Florence Henderson, best known for playing Carol Brady on the television show, “The Brady Bunch,” wasn’t as wholesome as she’d have you believe.
After a one-night-stand in the 1960s with then mayor of New York City John Lindsay, Henderson contracted pubic lice, or crabs.
Now 77, Henderson tells the story in her memoir, “Life is Not a Stage,” due out in September according to Reuters. She was married at the time when she met up with Lindsay, a friend of hers, for drinks at the Beverly Hills Hotel.
“I was lonely,” she explains. “I knew it wasn’t the right thing to do. So, what did I do? I did it.” The “it” being “had sex with John Lindsay.”
When she woke up the next morning, she found “little black things” crawling all over her. A visit to the doctor got rid of the problem, and she received flowers and an apologetic note from Lindsay.
So what lesson did Henderson learn from her ordeal? Surely, something about not cheating on your spouse, doing the right thing, making good choices? Not exactly.
“Guess I learned the hard way that crabs do not discriminate but cross over all socioeconomic strata,” she writes in the book.
(Health officials working on STD test app, would enable users to urinate into cell phone)
She also addresses another romance with Barry Williams, 20 years her junior, who played her son Greg Brady on the classic show. She denies anything ever happened between the two, but does acknowledge that Williams “did have a serious crush,” which she “understood and helped him get past.”
And even if he had put the moves on her: “I would never have done it.”