Simple Pleasures

I am beginning to learn that it is the sweet, simple things of life which are the real ones after all. - Laura Ingalls Wilder


The smell of fresh laundry.

Be sure and visit some other Simple Pleasures at A Collection of This and That by Dayle.

Happy Birthday to Maureen McCormick-

McCormick and fellow Brady Bunch cast member Barry Williams had a sporadic romance, their first romantic kiss happening in the summer of 1972 while filming the Hawaiian episodes.

In her autobiography, McCormick wrote that her grandmother died from syphilis in a mental institution, having gotten the disease from her husband who had caught it in Europe at the time of World War I (he committed suicide a week after his wife's death). McCormick's mother had contracted syphilis in utero and McCormick dealt with a life-long but unfounded fear she would also get the disease. Hence, she later said her favorite scenes in The Brady Bunch were those which called for her to cry, since this allowed her to show feelings drawn from those fears.

McCormick met Michael Jackson socially in 1973.

Following the cancellation of The Brady Bunch McCormick went through years of addiction to cocaine and Quaaludes which harmed her career. McCormick later claimed she had sometimes traded sex for cocaine. She flubbed an audition with Steven Spielberg for a part in Raiders of the Lost Ark, showing up high on cocaine and sleepless for three days. Having lost her reputation for reliability in Hollywood, a producer threatened that she would never work as an actress again. She had two unwanted pregnancies, both of which ended in abortion. She also dealt with bouts of depression and bulimia.

On March 16, 1985 she married Michael Cummings, who had never seen or heard of The Brady Bunch. They fell in love upon meeting in a church.McCormick and Cummings have one child, daughter Natalie Michelle, born May 19, 1989. The family lives in a Southern California suburb, northwest of Los Angeles.

After her marriage, McCormick went through a series of interventions, stints in rehab and experimental therapies. She says treatment with psychologist Eugene Landy, who had also treated Brian Wilson, set her back. Although she began to get sober after marrying her husband, McCormick still suffered from depression and paranoia. McCormick once threatened to jump from a balcony in front of her husband. She and her husband were at first wary of medication, but McCormick has been treated with antidepressant medication such as Prozac since the 1990s. McCormick also said she was helped by her friendships with former Brady Bunch cast members.

In April 2007 on the TV series Dr. Phil McCormick talked about a family dispute, accusing her brother of both elder abuse and alienating their father from his other children to gain control of his finances.

Maureen wasn't very Brady - was she?