A Look Back at Eve Plumb’s Career at 67: The Truth About Jan Brady’s Misunderstood Star
From 'Marcia, Marcia, Marcia' to a secret art career, discover the real woman behind Jan Brady
Key Takeaways
- Jan Brady made her famous, but Eve Plumb spent years redefining herself.
- Breaking away from 'Brady' wasn’t easy, but it shaped who she became.
- Behind the 'Marcia, Marcia, Marcia' was an actress finding her own voice.
When people talk about The Brady Bunch—particularly the kids, now all well into their 60s—there’s a natural tendency to group them together as if they were a single unit, not unlike the way The Beatles were once viewed as a collective rather than as individuals. But according to Lloyd J. Schwartz, son of series creator Sherwood Schwartz and a producer on the show, that wasn’t entirely the case. From his perspective, Eve Plumb (author of the new memoir Happiness Included: Jan Brady and Beyond) brought something a little different to the table, a quality that subtly set her apart from Barry Williams, Maureen McCormick, Christopher Knight, Susan Olsen and Mike Lookinland.
LLOYD J. SCHWARTZ: “She came to the show with more of a history of the business in some way, with her sister being an actress, her father involved in music and her mother ever-present. So whenever we would do a scene, she was just kind of a little bit apart. Not in a bad way at all, because everybody has their own life things they bring to it. But it was something that we started to notice and some of the stories that we wrote just kind of highlighted that in a way, evolving into the whole middle-child syndrome storyline. Of course, now everybody uses that as an example of Jan Brady as this tormented kid. You know, ‘Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!’ She played that really well.”
GEOFFREY MARK (pop culture historian; author of The Lucy Book): “Sherwood Schwartz had a great eye for talent. The reason both Gilligan’s Island and The Brady Bunch work so well and have lasted so long is because they were so well cast. In the case of The Brady Bunch, when people talk about the casting process of interchangeable blond dads and dark-haired dads and blond moms and dark-haired moms, and then kids to match them, I think they’re selling him short. It’s very difficult to cast child actors. A child can seem charming or precocious in an interview, but can end up being dead meat on a soundstage. Likewise, someone who actually has acting talent may not interview well. So we must applaud Eve that Sherwood saw that this was a child who could act. There is a reason why you mention The Brady Bunch to most people who know the show, and their immediate response will be, ‘Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!’”
“Eve was able to take what could have been a silly situation about playing the middle child who is not quite as pretty as the older sister and not quite as cute as the younger sister, and gave her a real personality and gave the situation seriousness. That’s why we remember ‘Marcia, Marcia, Marcia.’ She made an impression because she was playing a part. She wasn’t just a cute child actor saying lines.”
TED NICHELSON (co-author Love to Love You Bradys: The Bizarre Story of the Brady Bunch Variety Hour): “Eve is a very intellectual person and a deep thinker. Her personality is more academic compared to some of the other Brady kids. She knows a lot about many subjects and can have a conversation on just about anything imaginable. Eve loves to read and is a talented artist. A lot of the pictures and artwork hanging in the recently renovated Brady house were recreated by Eve in one way or another. I know she painted several of the big paintings in the house to match what we saw on TV 50 years ago. I was so impressed when I went through the house and saw Eve’s name signed on many of the things hanging up.”
The irony is that the actress has a reputation that has followed her for years—that she keeps her distance from Brady-related reunions—but it’s a bit misleading. While she’s sometimes portrayed as the one who opts out, the truth is far less dramatic: she’s largely been part of the group, with only a single notable exception. The idea that she’s consistently avoided those gatherings has taken on a life of its own, even though the reality tells a different story.
KIMBERLY POTTS (author, The Way We All Became the Brady Bunch): “I call her The Reluctant Brady, although at the same time I wonder how much people have sometimes mistaken her reluctance to participate in things as a hatred for the Bradys. I think she is very much like, ‘If I’ve already done it, why would I keep doing the exact same thing again?’ So I think for her, it’s been more like, ‘Why would I continue to give the same interview about this show when I know that most people are gonna ask me the same questions they’ve been asking me for 40 years?’”
EVE PLUMB: “I think what happened was that I would say things like, ‘Yes, the Bradys was great, but I also have a life.’ Or I’d be promoting something else and the media would be, like, ‘Brady, Brady. Brady,’ and I’d say, ‘That’s great, but I’m doing this now.’ It immediately became, ‘You’re bitter.'”
Early days to ‘Brady’ nights
Eve Aline Plumb was born on April 29, 1958, in Burbank, California. Her start in Hollywood was with TV commercials, which she describes as something that “just happened.”
EVE PLUMB: “A children’s agent moved next door to me when I was a kid and I got a commercial, then I kept getting more. I shot TV pilots, appeared on The Big Valley, then Lassie and then The Brady Bunch came along. I had so much success as a child, but once you age out of being the cute kid, then what? If you’re not ready for it, it can be very difficult.”
