just thought of this for no particluar reason -

did they ever tell the viewers why exactly the mom and dad were single with three kids (divorce, death, blablabla)?

just wondering, weird i know -

Both their prior spouses were in heaven.

Divorce doesn't exist in happybradybunchland.

[Edited by adamblast on 06-11-01 at 01:35 PM]

In the first episode, there was a bit of a problem with Bobby not really wanting to accept Carol as his new mom. Mr. Brady made it clear that although he was getting married, they would never forget his first wife. Of course, she was never mentioned again after that.

I thought I remembered hearing something about how Mike's wife was dead, and they wanted to make Carol a divorcee. I also remember it being too "scandalous" to have a divorced character, so they dropped the idea. I don't know if anything was ever filmed, or even scripted, but it certainly was excised from the show -- we don't really know anything about Carol's seedy past...

They never mentioned Carol's seedy past because she was dating Greg Brady at the time, and the show's creators didn't want John Q Public to know that Cindy is really Greg's lovechild.

Marianne

THE DEFINITIVE ANSWER: copied directly from Barry Williams' book "Growing Up Brady"

"Sherwood (Schwartz) and the network locked horns over the fate of Carol's first husband. Sherwood wanted him alive, well, and happily divorced from Carol, but the network demanded his death. Sherwood met with the brass, smiled, nodded, and was extremely polite, but paid no attention to the suggestions: he left the fate of the girls' father uncertain. You may notice she never refers to the guy as being dead. In Sherwood's mind, Carol Brady was television's first divorcee!"

Yeah, you don't even hear anyone mention that they had another father. I guess, Sherwood was a great mind. He developed and pushed the envelope of TV at that time. But I wonder, Did Sam the Butcher ever sleep over? Or Vice Versa?

Sam gave Alice his meat on a regular basis.

I was watching an A&E Biography (or some show like that) about Florence Henderson, and when they were talking about the premise of the Brady Bunch, they refered to Mike as a widower, and Carol as a divorcee.

J