Why the "Radical" Brady Bunch Almost Never Got Made - 1960s television executives weren't ready to put a blended family on air.

[Ubiquitous]

It’s been burned into generations of brains: the story of a lovely lady and a
man named Brady whose marriage creates a blended family of eight (not
counting Alice, Tiger or Cousin Oliver). Today, The Brady Bunch is viewed as
classic, family-friendly entertainment—not scandalous or challenging fare by
any means.

But though the show is a beloved, safe-seeming staple for modern audiences,
it was groundbreaking when it was first conceived—so groundbreaking that it
almost never got made.

The history of The Brady Bunch begins in 1966, when TV producer Sherwood
Schwartz read a news item in the Los Angeles Times that claimed 30 percent of
marriages involved children from a previous relationship. Now, in 1966 this
was a new phenomenon,” he later recalled. “Television was loaded with happily
married couples, and single widows and widowers, but there wasn’t any show
that revolved around the marital amalgamation of two families.”

Schwartz knew how to create a hit show—his Gilligan’s Island had been well-
received. And the statistic stuck with him. At the time, loosening social
mores around sex and marriage meant that divorce was becoming more and more
common. In 1966, there were 1.85 million marriages and 499,000 divorces. The
number had been creeping up for decades after a post-war divorce boom
(610,000 divorces in 1946) and a subsequent settling of divorce rates that
hovered around 400,000 until the beginning of the 1960s.

All those divorces, and changing views on whether people should marry at all,
produced new family structures that Schwartz felt would resonate with
audiences. So he wrote a pilot about a widower who falls in love with a
divorcee, gets married and thencombines their two families in one house for
endless situations and laughs.

But though Schwartz had proven television success and a solid script, Yours
and Mine was not beloved by executives at any of the three major television
networks. Though he received initial interest, no one seemed willing to take
a chance on a show whose premise was so new. The script languished on the
shelf and Schwartz moved on to other endeavors.

Then, in 1968, the film Yours, Mine and Ours hit theaters. Based on a true
story, the film follows Frank Beardsley, a U.S. Navy officer with ten
children, and Helen North, a nurse with eight children. Both of their spouses
have died, and despite their fear of blending their large broods, their
mutual attraction leads to marriage and a massive new family. The couple
learn to manage their 18 children (with one on the way) through a combination
of hilarious mistakes and military tactics.




Starring Lucille Ball as North and Henry Fonda as Beardsley, the film was not
received well by critics. But the public loved it, and it grossed over $25
million in box office receipts (over $180 million in modern dollars).









Two years after he pitched the networks, Schwartz’s idea seemed long dead.
The movie—with a premise extremely close to the one he had developed—could
have been the nail in its coffin. Instead, it resurrected the idea at ABC.

Later, Schwartz recalled the movie as “serendipity”: a chance to have another
piece of intellectual property prove the success of his concept for him. “A
big hit in another medium [gives] executives an ‘excuse for failure,’” he
wrote in his 2010 book on the Brady Bunch.

Now that ABC/Paramount knew the public was interested in stories about big,
blended families, Schwartz had an in. The network ordered 13 shows and was
set for a 1969 premiere. The film had helped greenlight the TV show, but the
similarities between both sparked potential legal trouble for Schwartz. Since
it was based on a true story, Schwartz knew he could not allege that Yours
Mine and Ours had copied his idea.

Instead, the film’s producer threatened Schwartz with a lawsuit after The
Brady Bunch’s 1969 premiere. Schwartz fired back with a letter that pointed
to the initial name of his pilot—Yours and Mine. “You called your movie
Yours, Mine and Ours by adding a kid of their own,” Schwartz wrote. “Just be
happy I didn’t sue you.”

That letter was enough to put the potential lawsuit to bed. The Brady Bunch
ran for 177 episodes and still enjoys a healthy life in reruns.

But though the show filmed its first episodes under the name The Brady Bunch,
it almost lost its name because of another film. The Wild Bunch, a Western
starring William Holden, Ernest Borgnine and others, was also released in
1969. It was a shocking take on the Western genre, and received criticism
(and big box office returns) for its cutting-edge film techniques and its
graphic violence.

Today, The Wild Bunch is considered one of the best Westerns of all time. In
1969, however, ABC/Paramount executives worried that audiences would
associate the word “bunch” in its newest sitcom’s title with marauding
vigilante justice and brutal violence. “They were afraid the viewers would
get the idea that the show was a western or about a mob,” Schwartz recalled.
He lobbied hard for the name, and won. If anything, The Brady Bunch managed
to remove the word’s gritty connotation, associating “bunch” with sanitized,
family-friendly and low-stakes comedy instead.

The Brady Bunch had a long shelf life and has even been parodied in two 1990s
films that have become cult classics in their own right. But what of the
movie that helped it get made? Yours, Mine and Ours' post-1960s life has been
more uneven. First came the 2005 remake that grossed a respectable $72
million worldwide, but was almost universally panned by the critics.

More recently, one of Frank Beardsley’s real-life sons has claimed life was
nothing like the movies. In 2013, he accused his stepfather of abusive
behavior in a book, True North. (North’s claims were disputed by other family
members). Unlike the Brady family, who always made up by the end of the show,
real life is more complicated than sitcom fiction.


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