Happiness Included Jan Brady and Beyond by Eve Plumb

For those British children who grew up in the early to mid 70s, a select number of US shows came over to us. They included cartoons, police shows (which you might be allowed to watch on a Saturday night) and one or two family shows firmly aimed at children. For me, one programme more than any other captured my childhood imagination. It was the story of a widow with three daughters and a widower with three sons called The Brady Bunch. I haven’t seen it in perhaps 50 years, because unlike in America where it is always being shown somewhere, none of the British TV channels or DVD companies have ever seen fit to repeat it or make it available to buy, but I can still recall the theme tune and the middle daughter Jan Brady. I was about eight years old when I first saw it, too old to identify with Cindy, too young to identify with Marcia but just the right age to see the programme through Jan’s eyes. It helped that Jan was the misfit of the family as that is how I felt most of the time. So, The Brady Bunch became weekly comfort viewing with its mix of comedy and sentimentality. When I found out that Eve Plumb had written an autobiography I wanted to get it when it arrived in the UK. I did, and here’s my review.

The introduction sets out the central approach of the book with one sentence; I have no child actress horror stories to sell in this book. If you’re looking for gossip, you have definitely come to the wrong place, but if you’re looking for a fascinating account of a TV and film world that has disappeared, this book is for you. Eve is candid about her own failings and those of others where necessary, but her career as a child actress in the pre-social media days now looks like an innocent halcyon time. What makes her clear eyed view so captivating is that in those clear eyes there is an ever present twinkle. She brings you into her world as a confidante, telling you stories and making you laugh. She is everything I thought Jan would be and more.

Eve had a varied and busy career as a child actor before The Brady Bunch, using her talent, looks and most importantly her instinct for other people to keep up a good strike rate for auditions. At one stage, if you needed someone to play a young girl who was in danger or dying, she was your go to! She was professional, talented and interested in what was going on around her. For The Brady Bunch audition, it turned out that her talent was taken as read. The choice of Eve as Jan Brady was made on the basis that she was the actress in the middle child category who most resembled Florence Henderson, the actress chosen to play Carol Brady. While that was clearly good fortune, she had earnt it by her previous performances that made her popular with programme makers and known throughout the industry as a safe pair of hands.

The Brady Bunch section is the main reason why I bought the book and it is a delight. She clearly has great affection for the programme and for the people she acted alongside. Her relationships with both of her onscreen parents, Florence Henderson and Robert Reed was very similar offscreen with both of them making sure that all six children were looked after and, in the case of Reed, treated to a cruise to London on the QE2 at his expense! There was frustration at storylines, particularly for Eve Plumb herself as Jan became a kind of one girl string of issues from imaginary boyfriends and sibling jealousy to not wanting to wear glasses. However, she always gave the best performance she could even when she didn’t enjoy the scenario. She does reference the clear jealousy of other students and even some of her teachers at ‘ordinary school’ but her real irritation is reserved for the subsequent use of one line from one show taken out of context by Melanie Hutsell of Saturday Night Live and repeated ad nauseum. ‘Marcia, Marcia, Marcia’ was the catchphrase of Hutsell’s ‘Jan Brady’ and it became a bone of contention for Eve as she saw it as the resurfacing of bullying of the ten year old girl she was. Sadly, it is now on Tik Tok so this may continue to be seen far more often than the original programme.

The rest of the book deals with her professional and personal life after the show was cancelled and is just as fascinating. The ups and downs of her life continue to be dealt with using humour, occasional sadness and the benefit of hindsight. As with a number of child actresses she didn’t manage to keep up the success of her early years, but a look at IMDB shows no fewer than 74 acting credits, the majority post The Brady Bunch. Acting, however, became more of an enjoyable hobby as her ability as an artist became more of a focus. She creates home decor, along with her excellent paintings, which can be found on her website https://www.eveplumb.tv/ It is clear that she is a happy fulfilled person and that is a lovely note to end on, one that the misunderstood middle child Jan would have been very pleased with. Thank you Eve for some of the most memorable television of my childhood and for being just as lovely in real life as I always imagined Jan to be.