THE "BRADY BUNCH" is back.
National magazines, musicals and books abound about the famous TV family from the '70s. The death of Robert Reed (Dad Brady) just fuels the fire.Brady heyday lives again.
Twenty years ago, Deseret News critic Howard Pearson wrote a good dozen articles on Mike Lookinland (Bobby Brady) alone. He traced Lookinland's roots to Spring City, Utah. Interviewed his siblings.
So with Brady mania building again, I went looking for Lookinland.
I found him in a quiet, middle-class Salt Lake neighborhood.
Today, Mike Lookinland is a hard-working photo-pro for Rocky Mountain Pictures. His home is a modest red-brick house, his wife is a modest woman named Kelly, and his 2-year-old son, Scott, is the center of their universe. Photos of Scott fill the living room walls. Toys and songbooks abound. And Mike Lookinland himself is at peace with himself and his life.
"I came back to Utah to get away from Hollywood," he says. "I even had my name in the phone book here for awhile, until I began getting 40 calls a day from people wondering if I played Bobby."
But other than the phone hassles, Lookinland lives the American dream, complete with a grade school up the street, two churches within walking distance, dutiful neighbors and a screen door that needs some repair. The neighborhood could pass as a set for "Leave It to Beaver."
"For me," he says, "the Brady thing is in the past. I'm just amazed at all this new interest in it."
And what does he think triggered it all?
"I have to think people are going back to the Bradys because they want to feel good," he says. "I mean a family that isn't dysfunctional is something of a fantasy for a lot of kids today. Even when I was doing the show I'd get entire bags of mail full of letters that would say `I love your family. In my family my father beats my mother.'
"The Brady family was what everyone wanted their family to be like."
Other stars from the show ended shipwrecked or worse. How did Lookinland make it out?
"I guess I made it through without many scars because of my parents, my upbringing and just dumb luck," he says.
With the rediscovery of Bradys, however, he says he finds himself being tossed back into the fish tank again. I asked what people want to know most.
"The No. 1 question is, `Do you still keep in touch with the other Brady kids?' The answer to that is `occasionally.' They live in Los Angeles and I live in Utah, so we don't socialize much.
"The second question is always, `Do you still get residuals from the show?' The answer is `no.' "
Driving away from our interview, I thought about Lookinland's comment that we return to the Bradys for fantasy. Years ago, viewers saw "Ozzie and Harriet" and "Make Room for Daddy" as everyday realism. Had the American family slipped so far that now such things were dreams from long ago?
Perhaps. But not in all cases. Mike Lookinland, his wife and son seem to living proof that the "Brady Bunch" - at least the "Lookinland Bunch" - can still exist in the '90s.