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Florence Henderson biography

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Actress Florence Henderson played Carol Brady, the mom of a blended family with six children, on The Brady Bunch sitcom.

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Actress Florence Henderson was born on February 14, 1934, in Dale, Indiana. She appeared on Broadway and also starred in the national tour of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma. Henderson was The Tonight Show’s first female guest host. In 1969 she landed the role that made her famous, Carol Brady on The Brady Bunch. The sitcom ran for five years. Starting in 2008, she hosted The Florence Henderson Show.

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Actress. Born February 14, 1934 in Dale, Indiana. The youngest of ten children, Henderson began performing at an early age. She attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, and quickly started a successful theater career. Rodgers & Hammerstein selected her for the lead in the national tour of Oklahoma, and she appeared on Broadway in Noel Coward's The Girl Who Came to Supper.

In 1970 she made her first feature film, The Song of Norway and she was a regular guest on variety and talk shows with Ed Sullivan, Merv Griffin, Steve Allen, and Dean Martin. Henderson holds the distinction of being the first woman ever to guest host The Tonight Show.

The role for which Henderson is most famous came in 1969. For five years, she played the quintessential sitcom mom Carol Brady on TV's The Brady Bunch. The show was a hit, and became increasingly popular in re-runs. It is now considered a cultural icon of the 70s, spawning two feature "spoof" films in the mid-90s.

Since then, Henderson worked as a producer on the Nashville Network's Country Kitchen for nine seasons, and guest starred on numerous sitcoms, including Roseanne, and as a recurring character on Dave's World. In 1999, Henderson joined NBC News as cohost of the morning show Later Today.

In 2008 Henderson became the host of her own show, The Florence Henderson Show which was nominated for an Emmy in 2010.

Henderson has four children, Barbara, Lizzie, Joseph, and Robert, with her first husband Ira Bernstein, to whom she was married from 1955 to 1985. She married hypnotherapist John Kappas in 1987. He passed away in 2002.

© 2012 A&E Television Networks. All rights reserved.

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