ERIKA WOEHLIK (author, Bradypedia: The Complete Reference Guide to Television’s The Brady Bunch): “Young Eve Plumb had a stellar list of credits to her name by the time she became a Brady. She was in roughly 15 separate television episodes as well as an unknown number of commercials. One appearance you won’t find on IMDB is of a drowning girl in Adam-12. Of note, Eve played Bonnie Braids in a pilot of Dick Tracy in 1967. Even earlier than that, in 1965, Eve was cast as Melissa in the pilot for The Barbara Rush Show. Had either of those series been picked up, the world may have had a different Jan Brady.”
Building on the work she had already done, Eve continued to rack up television appearances in the late 1960s, showing up in series like The Virginian in 1967 and, the following year, It Takes a Thief, Mannix, Family Affair and Lancer, with a visit to Gunsmoke coming shortly after. Even once The Brady Bunch had made her a familiar face, she didn’t limit herself to that one role. During the show’s run, she expanded her resume with projects like the TV movie House on Greenapple Road (1970), lent her voice to animated adventures on The Brady Kids (1972–1973), and popped up in the “Lucy and Donny Osmond” episode of Here’s Lucy (1972). She also ventured into Saturday morning fare with Sigmund and the Sea Monsters (1974) and appeared in the ABC Afterschool Special installment “Sara’s Summer of the Swans” that same year, continuing to build a body of work well beyond Jan Brady.
Looking back at Eve’s appearance on Here’s Lucy, Geoffrey Mark points out one of those wonderfully odd, one-off sitcom setups. In the episode, Lucy suddenly has a niece—played by Eve—who’s never been mentioned before and, as he notes, is never heard from again. Lucy and Kim (Lucie Arnaz) take her to a nightclub to see Donny Osmond, setting up a typical teen-crush scenario, with Eve’s character completely smitten with Donny. The twist, though, is that Donny becomes equally taken with Kim, creating a dynamic that plays out on screen in a way that’s both funny and slightly awkward—made even more so by the fact that, in real life, Donny genuinely had a crush on Lucie Arnaz during filming.
GEOFFREY MARK: “Eve was cast because she could act, otherwise she wouldn’t have been there. Lucille Ball could have chosen anybody, but she chose her because Eve could bring a reality to the character. She wasn’t going to have to worry about bringing some cutesy girl in who didn’t know how to act. On top of that, unlike The Brady Bunch, it’s not shot like a movie; it’s shot like a stage play. She needed someone who would know her lines, know her blocking, stay in character and keep up her energy. Her reputation for being a professional was already in place. When you have someone like Lucille Ball hiring you, you have to be good, because if you’re not, she will replace you.”
The point where Eve truly started to break away from the Brady image came with the 1976 television movie Dawn: Portrait of a Teenage Runaway. In it, she took on the role of 15-year-old Dawn Wetherby, a girl who leaves home, heads to California and ultimately turns to prostitution to survive—a far cry from anything audiences had seen from her before. It was a deliberate shift, and one that made it clear she wasn’t content to be defined by Jan Brady. She returned to the role the following year in Alexander: The Other Side of Dawn, which shifted the spotlight to Dawn’s friend Alexander Duncan, played by Leigh McCloskey, while continuing the story in that same difficult world.
EVE PLUMB: “I’ve been acting since I was six years old and I’ve lived in Hollywood most of my life. I think playing a hooker was fun. I certainly don’t feel bad about it. It was great to pretend to be tough, because it was so different from playing Jan. I’ve seen hookers in action in Hollywood. I know what they are and what they did. What I didn’t know, my mother told me. And it was funny. I went shopping with the costumer for the movie at some of those wild stores along Hollywood Boulevard. He is a middle-aged man. Some of the shopkeepers saw us together and thought I was the real thing!”
Saying no to ‘The Brady Bunch Hour’
One role she very deliberately chose not to revisit was Jan Brady in The Brady Bunch Hour, that strange, almost surreal attempt to reinvent the family as stars of a variety series. By that point, Eve was clearly looking to move forward rather than circle back, particularly after pushing herself into more challenging territory with projects like Dawn: Portrait of a Teenage Runaway. The idea of stepping back into Jan—especially in a format built around musical numbers and sketch comedy—simply didn’t fit where she was creatively or professionally.
The show, however, went on without her, casting Geri Reischl in the role—a decision that didn’t go unnoticed by fans and quickly led to the nickname “Fake Jan.” While the rest of the cast returned, the absence of the original Jan was a constant reminder that this wasn’t quite the same Brady Bunch. In many ways, Eve’s decision underscored a turning point in her career: she was no longer willing to be defined solely by the role that made her famous, even if it meant stepping away from a high-profile reunion that might have kept her more closely tied to it.
GEOFFREY MARK: “She only turned down The Brady Bunch Hour because they were hoping it would run for five years like the sitcom had. While she was willing to do a special, she wasn’t willing to become Jan again for five years. But she did all the other reunion things.”
