To print this page, select "Print" from the File menu of your browser salon.com > People July 20, 1999 URL: http://www.salon.com/people/col/reit/1999/07/20/brady Actress comes clean: Porn stardom a dirty rumor Former Brady Buncher claims she's still alive; Groucho on abstinence; Marilyn Manson not a nerd. Plus: Madonna's peekaboo breast. - - - - - - - - - - - - By Amy Reiter Cindy Brady (aka "the youngest one in curls") is not a porn star. Nor was "The Brady Bunch"'s thweet little lithper dragged to death by a bus, dethpite what you may have heard. In fact, Susan Olsen, the actress who helped make "Baby talk, baby talk, it's a wonder you can walk" a household phrase (at least in my household), is now 37 years old, married to a salesman and finding fulfillment as a stay-at-home mom. She's also helping TV Guide, in a delicious delve into the wacky world of TV myths, dispel the rampant rumors about her alleged post-Brady misadventures. The story that she met an untimely end after her coat got caught in a bus (where was heroic Peter to save the day?) started in the '70s, she tells the tube-watchers bible, when someone else with her name did suffer such an accident. But the rumors don't bother her a bit. "I always liked being rumored to be dead, because it put me in company with, like, Paul McCartney," says Olsen. "If you watch one of the 'Brady Bunch' episodes backwards, you can hear Greg saying, 'I buried Cindy.'" And TV Guide attributes those porn-star rumors to an Olsen look-alike who starred in 1996's X-rated "Crocodile Blondee." Other shocking revelations: While Madonna's right breast does make a surprise bustier-busting guest appearance in her "Papa Don't Preach" video and Groucho Marx did really tell a woman with 22 kids who said she loved her husband, "I love my cigar, too, but I take it out of my mouth once in a while" (the comment was never aired), Marilyn Manson is not nerdy Paul from "The Wonder Years" (although they could have been separated at birth) and the magazine deems it highly unlikely that, when asked "Where's the strangest place you ever made whoopee?" a "Newlywed Game" contestant replied, "That would be in the butt, Bob." OK, yeah, but Mikey really died from eating Pop Rocks and drinking a Coke, right? - - - - - - - - - - - - B-B-B-Elton and the Jets "The only long-term effect of the heart problem is that I have to carry a card explaining why I set off the alarms when I walk through airport security." -- Sir Elton John on his most recent snazzy accessory: a pacemaker - - - - - - - - - - - - Princess Diana: Soap star? Commandment No. 11: Thou shalt not take Princess Diana's name in vain, even if everyone else does. Especially if you're a smarmy new daytime drama. NBC's taking more hits than Prince Charles in a polo match over its decision to write dead Di into its new soap opera, "Passions." The story line, in which a character gets into a car crash in the same Paris tunnel in which Diana died and is subsequently visited by the ghost of the late princess, has not only ticked off viewers (even soap opera fans have their standards of decency, it seems) but also incited a furious royal flush or two. Prince Charles' cousin Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia told Soap Opera Weekly that she found the use of Diana's name to be "in exceedingly bad taste" and "totally inappropriate." (Given her country's woes, you'd think she'd have more important matters than soap plots to deal with, but hey, guess there's no accounting for princesstral priorities.) "To exploit other people's pain is always awful," she said. "To make money on someone who died like that is disgusting.'' The show's producers say they meant it as a tribute. Didn't anyone tell them they could exploit Diana's image all they wanted, provided they uttered the secret password: charity? - - - - - - - - - - - - If the show don't fit, it must be about zip ... "I go to the same barber shop as [Johnnie] Cochran, and he's given me his full support." -- Actor Phil Morris on a certain well-known lawyer's reaction to the prospect of being continuously lampooned in what may be the first "Seinfeld" spinoff, "The Jackie Chiles Show" - - - - - - - - - - - - Juicy bits Just when you thought the search for a convincing Bond was over, at least for a while, Pierce Brosnan goes and decides to shake (not stir) things up. Brosnan told the Sunday Times that he's hanging up his spy gear after his fourth turn as everyone's second-favorite suave spy (face it, Austin Powers' chest hair is ever so much shaggier) so as to take on other roles and avoid being typecast. Right, because who'd want to get a rep for being an irresistibly sexy spy capable of extricating himself from the most dangerous situations and saving the world without ever mussing his designer suit? Hey, look. Maybe that's the way you people do things in Alaska, but here in D.C., Mr. Young, it might behoove you to be mindful of those pesky little C-SPAN cameras. The staff members of House Resources Chairman Don Young, a Republican from Alaska, have had some 'splaining to do after Young was caught on TV flipping the bird to a couple of Democrats during a heated debate about funding for hunting traps on the House floor last week. An aide for Young told Capitol Hill's Roll Call that Reps. Jim Moran, D-Va., and Sam Farr, D-Calif., ticked off Rep. Young by playing with a hunting trap on the floor and "acting kind of childish ... He wanted to show them that he didn't appreciate the way they were acting." Yeah, well, they're rubber, you're glue ... Until he gets a handle on his anger, Rep. Young might not be welcome in stuck-in-the-Summer-of-Love Santa Cruz, Calif. The coastal town's blissed-out sun worshipers are contemplating a law rendering hatred illegal. If a group of signature-collecting activists gets its way, residents will vote to declare Santa Cruz an official "hate-free zone" in March 2000. "Hate is like litter," the group's spokesman, David Minton Silva, told the San Jose Mercury News last week. "Our city is a beautiful place to come, but leave your hate at the city limits and just enjoy yourself." Smile -- it's the law. salon.com | July 20, 1999