The Way We All Became The Brady Bunch

As he perused the Los Angeles Times during a routine weekday breakfast in 1966, a surprising statistic caught Sherwood Schwartz’s eye: More than 29 percent of all marriages now included at least one child from a previous marriage.

Schwartz was in the middle of producing the third season of his high-concept CBS sitcom Gilligan’s Island, but his next big series seemed to be leaping off the newspaper page at him. If this was suddenly such a prevalent family configuration, wouldn’t TV viewers be drawn to a weekly depiction of one of these new, modern families?

He felt so confident in the concept and all the new storyline possibilities it opened up that he left his eggs and coffee behind and immediately started to draft a general outline of the show, along with a handful of episode ideas. Time was of the utmost essence, he felt. He needed to put down his marker on the idea before any of his fellow TV scribes got there first. So with just those few pages in his hands, Schwartz set off to the Writers Guild of America West offices on Sunset Boulevard, where his plan for a series about a blended family, titled Yours and Mine, was officially registered as a Sherwood Schwartz joint.

Now he was free to develop this new family comedy further. And then he was free to wait…and wait, and wait some more, through three years, with interest from all three major broadcast networks, for his future classic to finally make its small-screen debut.

Sherwood Charles Schwartz had stumbled into the television-making business by way of medical school. Born in Passaic, New Jersey, in 1916 and raised in Brooklyn, the middle son of Herman and Rose Schwartz graduated from the famous DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx (where his fellow alumni included Neil Simon, Paddy Chayefsky, James Baldwin, Stan Lee, and Garry Marshall) before entering New York University as a premed student. “I grew up loving a book called Microbe Hunters,” Schwartz said. “That’s really what influenced my life. It was about the great humanitarian doctors who were guys like Dr. [Frederick] Banting, who discovered [insulin]. He was the one who discovered [its] relationship to diabetes and the effect it has on your body. I wanted to become an endocrinologist.”

But despite top grades at NYU, Schwartz was told he’d never get into a med school program because of an unofficial medical school quota system meant to limit how many Jewish students would be admitted. His NYU counselors even advised him to change his last name to “Black” and lie about his religion on his application. He refused to do either.

Schwartz had also been advised that additional credentials, like a graduate degree, might help him break past the anti-Semitic barrier of the quota and into med school. So he followed his older brother Al, a comedy writer for Bob Hope’s radio show, to Los Angeles, and in 1938 earned a master’s in biological sciences from the University of Southern California. While living with Al and waiting for news about his med school application, Sherwood asked his sibling if he might make a few bucks writing some jokes for Hope. “It never seemed that difficult to me to write jokes,” he said. So he typed up four pages of monologue bits for the comedian and submitted them.

Sherwood’s jokes landed, earning big laughs for Hope. And the comedian offered him a surprise in return: Instead of throwing some cash his way for the material Sherwood had already written, Hope had his agent, Jimmy Saphier, propose that the younger Schwartz sign a seven-year contract to become a writer for The Pepsodent Show, Hope’s radio classic.

Sherwood was flattered. He hadn’t considered a career as a writer. That was Al’s thing. Al had completed a law degree and passed the bar exam solely because their parents had insisted. He then gifted his diploma to his mother and told her, “Here, now I can write.”

Not that Sherwood’s writing talents hadn’t earned him praise before.

One of his NYU professors had returned a test essay to him with the message, “Get out of premed and become a writer” scrawled at the top in red…but what about medical school? He’d moved across the country and put forth the effort to earn a second degree, on just the chance that he’d get a shot at his dream of becoming a doctor.

So while he appreciated Hope’s generous offer, he told Saphier, and certainly didn’t want to offend him by turning down the job, he had to see this med school journey through.

When Saphier relayed the news to Hope, he countered. Schwartz would find out shortly whether or not he had landed a spot in a medical school program, right? Hope was about to leave Hollywood to spend his show’s summer hiatus in England. Before he went, Hope signed that seven-year contract. If Sherwood was admitted to medical school, Hope would wish the future Dr. Schwartz good luck. But if he wasn’t, all he had to do was countersign, and he would have a job as the newest writer for The Pepsodent Show.

