The posting yesterday on reunion movies along with TV Land airing the Brady Bunch this week end got me to thinking. They say that the only time the cast of a TV show became what they played on the show only happened with the Monkees. They were only suppose to play a rock band but eventually became a rock band. Well when the Brady Bunch went on the air in September of 1969 it was about to happen again. Over time the core cast, without realizing it, became a family. Robert Reed was famous for hating the quality of the scripts. In the last episode he was cut out of the script. He was told to leave the set but refused. Sherwood Schwartz could have had security drag him away but Mr. Reed and the kids were so close and viewed him as a father figure that he didn’t have the heart to have the kids see Dad taken away by security. If the show had been renewed for another season there were plans to write Mr. Reed out of the show. He was to have died in a car accident over the summer. It is a good thing he was kept alive. When the show spun off the Brady Brides Mr. Reed was asked to appear in the first episode since it was the wedding episode. The producers asked out of kindness and were ready to recast the part since he was busy on a Broadway play and really hated the show. They were surprised when he said he would make the time to do it because “No one else marries off my daughters!” He took time off from the play and flew to LA to shoot the pilot.
Now Peter, Christopher Knight, is getting married. Greg, Barry Williams, sang at the wedding and Bobby, Mike Lookinland, and Cindy, Susan Olsen, attended. Mike Lookinland said it wasn’t like a former cast member got married. He said “My brother’s getting married.”
I have known all my life that TV was powerful. I never realized that it actually created a family.
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