Although The Brady Bunch isn’t often labeled groundbreaking television, it tackled a once-taboo subject that was highlighted by the huge success of a 1968 Lucille Ball box office smash. But that’s where the story gets complicated.
The idea for The Brady Bunch originated with television producer Sherwood Schwartz. The CW docuseries, TV We Love, features the cast and crew of iconic shows sharing behind-the-scenes stories about how their classics came to life.
The second episode of Season 1, centered on The Brady Bunch, featured insights from Schwartz’s children, HopeJuber and Lloyd Schwartz. PEOPLEMagazine shared their recollections of how their father developed the idea of the TV classic.
"It was at breakfast, and he was reading a paper," Juber said. Lloyd added that there was an article that claimed, "For every married couple that comes together that has previous husbands and wives, they bring children into the marriage." This led Schwartz to come up with the concept of a blended television family.
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Schwartz concurred his daughter's statement in the book The American Family on Television, “Television was loaded with happily married couples, and single widows and widowers, but there wasn’t any show that revolved around the marital amalgamation of two families.”
The TV producer developed the idea for the series, tentatively titled Yours and Mine. However, in the late 1960s, the subject of blended families was still considered taboo, even though the subject was previously explored in the 1957 TV series Make Room for Daddy, where widower Danny Thomas, raising two children, marries a widow (Marjorie Lord) with a daughter after his television wife died off-camera.
However, it was the wildly popular success of the 1968 Lucille Ball and Henry Fonda film Yours, Mine, and Ours that inadvertently helped The Brady Bunch get made. The family comedy film followed the story of a widow and a widower who merge their 18 children into a single blended family.
Schwartz's pilot idea was revisited by ABC, which greenlit The Brady Bunch. However, there were some issues between Schwartz and the film's creators.
According to History.com, the television legend believed the film's executives had stolen his original idea. It was later revealed that the film was based on a true story.
The film's producers, in turn, attempted to sue Schwartz for using their title in his pilot. He was quoted in the book Brady, Brady, Brady as saying, “You called your movie Yours, Mine and Ours by adding a kid of their own. Just be happy I didn’t sue you.”
Therefore, instead of its original title, the series was renamed The Bradley Bunch and later, The Brady Bunch. The series would run from 1969 through 1974 on ABC and make small-screen stars of Robert Reed, Florence Henderson, Barry Williams, Christopher Knight, Mike Lookinland, Maureen McCormick, Eve Plumb, Susan Olsen, and Ann B. Davis.
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