How did the Brady family afford Alice?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Growing up, we had a full-time housekeeper. She didn't live with us but came in everyday, 9-6, 3 kids, big house, was paid $200. It was the seventies...

In the mid- to late 60s, my mom was a single mom working as a secretary. She had a housekeeper who came in 5 days a week and took care of 5 kids. So yeah, I think an architect could have afforded Alice, particularly given the room & board offset.

I'm with PP though. We know that Mr. Brady designed the house, they said so all the time. So why the hell have 3 bedrooms for 6 kids? It's possible he designed the house for his *three* kids, not realizing what fate had in store for him, and designing the attic so that it could be converted into a groovy bedroom for Greg once he was old enough, which is what happened. Or possibly planning that he wouldn't need a housekeeper eventually and Greg could move into Alice's room.

[Anonymous]

I love this thread!

[Anonymous]

She was definitely real!!! But, the Bradys managed to get the network to pay for her salary.

[Anonymous]

I loved it because they got to live in Southern California. It seemed so exotic to me.

[Anonymous]

Didn't Alice substitute her income by growing weed behind the garage and selling it to the kids next door?

[Anonymous]

I can't remember if it was ever revealed much about the kind of projects Mike worked on. But I'd have to believe that even at that time, architects could make decent money, depending on the times of buildings they were designing.

Was it also ever revealed exactly where in CA they lived?

The biggest thing that I envied about the sitcoms from that era is that despite the high-powered jobs that some of them had (Cosby Show, etc), they weren't that stressed and never seemed to have to work TOO many hours. Pretty nice lives.

[Anonymous]

I just realized "Alice" was not the name of a dead rejoined child.

[Anonymous]

Go ask Alice, I think she' ll know.

[Anonymous]

I think it's the second episode when the boys are moving their stuff into one room and the girls into the other. It was supposedly Mike's house. The pilot I think showed a different house, but then they used the same house every time. I would just even pass to be Carol and do all Alice's stuff. Work and home life without Alice is too much.

[Anonymous]

Remember: It was a different time back then, it was the early seventies when a man could work, bring home the bacon and feed eight people w/it while the mother could just do nothing and leave all the cooking/cleaning, etc. to the maid.

Aw....the good ol' days.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The real question is how did they have that big house with maids quarters, yet only 3 bedrooms upstairs.

I just thought this same thing. I was originally thinking it was a modest house with only 3 bedrooms, but then I remembered Alice's quarters, the den, the attic space...the LARGE family room, dining room, eat-in kitchen AND tv-watching room; oh and large foyer area...so it wasn't so modest maybe.

Don't architects make a lot of money?

Only a select few make a ton of money. Others are just making ends meet.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My husband and I were daydreaming about how we could make our lives with three small children and two full time jobs easier and more fulfilling and realized that what we really need is Alice from the Brady Bunch. How on earth did they afford that kind of wonderful and loving domestic help? [/b] They had normal jobs, [b]and weren't really old enough to have accumulated a ton of wealth. Maybe a really excellent life insurance policy on one of the deceased spouses?

Did the mom even work?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The real question is how did they have that big house with maids quarters, yet only 3 bedrooms upstairs.

The maids quarters was downstairs I think.

[Anonymous]

She volunteered so she could be a tv star.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The real question is how did they have that big house with maids quarters, yet only 3 bedrooms upstairs.

The maids quarters was downstairs I think.

Were not was!