Here's the Story Book Review
Here's the Story Book Review
Here's the Story Book Review
"Marcia, Marcia, Marcia."
It was all misunderstood middle-child Jan Brady heard, It's also all actress Maureen McCormick has heard, for the 40 + years since she began playing "The Brady Bunch's" oldest, perfect daughter. Fans who stop her on the street, walk up to her while she's shopping and interrupt meals while she's dining out, everyone, even Rosie O'Donnell and Nicole Kidman, greet her as "Marcia."
McCormick's tales of her troubled and tragic family background, childhood, kid beauty pageants, and modeling gigs eventually led to her winning, in 1969, the role to which she would forever be associated.
Off-screen the actress' life was far from Brady-like, as she chronicles in her biography, "Here's the Story" (the title is a play on the series' classic opening title lyrics, "Here's the story, of a lovely lady, who was bringing up three very lovely girls, all of them had hair of gold like their mother, the youngest one in curls. Here's the story of a man named Brady, who was busy with three boys of his own. They were four men, living all together. Yet, they were all alone. Till the one day when the lady met this fellow and they knew that it was just more than hunchthat this group would would somehow form a family, that's the way they/we all became the Brady Bunch.").
The plight of the "has-been" child actor has long been documented in the files of Hollywood tragedies. Actor Jonathan Brandeis, who was in "Ladybugs" and Steven Spielberg's series "seaquest DSV" and showed off his fine adult acting chops in Ang Lee's magnificent "Ride With The Devil," committed suicide by hanging at 27. Trent Lehman who played middle-child "Butch" in the Brady-era sitcom "Nanny and the Professor," hung himself on his elementary school yard fence, at the age of 20.
Bad choices which may have resulted from stunted childhoods and lifelong immaturity -- resulted in the death of Carl "Alfalfa" Swizter. Drug overdoses claimed the lives of one-time child/teen-stars Dana Plato ("Different Strokes"), Brad Renfro, Brigette Andersen ("Savannah Smiles"), River Phoenix, Lani O'Grady ("Eight is Enough"), Corey Haim, Andrew "Boner" Koenig, Scotty Beckett, Michael Jackson, Bobby Driscoll, Anissa Jones ("Buffy" from "Family Affair," died at 18), Christopher Pettiet ("Don't Tell Mom The Babysitter's Dead"), Heath Ledger, Brittany Murphy, Chris Penn, Glenn Quinn and Judy Garland.
And even though they are still alive, early fame and easy access to drugs and alcohol plague(d) the lives of Danny Bonaduce, Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears, Todd Bridges, Robert Blake, Corey Feldman, Jodie Sweetin, Edward Furlong, Adam Rich, Macaulay Culkin, Leif Garrett, Linda Blair, Natasha Lyonne, and Tatum O'Neal.
Coupled with McCormick's story the message is clear: keep your child away from Hollywood.
And, according to McCormick's bio, her post-"Brady Bunch" world was cocaine fueled. She tells grim stories far removed from the sweet set-up she, as Marcia, had on television. Until she met her husband, who she married in 1984, McCormick struggled with trying to land acting roles, always battling the specter of "Marcia."
By the early 80s series "Brady Brides," her drug use was so out-of-control that show executive producer, Lloyd Schwartz had her move in with his family in an attempt to monitor her. While not exactly promiscuous, she became something of a serial monogamist and had a series of boyfriends. She also reveals that she had two abortions and in a desperate, rock-bottom moment, she allowed her self to be videotaped naked so the man holding the camera would give her cocaine.
McCormick eventually saw the light and unsurprisingly, her light was becoming a born-again Christian. She also finds salvation in her supportive husband, a renewed relationship with her once estranged mother, her daughter, Natalie (born 1989) and Prozac, which evened out her bi-polar condition.
She begins and ends with her eventual triumph in 2006's Celebrity Fit Club (she won).
Classic sitcom fans may be titillated by the stories of the Brady kids' hook-ups, jealousies and crushes. It is, ultimately, a familiar story insecurity, drug addiction and redemption. But it will be - -and is interesting for fans of the titular series.
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