Maureen McCormick ended up finding herself in the middle of the ABC sitcom “Happy Days after her run on “The Brady Bunch” finished.
McCormick, who played the oldest sister Marcia Brady, appears on a second-season episode of “Happy Days.” The episode is called “Cruisin'” and has Richie, Potsie, and Ralph out looking for girls.
Ron Howard played Richie Cunningham, Anson Williams played Potsie, and Don Most played Ralph.
They are rolling through the streets, though, in Howard Cunningham’s DeSoto. Marion Cunningham took Richie’s car out to the store but got a dent in it. Plan B for the crew was “Mr. C’s” own car. Tom Bosley played Howard and Marion Ross played Marion on “Happy Days.”
Maureen McCormick Played Hildie On ‘Happy Days’ Episode
Now McCormick plays Hildie, one of three girls that the guys come across near the local pharmacy. She asks one of the three dudes to come to help her with a lock at her house. Potsie said he would and off they go. Hildie brings two of her friends along and the entire night looks set.
But they come across members of the “Dragons” gang that happen to be the three girls’ boyfriends. While talking with one of them, Fonzie, played by Henry Winkler, shows up and puts down a drag race challenge.
It’s a showdown on “Happy Days” for the ages. Well, maybe for just a half-hour sitcom.
The prize? The winner gest the girls. So “The Fonz” gets two of his buddies together, they go back to the garage and fix up the DeSoto on the “Happy Days” episode.
Who wins? Richie does, of course. Yet he, Potsie, and Ralph end up being disappointed because they find out that they were being used to make the girls’ boyfriends feel jealous. The guys’ great plans went down the drain.
McCormick’s appearance is on a “Happy Days” episode filmed on its own. There was a period of time before the show was actually filmed before a studio audience.
McCormick Dealt With Drug Abuse Demons In Her Life
While McCormick continued to find work after “The Brady Bunch” ended, one thing that kept haunting her life was drug addiction.
Her parents threatened to turn her into the police if they found her high one more time. Yet it was the threat from someone even more special to McCormick that started her on the road to sobriety.
“[I] met this guy — it was before we were married and we were just dating — and I had my last relapse,” she said referring to Michael Cummings. “[And] he came to me, and he said, ‘If you ever do this drug again, I’m gone, I’m leaving.’ It woke me up. It was like the coldest shower you could ever take; there’s just no way I’m gonna lose somebody that I love.”
McCormick started facing up issues that afflict both drug addicts and alcoholics. She married Cummings in 1985 and has been with him ever since that year. She remains sober to this day, too.
