A Very Brady Friday

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of meeting two TV icons in the same day. Coincidentally, they come from the same TV family. And it was only fitting that I would meet Jan Brady (Eve Plumb) and her TV mom Carol (Florence Henderson) on a Friday, the day on which The Brady Bunch aired on ABC from 1969-74.

Eve had stopped by the Sirius XM studios, appearing on the 2nd hour of the Frank DeCaro Show on OutQ to promote the February 18 opening of a New York gallery exhibit of her paintings.

Then, that night, Frank and I headed downtown to Joe's Pub, to catch Florence Henderson in her two-night show, "All The Lives of Me... A Musical Journey." In her very intimate and personal performance, Henderson talks about life not only as Carol Brady, but as a Broadway musical star, and even as a young girl, growing up as the 10th and youngest child of a poor Kentucky family.

In fact, in that section, Henderson talked about how as a very young girl, she was often forced by her mother to literally sing for the large clan's supper, to earn groceries from the local store. With that, she did some funny "crowd work" as she worked her way through the room, passing a cowboy hat for donations as she repeatedly sang "You Are My Sunshine."

It turns out, of course, that Henderson donates the proceeds from whenever she does this bit -- which she then personally matches -- to a local charity -- in this case, Broadway Cares / Equity Fights AIDS. The star has a personal connection to the cause, as her Brady co-star Robert Reed died of the disease in the early '90s.

And so coming up soon, she and her TV daughter Eve will appear together on stage, when Florence hosts Broadway Backwards 5, a one-night only lineup where performers will sing musical numbers originally written for the opposite gender. The show, where the two Brady ladies will be doing a duet, will be on February 22 at the Vivian Beaumont Theater at New York's Lincoln Center. Because after all, giving back is a very Brady thing to do.