TV Legend Schwartz Dies at 94
Wednesday, July 13, 2011 at 7:01AM He was one of the most interesting men in the television industry for decades.
I'm talking about Scherwood Schwartz.
Sherwood Schwartz, who created "Gilligan's Island" and "The Brady Bunch," two of the most affectionately ridiculed and enduring television sitcoms of the 1960s and '70s, died Tuesday in Los Angeles. He was 94.
His death was announced by the Archive of American Television.
Mr. Schwartz weathered dismissive reviews to see his shows prosper and live on for decades in syndication. Many critics suggested that they were successful because they ran counter to the tumultuous times in which they appeared: the era of the Vietnam War and sweeping social change.
Give or take a month or so, the original network run of "The Brady Bunch" coincided with two major upheavals in U.S. society. The show, about a squeaky-clean blended family in California, began in 1969, shortly after Woodstock, and ended in 1974, soon after President Richard Nixon's resignation following the Watergate scandal.
Sherwood Charles Schwartz was born in Passaic, N.J., on Nov. 4, 1916. He grew up in Brooklyn and was a premed student at New York University. After receiving his bachelor's degree, he moved to Los Angeles to attend graduate school at the University of Southern California, but the master's he earned in biological sciences was never put to use.
After World War II, during which Mr. Schwartz wrote for Armed Forces Radio, he became a writer for "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet," which was then on the radio. He made the transition to television in the 1950s with the sitcom "I Married Joan" and "The Red Skelton Show," for which he became head writer. In 1961 he shared an Emmy Award with his brother, Skelton and two other writers for the show.
Mr. Schwartz's survivors include his wife, Mildred; three sons, Donald, Lloyd and Ross Schwartz; and a daughter, Hope Juber.
