“The Brady Bunch” is one of the TV shows that shaped ’70s culture, and according to its creator, Sherwood Schwartz, we have a few lines in a newspaper to thank for one of the most famous fictional families in the world. In a 1997 interview with Dan Pasternack, Schwartz said it was a small item in the paper back in 1965 that got him thinking about unconventional family structures. “[The idea for the show] came from an item in the LA Times … It was five lines long … All it said was that, that year … 30 percent of all marriages also included not just the couple, but a child from either one or both parents.” The high percentage signaled to Schwartz that a new family structure was emerging in American society, and as a writer he saw an opportunity to tell new stories which these people would relate to. He called the dynamic “a wonderful Pandora’s box” full of stories.
Schwartz went on to explain how around the time he was developing the idea for “The Brady Bunch” his daughter was in junior high and she came home and told him a story about a kid in the school play she was in who was struggling to decide which parent to invite. Due to capacity issues, the kids only had one ticket to give to one of their parents. Schwartz said the boy’s mom had just gotten married and he was wavering with giving his mother the ticket or giving it to his new stepfather to bond with him. The story reinforced for Schwartz that kids had complicated problems and emotions that deserved to be explored on a show like “The Brady Bunch.”
It took Schwartz many years to get The Brady Bunch on TV
Sherwood Schwartz also created “Gilligan’s Island,” but “The Brady Bunch” is a more sentimental concept, so to best explain the kind of heart he was envisioning he wrote the pilot on spec. In the interview, he explained how NBC loved the concept but wanted him to change the ending of the pilot, “The Honeymoon,” in which Carol (Florence Henderson) and Mike Brady (Robert Reed) go on their honeymoon. While away, they’re trying to have a good time but they feel like something is missing. So, they go home and gather their kids and their pets so that the whole family can enjoy the getaway together.
NBC found the idea of taking kids on a honeymoon too ridiculous, but Schwartz loved the ending and refused to change it. So he took it to ABC, who he said loved the script but wanted him to extend it to the 1½ hour format by lengthening the scenes, which he didn’t agree with. He pitched the idea at the networks again when they changed executives but he didn’t find success until 1968 after the movie “Yours, Mine and Ours” starring Lucille Ball and Henry Fonda was released and became a hit. The concept was similar to “The Brady Bunch,” except the widow in the film, Helen (Ball), had 10 kids and the widower, Frank (Fonda), had 8. Schwartz explained that ABC came to him after seeing the success of the film because they had proof his original idea worked. They then bought “The Brady Bunch” in Schwartz’s format, which is how the world knows the original series today.