With the contract in his pocket, Sherwood returned to New York City, where he’d scheduled a meeting with an assistant dean at the medical school of Flower Hospital. Knowing what a long shot his admittance was, the future legend of TV comedy had a dramatic gesture planned for the interview. He knew the dean would ask how badly he wanted to be a doctor. And when the question came, Sherwood pulled out his seven-year contract, signed by Hope, and explained what it was. The dean was impressed. Sherwood explained he was so committed to a career in medicine that he’d be willing to rip up that contract then and there.

The dean, impressed even further, decided he had to be honest with Schwartz. He confirmed what Sherwood had already been told about the quota for Jewish doctors, a quota the AMA would never acknowledge, Schwartz later said, and one that would no longer be enforced after World War II. But in 1938, the quota would work against him, he was told.

The Flower Hospital dean offered to allow the very academically qualified Schwartz to fill out his own evaluation form—which the dean would then sign—assuring him the quota would prevent him from getting into the med school no matter what he wrote. Sherwood refused. The dean wrote a glowing recommendation himself, which he showed to Schwartz. Upon Sherwood’s return to Los Angeles, he received a telegram.

He didn’t get into the Flower Hospital program. He was the number one alternate, and the telegram advised him to stand by for a second telegram, should anyone drop out.

That second telegram never arrived. It was a good thing the dean hadn’t insisted Schwartz follow through with tearing Bob Hope’s contract to shreds.

It broke his heart to leave his plans to be a doctor behind, and for the rest of his life he would think about the good works he might have done, the patients he could have helped, the diseases he might have cured. Brady Bunch star Ann B. Davis said she was once brought to tears by Schwartz’s wistful tale about how much he had wanted to be a doctor. His daughter, Hope Juber, said he kept a black medical bag beside his desk throughout his life. He even made one of his most-loved TV characters, eldest Brady Bunch son Greg, a physician.

He saved a copy of the wait-and-see telegram for decades, Juber said, and finally demanded a decision as only a comedy writer would. “When Dad was in his late eighties, he sent a letter to that particular medical school [now renamed New York Medical College], saying, ‘I’m a patient man, but I have to get on with my life.’”

Sherwood signed his name on Hope’s contract and officially joined brother Al in what would become the Schwartz brothers’ family business (youngest brother Elroy would soon follow his siblings to Los Angeles and work as a Hollywood writer).

Sherwood spent more than four years penning jokes for Hope on The Pepsodent Show, then was assigned to write for the Armed Forces Radio Service (serving his time at an Army desk in Hollywood) when he was drafted during World War II. He jumped right back into the comedy world after the war, declining the chance to return to his job at The Pepsodent Show so he could try his hand at situation comedy.

A stint as a writer for The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, the radio version of the future TV show, led Schwartz to a writing gig on I Married Joan. The 1952–55 I Love Lucy-ish NBC comedy starred Joan Davis as Joan Stevens, a Lucy Ricardo–like character with similar gifts for physical comedy and turning misunderstandings into screwball gems. The series was not only Schwartz’s first foray into TV, but Joan’s husband, Judge Bradley Stevens, was played by Jim Backus, an actor who would later play a key role in Sherwood creating his own series for the first time.

But before that, he shared an Emmy with his brother Al and two other writers in 1961 for their work on The Red Skelton Show. The volatile Skelton had been unhappy with the output of a previous head writer, Schwartz’s former I Married Joan colleague Artie Stander, so he shot a loaded gun at the man’s feet to encourage him to turn out more creative scripts. Sherwood had helped steer the program out of the bottom of the ratings heap to success as the series’ head writer, a job he took only after CBS guaranteed he wouldn’t lose any appendages.

“I have ten toes, and I want to keep them all,” Sherwood told CBS executives, who desired Schwartz’s services so badly that they promised he’d never have to meet with the star of the show. He would write the scripts, and they’d be delivered to Skelton. For seven years, star and head writer never had an in-person meeting.

