Florence Henderson

Florence Henderson first saw the light of day in Dale, Indiana, during February 1934. Singing and dancing occupied her from the earliest years, and at seventeen she entered New York’s American Academy of Dramatic Arts. A small role in Joshua Logan’s Wish You Were Here (1952) led directly to the leading part in the inaugural national tour of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II’s Oklahoma! the following year. After that engagement and a short period working in Los Angeles theater, she returned to New York to head the cast of Logan’s Fanny (1954). Throughout the late fifties and early sixties she took principal parts in touring productions of numerous musicals, among them The Sound of Music, for which she received the Sarah Siddons Award as Maria Von Trapp. Additional stage credits included The Girl Who Came to Supper (1963). In 1965 she starred in a Los Angeles mounting of The King and I, and two years later she appeared in a Lincoln Center revival of South Pacific. Her screen debut arrived with the 1970 biopic Song of Norway, which chronicled the life of composer Edvard Grieg.

Although Henderson maintained stage and film work, her attention increasingly turned to television. Beyond countless guest spots on game and talk programs, she portrayed Carol Brady, the mother, in the long-running situation comedy The Brady Bunch (1969-1974). That series generated a 1977 sequel, television specials in 1981 and 1988, and a further sequel in 1990, all featuring her in the maternal role; only in the 1995 feature The Brady Bunch Movie did she appear as the grandmother. She also co-produced and hosted Country Kitchen (1985-1993), lent her name to a companion cookbook, and later fronted Florence Henderson’s Short-Cut Cooking (1998-1999). She performed on variety programs spotlighting pop and country artists and made guest appearances in series such as The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, L.A. Law, Murder, She Wrote, Roseanne, Ellen, Ally McBeal, and King of Queens. Outside performing, she served as an advocate for the deaf and the elderly. Heart failure claimed her life in Los Angeles in November 2016 at the age of eighty-two.