Barry Williams(I)

Barry William Blenkhorn grew up in Santa Monica, California and, after he turned 4 years old, he became one of those annoying kids who were bound and determined to get into show business. He was neighbors with actor Peter Graves whom he idolized and asked for advice on how to become an actor and his response was that he just thought about it. At the age of 11, he changed his name from Barry William Blenkhorn to Barry Williams. He then got an acting coach and took some scene study courses in Sherman Oaks and took courses for film and television techniques which later he landed a lead role in an educational school industrial called "Why Johnny Can Read" and landed roles in TV commercials. Then he had guest roles in TV shows such as Match contre la vie (1965), Here Come the Brides (1968), Opération vol (1968), Docteur Marcus Welby (1969) and Mission impossible (1966), but then success came for him when he landed the role of "Greg Brady" in the blockbuster hit family sitcom series The Brady Bunch (1969). After the first season, he and his TV siblings made a Christmas album signed by Paramount Records which sold terribly as critics called them 6 kids who couldn't sing so Barry took singing lessons and released a single by the same record company called "Sweet Sweetheart" hoping to have a solo album released but producers thought he should wait for that moment while he was making records with his TV siblings as they made 3 more records, did summer tours and had their own animated TV series The Brady Kids (1972) on which some of their songs were featured. After the series ended in 1974, Barry started performing solo in concerts and then took up musical theatre and landed numerous successful roles in shows like "Pippin", "West Side Story", "Oklahoma", "Movie Star", "Grease", "The Music Man", "Romance/Romance", "City of Angels" and "The Sound of Music" and still did the odd acting appearance in front of the camera like in Sergent Anderson (1974), Vivre à trois (1976), Les routes du paradis (1984), Arabesque (1984), and a stint on the daytime soap Hôpital central (1963) and the MTV series S Club 7 à Hollywood (2001) as well as in all the "Brady Bunch" reunion shows. In 1978, he did try taking a shot at pursuing a solo career and signed up with Private Stock records but their label went out of business. However, in 1999, he did release a tribute album called "The Return of Johnny Bravo" doing cover songs that expressed him as a singer as well as celebrating 30 years of The Brady Bunch (1969). He continues to do musical theatre as well as touring with his music and public speaking.