Remember The Brady Bunch, its peppy theme song and fun-to-imitate nine-square opening credits? Ah, good times.

The gosh-darn fun ABC comedy aired from 1969 to 1974, and spawned myriad spinoffs, sequels and big-screen movies.

But, probably most notorious in Brady lore is The Brady Bunch Variety Hour, the short-lived 1976 series starring the cast in all their polyestered glory singing and dancing with impressive fervour. And yes, there was a bunny suit involved.

Susan Olsen, who played pigtailed Cindy Brady on The Brady Bunch (the youngest one in curls), has teamed up with pop culture historian Ted Nichelson and graphic designer Lisa Sutton to produce a tome dedicated to the so-bad-it’s-good television disaster.

Love to Love You Bradys is in stores now courtesy of ECW Press. A pleasantly bubbly Olsen chatted with me about the book, trying to live down Cindy’s legacy and co-star Maureen McCormick’s secret battle with drugs.

TVGuide.ca: The show’s celebrating its 40th anniversary – does it seem that long to you?
Susan Olsen: In some ways it seems a lot longer. It seems like 140 years. But my memories are still very fresh.

TVG: The show’s had so many projects after it ended – movies, specials – why do you think people still love it?
SO: I think its three age groups of kids and both sexes. Every kid that watches can identify, and the kids are the focus. Lately I like to say that in order to have eternal life, you have to have a soul. And there is a soul to the Brady Bunch – our love for each other is genuine and people can tell that.

TVG: It totally does. And on top of that, the concept of a blended family was before its time.
SO: Yeah. In fact, Carol Brady was really the first divorced woman on TV, but the censors wouldn’t let that be known.

TVG: Talking about your book, had that been percolating for a while?
SO: No, it wasn’t my idea at all. The main author is Ted Nichelson and I met him because he put together a Brady Bunch Variety Hour website, really tongue-in-cheek to commemorate this terrible show. He wanted me to write something for it about seven years ago.

I was amazed that there was a lot about the Variety Hour that I’d blocked out – Red Foxx was on the show! So I wrote something like, ‘This is very important. I’m glad that Ted has kept the memory of this show alive – we mustn’t forget or something like this could happen again.’ And people were asking him to write a book, so he asked me to write a forward and I said my friend Lisa Sutton, who’s a fabulous graphic designer, could put it together. He then asked me to write sidebars for the book

TVG: What exactly made The Brady Bunch Variety Hour so bad, in your mind?
SO: It’s just a perfect example of what was bad about the ‘70s – at the time I thought disco music was horrible, polyester should only be used for house siding. And I didn’t like variety shows that much, either. So to take us, these unlikely people, it’s a fish-out-of-water thing.

The show was modelled after The Donny & Marie Show, and you could think it’s awful because of the same ‘70s stuff, but they could really sing and dance and you expect it from them. You don’t expect to see Mr. Brady in a bunny suit. There’s not much to smear us with [in the tabloids] because we’re all pretty good people, but we did one really bad show.

TVG: Did the rest of the cast think it was bad at the time?
SO: I don’t think Barry [Williams, who played Greg] thought it was bad. Florence [Henderson], had it been her with people who had the same abilities as her, it wouldn’t have been bad.

For me, I hated that stuff. People think about disco in the ‘70s, but The Who was still touring and punk was just getting started with The Ramones – that’s what I was into. Plus, Saturday Night Live had cutting-edge comedy and I hoped we could get into stuff like that.

We had great writers; it just didn’t come off well with us. It was bad, it was spectacularly bad.

TVG: You were young on the show – were you aware of all the hype around The Brady Bunch?
SO: I was very aware of who we were and where we stood with the public, and that we would get away with this. I think it would have continued if we had had a regular timeslot, but we were shuffled around and people didn’t know where to find us. But we got a ton of fan mail because people wanted to see us in any way they could get us.

TVG: Do you still get fan mail?
SO: I don’t know – I don’t get it to my house, thank God! It’s so much better now with the Internet. You can do websites and have a more natural relationship with the public. I’m on Facebook as myself, and most of the time I talk about the cats that I’m fostering because I do kitten rescue. To me, I’ve never been comfortable with the objectification of being a celebrity, so to have a place where it’s safe to be yourself with the public is much better.

