The Brady Bunch originally had a much weirder name because of a hit Western

Can you imagine Kris the housekeeper working for the Bradley Brood?

"Here's the story / Of a lovely lady…" You know the words. Sing along now!

"'Til the one day when the lady met this fellow / And they knew that it was much more than a…" Mood? Attitude? Food? Dude?

It's a good thing The Brady Bunch did not stick with its original title, because "Brood" is a much harder word to rhyme in context of that theme song.

Yes, indeed, The Brady Bunch was originally called The Brady Brood. Weird, right? When we hear the word "brood" we picture a nest of baby rats or spider eggs. Gross, sorry. "Brood" also means to quietly sit and stew over something that makes you unhappy. That hardly seems like an appropriate term for the family that crooned — "Croon!" There's another rhyme! — "Sunshine Day."

The Brady Brood was more than a proposed title or something scribbled on a notepad. Trade publications originally referred to the series as The Brady Brood. The scripts for the pilot episode, "The Honeymoon," came with THE BRADY BROOD printed across the cover.

Well, until someone crossed out Brood and wrote Bunch in blue ink. You can see that below on Mike Lookinland's (Bobby) script.

To the left, you will notice a wire report from the late Sixties. "Two-time Emmy winner Ann B. Davis landed a top role with Robert Reed in 'The Brady Brood,' a television pilot being made at Paramount," the UPI bulletin declared.

Davis would play Alice. But here's another interesting difference — the housekeeper was not called Alice.

In an early scene in the original "Brady Brood" pilot script, the direction reads: In b.g., we can see KRIS, Mike's housekeeper, preparing food at the range.

Brood? Kris? Was nothing sacred? Furthermore, Kris was described as "middle-aged, and a fondness for her own good cooking has made her plump." Also, she was Swedish.

That is not all. The Bradys? They were not even called the Bradys in some early drafts! Early in the development process, the family carried the surname Bradley, and titles like The Bradleys and The Bradley Bunch were kicked around.

But Paramount was reluctant to use the word "Bunch." In the summer of '69, it was a bit of a dirty word. Well, gritty, at least. You see, one of the blockbuster movies of that season was The Wild Bunch, the bloody Western directed by Sam Peckinpah. It was one of the first films to earn an "R" using the MPAA's rather new rating system that was implemented in 1968.

The Brady studio feared that the word "Bunch" would be too associated with The Wild Bunch and bring to mind a gun-toting posse in the Wild West. That was hardly the mental image they wanted to be associated with a family sitcom. 

But the "Bunch" won out. Which is a relief.

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12 Comments

bradyguy 22 months ago
Umm...what exactly does "Croon" rhyme with???
RobCertSDSCascap 62 months ago
Glad they changed their minds, or we would have missed this!

Barry22 63 months ago
I think The Brady Bunch as a family of outlaws would've been pretty cool.
UnicornPrincess Barry22 63 months ago
Sounds like the next gritty reboot from NetFlix, lol.
bradyguy UnicornPrincess 22 months ago
LOL...from the people who brought you "Wednesday" and "Bel-Air"...
ELEANOR 63 months ago
Well, it's a good thing that the suits didn't win on this one.
Martin 63 months ago
Alternative cartoonist Peter Bagge did a strip about a contentious family called "the Bradleys", in the 80s, for his magazine NEAT STUFF and later spun off the eldest son, Buddy, in a solo strip as well for his comic book HATE.
cperrynaples 63 months ago
Neighborhood...they could have rhymed THAT with Brady Brood! Or Mike could have run an oil company and have "Bubblin' Crude"! Oh sorry, The Beverly Hillbillies already used that rhyme for food...LOL!!
bradyguy cperrynaples 22 months ago
Except nobody says "NeighborWHO'd"...
PANTHERNATION 63 months ago
I don't know, I mean, "The Bradley Bunch", don't sound too bad.
TVFF 63 months ago
The Brady Brood does sound a bit crude I can see why they wanted to change it.
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