramped confines of a DC10 as a sort
of makeshift conference room, in which we're catching up with
one another, rehashing our common history, and using our now
grown-up perspectives in getting to know each other again ...
maybe for the first time.

We talked all the way across country, discussing our different
"Brady" experiences, our expectations, our disappointments, our
reflections, and finally came to the conclusion that while growing
up presents all kinds of challenges, the multitudinous advantages
and drawbacks of growing up Brady complicated that process
immeasurably.

As I watched my TV family reminisce and listen and learn and
share, I was absolutely fascinated. I also realized that these stories,
the real ones that took place behind the cameras and away from
the carefully groomed facade of network public-relations departments, were all but hidden from the kind of fans who'd just greeted us so warmly in the freezing rain. It occurred to me that they
deserved to be told.

As you'll see, this isn't a "trivia" book about "The Brady Bunch."
Instead, it is a book about the relationships, the behind-the-scenes
stories, and especially the people who made it all happen, and who
made it so special to multiple generations around the world.

Above all else, it is a book about the unique challenges of growing up in show business and growing up Brady.

Soaked on
Sally.
(Courtesy Multimedia Entertainment, Inc.)

ust after my fourth birthday, I became one of those annoying kids who are bound and determined to get into show
business. Saturday movie matinees and late-fifties television
(the schlockier the better) held a magical, almost hypnotic
fascination for me. I bought into it all-the excitement, the adventure, the magic, and while my friends were dreaming about
becoming the next Willie Mays, clocking fastballs over center-field
fences, I'd dream about "The Fabulous Barry Williams Show." I'd
sing, dance, tell jokes, schmooze with my incredible imaginary
guest stars-and let me tell you, I was great!

Now, a lot of kids dream about moving to Hollywood and
becoming TV stars, but I knew that I had an edge. Y'see, I already
lived in the L.A. suburb of Pacific Palisades, and a bona fide TV star
lived right on my block.

The star was Peter Graves, and in 1958 he was still nine years
away from becoming "Mission: Impossible "'s white-haired good
guy, Mr. Phelps. Instead, he played the hero on my absolute
favorite TV show, "Fury."

It was a western type show set in the 1950s. A man (Peter
Graves) adopts an orphaned city kid and brings him out to live on
his country ranch. It was standard western fare with the good guys
in white hats and the bad guys in black, and of course one great
horse ... Fury. Still, I loved it, and thought Mr. Graves was just
about as cool as a human being could get. Often, I'd spend my Saturday mornings watching him tie up the bad guys, and my Saturday afternoons watching him tie up his garbage or mow his lawn.
He was my idol, the grown-up embodiment of everything I wanted
to be.