Here's the Story LP: Surviving Marcia Brady and Finding My True Voice (5 page)

“Great,” I said.

We were growing up.

W
e began the third season by shooting a three-parter about the Bradys vacationing in the Grand Canyon. The story was typical: The Bradys were stranded in a ghost town, Bobby and Cindy got lost at the bottom of the canyon, and then we helped out an Indian boy who saved the day. It was fun to be on location. Barry described these road-trip episodes as being “as close to
Easy Rider
as
The Brady Bunch
would ever get.” Too bad; I could have gone for a skinny-dipping scene with Barry. Unfortunately there were too many parents around for anything like that to happen.

Glenita, our wardrobe lady, was heavily into turquoise, and she draped Florence, Eve, Susan, and me in jewelry. I thought the beads made me look like a hippie, closer to the way I imagined Susan Dey to be. It was during that trip that I noticed my boobs were finally and noticeably bigger than Eve’s, though she was curvier. As the season progressed, we tried to wear our skirts as short as possible. When they got too short, Glenita or Lloyd let us know we needed to change. Still, when I rewatched some of those episodes, I glimpsed Eve’s and my underpants a few times.

We cranked out the episodes, one a week for more than half the year. We had no idea which ones would take on a life of their own or which lines would be repeated for decades. To me, the episode entitled “Her Sister’s Shadow” was just one of many, the fifty-fifth we had made over three seasons. Even the story line was vaguely repetitive: Jan was jealous of her seemingly perfect sister Marcia. But Act One of that show will be remembered in the annals of Brady history for that moment when a frustrated Jan turns away from her older sister and says, “All I ever hear is Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!”

Who knew? None of us had any idea that that line, written by veteran comedy scribe Ben Starr, would take on a life of its own. Ever since that show aired, I can legitimately say, “All I ever hear is Marcia, Marcia, Marcia.”

I’m serious. People in airports have passed me and said, “Hi, Marcia, Marcia, Marcia.” Waitresses have asked, “What can I get you, Marcia, Marcia, Marcia?” I have heard it in bathrooms, the grocery store, on Fox News. I’ve heard it adapted to Martha Stewart: Martha, Martha, Martha! I lost track long ago of the number of women who have stopped me and said, “I’m sorry to bother you, but can I just say it?”

Midway through the season, we shot one of my favorite episodes of all time, “Getting Davy Jones.” As the head of Fernwood Junior High’s Davy Jones Fan Club, Marcia is responsible for getting the impossibly cute lead singer from the Monkees to appear at their prom, and after various miscommunications and lots of worry, she comes through. The show on which Jones actually made an appearance had aired from 1965 to 1968. The made-for-TV band officially broke up shortly before we taped the show, but they were still extremely popular, and Davy’s arrival on the set created a buzz greater than any other guest star we had on the show.

Of course I was thrilled to be the one who got to interact with him. I can see why Eve could get jealous. Davy was a lovely guy, and it was a big deal to have a pop star of his caliber on the set. I noticed Barry watch him the way one might if looking for pointers. Though excited to be the object of his affection, or rather attention, I didn’t show it. I’d learned to play it cool around stars.

My heart fluttered when he kissed me at the end, I’ll admit it, but Peter Tork was always my favorite Monkee. That was the difference between Marcia and me. She was predictable, a straight arrow. My taste was quirky, offbeat, and different. At fifteen, I felt ready to experiment.

Time to Change

B
arry was ready to experiment, too. One look in his eyes and I knew he was thinking his moment had finally arrived. I’m not talking about jumping my bones. That happened later. No, we were three-quarters of the way through the third season when we arrived at episode 64, a show that was Barry’s unofficial coming out as a singer—and I was all for it because the rest of us were along for the ride.

Titled “Dough Re Mi,” the show featured Greg writing a song that he was certain would turn him into a pop star. The song was called “We Can Make the World a Whole Lot Brighter.” When he didn’t have enough money to buy studio time, his siblings split the cost in exchange for singing backup. Then there was a second twist: Peter had a lousy voice. But Greg solved that problem not only by writing another song, “Time to Change,” but also by incorporating his brother’s adolescent squeaks.

