Robert Reed's memos to Sherwood Schwartz RE: The Brady Bunch

Yeah, I was just joking and having some fun with the long-standing rumors. I don't really care if they banged...

 

She was hot in a "1970 MILF" way. Not hot in a Playboy centerfold way.

 

Until the day I die, I will believe Florence Henderson was never hot in any way, shape or form. Throw out all the modifiers you want - I won't be swayed on this!

 

Eh, yeah, I agree. I never thought Henderson was particularly hot either.

Now Marsha is another matter. . .

 

Found this from a random website while searching for Bob's feelings on the show:

"There was one episode where Alice and Carol were making some strawberry desserts in the kitchen. The script called for Mike to walk in and say, 'Wow, it smells like strawberry heaven in here!' Bob Reed looked over the script on the set, and upon reading the line -- he quietly closed his script book, went to his trailer, and locked the door.

I knocked for ten minutes before he opened up. Finally, when he did, I asked him what the problem was. Bob said, 'What's the problem?? I'm supposed to say 'Wow, it smells like strawberry heaven in here!!' I quipped back, 'Yeah, so?' Bob became furious. 'SO?? Sherwood, are you ignorant, or do you honestly not know that strawberries, when cooked, have NO aroma??'

I told him that I, in fact, had not known this-- and I begged him to shelve his pride about is, and just do the damned scene. Finally, after hours, he agreed to do the scene. But Bob had the last laugh. When we were finally rolling, and he entered the kitchen as Mike Brady-- he changed the line, saying, 'Wow, I feel like I've died and gone to strawberry heaven!' --and that's what we kept."

And another:

Florence Henderson recalled the time they were shooting a scene where Reed was supposed to be getting stuff out of the refrigerator. The script called for him to drop an egg and slip on it. Reed said that it was total nonsense, and it would never work. Florence told him, "Before you shoot something down, try it". So when Reed finally went through with the scene, he actually dropped an egg and took a fall.

Ann B. Davis said of the incident: "I can add to that story, because Bob was making rather a fuss! I swear, he hit the ground before the egg did! And, once I found out if he was all right, that he didn't hurt himself, I said, "Do you think you can play it now?" And he looked up and said, "You know, all the way down I was thinking I deserved this!"

 

Saw The Brady Brides movie on YouTube and watched it again for the first time since it originally aired on TV. The only thing I remembered from it was Bobby wearing cleats and even as a 10 year old kid I thought "how could he forget to change shoes when he has to remove his shoes to change his pants?". I found it as an enjoyable tv movie, it wasn't as bad as I expected. I did, however, imagine what Robert would have thought about certain plot holes and how he would have carried on with Sherwood. But maybe this was a family reunion type environment so maybe Bob didn't rock the boat too much. But I can imagine his memo now "Sherwood, how would Alice remember Marcia using crayons when the oldest girl was clearly to old to be using or playing with a childish things when the couple first married?"... Or "How does one change clothes then proceed to put on the wrong pair of shoes, not once but TWICE with the oldest and youngest sons? It's typical Gilligan humor that has no place on in this show".

Hahaha. There are several of the 30 minute episodes also on YouTube and I'm gonna check them out when I have time. I have never seen those and I wonder if the girls can carry a show on their own.

 

I can't submit to the idea that 'Bewitched' was a 'horrible' show. Elizabeth Montgomery, Agnes Moorehead, Dick York and Paul Lynde all had serious comic chops, and if some of the scripts weren't up to their ability, they often transcended it.

 

"Died and gone to strawberry heaven" is the better line.

 

Exactly. You would think a board made up of intelligent audiophiles wouldn't jump to tabloid conclusions at every opportunity but apparently no such luck.

 

It was a very mediocre show at best. That didn't stop me from watching it on many occasions, and I would absolutely call it a classic of its kind. But a stupid, formulaic show that basically kept recycling the same two or three jokes.

A friend of mine once had lunch with longtime Bewitched director (and Elizabeth Montgomery's husband for a time) William Asher. He asked Asher a question for me: "it's too bad that you never did an episode where Darren asked Samantha, 'if you're a witch, can you tell me if there's life after death? Is there a god? Is there a devil? Can you bring people back from the dead? If witches live hundreds of years, can you magically make me live hundreds of years with you? If witches and warlocks have great power, why not end all the suffering on Earth? What's the point of life'"?

Asher laughed and answered, "those are all great questions! But if we'd answered them, it would've been the end of the series."

 

I loved BEWITCHED as a young teen when it premiered on ABC. It was just the best thing going, in my then-humble opinion. In fact, it prevented me from watching all of STAR TREK's first season. I'd watch the first half-hour of TREK and then change to ABC for BEWITCHED.

But sometime in the second Darrin iteration, I lost interest, but stuck with it. When it showed up in endless reruns over the year, I pretty much avoided it, but when the first season was released on DVD, I jumped at the chance to own it. The first season was sort of special, with some genuinely innovative episodes, but as Vidiot states, the show became derivative of its own formula. I enjoyed that first season DVD, but never went any farther. It was hard to find the black & white second season - I might have bought that, but the opportunity never presented itself. I didn't want the colorized, which seemed to be everywhere.

Harry