Photo illustration by Chris OBrion/The Olympian

Out of the picture

Deal leaves Bradys fatherless on all new merchandise

HANK STUEVER, THE WASHINGTON POST

In the short history of postwar, blended-family patriarchy, no one has outdone Mike Brady: He was a successful architect, an amorous and attentive husband, a capable parent; he was stern when he needed to be, fun-loving ("We're all going to Hawaii!") and a little bit groovy, as stepdads go. He drove a convertible, wore a man-perm, had twinkly blue eyes.

So, OK, he was a fantasy construct of television.

Now it seems he's even more nonexistent. Almost 10 years after the death of Robert Reed -- the actor who played him on the TV series "The Brady Bunch" from 1969 to 1974 -- the character of Mike Brady has faded from the Brady universe.

On the 2002 Brady Bunch wall calendar the original sitcom characters are all present and accounted for, in their eternal circa-1972 states of being, except for one.

Mr. Brady doesn't live here anymore.

He's ... gone.

It's not just the calendar. On all licensed "Brady"- related lunchboxes, T-shirts and other merchandise, Mike Brady has been rubbed out.

There's something sort of Stalin-era about it, once the eye is alerted to Reed's absence, some sinister and creepy feeling. Though Mike Brady lives on in reruns on Nick at Nite, he's been cropped out or digitally removed from the faded Politburo shots in the Brady canon. On the trademark grid from the show's opening theme -- the 3-by-3 layout of the faces of those who "must somehow form a family" -- his place has been taken by Alice (Ann B. Davis), the family housekeeper. (Her place, in the holiest center square, has been filled with the show's logo.)

In a much-reprinted family shot, Reed's image has been zapped away from his proud perch between sons Greg (Barry Williams) and Peter (Christopher Knight). In an equally unsettling retouch, all six Brady kids and Alice are standing on the family's staircase. Mother figure Carol Brady (Florence Henderson) stands on the landing. Next to her should be Mike Brady, but he's been lopped off. Also, his hand has been erased from her shoulder.

This demands an explanation.

When pressed, a vice president in the licensing department at Viacom Consumer Products/Paramount Pictures, which oversees all "Brady Bunch" images and trademarks, firmly issued a "no comment." There are all kinds of "no comment." This one did not contain a whiff of "hmmm, silly question" or even outright fear of revelation. It was especially locked down. No. Comment.

(Go. Away.)

So you begin to wonder if it's a sad story.

You begin to wonder if Mr. Brady has been banished from paradise.

- - -

John Robert Reitz was born in Highland Park, Ill., in 1932, grew up in Muskogee, Okla., played high school basketball and joined the drama club.

When he died 59 years later in Pasadena, Calif., he was Robert Reed, famous to a world who knew him as Mike Brady. A week after his May 1992 death of intestinal cancer, the world also learned, from his death certificate, that he was infected with HIV.

And so it was, in a roundabout tragic way, that Mr. Brady came out of the closet. An icon took on a new veneer of easily packaged sadness, i.e., all this time he was hiding that he was gay?

Reed studied drama at Northwestern University and then the Royal Academy of Arts in London. He married his college sweetheart, fathered a daughter and divorced two years later. He did Shakespeare off-Broadway, then moved to Hollywood, where he signed a TV contract with Paramount and popped up in brief roles on shows such as "The Lawman" and "Father Knows Best."

In 1969 Reed auditioned for starring roles in three different series pilots, one of which he was particularly loath to do, because he considered himself a serious actor and it was a cutesy family sitcom. He beat out studio choice Gene Hackman for the role of Mike Brady. But was he happy?

Various Brady scholarship and tell-alls (Barry Williams' "Growing Up Brady" is considered the source of all Brady deconstruction) dwell on Reed's conflicted life as the ur-Dad. Stories abound of his constant bickering with Sherwood Schwartz, the show's creator. Reed, according to Brady lore, deplored the scripts, the plot, the cheap laughs; frequently he would storm off.

Yet he never rejected the Mike Brady within him: Even now, to watch him in the role is to see a man enveloped in the simple pleasure of being good and morally centered. There also are tender stories of Reed's fatherly doting on the actors playing the Brady kids.

He bought them each a Super-8 movie camera; he took them on a QE2 cruise to England. When it came time for reunions -- the ill-fated, schlocky "Brady Bunch Hour" variety show; the updated "Brady Brides" sitcom; the Nutra-Sweetened "A Very Brady Christmas" -- Reed always leisure-suited up and returned to being Mike.