Genius!

Suddenly the Brady kids had two songs. It wasn’t enough for an album, but you only needed two for a 45. It looked like we were taking on the Partridges. Thinking about it, wouldn’t it have been funny if the two families had toured together and Alice and Reuben Kincaid had fallen in love?

Anyway, it was clearly a ploy by Sherwood and Lloyd to expand the Bradys into other businesses. The previous year we’d recorded a Christmas album. It tested the water. After this episode, it was decided that we would record another album, this one straight-ahead pop and rock, and then tour. Barry was thrilled. All of us were excited. I felt like every dream I had was coming true. As for the bad stuff I worried about, well, this seemed to confirm that it didn’t apply in this world of make-believe.

In reality, it was Marcia Brady taking over my life or vice versa, me associating my identity more and more with Marcia. I didn’t think I was Marcia. It was just my point of reference. Everything I did revolved around Marcia. She consumed my life in a way that would leave me rudderless and wondering who I was years later when the show ended. Life really was Marcia, Marcia, Marcia. I got up, went to the studio, put in a full day, came home, and memorized lines. If we weren’t shooting, I was doing PR or attending events. Now the schedule included singing. That was fine with me. I loved to sing. I had done it professionally on commercials since I was little, and I knew my voice sounded good.

We went into the studio and recorded an album featuring the two songs from the show and covers of a handful of recent soft-rock hits including “American Pie,” “Day After Day,” and “Me and You and a Dog Named Boo.” Professional singers were brought in to cover Chris’s parts (in real life, he had a terrible voice) and sweeten our vocals, though I thought Barry and I pulled off our solos with total credibility within the range of our abilities.

As soon as we finished the season, we began rehearsing for a tour. Then we hit the road. Barry took it very seriously, worked extremely hard, and got upset at me for not seeming to embrace it to the same degree as he had. I was trying, though not hard enough to satisfy him. He was driven.

“Do you know what we could become?” he said to me one day during a break in rehearsals.

I did. I loved the singing and dancing as much as he did, and I even thought it might be a new career. It seemed possible. Eve’s father was in the music business. David Cassidy was huge. Others on TV cut albums and performed. So it was easy to get swept up in that kind of talk. This opportunity fascinated my brother Kevin, who’d taught himself to play guitar and mused about the two of us writing songs and cutting our own album. We’d talk about that idea for years.

My interest in boys took a more serious turn around this time when I began going out with a guy named Joe. He was my first serious boyfriend. He had blond hair, dark skin, and amazing eyes and lips. On top of all that, he drove a Corvette. He was what we called a hot guy. He ran with a different, older crowd than I was used to. I liked being with him, but I always had the feeling I wasn’t fast enough for him.

It turned out I was right. One day a friend of mine said that he found out Joe was dating another girl at the same time as he was dating me. In other words, I was being two-timed. Infuriated, I wanted to confront Joe and let him have a piece of my mind. But then, as I thought about it, I got curious about who this other girl was who interested my boyfriend as much if not more than me. I wanted to see my competition.

My friend drove me to her house, and we sat in his VW van at the end of her driveway, waiting until she came in or out. Within a short time, she walked out of the house. I was ready for a confrontation, except she looked nice. I got out of the van, went up to her, introduced myself, and we talked. The darnedest thing happened. Carin—that was her name—and I became best friends.

Both of us dropped Joe. Carin and I became inseparable. I met her friends. They were Encino girls, wealthier and faster than my crowd in Woodland Hills. Her parents welcomed me as if I were a member of the family. I adored her mother. It was a very different household than mine. Carin taught me to smoke, and one night, as we sat around in her bedroom, she gave me a frank talk about the facts of life. She was quite detailed in her description.

