Former ‘Brady’ on Christmas concert bill

David Renzi

Friday, Dec. 20, 1996 | 3:43 a.m.

If his second time on a Las Vegas stage is anything like his first, Barry Williams might be tempted to sing "Jingle Smells."

"We followed Edwina the elephant. She was piles of trouble for us," he says, recalling his Vegas debut at the 1973 Associated Guild of Variety Artists Awards show at Caesars Palace, hosted by Ed Sullivan.

Williams was a member of "The Brady Bunch" then, the oldest of Carol and Mike's TV brood that somehow formed a family and occasionally bolted the confines of the box to sing live.

This time the erstwhile Greg Brady will find himself sharing the stage with pianist Giovanni and the Las Vegas Academy Holiday Choir for a pair of Christmas concerts.

"I'm singing a medley of 'Jingle Bell Rock' and 'Rockin' Round the Christmas Tree,'" Williams says.

The 68-member choir from the Las Vegas Academy will join him for a rendition of "Silent Night."

Despite his previous engagement here 23 years ago, "this will be the first time my name is spinning around on a marquee on the Strip," he says.

But his name has been popping up in a variety of places in the last six months. He filmed an episode of a new show called "Perversions of Science," a "Tales From the Crypt" spinoff starring Patrick Cassidy, and sung the national anthem before a New York Knicks game at Madison Square Garden over Thanksgiving weekend.

"Most of my work is in musical theater," says Williams, who has appeared on Broadway.

He last toured with the show "City of Angels," and his most recent stage production was "Man of La Mancha" in Palm Springs, Calif.

"I love music. I prefer the excitement of live and on stage. I've done a great deal of that with the theater. It's thrilling," he says of live performing. "You have more control, no editor and no second take."

Williams also travels the country with his one-man show, which he performs at colleges and corporate parties. He describes it as a live version of his book, "Growing Up Brady," a best-selling, tell-all account of his years on the show. His one-man show contains video outtakes from "The Brady Bunch," costumes and Williams' singing and storytelling.

Williams sees his former television brothers and sisters several times a year and talks with them every five or six weeks.

His report:

* Susan Olsen, who played youngest daughter Cindy, has taken time off from her gig as a radio talk show host in Los Angeles to take care of her first baby.

* Eve Plumb, who played middle daughter Jan, is-was hosting the Saturday morning television show "Fudge."

* Maureen McCormick, who played oldest daughter Marsha, did a TV movie for the Fox network and cut a country album last year.

* Christopher Knight, who played middle son Peter, is out of show business and in the computer business.

* Mike Lookinland, who played youngest son Bobby, owns a Salt Lake City company that supplies film for production companies shooting in the area.

Williams is ambivalent about "The Brady Bunch Movie" and "A Very Brady Sequel," which spoofed the television show.

"I have to say that, as an audience member, I enjoyed the first movie. The only problem I had was with the characters. What they did to the characters was the one thing our producer, Sherwood Schwartz, wanted to avoid like the plague. They reduced them down to one-dimensional personalities.

"We had heightened kinds of plots we had to deal with, and we always tried to deal with them in an honest way for the period and the time. The movie satirizes them, which I like, but made caricatures out of the characters."

Not unlike David Cassidy, his "Partridge Family" contemporary, Williams says that he too found it difficult to get work after "The Brady Bunch" went off the air. Directors heard the name Barry Williams and immediately thought Greg Brady.

Williams is philosophical about it.

"It worked both pro and con," he says. "I can't do anybody else's thinking, so I just put my head down and kept going. The doors were closed before there was any kind of identification with a particular character. It's always been tough. By the way, typecasting is not limited to David Cassidy and Barry Williams.

"You could go right down the line with the biggest stars, from Sally Field and 'The Flying Nun' to Sylvester Stallone wanting to do a romantic-comedy. Leslie Nielsen for years couldn't do comedy because he was identified as a dramatic actor, and Cher couldn't get a job as an actress because she was a singer. It's the nature of the beast."