A visit to the restored Brady Bunch house reveals how childhood magic can curdle behind velvet ropes
Like most Gen-Xers, I’ve long had a fairly obsessive relationship with The Brady Bunch.
The Bradys represented everything I wanted—a family where you were fully accepted for being who you were, where you had endless siblings to pick from to be friends with, where your house was so central to the action that Joe Namath tossed footballs in your backyard. You really liked your cousin when he came to visit. And you even tried to set world records that landed you in the newspaper.
All of which is to say that when I found out it was possible to tour the original Brady house—that is, the house that was used as the “outside” with the inside restored to look just like the TV show’s set—I jumped at the chance. Even when I heard the tickets were $275 apiece and that you could only be there for 90 minutes, my inner 10-year-old salivated. Happily, my friend Joe, a TV obsessive to the point that he writes about the entertainment industry for The Wall Street Journal, was also game.
But when we arrived at 11222 Dilling Street in Studio City at our appointed time on a Saturday in December, the vibe was most definitely not what I’d expected. It’s not that I thought there would be a food truck serving pork chops and apple sauce or the theme song being played by a live band, but I’d anticipated the tiniest bit of joy.
Instead, we stood outside with four extremely serious fellow visitors—what appeared to be a couple our age and their unexcited teenage son, as well as a man videotaping everything with a shell-shocked-to-actually-be-there look on his face that made it somehow obvious he hosted a Brady Bunch podcast.
After a few minutes of standing there, not speaking, we saw a scowling woman walk out from the backyard and announce that we should follow her. Once back there, I asked Joe to take my picture next to the teeter-totter—the set piece that had motivated me, at 10, to beg my friend Ramsay to join me in trying to set the world record for longest time on a swing set. (We lasted an hour and the local TV reporter we asked to document the event didn’t show up during that hour.)
Credit: Joe Flint
“Do NOT touch that!” Scowler exclaimed. I apologized as Joe and I walked over to the sliding glass door she was manning. She looked at a clipboard and allowed the couple, their child and the podcaster in.
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But when we stepped up, she shook her head before we even said our names. When we did, she announced, “You’re not on my list,” as if we were standing in a teeming crowd outside Studio 54 and not alone outside a sitcom set inhabited by four other people.
I pulled up the receipt on my phone and showed it to her. She gazed at the email, her expression grim. “It doesn’t say the time on here,” she announced.
I looked at the receipt; she was right. But I had emailed back and forth with a cheerful-seeming woman—definitely not the Scowler, I was guessing—who had assured me that our designated slot was definitely 2 pm. Wasn’t it more the organizer’s issue that their tickets didn’t have the time on them and not mine?
Thankfully, Scowler pulled the sliding glass door open. “Fine,” she said, as if she were allowing interlopers to encroach on a private residence and not welcome two people who were paying a combined $6.11 a minute to be there. “Shoes off.”
Giddy to be past the imaginary velvet rope, we wandered shoeless into the den, taking in the wood paneling, stone walls and walnut console stereo cabinet. Everywhere I looked, I saw décor more familiar to me than my family home—linoleum flooring, a phone nook with the infamous pay phone, orange Formica counters, even a stuffed Rover!
Scowler followed a few feet behind, strongly suspicious, perhaps, that we were going to make off with the stuffed Rover? That’s when I noticed a woman dressed in Alice’s maid uniform standing in another doorway, also scowling. She didn’t physically resemble Alice at all and had made no costume efforts beyond the dress. Was she part of the “set dressing”? She definitely gave off more “second guard” than “nostalgic presence meant to enhance our experience.” Perhaps, as Joe suggested, she was meant to be Kay, the mean maid who replaced Alice in the episode where Alice supposedly left because the kids iced her out for telling on them.
Credit: Anna David
Joe and I persevered in the face of the negativity, running up to the boys’ room, the bathroom and the adjoining girls’ room with its three single pink-quilted beds. We scampered down a hall into a room that was designed to look like the attic that became Greg’s room, where I ran my fingers through the beads Greg had strung there to express his individuality. We walked up and down the wood-carpeted staircase, explored Mike’s office which housed an “Architect of the Year” plaque and took photos at the front door where we could look out at the 1971 Plymouth station wagon parked in front.
Credit: Joe Flint
It wasn’t long into our self-guided stressful tour that I discovered I wasn’t nearly the Brady fanatic I’d fancied myself—or at least I had a much worse memory than I realized. Joe kept up a steady stream of episode references, easily recalling specific details about when Marcia got in trouble for sneaking out to send a letter nominating Mr. Brady for best dad, Greg bought a car that turned out to be a lemon and Jan had an imaginary friend. And he had nothing on our Brady Bunch podcaster, who I’d managed to wear down into talking to us. I had a feeling not unlike when I’d appear on Fox News to discuss politics and suddenly realize my cursory knowledge was no match for my fellow pundits. But my humility didn’t have much time to settle since Original Scowler and Scowler Alice/Kay were ever hovering. After about a half hour, I asked Joe if he felt like we’d done what we came to do. He nodded. Even though she was the main reason we were leaving, I felt like I had to explain our departure to Scowler. A perfect response popped into my head: Something suddenly came up. I turned to say it to her but she was scowling at her phone so we just snuck out, as surreptitious as Marcia mailing the letter about her dad.