It was lucrative, after all. Reed and Henderson received residuals on the original "Brady" reruns that the children never got (before 1972, child actors under contract didn't qualify for residuals; they fared better as adults on the reunion shows). By all accounts, Reed had come to a certain peace about his contribution to the Me Decade.

Not long before he died, however, Reed took the advice of his then-lawyer Dan Kossow (who also represented Adam "Batman" West) and refused to sign a deal with Viacom/Paramount that would let the corporation use his '70s-era visage on Brady products. Other cast members had agreed, so Viacom decided to carry on without Mr. Brady.

It isn't known if Reed was aware of the lasting Bradymania to come. By the early '90s, a Los Angeles comedy troupe was performing intentionally ironic re-creations of "Brady Bunch" episodes for live audiences. "Saturday Night Live" used a Jan Brady impersonator. Paramount Pictures recast the whole family for "The Brady Bunch Movie" in 1995 and a "A Very Brady Sequel" the following year, both of which were hits.

Nick at Nite aired hours of Brady reruns. The dormant franchise was now a font of new merchandise, CDs, books. (A new television movie will air on Fox soon, in which Mike Brady -- now played by Gary Cole -- is elected president and moves the family to Washington.)

Reed's image, where absolutely necessary, still appeared here and there. After about 1996, it began to disappear entirely.

- - -

The rest of the original Bradys have made a cottage industry of being everywhere. They do paid appearances and give motivational lectures. They were contestants together on "Weakest Link." With the exception of Davis, who lives a life of contemplative prayer in a Texas religious compound, they make themselves available for documentary reflections on their lives as Bradys. (Even the home movies they shot with Reed's gift of cameras were repackaged into a TV special in 1995.)

And they frequently file reports on their lives to Bradyworld.com, a fan site that has grown to a de facto status of officialdom, which is run by Wendy Winans of Cleveland. Winans has been on top of the Missing Mike Brady Mystery all along.

"It is disturbing to fans when they buy something and don't see (Reed) in there with the family," Winans says. "People ask about it all the time."

Winans tells them what she knows -- that it's because Reed's estate won't release the rights to his image. "The sad thing is that, with Robert Reed, sometimes people focus on how he died, or certain parts of his private life, and they think it has to have something to do with that. It upsets people when he's not there. But for fans, he's always there. He's always Mr. Brady."

Winans has become friends with Reed's daughter, Karen Baldwin. The two and another woman got together a few years ago to sell Reed's belongings to memorabilia collectors. The women scoured videotapes of "Brady Bunch" episodes, trying to match Reed's old shirts and ties to those Mr. Brady wore on-screen. (One tie, Winans notes, ultimately fetched $1,300 on eBay.) They also sold copies of Reed's head shots from his early career.

Winans says that, if Baldwin and her attorney change their minds, Reed's face could be restored to official Brady stuff. "That would be interesting," she says. "We've had 10 years of different (merchandise) without him on it. If he comes back, then something that is missing his picture could become more valuable."

- - -

So it comes down to the law.

Unlike the way fictional characters eventually drift toward the public domain, real-life actors retain the rights to their images, even after they're dead. Some things become public anyhow (Marilyn Monroe on the steam grate); some things get nasty (Bela Lugosi's estate fought for years over his Dracula image). Robert Reed never owned Mike Brady, but he did own Robert Reed, and Robert Reed didn't happen to want to be on a T-shirt for what they'd pay him.

Chicago attorney Cary Fleischer now handles Reed's estate.

"There's no question that his daughter and his grandson care deeply about his image," Fleischer says. "They're happy the Brady show is played and replayed, and sometimes, when someone wants to use his image for a charitable purpose, we say fine. But we take this very seriously."

Fleischer said he reviewed the Viacom/Paramount offer years ago and still advised Baldwin not to take it. "I told her it would be to her benefit to keep these rights, that any money that could come from it was going to be insignificant." (When pressed, Fleischer says he considers $5,000 to be "significant" and that the merchandise potential was "a lot less than that.")

"The family has turned down offer after offer," Fleischer says, from producers and writers who want to tell the "whole" Robert Reed story: "A lot of the publicity about him has gone toward one part of his life, rather than the way the family wants him remembered."

And in this way, Mr. Brady abdicated part of his throne.

"Does it matter that he's not on T-shirts?" Fleischer says. "I don't think so. His presence still exists. He's the all-American father. He always will be."

For related stories go to the South Sound Living section.

On the Web

Web sites dedicated to the popular television series "The Brady Bunch" include:

- www.bradyworld.com

- www.geocities.com/ TelevisionCity/5283

Also:

- www.jumpthe shark.com: A site dedicated to discussion of when television series started to go bad.

The Olympian Copyright 2002

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