At the time that Brady Bunch was released, showing a couple sleeping in the same bed on TV was very taboo. Although people believe that Mike and Carol Brady were the first on-screen couple to do so, this wasn’t the case.
Mary Kay and Johnny Stearns from the late 1940s sitcom, ‘Mary Kay and Johnny’, were actually the first ones to be seen in a bed together.
Bobby for the Win
Greg Brady plays the charming stud on the show. The oldest of the Brady Bunch, he is super talented at sports and, you guessed it, with the ladies. While he is seen dating many girls on the show, he actually doesn’t have any on-screen kisses for the entire duration of the show.
Ironically enough, Bobby, the youngest of the family, was the only child to have a kissing scene of his own. We can imagine that Barry Williams had much to say about this.
Aloha
Although Barry Williams didn’t get to have a kissing scene on-screen, you shouldn’t feel so bad for the stud muffin; his romantic life was anything but dry. Turns out that Barry was getting it on with his on-screen costar and sister, Maureen McCormick. During the episodes filmed in Hawaii, the pair were allegedly hooking up behind the scenes. McCormick later shared in her memoir, 'Here's the Story: Surviving Marcia Brady and Finding My True Voice', about her first kiss with Williams.
"It was long, passionate, and deep. It was wonderful, too, though as we continued to kiss and press against each other so closely that we could feel each other's body heat." Side note - Greg Brady was the only character in the show to ever talk about sex. He mentioned it during the first season as well as in the final episode.
Not an Immediate Success
Although 'The Brady Bunch' would become a widely successful show and one of the most popular American sitcoms, when it was initially released, it wasn’t a big hit. Because the ratings were disappointingly low, the show was renewed for only thirteen episodes at a time. During the five years that the show was aired, it never made it to the top 30 of the Nielsen ratings. By the time the show reached its final season, it finally gained the rights to release an entire season at once.
The show didn’t gain popularity and its iconic status until years later when reruns were shown on TV, especially during after-school hours when children could tune in. The show’s director, Schwartz says that the show gained its iconic status despite low ratings because children could relate to the show.
Low Pay
Due to the show’s low ratings, the actors’ salaries were nowhere near the $1 million per episode paychecks of stars nowadays, like on 'The Big Bang Theory'.
Not only was their pay low, but apparently they even had to pay to park their cars on the ABC lot while filming. Talk about cheap, ABC!