Brady Brady Brady—The Complete Story of The Brady Bunch as Told by the Father/Son Team Who Really Know

By Sherwood Schwartz and Lloyd Schwartz. Foreword by Monty Hall (Seriously. Monty Hall. Like that’s going to sell book in 2010.) Running Press, 2010. $24.95.

Sherwood Schwartz, creator of The Brady Bunch and hands-on producer of nearly all its manifestations save for the Variety Hour series and the Very Brady Sequel feature film, credits his wife with coming up with the title of this book.

Well, the title Here’s the Story was already taken. So was Growing Up Brady, The Brady Bunch Book, The Brady Bunch Files, Alice’s Brady Bunch Cookbook, Beyond the Brady Bunch, The Brady Bunch Guide to Life, Life Lessons from the Bradys, Bradymania!, Bradypalooza, Love to Love You Bradys and (boooring) The Brady Bunch.

The best titles are all taken, which may be why this book conserves its one by having two separate books by two separate authors under the same Brady Brady Brady cover. The more thorough one, by Lloyd J. Schwartz comes second. The first one, by his dad Sherwood, comes first and is superficial and grudge-filled; it reads like a long introduction to Lloyd’s.

Any revelations? Hardly, after Barry “Johnny Bravo” Williams’ book, which came out over a decade ago and has since earned an “updated special edition.” There are a lot of intriguing tangents, like how Lloyd’s rebellious phase as a 1960s student liberal lasted a nanosecond before he joined the family business and rose in the ranks from dialogue coach to associate producer to producer. It’s clear that both father and son feel they have to defend charges of nepotism, and the way they mention awards and ratings shows how thin-skinned they are about those who would dismiss or diss the Bradys.

Sherwood Schwartz goes so far as to say that the reason The Brady Bunch and his earlier hit series Gilligan’s Island worked so well is because they were “socially significant.” He makes Gilligan’s Island sound like Sartre’s No Exit and the Bradys like a precursor to August: Osage County. Sherwood Schwartz is very big on social significance. He tells a story about an idea he had (which he does not expand upon) that would have saved and redeemed a show by other producers, a show that was sadly axed before its full potential could be realized. That sadly aborted program? Me and the Chimp.

All this second-guessing, reprioritizing, hindsight and nostalgia begs the question: Why was this book not called Much More Than a Hunch?