Maureen McCormick’s New Book Continues The Tradition Of Ruining Brady Reruns For An Entire Generation
Okay, so my title is kind of facetious, but come on. Is there anyone that The Brady Bunch didn’t totally screw up? It seems that everyone associated with this show has had problems of one sort or another over the past couple of decades. I’m starting to think the only two to escape unscathed were Sam the Butcher and Tiger, and that was only because he was smart enough to pack his agent and his doggie dish before they gave him a verse on Time To Change.
Maureen McCormick, best known as eldest daughter Marcia Brady, has come out with a new book, where she reveals how her life totally went off the rails after the show ended and just what compelled her to tell her story now:
The book is a painfully frank account of a lifelong battle with a litany of demons: sex, drugs, depression, bulimia, paranoia.
But it is also a story of hope, because in the past two years, McCormick said, she has finally come to grips with those demons and found peace. [...]
Now 52, McCormick reveals all about a colorful but frequently troubled life: her romance with Williams, her dates with Michael Jackson and Steve Martin, cocaine binges and parties at the Playboy Mansion and the home of Sammy Davis Jr., two abortions, and trading sex for drugs.
“That was one of the lowest parts of my life,” she told Roker of the depths of her addiction. “It came toward the end of my doing cocaine … All I cared about was having sex and doing the drugs. I had sex to get the drugs.”
McCormick was 14 when “The Brady Bunch” debuted on ABC, running from 1969 to 1974. Despite her role as a sunny Miss Perfect, she struggled privately with anxiety and insecurity, the youngest of four children born to a mercurial father who abused and cheated on their mother.
Maureen says that beneath the sunny exterior, there was a hidden side, full of depression and fear, and after the show ended drugs took over her life:
“As a teenager, I had no idea that few people are everything they present to the outside world,” she writes in the book, published by William Morrow. “Yet there I was, hiding the reality of my life behind the unreal perfection of Marcia Brady … No one suspected the fear that gnawed at me even as I lent my voice to the chorus of Bradys singing ‘It’s a Sunshine Day.’ ”
When “The Brady Bunch” ended, she took up a hard-partying lifestyle in Hollywood, using drugs that included cocaine and Quaaludes. She struggled to regain her earlier success, landing some TV and movie roles, but developed a reputation for unreliability due to her addiction, even botching an interview with Steven Spielberg [for Raiders Of The Lost Ark] because she was high.
She missed an audition for “The Brady Brides” because she was up for three days doing cocaine. When her agent came to her home to find out what had happened, he had to climb a ladder to her bedroom to drag her out of the closet where she was hiding. “He tore my clothes off, threw me in the shower and told me we’re going to Paramount” for the audition, she told Vieira.
That, she said was rock bottom.
After interventions, stints in rehab and experimental therapies, McCormick began getting sober in 1985 when she married actor Michael Cummings, with whom she has a daughter, Natalie. She continued to fight depression through therapy, medication and the help of “Brady” castmates.
Think about how much different Raiders Of The Lost Ark would have been had Marcia Brady helped Indy!
And about those rumors of rampant, raging hormones on the set? Yep, pretty much true, except not about that Jan part, which she made up:
The final bridge to be repaired is the one with [Eve] Plumb. McCormick told Vieira that her co-star stopped speaking to her years ago after McCormick appeared on a late-night talk show and got carried away during a conversation about the “The Brady Brides,” a reunion TV-movie that marked the first time the entire cast had been back together since “The Brady Bunch” ended its five-year run in 1974.
“It was all this sex with the Brady Bunch,” she said of the rumors at the time that set the tenor of the talk-show segment. “So I was on this talk show and I said I fell in love with everybody,” McCormick went on, naming her fellow cast members: Robert Reed, her TV father, and her TV brothers, Barry Williams [Greg Brady] and Chris Knight [Peter Brady].
She actually did have a crush on Reed, and she almost lost her virginity when she was 16 to Williams. (His parents came in his room and caught them in a passionate clinch and circling the bases, but not yet arrived at home plate.) In the spirit of fun, she told Vieira, McCormick added on the talk show that she was also in love with Florence Henderson, her TV mom, and Plumb, whom she said she kissed.
“I was having fun, something I was joking with, and she didn’t take it that way,” McCormick told Vieira.
Oh well, we always knew Jan was an old stick in the mud. (Just kidding! Eve, call her, life is too short.)
Now, normally this is the place where I get all cynical and say that she’s in it for the money and a tell-all biography featuring behind-the-scenes tidbits of one of television’s most popular series is the best way to make all the problems go away, put money in the bank, and/or get on the news. And I’m sure there’s a bit of all that wrapped up in all this. But I don’t know…maybe I’m just nostalgic, but I want to believe that Maureen really does want to share her story, that she really does have words of advice to give to today’s young people and the child/teen/young adult stars we see in movies and on TV. After all, she’s been there and done that. Maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to throw out these sorts of books just because there have been a few of them who are blatant money-makers for their authors.
Yet another example of why thrusting fame and pressure on young kids isn’t such a good idea. But after all the revelations of the backstage drama that took place on the set of this one show, I can’t look at any episode the same way. What am I saying? I never really liked the show, although I wanted the house. Now that was a cool house. You can’t tell me you didn’t love that seventies staircase, although I think the designers used a bit too much orange. My daughter loves the show, though, so I think I’ll let her live a few more years in innocence before spoiling it for her.
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I used to masturbate with the lovely Marcia on my mind. She is still so hot I will continue to do so.
Comment by Leroy Bofus — October 15, 2008 @ 12:51 pm
Wow, that was really thoughtful of you share with us.
Comment by D — October 15, 2008 @ 1:53 pm
CALL BACK
Comment by t moore — October 15, 2008 @ 2:34 pm