“The Brady Bunch” was a huge hit in the 1970s, and it continues to enjoy success in reruns today, but there was one important detail the writers never clarified.
The pilot episode of the series made it clear that Mike Brady, played by Robert Reed, had been widowed, but the show never specified if Florence Henderson’s character, Carol Brady, had been widowed or divorced.
“There was a whole discrepancy in the basis of the show, in the concept of the show that the network fought [creator] Sherwood Schwartz on, and that is the premise was a widower with three sons and a divorcee with three daughters, and the network felt a divorcee created too many problems for the series,” Barry Williams, who played oldest son Greg Brady, said on his “The Real Brady Bros” podcast.
Williams said executives felt custody details and the issues that would have led to the divorce would complicate the premise of the show.
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“We were playing to a very conservative country, so they wanted Carol to be a widow, and Sherwood never changed it. But they agreed to disagree, and it was left unhandled, which is why you never see in our pilot episode Carol’s ex-husband or even referenced,” he added.
He added that the show also never depicted any of the children being adopted by their stepparents, although Susan Olsen, who played youngest daughter Cindy Brady, noted the fact that the girls’ last names were Brady implied they had been adopted by their stepfather.
“What is interesting, as you mention, is that they leave it. They don’t deal with Mr. Martin by reference,” Christopher Knight, who played middle brother Peter and co-hosts the podcast, said, referring to Carol’s first husband. “They do refer to Mrs. Brady, the previous Mrs. Brady, quickly in this episode in a really touching scene, and we’ll review it, and [they] then never again reference it or deal with it.”
Olsen said she thought it was “kind of sad” the boys’ mom was never mentioned again.
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She noted that Carol does say, “‘Three years ago, I thought it was the end of the world, and now it’s just the beginning,’ and you wonder, ‘Did he die, or did they split up?’”
“I’ve felt that was through a divorce or two myself,” Williams said. Knight added that Schwartz “left it so the audience can decide for themselves.”
Knight said he also took “offense” to the idea that the siblings never referred to the fact that they were stepchildren.
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“I thought that was the part of the show that really failed us as kids, and I was just 12 years old, thinking at that time, ‘They’re not really my sisters,’ and I know growing up I would have said, ‘You’re not really my sister.'”
He said he now realizes the reason for the show’s success was because they didn’t do that.
“It was all about getting along,” he admitted.
“And in getting along, having mom’s picture always up, referencing your real mom or your birth mom is only gonna be a wedge issue, a potential wedge issue, so it was completely put aside,” he explained.
Divorce was a sticky issue on TV at the time. The series ran from 1969 until 1974.
Mary Richards on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” which ran from 1970 until 1977, was also supposed to be a divorcee when she decided to move to Minneapolis and work for a local news station, but again the show’s network didn’t like the idea.
Allan Burns, co-creator of the show, told The Hollywood Reporter in 2017, “We had the idea that we would do the first divorcee on television. It’s hard to believe, but in 1970 that was a controversial idea. Mary loved the idea, Grant loved the idea. Both of them were divorced and understood it, but the network had a sort of cardiac episode.”
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He said he was “summoned” to a CBS executive’s office, and divorce was replaced by a broken engagement.
