America’s favorite dad was livid.
The man who played Mike Brady, Robert Reed, paged through the latest script for “The Brady Bunch” and lashed out at the show’s creator, demanding that his part be rewritten.
And what had so incensed the actor?
The smell of strawberries. Or the lack thereof.
In Season 4’s episode, “Jan, the Only Child,” Brady mom, Carol, and the family’s housekeeper, Alice, hold a competition to see who can craft the tastiest strawberry preserves.
As the competition raged in the Brady’s formica kitchen, the script called for Mike Brady to arrive home and remark that the house smelled like “strawberry heaven.”
Only Reed, who had a habit of meticulously fact-checking each script, discovered while poring over the “Encyclopedia Britannica” that strawberries supposedly give off no smell while they’re being cooked.
So Reed went to “Brady” creator Sherwood Schwartz and told him he would not say the line.
Attempting to placate the actor, Schwartz invited Reed down to the set where strawberries were actually being cooked and pointed out that the berries did indeed give off a scent.
Reed wouldn’t hear it. He’d read that they didn’t, and he refused to say the line.
So Schwartz offered a compromise: Mike Brady could say it “looks like strawberry heaven in here,” and Reed reluctantly agreed.
(Although the line he ultimately delivered in the filmed episode was, “I do believe I’ve died and gone to strawberry heaven.”)
Reed was famous for being difficult on set. In another episode in which youngest Brady boy, Bobby, sells hair tonic in a get-rich-quick scheme, Reed objected because the product wasn’t FDA-approved. In yet another, Reed whined about the implausibility of his character slipping on a broken egg. He even once disapproved of the quality of the fake ink that stained Alice’s uniform, prompting the actor to pen an angry, multi-page memo to the show’s executives. Reed blasted the prop department for its choice and called the ink scene so “unfunny that even a laugh machine would balk” at it.
With all the behind-the-scenes drama, it’s a wonder the show didn’t crash and burn in its first season. But “The Brady Bunch,” which celebrated its 50th anniversary on Sept. 26, survived to become one of the most famous shows in television history, as detailed in “The Way We All Became the Brady Bunch: How the Canceled Sitcom Became the Beloved Pop Culture Icon We Are Still Talking About Today” (Grand Central Publishing), out now.
“I don’t feel like anyone thinks it’s a great show. This is not the sitcom version of ‘Breaking Bad,’ ” author Kimberly Potts told The Post. “It’s more that it’s a sweet show. Now so many generations have watched it, it’s a good memory and makes them feel good.”
Schwartz, the creator of “The Brady Bunch,” always wanted his show to be more than a quick laugh.