J
oe Seiter and Ray Reese, veterans from the Osmonds’ tour, produced our show. The moves were slick, but our mothers made our costumes. We also traveled in station wagons rather than limousines. Like most things Brady, it was a mostly homespun effort. But you couldn’t start out any bigger than us. Our first public performance was a benefit for the American Guild of Variety Artists at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. Ed Sullivan hosted, and the headliners included Sonny and Cher, Lily Tomlin, Danny Thomas, and Edwin the Elephant. Naturally, we followed the elephant—and yes, thanks to Edwin, we had to watch our step on the stage.

I was enamored of Sonny and Cher. I couldn’t take my eyes off Cher. It was the first time I had been around a woman who thoroughly mesmerized people, who commanded your attention with her looks. We were introduced to her backstage. She was with her daughter, Chastity, a tiny blond cherub with her mother’s expressions. Eve held Chastity’s hand and sweetly asked, “Can you say
elephant
?”

Before she could respond, Cher cracked, “She can say a hell of a lot more than elephant, that’s for sure.”

We also appeared on
The Mike Douglas Show
. Liberace was his co-host that week, and he fell in love with us. He looked at Susie and said, “Doesn’t she have the cutest lips?” People applauded. “Say something,” he said.

“Something,” Susie said, getting a big laugh.

Afterward, Liberace invited us to his show and then said he wanted to take us on tour as his opening act. But our tour was already lined up, and Tony Orlando & Dawn opened for us. (Side Note: I had a mad crush on Tony, who could’ve tied a yellow ribbon around me without complaint.) We officially opened our tour at the San Bernardino Orange Show, an annual event hosted that year by
American Bandstand
’s legendary Dick Clark. We followed that with state fairs and concert halls all over the country: Savannah, Raleigh, Knoxville, Atlantic City, Portland, Seattle, San Francisco.

It was our first real taste of stardom, of our popularity beyond our neighborhoods at home. Until then, we had been pretty much stuck to the Paramount lot and doing magazine interviews. That changed as we traveled across the country. It was like Bradymania everyplace we went. In San Jose, we were scheduled to make an appearance at a mall, but the crowd was so large the architect was called to see if the balconies could support the weight. A town in the South closed school for the day. At various stops, I had hair torn out of my head, beads ripped from my costume, and at one stop in the South fans pushed past security and knocked over our Winnebago.

With parents and welfare workers watching us closely, we didn’t stray or get into trouble. But Eve and I still managed to sneak off to smoke cigarettes. We thought we were being clever by spraying our mouths with Binaca. Only Chris Knight’s mom, Willie, knew about our nasty habit, and she didn’t care. She even bought us packs. Eve paraded around the dressing room without any clothes on. Susie and I were floored by the sight of our long-legged sister fluttering about stark naked. She also farted all the time. When we asked her not to do either one, she tossed back her hair and said, “Oh, get over it.”

Our show was fast and busy, with lots of lineup shuffles and costume changes. We changed clothes in makeshift rooms off to the side of the stage, boys and girls next to one another separated only by a flimsy curtain that offered glimpses of the other side through thin separations in the panels of hanging fabric. I remember a lot of intentional flashing between camps—and some unintentional glimpses, too. I saw legs, some butts in their tighty whities, and bare chests—but never any full frontal.

One night as I hurried back onto the stage after a quick change into my yellow beaded halter costume, I was greeted by a blinding burst of flashing camera bulbs. That was normal, but this instance seemed more intense. I had a feeling something was going on. I looked down and saw that one side of my halter had slipped, completely exposing one of my boobs. I wanted to die.

Every night Barry and I dueted on the James Taylor/Carole King classic “You’ve Got a Friend.” He always came out onstage by himself and did the first verse. Then I joined him. We stood on opposite sides of the stage, inching slowly toward the center. Finally, we turned and sang to each other. It was choreographed to be a romantic moment, and there was so much sexual tension between us we didn’t have to pretend. The crowd loved it.

