What Might Have Been: Gene Hackman as Mike Brady

No one thinks of television first when they recall the career of Gene Hackman – though like many young actors in the 1960s he first found work on shows like The United States Steel Hour, Naked City, and The F.B.I. Even after earning an Oscar nomination for his performance in Bonnie and Clyde (1968) he still turned up in episodes of I Spy and The Invaders.

But any compendium of Hackman’s TV work would be overshadowed by the role he didn’t get – that of Mike Brady in The Brady Bunch. Series creator Sherwood Schwartz said Hackman was his first choice, but ABC executives wanted an actor with more experience.

The rejection worked out well for all parties involved. Robert Reed, who had recently completed four seasons on the legal drama The Defenders, was cast as Mr. Brady. Despite his frequent grumbling about script quality, he became one of television’s most beloved father figures, and forged close and loving relationships with his TV kids that endured until his passing.

And from 1969 to 1975, the years in which The Brady Bunch aired, Gene Hackman appeared in such memorable films as Marooned, Prime Cut, The Poseidon Adventure and The Conversation, and won the Academy Award for playing Popeye Doyle in The French Connection. 

Given how more than one generation embraced The Brady Bunch to the point of having viewed every episode dozens of times, it is difficult now to imagine how the series might have fared if Sherwood Schwartz got his wish. But not impossible. It’s common knowledge among fans that Joyce Bulifant came close to landing the role of Carol Brady, and I can see that working, just as I think Sharon Tate would have fit well in Petticoat Junction and Susan Lanier could have played Chrissy on Three’s Company. In all these cases there are similarities between the actresses who almost got the parts, and the ones that did. 

Envisioning Gene as Mike seems like more of a stretch. Though he was only two years older than Robert Reed, he seemed much older at the time, and not just because of the already-receding hairline. There was also a roughness around the edges to him. When you see Hackman in Bonnie and Clyde, even though his character is often smiling it’s apparent he came from a hardscrabble upbringing and still wears those scars. 

Consider also that there are not a lot of comedies in Hackman’s resume – and the ones he made aren’t very good. We won’t count Young Frankenstein because that was an unbilled cameo. One could say his take on Lex Luthor in Superman had a comedic quality, but he still gave the character enough of an edge to sell the conflict. 

Of course, it’s acting at the end of the day. There’s not an obvious comp in Hackman’s filmography to the kind of traditional family patriarch he would have played on The Brady Bunch, but that doesn’t mean he could not have made it work. I just know that I wouldn’t have risked it. 

Looking back over my series of pieces reviewing the prime-time schedules of the 1970s, I have come across many shows with potential that didn’t last because of casting.  Shows like Apple’s Way, Lotsa Luck and Kate McShane come to mind. Perhaps The Brady Bunch would have suffered the same fate. 

We’ll never know for sure what Gene Hackman would have brought to the show, but we know what we were gifted with Robert Reed. If the Bradys became the idyllic American family, then Reed’s Mike Brady was its idyllic father: kind, patient, supportive, and always willing to delay a business meeting to help one of his kids with their algebra homework. He could be stern when punishment was necessary, but tempered justice with mercy. He was steadfast and reliable and reassuring in all the ways that, in a perfect world, every father would be. Most of all, you never doubted for a moment how much he loved his wife and children – and housekeeper.

No wonder we still escape from our upside-down world for a 30-minute respite into this alternate reality where goodness and common sense hold sway. 

Perhaps those of us who grew up with the Bradys and treasure the hours we spent (and still spend) with them should be grateful that Sherwood Schwartz didn’t get his way. I never asked Mr. Schwartz about this the one time I was able to speak with him, but given the headaches Robert Reed induced with his pedantic memos about plot inconsistencies in Brady scripts, he might have still wished Gene got the part.