Florence Henderson

At 82 years old, Florence Henderson has this physical status:

Florence Agnes Henderson (February 14, 1934 – November 24, 2016) was an American actress and singer with a career spanning six decades.

Carol Brady appeared on ABC's The Brady Bunch from 1969 to 1974, and she is best known for her role as Sherry Brady.

Henderson has appeared in film, as well as on stage, and has hosted many long-running cooking and variety shows over the years.

She appeared on several scripted and unscripted (talk and reality show) television shows and as a panelist on several game shows.

In 2010, she was a contestant on Dancing with the Stars.

Henderson hosted her own talk show The Florence Henderson Show and cooking show Who's Cooking with Florence Henderson on Retirement Living TV during the years leading up to her death at the age of 82 on Thanksgiving Day 2016.

Early life

Henderson, the youngest of ten children, was born in Dale, Indiana, a small town in the state's southwestern area. She was the niece of Elizabeth (née Elder), a homemaker, and Joseph Henderson, a tobacco sharecropper. She was taught to sing at the age of two by her mother, who had a collection of 50 songs, during the Great Depression. By the time she was eight years old, her family had dubbed her "Florency" and by the time she was 12, she was performing at local grocery stores.

Henderson graduated from St. Francis Academy in Owensboro, Kentucky, in 1951, and immediately thereafter, he moved to New York City, enrolling in the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. She was a member of the Alpha Chi chapter of Delta Zeta sorority, and was an Alumna Initiate.

Personal life

Ira Bernstein, Henderson's first husband, married her in 1956. They had four children together before divorcing in 1985. She married her second husband, hypnotherapist Dr. John George Kappas, who she had met in 1988 when he treated her for depression and stage fright. They were married until his death in 2002. Henderson had five grandchildren.

Source

Career

Henderson began her career on stage, including the touring version of Oklahoma! Lincoln Center and South Pacific.

She appeared in the Broadway comedy Wish You Were Here in 1952 and then appeared in the long-running 1954 film Fanny (888 performances), in which she starred in the title role. Henderson appeared with Gordon MacRae in the Oklahoma! A salute to Rodgers and Hammerstein (1954), a segment of the 90-minute television special "A Salute to Rodgers and Hammerstein (1954). She later appeared on "The Abbe and the Nymph," an episode of the 1950s TV series I Spy (not to be confused with the 1960s series of the same name). In a CBS-TV musical adaptation of Little Women, she also portrayed Meg March.

Henderson appeared in two episodes of The United States Steel Hour. In an episodic adaptation of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which aired on November 20, 1957, she portrayed Mary Jane. She appeared on "A Family Alliance," an episodic adaptation of a short story by Dorothy Canfield Fisher (1956), which aired on June 4, 1958.

Henderson and Bill Hayes appeared in Oldsmobile commercials from 1958 to 1961, which Oldsmobile was the sponsor. In Good News About Olds, an oldsmobile production, she performed "Don't Let a Be-Back Get Away" in 1959. Bill Hayes and she gave a live broadcast of Tonight Starring Jack Paar on January 13, 1960. Henderson appeared on Broadway in The Girl Who Came to Supper (1963).

She received the Sarah Siddons Award in 1962 for her work in Chicago, and in the same year, she became the first woman to host The Tonight Show in the period after Jack Paar left as the show's host, and before Johnny Carson took over in 1962 as the show's longest serving host. She also joined The Today Girl on NBC's long-running morning show, covering weather and light news, which was previously unhearded by Barbara Walters.

She appeared on Paar's new talk show in 1963, as well as the January 25 and February 22 broadcasts. Baritone Mario Sereni appeared in The Voice of Firestone, a television broadcast from May 19, 1963. As part of her music career, she also released her albums under RCA Victor.

Carol Brady appeared in The Brady Bunch, the ABC's most well-known program, from 1969 to 1974. Shirley Jones, Henderson's best friend, had turned down the role, but Shirley Partridge, the narrator of The Partridge Family, which aired from 1970 to 1974, assumed the same role.

Henderson was ranked 54 on their list of the 100 Greatest TV Icons by TV Land and Entertainment Weekly, owing to her appearance on The Brady Bunch.

Henderson, a lifelong game-show fan and a regular panelist on Hollywood Squares, appeared on The $25,000 Pyramid on occasion. Password, the original Match Game, What's My Line (as a panelist and a mystery visitor), and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? On the original Family Feud's All-Star weeks, she appeared alongside Brady Bunch co-star Robert Reed on the John Davidson-hosted version of Hollywood Squares, where they finished in second place.

Henderson was the spokeswoman for Wesson cooking oil from 1974 to 1996. During this time, she hosted a cooking show on TNN, Country Kitchen, and created Prange's, a Wisconsin department store chain. With Jodi Applegate and Asha Blake, Henderson co-hosted the short-lived NBC morning talk show Later Today (1999–2000).

She was the spokeswoman for Polident in the 2000s. Henderson played a Pepsi Twist television commercial with Ozzy Osbourne in 2003.

Henderson also appeared on television as she did with Christopher Knight on the reality television program My Fair Brady. She appeared on VH1's The Surreal Life in its sixth season.

Henderson will perform "God Bless America" at the Indianapolis 500, accompanied by the Purdue All-American Marching Band, at the behest of the Hulman-George family, the owners of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and acquaintances of Henderson's.

She appeared in the "Weird Al" Yankovic video for "Amish Paradise." She made a memorable guest appearance on improvisational comedy show Whose Line Is It Anyway? in 2002, when she appeared in on-screen kisses with Ryan Stiles and Colin Mochrie.

Henderson co-hosted the daily talk show Living Live with former Designing Women actress Meshachach Taylor on Retirement Living TV from 2007 to 2009. The show was reworked to concentrate on her and was renamed The Florence Henderson Exhibition. In 2010, the show was nominated for an Emmy award. Henderson produced a series of Fox radio spots in May 2010. Henderson appeared on WWE Raw's night 10 on July 12, 2010, as the evening's guest host.

Henderson was one of 12 celebrities competing on Dancing with the Stars' 11th season, which premiered on September 20, 2010. Corky Ballas, the father of two-time champion Mark Ballas, was her professional partner. She was the fifth contestant eliminated on October 19, 2010.

In the episode "The Boys In Me" of The Cleveland Show, which first aired on March 25, 2012, Henderson appeared as Barbara, Cleveland Brown's childhood nanny. A depressed and confused Cleveland performs a parody version of his show's theme before Barbara interjects and convinces Cleveland that it doesn't matter who he is or what others perceive him to be as long as he accepts himself for who and what he is. "Florence Henderson, everybody!" Cleveland says at the end of the episode.

Henderson made a special appearance in a special Mother's Day episode on The Price Is Right on May 11, 2012, with Drew Carey, showcasing awards, as well as one of the exhibits.

On Retirement Living TV, she began hosting a cooking show, Who's Cooking with Florence Henderson in February 2013. Mrs. America and Mrs. World were two of the beauty pageants on television at Henderson.

Henderson became a public benefactor to the Sisters of St. Benedict in Ferdinand, Indiana, in the 2000s. Any of the nuns had been early educators of Henderson, as had been Stephen. She appeared in several of their promotional videos and supported fundraising efforts. She won money for the sisters on the game show Weakest Link and on a classic television-themed episode of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire in 2001, winning $32,000. Henderson refused to wear a nun's habit in a comedy skit when she appeared on The Surreal Life.

Source