The actress best remembered for playing the mother on The Brady Bunch shared a few new tidbits about her good friend, now-dead New York City mayor John Lindsay, in her upcoming biography.
Henderson, who portrayed cheery mom Carol Brady on the hit family sitcom, claims she caught crabs following a one-night fling with professional politician John Lindsay, who was the mayor of New York City at the time.
According to Reuters, Henderson, now 77, claims she got into bed with Lindsay after he put the moves on her over cocktails at the Beverly Hills Hotel.
Henderson, who was married at the time, says, “I was lonely. I knew it wasn’t the right thing to do.”
“So, what did I do? I did it,” she writes in “Life is Not a Stage,” set for publication in September.
According to her story, she returned home later that night and awoke the next day to a gruesome surprise: ‘little black things’ crawling all over her bed and body.
Henderson quickly dialed a doctor, who assisted her in eradicating the parasitic insects known as pubic lice.
Lindsay gave her flowers as well as an apologetic message.
Henderson, thankfully, learned from the experience in true Brady fashion.
“Guess I learned the hard way that crabs do not discriminate but cross over all socioeconomic strata,” Henderson writes. “He must have had quite the active life. What a way to put the kibosh on a relationship.”
Lindsay, who served as mayor of New York from 1966 to 1973, died in 2000. He was once a member of the United States Congress. In 1972, he ran for the Democratic presidential nomination for a short time. His 51-year-old wife died in 2004.
Henderson is most remembered for her role on The Brady Bunch, a sitcom about a blended family that aired from 1969 to 1974 and is still beloved across the world.
However, she barely devotes a chapter to that period of her life in the book, and she refutes the widely circulated rumor that she had an extramarital romance with Barry Williams, who portrayed her eldest adolescent stepson, Greg Brady.
She writes: ‘Barry did have a serious crush on me, which I understood and helped him get past.
‘Let us just say that if he had entertained a roll in the hay with me, I would never have done it.’
She says that despite their 20-year age gap, the two are still excellent friends.
