The Brady Bunch has long proven its staying power in the cultural landscape of American television history. But to get there, it encountered some surprising bumps along the way, with the most unexpected coming from a grim, bloody Western called The Wild Bunch, which gave showrunners a hard time picking a title.
Meet the Wild Bunch! Wait, no – the Brady Brood! Both are actually correct, but they contain very different content. The Wild Bunch was a film released in 1969 that followed an outlaw gang trying to adapt to a changing world – and its bloody content made it hard for The Brady Brood to pin down a final show name.
‘The Wild Bunch’ made ‘The Brady Bunch’ start out with a very different name
Meet The Wild Bunch, which not only made the American Film Institute’s list of 100 greatest movies of all time, but was also selected for preservation from the Library of Congress. Directed by Sam Peckinpah, The Wild Bunch is celebrated for its intricate editing and filming techniques, and its writing was nominated for an Oscar for Best Writing. In short, this movie was a big, popular deal.
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It was also unabashedly gritty, grim, and violent – bloody violent, at that. The macabre was a famous staple of the film; anyone who thought The Wild Bunch at some point would think of its graphic violence.
So, early – very early – in the creation process of The Brady Bunch, when the word “bunch” was proposed for the show’s title, Paramount was squeamish towards it and its potential association for Peckinpah’s grand, dark Western epic. So, for a time, the show was determinedly referred to as The Brady Brood. But that wasn’t even the only difference between how it started and what viewers fell in love with.
‘The Brady Bunch’ had to go through a few more changes to become what we know today
The “bunch” aversion to maximize distance from The Wild Bunch persisted for quite a bit, meaning the scripts for the show’s pilot episode, “The Honeymoon,” actually had The Brady Brood printed on them. A picture of Mike Lookinland’s script shows the original working title still in use, only for it to eventually be crossed out in blue ink, with “Bunch” written on top.
But even when “bunch” did see use, something else was different: the titular family was called the Bradleys. That’s right: ABC almost introduced audiences to the Bradley Bunch! Would it be the Bradley Brood?
On top of all this, the beloved housekeeper Alice was originally Kris, a middle-aged Swede who fostered a sweet tooth while looking over the Bradleys. What a different show we almost got!