But one time when Barry turned to face me, I saw tiny rivers of black dripping from his hair down his face. It was his hair dye. Under the hot lights and with all the sweat, it was melting off his hair. I cracked up so hard that I couldn’t get out the words to the song. What struck me as even funnier was that he had no idea it was happening, and he gave me dirty looks as he sang. I knew he wanted me to pull myself together. But I couldn’t. He was so serious, so into his act, so involved in the effort to make himself the next David Cassidy, and yet his face was streaked with black hair dye. Although I apologized afterward, he was angry at me for a long time—maybe for a whole day. But all was forgiven by the time we regrouped for season four.

L
ike the previous season, we began with a multiparter on location. Instead of the Grand Canyon, though, we went to Hawaii. Hawaii was one of my dream destinations. I freaked out with excitement. My family didn’t go on vacations. When I was four, my parents took off for the weekend and the house nearly burned down after the lint in the dryer caught on fire, and they never left us alone again.

The flight over the Pacific went by quickly, but I worried for the duration of the five-and-a-half-hour flight about wearing a bikini on camera. What almost sixteen-year-old girl wouldn’t have felt the same way? I thought I had good legs, shoulders, and boobs, but I was self-conscious about my hips. I also had a little pooch. No matter how much I dieted or how many sit-ups I did, I never had a flat stomach.

Everything else was pretty good. Why couldn’t I have a flat stomach, too?

Florence had one. So did Susan Dey and Peggy Lipton. (It would be interesting to know how those women felt about their figures; all I saw was perfection versus my imperfection.) Everyone I admired had a flat stomach. Nowadays I would give anything to have the stomach I had back then. I was nuts to have spent one second worrying about it, but hey, I had bikini scenes to do. The funny thing was, I ended up holding a towel in front of my stomach in every shot in which I wore a bathing suit.

Anyway, we stayed at the Pink Royal Hawaiian Hotel in Oahu. The surroundings took my breath away. I had never stayed anywhere as beautiful. And talk about romantic! There was the air…the water…and Barry’s blue eyes.

As soon as I stepped off the plane, I started to think about him more intensely, in the way I had fantasized for a long time. We had spent the past three and a half years staving off the desire of a mutual attraction despite the intimacy of working closely with each other every day. We had gone out to dinner plenty of times, played guitar together, and early on we had even sort of double-dated with Florence’s daughter and Barry’s brother Scott.

An actual romance had yet to happen, though. Heck, till that point, we had never even kissed. Maybe it was the intoxicating effect of the tropical air, but I knew Hawaii was going to be different, and it was.

It was our second full day on the island, and we had finished work but were all still gathered on the beach when Lloyd Schwartz came over to Barry and me as we chatted and suggested that the two of us take a walk together down the beach. Lloyd gestured toward the hotel, which was visible in the distance. I think he wanted us to have some fun, though I don’t believe he knew the force of our attraction. Barry and I looked at each other, grinned, and strolled off.

Our shoulders bumped and touched as we walked. Wordlessly, we fell into a slow, easy step and stared at the gorgeous sunset. It was a picture-perfect Hawaiian moment. When we felt comfortably away from the set, he slipped his arm around me and I slid mine around his waist. As we neared our hotel, we turned toward each other, and kissed. We couldn’t hold back any longer.

It was our first kiss, and it was long, passionate, and deep. It was wonderful, too, though as we continued to kiss and press against each other so closely that we could feel each other’s body heat, a part of me—a tiny part, admittedly—said to myself, “Oh my God! I’m kissing my brother. What am I doing?”

I didn’t care.

I knew exactly what I was doing. Barry was a good kisser. Lloyd Schwartz may have regretted it later on when he spotted us back in the hotel. Though Barry and I snuck off for several more private moments, Lloyd kept a close eye on us the rest of the trip, making sure nothing serious happened on his watch.

It didn’t matter. I knew that I would go back home not feeling like it was time to change, but the fact was that I had already changed. But of course I had no idea the extent to which that would be true.