Two things: First of all I know that Gene Hackman was the first choice for this role, but why did it eventually go to Robert Reed (who apparently didn’t want it anyway)?
Next: I read that Robert Reed’s mother and daughter DID NOT attend his memorial service. Does anybody know why? Was he estranged from them and if so, why?
Sherwood Schwartz thought Gene Hackman, then fairly unknown, was perfect for the role. The network rejected the idea. There’s no clear reason why Reed ended up with the role except that, like Tina Louise and Natalie Schaefer before him, he didn’t expect the pilot to get picked up.
Don’t know about his mother but his daughter was one of two people allowed to visit him in the hospital, and took his ashes to his burial place.
Reed’s mother may have been unable to attend her son’s memorial service. She was around eighty when he died.
Reed was a contract player for the studio (Paramont, I think). He ended up with role because he couldn’t get out of it. He caused a LOT of crap on the set and behind the scenes (though NEVER around the kids) about the stupid storys and scripts. Schwartz said that if the show had gone on another season, Mrs Brady would have been “The Widow Brady”.
Hackman’s signature was explosive outbursts. Wonder how that would have worked into the show.
[Hackman]“Marcia, Marcia, MAAAAAARCIAAAAAAA!!!”[/Hackman]
For some odd reason (maybe grandma) my 2 year old LOVES The Brady Bunch… and as a result, we have been “forced” to watch EVERY episode multiple times. I read up on his dissatisfaction with the show but I have to admit he played a pretty idyllic father.
I read Florence Henderson’s autobio. Reed’s daughter Karen DID attend the memorial service, along with all of the Brady kids.
It’s hard to judge Robert Reed. Barry Williams is very gentle with him in Growing Up Brady and the reader comes away with the impression that the troubles were mostly Schwartz’s fault. OTOH, it seems to be a classic case of “I’m a REAL actor, dammit, so quit shoving these sitcom scripts at me along with the fat paycheck for acting in them.” Shatner and Nimoy were “real actors,” too. And let’s not forget Alexander Dane… five curtain calls.
I’ve also come across intriguing but unsupported comments that Reed was a self-loathing gay man. He would be of the right era and background, with the requisite brief marriage, and it would explain a lot about his high standards and desire to succeed as a serious actor. (ETA: And not be seen as a clown.)
Seems as though he might have agreed to do the pilot due to contractual obligations:
“As part of Paramount’s stable of contract players, Robert tested for three pilots, and was ultimately cast as Mike Brady in “The Brady Bunch,” a part he was unenthusiastic about.”
It must have been tough for him to be an uncover gay man in those days in Hollywood. I assume plenty of people knew, but like everyone else at the time he would have to deny it in public. After the Brady Bunch he took a role on Medical Center (I think that one) as a man undergoing transexual surgery, a role no one else would take. He had to do the usual “I’m a straight man, just an interesting role” type of stuff. Hard to judge his off screen behavior in the Brady Bunch without considering the rest of his life and the environment he lived in.
Reed’s Wikipedia page mentions that he was a close friend of actress Anne Haney. We were watching an old show (Dragnet? don’t remember) the other day and she was on, and I looked her up to see what else she’d been in, because she looked familiar. Her page says that he picked up his medication for him to protect his confidentiality; his page says only that she and her daughter were his only allowed visitors.
However, it also says that his medication was prescribed “under a pseudonym”; his IMDB page says it was under his real name, John Rietz. Nevertheless, good friend.
Schwartz had the great line “If Bob had bombed in Hamlet he’d have blamed the writing”.
Of course that said, The Brady Bunch wasn’t Hamlet. To put it nicely it was “intellectually unchallenging” or, more accurately, it blew goats, so I can understand why an actor would hate it. (Henderson, coming from a musical comedy background professionally and a grindingly poor background personally, was probably not as demanding in roles and far more impressed with the paycheck than her co-star.)
OTOH, there were actors as good and better than Reed ever was who had to wait tables or work office jobs at 50, and The Brady Bunch saved him from that. (Unlike the kids, the three adults on the show got residuals.) In addition to the transsexual role mentioned he had decent roles in Roots and a lot of episodic guest shots and miniseries, so not a whole lot of sympathy there.
I think the kids remember him as a bit distant but very nice and generous. He took them all on a cruise as a gift in the final season of the show.
(For those not familiar, Find-a-Death is a morbid but cool site dedicated to celebrity deaths, usually with tidbits about their final days and pics of their homes or graves or whatever.)
They may say that, but he was back for almost every Brady reunion and follow-up, including the Variety Hour.
Easily the cheesiest series of the '70s. The entire Brady clan (sans Jan, who wisely sat this one out) wearing gold lame and singing and dancing to ‘Shake Your Booty’ is something that plays on a loop in the anterooms to Hell.
Ah well, caveat emptor.
IIRC he also had vauge plans to bring Carol’s 1st husband back into the picture if that happened. Mike was definatly a widower, but the show was always very carefull to avoid mentioning whether Carol was a widow or a divorcee.
And brilliantly parodied by The Simpsons some years ago. But if Reed was so unhappy playing Mike Brady it seems he must have had the chance to distance himself from the character and didn’t take it.
Did they say definitely she had a husband? I thought she concocted the girls out of sugar, spice, etc. I may be mixing them up with the Powerpuff Girls.
Other possibilities: