It’s been 54 years since The Brady Bunch’s fourth season kicked off with a trio of episodes shot on location in Hawaii. The storyline centered on a bad-luck tiki idol that wreaked havoc on the family, but behind the scenes the cast experienced some bad luck all their own.
The first episode, titled “Hawaii Bound,” premiered on Sept. 22, 1972, on ABC. After informing his family that he has been sent to Hawaii to oversee a construction project, patriarch Mike Brady (Robert Reed) thrills his family with the news that they are all going along with him. But once Peter and Bobby (Christopher Knight, Mike Lookinland) find an ancient tiki idol, they laugh off the locals’ warning that the tiki brings bad luck to anyone who touches it.
On cue, a series of bad things happen to the clan: Alice (Ann B. Davis) hurts her back during a hula lesson, Bobby almost gets clocked on the head when a heavy wall decoration falls onto his bed, a tarantula nearly bites Peter, and the biggest scare of all, Greg (Barry Williams) has a dangerous wipeout during a surfing contest. That all happens before the Brady boys are held captive by a crazed orofessor (Vincent Price) as they attempt to return the cursed tiki to a Hawaiian burial ground.
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The Hawaii episodes were plagued with real-life problems. In an early scene, the cast took a tour of the area, shooting on an outrigger. But when a crew outrigger bumped the youngest Brady, Susan Olsen, over the side, she could have drowned.
“I’m not a strong swimmer at all,” Olsen later told Variety, adding that her TV mom Florence Henderson saved her by hooking her ankles under the seat in front of her and pulling her out of the ocean. “I didn’t have any family on that outrigger to calm me down,” Olsen said. “Except for Florence.”
Of that tarantula scene, Knight told the Today show that producers lied to him about the spider that was used in the scene—and that he was still “terrified” during shooting.
“They did lie to me,” he claimed in the November 2024 appearance on the NBC morning news show. “They told me that they put ball bearings on its fangs so that it couldn’t inject [anything]. I was terrified, but I was a perfect kind of terrified because I got to prove my hero self to the ladies. I shouldn’t let them know I’m scared to death.”
Williams also confirmed that Knight shot with “a real spider and he had nothing under it, it was on him.”
As for Williams’ scene in which his character Greg enters a surfing contest, producers initially wanted to use a stunt double.
“I was told I would not be doing my own surfing because it was simply too dangerous and I had to use a surf double to do the actual surfing for me,” Williams shared on The Real Brady Bros. podcast. “And I was like crestfallen, so I put up a big defense and a big stink and I said. ‘Look you guys, I’ve been a surfer a lot longer than I’ve been a Brady.’ And then I started to exaggerate a little bit and said I did win contests and you know I had been recognized and I could show him the trophies if they wanted. …I knew I could handle it, so they finally said ‘Okay, network approved it.'”
Williams was sent to Hawaii a week early to practice his surfing, but he could have used a little more practice, because when he shot the scene while riding on the dangerous Hawaii waves, he had a scary fall.
Williams wrote about the surfing scene in his book, Growing Up Brady: I Was a Teenage Greg, noting that “Greg’s wipeout was more spontaneous than planned.”
“A section of the wave closed out, and I flew through the air, careening toward an exposed coral head that was sticking up out of the water by a good two feet, and drooling over its chance to chew me to shreds,” he wrote.
“As I fell, the top half of the wave broke over me, and I tucked, using its force to turn myself completely around. I was still on a coral collision course, but now, thanks to luck, reflexes, and the forces of nature, my head was spared. My feet, however, got turned into hamburger meat,” The Brady Bunch star added.
Williams also recalled that the real-life footage of Greg’s wipeout was so scary that network executives considered keeping it out of the episode.
More than 50 years later, the Hawaii episodes remain fan favorites, as well as the favorites of multiple Brady Bunch cast members—even with all of those mishaps.
Related: 53 Years Ago Today, ‘The Brady Bunch’ Wrapped Filming on Location—But It Almost Ended in Disaster
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