Ann B. Davis, the Emmy Award-winning actress best known as housekeeper and comedic foil Alice Nelson on "The Brady Bunch," has died. She was 88.
Davis, who appeared in all 117 episodes of the classic 1970s sitcom, died Sunday after falling a day earlier at her
home in San Antonio, Texas, the Los Angeles Times reported.
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"She was a wonderful, smart, funny woman," William Frey, a close friend and retired Episcopal bishop told the Times. Davis was living with Frey's family at the time of her death. "She was Alice."
Davis once said in an interview that she was surprised how popular "The Brady Bunch," which ran from 1969 to 1974, continued to be in syndication, where it generated enough interest for movies and television specials through the 1990s.
"Every once in a while I'll come across an episode, just flipping around the dial," Davis said in 1990, according to the Times. "I'll sit down and watch it 'cause I don't remember how it came out. And that makes it kind of fun. Some I recognize right away, some I literally don't remember having shot. It's amazing to me that it's lasted 20 years."
The popularity of Davis' character Alice overshadowed the television role she previously received the most acclaim for — playing Bob Cummings' wisecracking secretary in the comedy "The Bob Cummings Show,"
which ran from 1955 to 1959, according to The New York Times.
Davis won two Emmys for that part as Charmaine Schultz, the "lovesick spinsterish secretary" to her playboy Hollywood photographer.
Davis graduated from the University of Michigan 1948 with a degree in theater and moved to Los Angeles where a casting agent spotted her performing at a cabaret-coffeehouse and asked her to try out for the Cummings show.
The actress became connected with Frey and his religious work in the mid-1970s, according to The New York Times. The newspaper wrote that she became involved with Frey's work while continuing to act on stage and film part time.
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