TVG: To a lot of people, you’ll always be known as Cindy, but did you ever get to the point where you rebelled against the idea?
SO: Totally! I don’t even like Cindy. I had to be her and always went to school when we stopped filming. Cindy was a tattletale and she wasn’t very bright, so for me, playing her and having to go back to school and deal with the things Cindy did wasn’t fun. I wanted to be in The Exorcist.

And when I turned 18 and could go back to working, the jobs I wanted would have ruined the image of Cindy – drug addicts, axe murderers. But people had a hard time hiring Cindy Brady to play that. And that’s what made me lose interest in acting.

TVG: What would you want to play now?
SO: I’d be a character actress because I’m too old to try to look good now. [Laughs.] I want to play hunchbacks and sea hags.

TVG: Any plans for another Brady reunion? 
SO: There have been, but I wouldn’t think you’ll ever see us play our characters again. I can pretty much guarantee that I won’t play Cindy again. But you might see us together as ourselves – there’s an awful lot of good chemistry with us.

TVG: Maureen McCormick [who played Marsha] also wrote a book a couple years ago – what did you think about it?
SO: The only reason I was able to talk about her drug problem was because she wrote about it. Ted was asking how we could tell the story of the Variety Hour without talking about how you waited around to see if Maureen would show up for work. And I’m not like Cindy – I’m not a tattletale! You have to give her credit because she did clean up, and she’s fine now.

TVG: Definitely. So you were talking about your work with kittens – what else do you have on the go?
SO: I would like to write my own book. Not a memoir, but I’ve been writing all my life. There’d be a lot of memories, but I wouldn’t do a tell-all. I’d rather do something humorous. I’m a single mom raising a child who has Asperger syndrome, so he’s a real challenge.

And I’m very involved with PreciousPaws.org, a non-profit animal rescue and we deal almost exclusively with cats. I take in orphan kittens and bottle-feed them and get them all plumped and socialized and ready for adoption. Next to being a mom, it’s the thing I’m most passionate about. There’s an enormous problem with cat overpopulation. You can’t say it enough times – spay and neuter! They breed like mosquitoes. We created the domestic dog and cat, and we’re responsible for them.

Thoughts? Do you remember The Brady Bunch Variety Hour? melissa@tvguide.ca

 

GOT FIVE MINUTES?
Bookmark CTV.ca, where the network will post minisodes of classic TV shows during the 2009-10 season.

The site will unveil more than 200 five-minute retro minisodes of Bewitched, Charlie’s Angels, Diff’rent Strokes, Dilbert, Fantasty Island, Good Times, Starsky and Hutch, TJ Hooker, The Jeffersons and What’s Happening. Cancon bonus: it’ll post all six seasons of The Littlest Hobo!

“We recognize that there is a large audience who crave nostalgia and memories from their youth. YouTube and many other sites have proven that,” Richard Kanee, director of business development for CTV Digital, tells me.

“The minisode format is so appealing because we often find that we get our nostalgia fix in a few minutes and it is the rare series that holds up 20 years later.” 


CLIP OF THE WEEK
The Muppets performed the peppy '70s song "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" by Elton John and Kiki Dee on last Wednesday's episode of America's Got Talent. I had this song in my head all night:



 

 

Whether a show invaded TV in the ‘50s, ‘60s, ‘70s or ‘80s, Melissa will likely think it’s hep, groovy, dyn-o-mite or totally awesome. Her ever-expanding classic TV on DVD collection includes Three’s Company, Beverly Hills, 90210 and The Mary Tyler Moore Show. She has a soft spot for anything retro – heck, she even married an ex Elvis tribute artist.

Though her fave current series are quirky ones, like Flight of the Conchords, Mad Men, 30 Rock, Reaper, How I Met Your Mother and The Late Late Show, Melissa is on a quest to rediscover forgotten shows and classics of TV screens past. Her RetroChick mission is simple: to dish retro news, tease your brain with trivia, indulge in nostalgia and catch up with past icons. The question is, can you dig it?


 

 

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