Housekeeper Alice of The Brady Bunch
Emmy-winning actress Ann B. Davis, who became the country’s favorite and most famous housekeeper as the devoted Alice Nelson of The Brady Bunch, died Sunday at a San Antonio hospital. She was 88.
Bexar County, Texas, medical examiner’s investigator Sara Horne said Davis died Sunday morning at University Hospital. Horne said no cause of death was available and that an autopsy was planned today.
Bill Frey, a retired bishop and a longtime friend of Davis, said she suffered a fall Saturday at her San Antonio home and never recovered. Frey said Davis had lived with him and his wife, Barbara, since 1976.
More than a decade before scoring as the Bradys’ loyal Alice, Davis was the razor-tongued secretary on another stalwart TV sitcom, The Bob Cummings Show, which brought her two Emmys. Over the years, she also appeared on Broadway and in occasional movies.
Davis considered her ordinary look an asset.
“I know at least a couple hundred glamour gals who are starving in this town,” she told the Los Angeles Times in 1955, the year the Cummings show began its four-year run. “I’d rather be myself and eating.”
The Brady Bunch debuted in 1969 and aired for five years. It has lived on in reruns and sequels.