Schwartz also spent a year as the script supervisor for My Favorite Martian, one of the many ’60s series—like Screen Gems’ I Dream of Jeannie, Bewitched, and The Flying Nun—that tried to freshen up the stagnating situation comedy with fantastical elements.

By this point, though, he’d had enough of writing other people’s stories. He had important ideas he wanted to tackle, points he wanted to make with his writing. And, as he was about to illustrate, he certainly wasn’t above using a grand, outside-the-box concept himself to share his philosophies with sitcom viewers. Like stranding seven people on a deserted island, as a social microcosm showing what can result when disparate people are forced to live together and find a way to coexist peacefully, and maybe even happily.

That was the lofty premise of Schwartz’s pitch for Gilligan’s Island, in which SS Minnow charter-boat captain Jonas “The Skipper” Grumby, his first mate Gilligan, wealthy marrieds Thurston and Lovey Howell, movie star Ginger Grant, Roy “Professor” Hinkley, and farm girl Mary Ann Summers are shipwrecked on a deserted island in the Pacific Ocean after their three-hour tour meets a tropical storm head-on.

But before he could get the idea in front of TV executives, he first had to convince his longtime agent, George Rosenberg, that this Robinsonade vehicle wouldn’t get him laughed out of the pitch meeting.

“Are you outta your fuckin’ mind?” Rosenberg asked Schwartz. “Who the hell is gonna tune in week after week to watch those same goddamn people on that same goddamn island?”

Sherwood was undeterred. When “Rosey,” who was not only his agent but also a personal friend and godfather to Sherwood’s son Ross, couldn’t be sold on the pitch, Schwartz, with his friend’s blessing, took the idea to another agent, Perry Leff. Leff, too, thought the series was pretty out there, but agreed to make a call. CBS, Schwartz’s network employer for The Red Skelton Show and My Favorite Martian, was interested.

Knowing the skepticism he would face about how he could turn this idea into a new episode week in and week out, Sherwood started jotting down episode ideas. He took a long sheet of white butcher paper and tacked it to the walls of his office, wrapping it all the way around the room. In just a week, he’d filled the paper with dozens of plots, and he removed the sheet—all thirty-one feet of paper—rolled it up, and secured it with a rubber band. He was ready to hand it over to anyone who questioned if he could sustain this “social microcosm” for thirty-some episodes a year.

None of the CBS executives ever unspooled that tube of paper. CBS programming president Jim Aubrey had only one major concern about the Gilligan premise: Valuable time would have to be spent at the beginning of every episode to explain how the Skipper, Gilligan, Mr. and Mrs. Howell, the Professor, Ginger, and Mary Ann ended up marooned on the island. It would grow tiresome, Aubrey insisted, and viewers wouldn’t tune in. He was so insistent this was a hurdle that couldn’t be overcome that he spent one entire meeting between Schwartz and CBS honchos showing his obvious lack of confidence in the series by fashioning memo sheets into paper airplanes and launching them around the room while Schwartz pitched.

Schwartz remained resolute: Gilligan’s Island was a solid idea, and he knew a snappy opening theme song could double as weekly exposition. The night before a pivotal meeting with the network, he spent a few hours hastily writing a tune about “the tale of a fateful trip”…a three-hour tour (a three-hour tour!) “aboard this tiny ship” that ended with a crash landing on an “uncharted desert isle” after some rough weather. Schwartz went to the next morning’s meeting with lyric sheets he passed around the room. Aubrey didn’t want to read the theme song, though; he wanted to hear it.

Sherwood obliged. Aubrey’s only response was to suggest the middle part of the song needed a little work, which served as his confirmation that Schwartz had ensured Gilligan’s Island’s place in the network’s lineup, and eventually, in TV history.

Schwartz was just relieved Aubrey hadn’t turned the theme song lyric sheets into paper airplanes.

Gilligan’s Island was a ratings winner for CBS and Schwartz, finishing its first season as a top 20 hit. Season three, however, would end with a surprise cancellation, not because of poor ratings but as collateral damage from CBS president William Paley’s insistence that Gunsmoke