The Brady Bunch: Mike Brady (Robert Reed), top centre, and his three sons; his wife Carol (Florence Henderson), below him, and her three daughters; and to Mike and Carol's left, the family's housekeeper, Alice (Ann B Davis), seen in 1970. Photograph: ABC Photo Archives/ABC via Getty ImagesIn the 1960s, no one had his finger closer to the pulse of the great American television-watching public than Sherwood Schwartz, who has died aged 94. Schwartz created both Gilligan's Island and The Brady Bunch, two shows that defied critical opprobrium to become hits, and through endless sequels and repeats in syndication have become icons of their era.
Looking back, it is possible to find some cultural weight in each. Gilligan, which, as its theme song, co-written by Schwartz, explained, was the tale of seven people on a "three-hour cruise" who wind up cast away on a lost island, was sold to the CBS network as "a microcosm, but a funny microcosm", and it made its debut in 1964.
As played by Bob Denver, the clumsy first mate Gilligan might be seen, when the show debuted in 1964, as a prototype hippie, interacting with an egghead professor and an arrogant millionaire. Schwartz loved casting broad comic actors: the millionaire was Jim Backus, and Gilligan also had a fraught relationship with Alan Hale as the ship's skipper.
The Brady Bunch, broadcast from 1969 onwards, reflected the decade's social changes. Schwartz read a newspaper item claiming that nearly one-third of American households included a child from a previous marriage. From that he spun off a comedy where Robert Reed marries Florence Henderson, each bringing three children along with them. The leads played straight man for the kids, while housekeeper Ann B Davis provided the broader strokes.
Sherwood Schwartz made a lifelong industry of recycyling his two winning formulas, quite unconcerned about critical scorn. As he put it, "I know what the critics love. We write and produce for people, not critics." Photograph: Frederick M Brown/ Getty Images Comedy was a field Schwartz came to by accident. Born in Passaic, New Jersey, he grew up in Brooklyn and was a science student at DeWitt Clinton high. Graduating with a pre-medical degree from New York University, he took a master's in biological science at the University of Southern California. He lived with his brother Al, who was a writer on Bob Hope's newly launched radio show. In need of money, he began selling jokes to Hope, who in 1938 offered him a staff job. "I was faced with a major decision," he said, "writing comedy or starving to death while I cured those diseases. I made a quick career change."
Schwartz wrote shows for Armed Forces Radio during the second world war, and returned to radio sitcoms after the war. In 1952 he moved to TV, writing I Married Joan, starring Backus as a respectable judge tormented by his erratic wife. The following year he rejoined his brother as a writer for Red Skelton, with whom he stayed until 1962. Although Schwartz won an Emmy in 1961 as part of the writing team, his relations with Skelton were so bad that his contract specified he would never have to deal directly with the star. In Denver, Schwartz found a more agreeable version of Skelton's bumbling comic persona.
In 1963 he wrote for My Favorite Martian, another series about understanding different kinds of people. Much analysed in retrospect, Ray Walston's secret Martian identity is sometimes viewed as an allegory of closeted gayness. Sherwood had a sharp sense of satire: the SS Minnow, Gilligan's shipwrecked boat, was named after Newton Minow, the head of the Federal Communications Commission who famously called American TV "a vast wasteland".
In 1966 Schwartz began mining Gilligan with the launch of It's About Time, in which two astronauts travel back to a prehistoric time which conveniently looked exactly like the sets of Gilligan's Island. The cavemen included Imogene Coca, Joe E Ross and Mike Mazurki, but despite a shift halfway through the series which brought them to the 20th century, the show lasted only one season. In 1973, the Brady Bunch's final season, Schwartz created Dusty's Trail, a western Gilligan's Island with covered wagons. Denver starred as Dusty, with Forrest Tucker in the Alan Hale role. Although Denver considered it his best work, it also lasted only one season. Schwartz was writer-producer for the short-lived Harper Valley PTA (1978), based on the country-music hit, and developed, but failed to sell, two more series with Denver, Scamps (1982) and The Invisible Woman, eventually done as a TV movie in 1983.
Recycling Gilligan and Brady became a lifelong industry, often involving co-writing with members of his family. Gilligan's Island is sometimes cited as the most-rerun programme in TV history. It spawned three TV movies. One might have felt the first, Rescue From Gilligan's Island (1978) would have ended the franchise, but the third, The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island (1981), certainly did. After a successful TV movie, The Brady Girls Get Married (1981), the series The Brady Brides (also 1981) lasted only six episodes, and after a Christmas special in 1989, The Bradys (1990) lasted only five. Schwartz did not work on the tongue-in-cheek Brady Bunch Movie (1995) with Gary Cole and Shelley Long, but threatened to disavow the film if the script updated the characters' dialogue to include swearing. It was a hit, and spawned a sequel and a TV movie, The Brady Bunch in the White House (2002).
Schwartz co-wrote a musical version of Gilligan's Island, and a 2006 play, Rockers, which ran at the Theatre West in Los Angeles. He was admired by Brady fans for his efforts to stop Paramount from harassing amateur theatre groups for copyright infringement when they staged productions based on the Brady Bunch.
He is survived by his wife of 69 years, Mildred, three sons and a daughter. The scorn of critics never bothered him. "I know what the critics love," he said. "We write and produce for people, not for critics."
• Sherwood Charles Schwartz, comedy writer and producer, born 4 November 1916; died 12 July 2011
No comments:
Post a Comment