Florence Henderson, the wholesome actress who went from Broadway star to television icon when she became Carol Brady, the ever-cheerful matriarch of The Brady Bunch, has died aged 82.
Henderson suffered heart failure on Thursday night at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles after being hospitalised the day before, her publicist David Brokaw and manager Kayla Pressman said.
On the surface, The Brady Bunch resembled just another innocuous TV sitcom about a family living in suburban America and getting into wacky situations each week.
But well after it ended its initial run in 1974, the show resonated with audiences, and it returned to television in various forms again and again, including The Brady Bunch Hour in 1977, The Brady Brides in 1981 and The Bradys in 1990. It was also seen continually in reruns."It represents what people always wanted: a loving family. It's such a gentle, innocent, sweet show, and I guess it proved there's always an audience for that," Henderson said in 1999.
Publicity handout of the cast of "The Brady Bunch" television series, all beaming with their heads stacked on top of each other. Ca. 1970s. Source: Corbis Historical
Premiering in 1969, it also was among the first shows to introduce to television the blended family. As its theme song reminded viewers each week, Henderson's Carol was a single mother raising three daughters when she met her TV husband, Robert Reed's Mike Brady, a single father who was raising three boys.
The eight of them became The Brady Bunch, with a quirky housekeeper, played by Ann B Davis, thrown into the mix.
The blonde, ever-smiling Henderson was already a Broadway star when the show began, having originated the title role in the musical Fanny. But after The Brady Bunch, she would always be known to fans as Carol Brady.
"We had to have security guards with us. Fans were hanging on our doors. We couldn't go out by ourselves. We were like the Beatles!" she said of the attention the show brought the cast.
She and Reed returned for The Brady Bunch Hour, The Brady Brides and The Bradys. So did most of the original cast.
She was also back again in 1995 when a new cast was assembled for The Brady Bunch Movie, a playful spoof of the original show. This time she was Grandma Brady opposite Shelly Long's Carol.
Florence Agnes Henderson was born Febuary 14, 1934, in the small town of Dale in Indiana. She was the 10th child of a tobacco sharecropper of Irish descent.
After high school she moved to New York, where she enrolled in a two-year program at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, her studies financed by a theatrical couple who had been impressed by her singing when they saw her perform in high school.
She dropped out of the program after one year, however, to take the role in Wish You Were There at age 19.
Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II were so impressed they made her the female lead in a 1952 road tour of Oklahoma! When the show returned to Broadway for a revival in 1954, she continued in the role and won rave reviews.
After The Brady Bunch ended its first run, Henderson alternated her appearances in revivals of the show with guest appearances on other programs, including Hart to Hart, Fantasy Island and The Love Boat.
In later years, she also made guest appearances on such shows as Roseanne, Ally McBeal and The King of Queens.
Henderson married theatre executive Ira Bernstein and the couple had four children before the union ended in divorce after 29 years.
Her second husband, John Kappas, died in 2002.