Brady Bunch Housekeeper Ann B. Davis Dead at 88

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3:40 PM PDT 6/1/2014

by Mike Barnes
The Hollywood Reporter
Ann B. Davis 'Brady Bunch' - P 2014
Everett Collection
Ann B. Davis on “The Brady Bunch”

The actress was best known as the ever-chipper live-in housekeeper Alice Nelson on the highly rated ABC series.

Ann B. Davis, best known as the ever-chipper live-in housekeeper Alice Nelson on the highly rated ABC series The Brady Bunch,has died in San Antonio, her close friend close friend Bishop William Frey told CNN. She was 88.

Davis, who earlier won two Emmy Awards for her role as the peppery secretary Schultzy onThe Bob Cummings Show, died Sunday after a fall in her bathroom, CNN reported, adding that she hit her head and never regained consciousness.

The Brady Bunch, created by SherwoodSchwartz, originally aired from September 1969 to March 1974 on ABC, then spent a year in syndication, followed by several reunion films and spinoff series.

It’s the story of Mike Brady (Robert Reed), a widowed architect with three sons — Greg (Barry Williams), Peter (ChristopherKnight), and Bobby (Mike Lookinland) — who marries Carol Ann Martin (Florence Henderson), who has three daughters: Marcia (Maureen McCormick), Jan (Eve Plumb) and Cindy (SusaOlsen).

Davis played the housekeeper Alice on the sitcom and occupied the center square of the checkerboard in the show’s opening.

Davis, who was an avid knitter, told People magazine in a 1992 interview that the cast “got along beautifully. … “I had the boys hooking rugs and the girls doing needlepoint.” She said in the story that in real life, “I basically don’t do that well with children.”

The Bob Cummings Show (also known as Love That Bob), starred Cummings as Bob Collins, a Hollywood photographer and ladies’ man. The first show to debut as a midseason replacement, it debuted on NBC in January 1955, jumped to CBS and then finished its five-season run back on NBC in September 1959.

Davis played Bob’s infatuated and hilarious young secretary on the show and won best supporting Emmys in 1958 and 1959 for her work after being nominated the previous two years.

Davis also had a regular role as the never-been-kissed physical education teacher Miss Wilson on NBC’s short-lived 1965-66 series The John Forsythe Show.

Her last credit came in 1997 in a guest role on the sitcom Something So Right.

Born in Schenectady, N.Y., Davis studied pre-med at the University of Michigan but decided to become an actress after seeing her older brother performing in a production of Oklahoma!

Her early TV appearances including stops on musical variety shows hosted by Keefe BrassellePerry Como and Arthur Murray.

In 1994, her collection of 280 recipes that were actually prepared for her most famous series, Alice’s Brady Bunch Cookbook, was published.

 

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/ann-b-davis-brady-bunch-708536

 

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