Florence Agnes Henderson (February 14, 1934 – November 24, 2016) was an American singer and actress. With a career spanning six decades, she is best known for her starring role as Carol Brady on the ABC sitcom The Brady Bunch. Henderson also appeared in film, as well as on stage, and hosted several long-running cooking and variety shows over the years. She appeared as a guest on many scripted and unscripted (talk and reality show) television programs and as a panelist on numerous game shows. Henderson was also a contestant on Dancing with the Stars in 2010.
Henderson hosted her own talk show, The Florence Henderson Show, and cooking show, Who's Cooking with Florence Henderson, on Retirement Living TV during the years leading up to her death at age 82 on Thanksgiving 2016 from heart failure.
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Early life
Henderson, the youngest of 10 children, was born on February 14, 1934, in Dale, Indiana, a small town in the southwestern part of the state. She was a daughter of Elizabeth (née Elder), a homemaker, and Joseph Henderson, a tobacco sharecropper. During the Great Depression, she was taught to sing at the age of two by her mother, who had a repertoire of 50 songs. By the time she was eight, her family called her "Florency," and by age 12, she was singing at local grocery stores.
Henderson graduated from St. Francis Academy in Owensboro, Kentucky, in 1951 and shortly thereafter went to New York City, enrolling in the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. She was an Alumna Initiate of the Alpha Chi chapter of Delta Zeta sorority.
Career
Henderson started her career on the stage performing in musicals, such as the touring production of Oklahoma! and South Pacific at Lincoln Center.
She debuted on Broadway in the musical Wish You Were Here in 1952, and later starred on Broadway in the long-running 1954 musical, Fanny (888 performances) in which she originated the title role. Henderson appeared with Gordon MacRae in the Oklahoma! segment of the 90-minute television special General Foods 25th Anniversary Show: A Salute to Rodgers and Hammerstein (1954). She later appeared in "The Abbe and the Nymph", an episode of the 1950s TV series I Spy (not to be confused with the 1960s series of the same name). She also portrayed Meg March in a CBS-TV musical adaptation of Little Women, which aired October 16, 1958.
Henderson appeared in two episodes of The United States Steel Hour. She portrayed Mary Jane in an episodic adaptation of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which aired on November 20, 1957. She also appeared in "A Family Alliance", an episodic adaptation of a short story from A Harvest of Stories (1956) by Dorothy Canfield Fisher, which aired on June 4, 1958.
Henderson, along with Bill Hayes, appeared in the Oldsmobile commercials from 1958 through 1961 on The Patti Page Show for which Oldsmobile was the sponsor. In 1959, she sang "Don't Let a Be-Back Get Away", in Good News About Olds, an industrial musical for Oldsmobile. Bill Hayes and she also gave a musical performance on the January 13, 1960, broadcast of Tonight Starring Jack Paar. Henderson also appeared on Broadway in The Girl Who Came to Supper (1963).
In 1962, she won the Sarah Siddons Award for her work in Chicago theater, and the same year became the first woman to guest host The Tonight Show in the period after Jack Paar left as the show's host, and before Johnny Carson began his 30 years as the show's longest serving host in October 1962. She also joined the ranks of what was then called The Today Girl and often substituted for Dave Garroway on NBC's long-running morning show, doing weather and light news, a position also once held by Barbara Walters.
She gave later musical performances on Paar's subsequent talk show in 1963, including the January 25 and February 22 broadcasts. She performed in the May 19, 1963, broadcast of The Voice of Firestone, alongside baritone Mario Sereni. She also released her albums under RCA Victor as part of her music career.
Charity appearances
In the 2000s, Henderson became a public benefactor to the Sisters of St. Benedict in Ferdinand, Indiana. Some of the nuns there had been early educators of Henderson. She appeared in a number of their promotional videos and helped in fundraising efforts. She won money for the sisters on the game show Weakest Link and on a classic television-themed episode of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire in 2001, winning $32,000 in their name. When Henderson appeared on The Surreal Life, she refused to wear a nun's habit in a comedy skit.
Personal life
Henderson married her first husband, Ira Bernstein, in 1956. They had four children together before divorcing in 1985. Three of the children worked in show business, with her oldest daughter Barbara Bernstein appearing in three episodes of The Brady Bunch. In 1987, she married her second husband, hypnotherapist Dr. John George Kappas, whom she had met when he treated her for depression and stage fright in the early 1980s. They remained married until his death in 2002. Henderson had five grandchildren.
Death
Henderson died on November 24, 2016, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California, at the age of 82. She had been hospitalized the previous day. According to her manager, Kayla Pressman, Henderson died of heart failure. Three days before her death, Henderson had attended the recording of Dancing with the Stars to support her friend and former on-screen daughter Maureen McCormick, who was a contestant. Pressman stated that Henderson was not ill prior to her sudden hospitalization and that her death was a "shock". She was cremated, and her ashes interred at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles.
Awards
At the 33rd Annual Gracie Awards Gala (2008), Henderson won an Individual Achievement Award and an Outstanding Host (Information or Entertainment) for The Florence Henderson Show.
She won another Outstanding Host (Information or Entertainment) at the 37th Annual Gracie Awards Gala (2012) for co-hosting Good Food, Good Deeds.
A 1+1⁄16-mile (1.7 km) turf horse race for 3-year old and older fillies and mares born and bred in Indiana held at Indiana Grand Racing & Casino since 2004 is named in her honor, the Florence Henderson Stakes, on the Tuesday after Labor Day in September.
Selected filmography
Book
Henderson, Florence (September 20, 2011). Life Is Not a Stage: From Broadway Baby to a Lovely Lady and Beyond. Center Street. ISBN 978-1-599-95388-5.