I always suspected that Jerry Houser was a good guy.  Jerry Who?  Oh, ye of little Brady knowledge!  Jerry Houser, the actor who portrayed Wally Logan, aka The Man Who Married Marcia Brady.  I’ve always thought that he is probably a very nice person.  Now, I know that the image an actor projects as a fictional character is often unrelated to the true nature of the human being who is speaking the lines.  Take Margaret Hamilton, for example, whom we remember as the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz.  Turns out she wasn’t evil (who knew?).  So just because Wally Logan always seemed like the best brother-in-law a family could have, it doesn’t mean that Jerry Houser must therefore be similar.  It’s just that his performances seemed endearingly genuine to me.  Thanks to Maureen McCormick’s new autobiography, Here’s the Story, I now know that my hunch was on the money.

Oh, you won’t hear much about Houser in the barrage of promotion and press coverage concerning this book.  No doubt you’ve heard a salacious detail or two (or three or four) by now, and whether it’s the nature of modern media or the provocation of a publisher that knows sleaze sells, most all of the publicity has taken a decidedly negative slant.  There’s little point in elaborating upon those details here.  But what’s struck me the most about what I’ve read and heard in all of the recent press is that the positive and redeeming part of Maureen’s story is being largely ignored.

I’ll be the first to admit that Here’s the Story isn’t likely to win any literary prizes, but there’s more here than the tabloid headlines would suggest.  Some of it is difficult to read, not because of the accounts of very un-Brady-like behavior but rather due to the pathos of an addict repeating the same mistake again, and again, and yet again.  Just when it seems like our autobiographer has pulled herself together, she descends into another self-indulgent relapse of destructive behavior.  By the time she began working on The Brady Brides, she was a total mess.  That’s when Jerry Houser came along.

At first he was smitten with her and sought a romantic relationship.  She soon decided they weren’t right for each other.  That was far from the end of things, however, as a sincere friendship evolved between the two.  He was concerned for her health.  He visited her regularly.  They took long walks and talked about their lives.  One night, he took her into a church, and…(hold your ears, Hollywood)…he prayed for her.  Out loud, even.  And soon he brought her to his home church, where she met the man she would marry in real life.  Nothing changed overnight, but it was the beginning of the end of an addict giving in to her addiction.  I would call Jerry Houser a genuinely good guy, wouldn’t you?

So rest assured, folks, it’s not just the story of a lovely lady who was binging, coking up, and sometimes hurled.  Like a prodigal daughter, this is also a tale of redemption.  You won’t hear about it from most every other media outlet, but take it from The Greg Brady Project:  Here’s the Story is ultimately an inspiring testimonial of how faith and commitment can overcome our darkest days.