THE STORY OF A LOVELY LADY
Broadway actress became beloved TV mom as matriarch on sitcom The Brady Bunch
LOS ANGELES Florence Henderson, who went from Broadway star to beloved TV mom on The Brady Bunch, has died. She was 82.
Henderson died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles on Thursday, Nov. 24, a day after she was hospitalized, said her publicist, David Brokaw. Henderson had suffered heart failure, said her manager, Kayla Pressman.
Family and friends had surrounded Henderson’s hospital bedside, Pressman said.
On the surface, The Brady Bunch with Henderson as its ever-cheerful matriarch Carol Brady resembled just another TV sitcom about a U.S. suburban family getting into wacky situations each week.
But well after ending in 1974, the show resonated with audiences, returning in various TV forms again and again and even as a feature film. It was also endlessly in reruns.
“It represents what people always wanted: a loving family. It’s such a gentle, innocent, sweet show, and I guess it proved there’s always an audience for that,” Henderson said in 1999.
Debuting in 1969, it also was among the first shows to introduce to TV the blended family. As its theme song reminded viewers, Henderson’s Carol was a single mother raising three daughters when she met her TV husband, Robert Reed’s Mike Brady, a single father raising three boys.
The eight of them became “the Brady bunch,” with a quirky housekeeper, played by Ann B. Davis, thrown into the mix.
Mourners flooded social media with memories of Henderson.
Maureen McCormick, who played eldest Brady daughter Marcia, tweeted, “You are in my heart forever Florence.”
Dancing With the Stars host Tom Bergeron tweeted, “Heartbroken. I’ll miss you, my friend.” Henderson’s last public appearance was Monday at the DWTS recording, in the audience to support McCormick, who has been a competitor this season.
Henderson was already a Broadway star when the TV show began, having originated the title role in the musical Fanny. But TV fans would always know her as Carol Brady.
When a new cast was assembled for the 1995 Brady Bunch Movie, a playful spoof of the original show, she played Grandma Brady opposite Shelley Long’s Carol. Numerous memoirs also kept interest in the show alive as some cast members revealed they were more than just siblings off camera. Barry Williams, who played eldest son Greg, would confess to having a crush on his TV stepmom. Henderson denied any relationship with Williams but did acknowledge a fling with former New York City mayor John Lindsay.
Henderson was a 19-year-old New York drama student when she landed a one-line role in the play Wish You Were Here.
Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II were so impressed they made her the female lead in a 1952 road tour of Oklahoma! When it returned to Broadway in 1954, she continued in the role to rave reviews.
She played Maria in a road production of The Sound of Music and Nellie Forbush in a revival of South Pacific.
As her TV career blossomed with The Brady Bunch, Henderson also began to make frequent TV guest appearances. She was the first woman to host The Tonight Show for vacationing Johnny Carson.
After The Brady Bunch ended its first run, Henderson alternated her appearances in revivals of the show with guest appearances on others, including Hart to Hart, Fantasy Island and The Love Boat.
Florence Agnes Henderson was born Feb. 14, 1934 in the small town of Dale in southern Indiana. She was the 10th child of a tobacco sharecropper of Irish descent.
After high school she moved to New York, where she enrolled in a two-year program at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, her studies financed by a theatrical couple impressed by her singing when they saw her perform in high school.
Henderson married theatre executive Ira Bernstein and they had four children before divorcing after 29 years.
Her second husband, John Kappas, died in 2002.
Four children and five grandchildren survive her.