ABOUT LLOYD J. SCHWARTZ (PLAYWRIGHT)
Besides his extensive career in all media, Lloyd J. Schwartz and his father, Sherwood Schwartz, were one of the only…if not the only…father-son producing teams in television. Having been raised in a show-business family, the younger Schwartz began his own career as a writer for “Love: American Style” and “Alice” and as part of a white/black comedy team while still in college at UCLA. By that time he had already been a dialogue coach on the series “It’s About Time” and “Gilligan’s Island.” When that position opened on “The Brady Bunch,” he signed on. During the five-year run of that iconic series, Schwartz moved to associate producer, director and producer. At age 25, he was the youngest producer in network television.
After “The Brady Bunch” Sherwood and Lloyd co-created and produced “Big John, Little John,” a Saturday morning show for NBC. He became a network executive at ABC and supervised four of the top five shows in the country: “Happy Days,” “Laverne and Shirley,” “What’s Happening!!” and “Three’s Company.” Schwartz then became the producer of “What’s Happening!!” and created “Harper Valley P.T.A.” with Sherwood for television. This was followed by a tenure as head of comedy development at Paramount TV.
Completing a Brady tour of the major networks, Lloyd was executive producer and co-writer of the “The Brady Bunch in the White House” on Fox which he co-wrote with Hope. He received an Emmy nomination for “Still Brady After All These Years,” the 35th Anniversary special produced for TV Land. Interspersed with all of his Brady and Gilligan activities, he wrote the pilot for “The Munsters Today” and served as executive producer and wrote episodes of “The A Team,” “Alice,” “Love Boat,” “Baywatch” and other series.
Lloyd has had 34 produced plays. With Wendell Burton, he co-wrote “The Nearlyweds,” considered the first play specifically written for dinner theatre. He won Valley Theatre League Awards for best comedy for “Much A Dieux” and for best lyrics and book for his musical “You & Me.” Two of his historical plays, “The Great Adventure,” about Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, and “An Evening with John Wilkes Booth,” have enjoyed great acclaim. Lloyd has developed his John Wilkes Booth play into a miniseries, which was sold to CBS as “The Brothers Booth.”
In June of 2008, “A Very Brady Musical” debuted at Theatre West. It is co-written with Hope Juber, has words and music by Hope and Laurence Juber, and was directed by Lloyd and won seven Valley Theatre Awards including best production and best director and is slated to be in Las Vegas in the near future.
With his wife, Barbara, Lloyd co-founded The Storybook Theatre of Los Angeles thirty-five years ago, and has written, composed, and/or directed all 18 of their original productions. A Storybook Theatre play has been running constantly for over three decades at Theatre West. He has personally won 20 Valley Theatre League Awards for those shows, and he and his wife have been honored by the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House of Representatives and the City of Los Angeles for their contributions to the youth of Los Angeles as well as winning one of the inaugural Red Carpet Awards from Women in Theatre. In 2009, “Los Angeles Magazine” named Storybook Theatre the best children’s theatre in the city.
In 2017, Lloyd re-introduced “An Evening with John Wilkes Booth” at the Hollywood Fringe Festival which he directed and won a producer’s award.