OMG! Love to Love You Bradys!!

[Borstalboy]

Posted: 9/15/09 at 11:36am

From Salon.com. It's a whole damn book about the reviled Brady Bunch Variety Hour! I'm kvelling!

Sept. 15, 2009 | You think reality TV invented shamelessness? Kids, you have no idea.

?The Brady Bunch? was a corny, campy, but strangely lovable part of our lives. "The Brady Bunch Variety Hour" was the mutant cousin in the basement. Now, even those born long after the time when a perm and wide shirt collar were somehow considered attractive can experience it in glorious horror via a photo-packed, glitter-dappled scrapbook co-written by the one in curls herself, Susan Olsen.

For one strange and inexplicable late '70s year, America?s favorite blended family returned to the television airwaves as the spangly stars of one of the most appallingly weird spectacles to ever make it to network television. "Love to Love You Bradys" is, undeniably, a head-scratchingly hilarious celebration of a show that welcomed both Tina Turner and H.R. Pufnstuf, that notoriously featured a "fake Jan," and that the authors themselves refer to as "a steaming turd." It?s also a candid peek into the workings of a sinking, polyester ship, replete with closeted homosexuality (Robert Reed), drug abuse (Maureen McCormick), hissy fits (Florence Henderson) and some of the worst attempts at singing and dancing ever recorded in human history.

Only by understanding those things that Ann B. Davis refers to as "unmitigated disasters" can we hope to never repeat them. "Love to Love You Bradys" is the "Wisconsin Death Trip" of the disco era -- strange, awful and utterly, guilt-inducingly fascinating.

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 9/16/09 at 1:16pm

Next on my list!

[Wicked Kitty]

Posted: 9/16/09 at 1:29pm

They did a spoof of it on That 70s show with Charro and Shiley Jones as the guests.

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 9/16/09 at 1:51pm

We were discussing this show on another thread recently and it is truly one of the most wacked-out messes I've ever seen. And I saw Supertrain.

[StockardFan]

Posted: 9/16/09 at 2:05pm

I read the book that Greg wrote, but that one wasn't about the variety show, just the sit-com. I have to find this one!

[StockardFan]

Posted: 12/1/09 at 7:19pm

Where's Borstal's bump?

[Borstalboy]

Posted: 12/1/09 at 7:24pm

Yeah! I had all these tidbits!

[StockardFan]

Posted: 12/1/09 at 11:44pm

What the hell?

Posted: 12/2/09 at 9:35am

Will have to read it--but I wish they'd release more vols of it on DVD https://www.amazon.com/Brady-Bunch-Variety-Hour/dp/B00004WMP2

[blueroses]

Posted: 12/2/09 at 10:50am

Stockard, I LOVED "Growing Up Brady."

[Borstalboy]

Posted: 12/2/09 at 4:32pm

Couple of things I didn't know:

Florence Henderson was not only discovered by Richard Rodgers, she was the first-ever female to host the Tonight Show.

Geri Daschle--a.k.a. "Fake Jan"--was one of the finalists for Regan McNeil in THE EXORCIST (Mom read the book and pulled the plug) and was supposed to play Blair in THE FACTS OF LIFE but producers thought she was too high profile as the star of a large ad campaign for Crispy Wheats N Raisins (She was Dorothy in the The Wizard of Oz-themed ads, which ran for four years).

Kathy Richards, later Kathy Hilton, was also in the running for Fake Jan.

Among the guests were Natalie Wood, Farrah Fawcett and Tina Turner (fresh from ditching Ike)

Rip Taylor of all people played Alice's love interest and the born again Ann B. Davis didn't much like him.

The book is woderfully overstuffed and hilarious. A wonderful gift for that pop culture-obsessed Gen X-er loved one.

[EVIE]

Posted: 12/2/09 at 5:49pm

This is most def a must read! LOL

[StockardFan]

Posted: 12/2/09 at 5:56pm

Stockard, I LOVED "Growing Up Brady."

LOL! I did too!

[danmag]

Posted: 12/2/09 at 6:18pm

I would KILL to know what I ever did with my autographed picture of the Bradys...It's probably in a box in my parents attic with all my old K-Tel records.

[StockardFan]

Posted: 12/2/09 at 9:19pm

You must find that!