30 Secrets From Behind the Scenes of “The Brady Bunch”

The Birth of a Sitcom

Have you ever wondered how The Brady Bunch came to be? Apparently, it was all thanks to a news article that Sherwood Schwartz happened to see.

While the creator of the show was perusing the Los Angeles Times one morning, he saw a news article about partners remarrying with children from previous relationships, a trend becoming more common. It was a lightbulb moment that led to the sitcom that would go down in TV history.

A Real Father Figure

The Brady Bunch was a show that centered around family. So, it’s no surprise that the roles made the cast closer. Since the show’s airing, both Mike Lookinland and Susan Olsen have shared some of their feelings.

On the show, Lookinland played Bobby and Olsen played Cindy. They’ve shared that Robert Reed became more of a father figure to them than their own fathers had been. He once even took the cast on vacation!

Missing the Finale

If you saw The Brady Bunch finale, you probably noticed something odd. Mike was completely absent from the show’s final episode!

This was because Robert Reed gave the producers a choice — or, more aptly, an ultimatum — that the last episode was changed or he wouldn’t participate in the finale. Sherwood Charles Schwartz simply accepted that choice and continued on. As for Reed, he kept to his promise and stayed away, giving us a finale free of one of the main characters.

Something Missing

If you saw any scene in The Brady Bunch that took place in the bathroom, you might have noticed something missing. Where is the family’s toilet?

Well, when the show aired, you couldn’t show a toilet bowl on screen. So, how do you have scenes of characters getting ready in the bathroom without catching the toilet in a single shot? As the makers of The Brady Bunch found out, you can simply do away with the toilet altogether.

Catching Up

When you rewatch The Brady Bunch, it’s easy to spot Florence Henderson in the first six episodes. Why would you expect not to?

What you probably don’t expect is that she filmed her scenes separately from the rest of the cast. This was because she was unavailable when the scenes were originally filmed, as she was filming a movie in Europe at the time. So, her scenes were recorded when she returned.