The secret life of Marcia Brady

“Apologies to straight post-boomer guys everywhere,” said Andrew Sullivan on his blog, The Daily Dish. Contrary to published rumors, it turns out that “Maureen McCormick, who played Marcia on the Brady Bunch, did not, in fact, have a lesbian affair during the taping of the series with Jan,” her on-screen little sister.

McCormick, 51, has written a tell-all book called “Here’s the Story”—due to be published next year—about her experiences on the set of the 1970s sitcom. Her publisher says she reveals plenty of surprising tidbits about herself and the rest of the cast, but that a lesbian affair between her and Eve Plumb, who played Jan, isn’t one of them. “We are verifying that it is not true,” said Debbie Styer from the publicity department of HarperCollins imprint William Morrow, the book’s publisher.

This rumor wasn’t “the first time salacious details of behind-the-scenes sex have emerged in the years since the campy classic went off the air,” said Lukas Alpert in the New York Post. Ten years ago McCormick “hinted at a lesbian tryst between her and Plumb” when she told a radio host that she once had a crush on Plumb, and that the two had kissed. And in 1992, Barry Williams, who played Greg Brady, wrote in his memoir, "Growing Up Brady," that he had dalliances with both McCormick and “his on-screen mom,” Florence Henderson.

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My heavens, said Sarah Aarthun in the Charlotte, N.C., Observer. Life backstage did not exactly conform to the wholesome image projected on our TVs, now did it? “Well, it was the ‘70s!”