You can find out more details about his career here (NY Times) and here (Guardian).
Anybody growing in the Seventies felt the influence of Schwartz’s two major contributions to American Pop culture: Gilligan’s Island and The Brady Bunch which were both heavily syndicated by then. We drove my mother crazy watching Gilligan weekday afternoons. There’s something appealing to the huts, coconuts and lagoon to children. It was like the castaways were living in a giant treehouse! Why not? Gilligan and Skipper slept in hammocks.
A favorite reference/debate comes from a pair of favorite movies. I couldn’t find a short enough clip from Galaxy Quest so here’s the quote. The other is Dazed n’ Confused, the argument doesn’t come up until the girls are in the ladies’ room.
The Brady Bunch was more ‘insidious’ because it received complaints from both parents due to the reruns airing closer to dinner time. Looking back as an adult and learning about the context of when the show originally aired, Brady seems to be an anomaly for 1969 and even more by its end in 1974. How? More ‘realistic’ situations were the staple of American TV as All in the Family demonstrated. During dinner I stated how Brady today would more likely have parents being divorced and their marriage being a second (or third) attempt versus the more acceptable widowed scenario of the late Sixties. Divorce happened back then, it was taboo.
This show’s appeal is a mystery to me. I know it enthralled me as a kid. Looking back though, I can’t explain it well. The characters had rather mundane adventures after you remove the trip to Hawaii, the Grand Canyon, Rosie Grier and Davy Jones episodes. Maybe a bigger aficionado will gladly give an explanation here.
Brady certainly lent itself to parody more easily as the first movie did; Gary Cole’s caricature of Mr. Brady is what made it funny. The X-Files then had Scully, Doggett and Reyes investigate a something sinister in a house modeled after the trademarked family residence.