EVE PLUMB: “I visited them on the set. It was nice to see everyone and they all understood my decision. I’m sure I’ve gotten more attention not doing it than I would have by doing it.”
As the 1970s moved forward, Eve kept working steadily, building a résumé that showed she wasn’t tied to any one type of role. She made guest appearances on a range of popular series, including Wonder Woman, and had recurring turns with multiple episodes of both The Love Boat and Fantasy Island. At the same time, she took on parts in television movies like Secrets of Three Hungry Wives and appeared in miniseries such as Little Women and Greatest Heroes of the Bible, continuing to establish herself as a versatile presence on television.
ERIKA WOEHLIK: “Around 1980, she formed a production company called Fleur de Lis Productions. She bought the rights to the book The Sweetheart: The Story of Mary Pickford and planned a movie where she would star as Mary. The company also filmed a short called ‘Sea People’ and had plans for a movie called The Exchange. Alas, none of the projects actually made it to a viewing audience. Eve would nonetheless continue to make occasional television and movie appearances.”
Oh, ‘Fudge!’
That steady run of guest appearances has continued over the years, extending right up to a 2020 episode of Bull. Along the way, she also took on a more regular role in 1995, playing Anne Hatcher—the mother at the center of the kids’ series Fudge, adapted from Judy Blume’s books. What began as a television movie proved successful enough to evolve into a series that ran for two seasons, giving her another opportunity to anchor a project in a very different kind of family setting. Alongside her screen work, Eve has also maintained a strong connection to the stage, taking on a series of Off-Broadway roles that allowed her to stretch in different ways as a performer. Among them were Love, Loss and What I Wore in 2009, followed by Miss Abigail’s Guide to Dating, Mating & Marriage in 2010, and later Unbroken Circle in 2013, each offering a chance to work in a more immediate, actor-driven environment.
LLOYD J. SCHWARTZ: “Eve has done a lot of theater and I always recommended that to all of them [the Brady actors] because that’s where the real true acting takes place. You have to remain ‘in’ all the time and learn all these lines and not pay attention to the audience while you build a character. But I can put somebody in front of a camera and if you have 15 takes, I can finally get something out of them.”
EVE PLUMB: “Getting to change categories is a nice thing about being an actor. I see acting as a profession. That doesn’t mean I’m completely unemotional about it; it’s just that I’ve gone back and forth over the years, wondering what’s the magic formula. What gets you work? In my late 20s, parts stopped coming my way. That’s when it became difficult. I didn’t realize how much I worked as a kid, because I would just get the jobs all the time. It became hard to get people to delineate between who’s Eve and who’s Jan, because I don’t consider Jan this fully fleshed-out character. It’s not like I was one way when the cameras were rolling and another when they stopped. It wasn’t a Meryl Streep thing.”
As noted above, there’s long been a perception that Eve has kept the Brady experience at arm’s length, but her actual track record tells a more complicated story. She returned for The Brady Girls Get Married in 1982, which led to the short-lived series The Brady Brides, and later reunited with the cast again for the 1988 TV movie A Very Brady Christmas and its 1990 follow-up series, The Bradys. More recently, she was fully engaged in HGTV’s A Very Brady Renovation, taking part in the detailed recreation of the show’s iconic home—hardly the actions of someone looking to walk away from that chapter of her life.
EVE PLUMB: “The renovation series was very strange, because we spent a lot of time in there filming and then doing some digital stuff and behind-the-scenes stuff. It was very strange. I think we were finally getting used to the fact that there’s a fourth wall and a ceiling. And certainly, we’d seen each other in different groupings over the years for one thing or another, but I think the last time that there was a confluence of all six was about 15 years prior. Obviously, we’re all grown up now and we get along like real people and HGTV offered us an extended family reunion. Just like any family reunion, having different memories of different events. It’s been with me my whole life, so I’ve always been used to it.”
KIMBERLY POTTS: “The renovation series was kind of the first time anybody has ever gotten a chance to see a bit of her personality. I mean, she comes off as having a very dry sense of humor, but being very funny. I love that we saw one episode where they sent her off to her storage unit or the garage of a friend where she stores a lot of her stuff. And she actually had bins and bins and bins of Brady material. She had the original scripts, that great metal lunchbox that is such a collectible. So clearly the show meant a lot to her. Those are not things you keep for 50 years if you don’t care about it.”
There is much more to learn about Eve Plumb—including her marriage and the shift from acting to a successful career as an artist—which you can do so by checking out our exclusive interviews with the actress here and here.
Conversation
All comments are subject to our Community Guidelines. Woman's World does not endorse the opinions and views shared by our readers in our comment sections. Our comments section is a place where readers can engage in healthy, productive, lively, and respectful discussions. Offensive language, hate speech, personal attacks, and/or defamatory statements are not permitted. Advertising or spam is also prohibited.
