Davis Family History & Genealogy

High School Picture Day

Emma

Linda Cain 2016

With Chevelle

photo by John "J-Cat" Griffith

Ann B. Davis, the Emmy-winning actress best remembered as the nutty housekeeper on television’s “The Brady Bunch,” has died. She was 88.

Davis died Sunday in San Antonio, said her agent, Robert Malcolm. She had fallen Saturday at her home there and did not regain consciousness.

For the last several years Davis had lived in San Antonio with the family of retired Episcopal bishop William Frey, a close friend.“She was a wonderful, smart, funny woman,” Frey told The Times on Sunday. “She was Alice.”

Davis was a two-time Emmy winner playing the wisecracking assistant on “The Bob Cummings Show” in the 1950s, but it was her “Brady Bunch” character that brought her the greatest fame. As housekeeper Alice Nelson, she provided a dizzy comic presence amid the busy Brady household, solving disputes and offering advice through 117 half-hour episodes.

The family sitcom lasted from 1969 to 1974 on ABC and, despite the withering views of critics, went on to become one of the most successful programs in syndication, spawning reunions of the cast in several television movies and spin-off series during the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s.

“Every once in a while I’ll come across an episode, just flipping around the dial,” Davis told an interviewer in the ‘90s, “and 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.”

Since 1976, Davis lived with an Episcopal community, first in Denver, then in western Pennsylvania, finally settling in the Texas hill country near San Antonio. She worked in a homeless shelter in Denver and devoted herself to prayer and Bible study but took occasional acting roles through the years.

“I never heard a large voice from above saying, ‘Get out of show business, Ann,’” she told Newsday in 1995. “I just found that my priorities had changed and I knew that I needed some space.”

Ann Bradford Davis was born May 5, 1926, in Schenectady, N.Y., and grew up in Erie, Pa., where she and her twin sister Harriet were encouraged to perform in puppet shows and play acting. She switched her major from pre-med to drama while studying at the University of Michigan, and she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 1948. After college, Davis performed in various nightclubs and stage productions before eventually settling in Los Angeles.

In 1955, she landed the role of Charmaine “Shultzy” Schultz on “The Bob Cummings Show,” playing the devoted assistant to Cummings’ playboy photographer until the series ended in 1959. It was later retitled “Love That Bob” in syndication.

“It depends on how old you are whether you remember ‘The Cummings Show,’” Davis told the San Antonio News Express in 1998. “For most people, I’m just Alice. But I don’t mind. Now, if I were Alice the ax murderer, then I’d hate it.”

During TV hiatuses, she headlined regional theater productions of “Auntie Mame,” “Blithe Spirit,” “Funny Girl,” “Once Upon a Mattress” and many others. With the USO, she toured Southeast Asia. In the mid-1990s she appeared on Broadway in the Gershwin-themed musical comedy “Crazy for You” after touring extensively with the road show.

On the big screen, Davis appeared with Rock Hudson and Doris Day in the 1961 romantic comedy “Lover Come Back.” Her other movies included “A Man Called Peter,” “Pepe” and “All Hands on Deck.” She made cameo appearances as Alice in “The Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult” in 1994 and as a truck driver in 1995’s “The Brady Bunch Movie.”

Davis’ other television credits included: “The Keefe Brasselle Show,” “The John Forsythe Show” and guest appearances on such series as “Wagon Train,” “The Dating Game,” “Love, American Style,” “The Love Boat,” “Day by Day” and “Hi, Honey, I’m Home.”

In 1994 Davis co-wrote “Alice’s Brady Bunch Cookbook,” a collection of Brady-themed recipes and anecdotes, despite her confession that she was clueless in the kitchen.

“Part of the fun of promoting that book was that I would admit it from the beginning: I don’t know how to cook,” she told the San Antonio News Express years later. “The fact that Alice didn’t know how to cook is a funny bit.

“When I did ‘Regis and Kathie Lee,’ Regis picked up on it very fast when he realized I didn’t even know how to handle the utensils. He moved in and led me every step of the way.”

Davis is the second “Brady Bunch” cast member to die. Robert Reed, who played father Mike Brady, died in 1992 at 59.

By a Times staff writer June 1, 2014 5:02 PM PT

Times staff writers Steve Chawkins and Ryan Parker contributed to this report.

Ann B. Davis, the comic actress best known as the wistful, wisecracking live-in maid on the long-running ABC sitcom “The Brady Bunch,” died on Sunday in San Antonio. She was 88.

Her agent, Robert Malcolm, confirmed the death, saying had slipped into a coma while hospitalized after falling in a bathtub on Saturday. She lived in San Antonio.

From 1969 to 1974, Ms. Davis played the eternally good-natured, reliably self-deprecating Alice Nelson, who kept house for and dispensed cornball advice to a wholesome blended California family of eight on one of the perkiest prime-time series of its era.

Alice was, however, simply the best known of a series of plain-Jane characters Ms. Davis played, women who yearned for but never really expected to find romance. “I’ve been digging Sam so long, by the time he proposes I’ll be six feet under,” Alice once said of her unending crush on the Bradys’ butcher.

More than a decade before “The Brady Bunch,” television viewers had known Ms. Davis from “The Bob Cummings Show” (1955-59) — it was retitled “Love That Bob” in syndication — in which she played Charmaine Schultz, better known as Schultzy, the lovesick spinsterish secretary to a playboy Hollywood photographer who was always surrounded by glamorous models. Schultzy couldn’t hold a candle to those beauties, but she was beloved enough as a characterization that Ms. Davis won the Emmy Award for best featured actress in a comedy series for the role in both 1958 and 1959.

Between that series and “The Brady Bunch,” Ms. Davis starred on the short-lived “The John Forsythe Show” as a gym teacher; was a regular on “The Keefe Brasselle Show,” a variety series; and played the unglamorous secretary of Doris Day’s character in the film “Lover Come Back” (1961).

Ann Bradford Davis was born — along with a twin sister, Harriet — in Schenectady, N.Y., on May 3, 1926. When she was 3, her father, an electrical engineer, and her mother, an amateur actress, moved the family to Erie, Pa., which Ms. Davis once described as “much easier to spell.”

In 1954 she moved to Los Angeles and had the good fortune to be discovered, Hollywood style. While she was performing (unpaid) at a cabaret-coffeehouse that presented revues, plays and concerts, a casting agent saw her and suggested she try out for the new Cummings series. She won the role, and her career was underway.

After “The Brady Bunch” went off the air, Ms. Davis, like other cast members, capitalized on the show’s popularity in a string of mostly ill-conceived follow-up projects, including “The Brady Bunch Variety Hour,” a 1976-77 series, and the television movies “The Brady Girls Get Married” and “A Very Brady Christmas” in the 1980s. When the torch passed to a new generation in “The Brady Bunch Movie” (1995), starring Shelley Long and Gary Cole in the roles originated by Florence Henderson and Robert Reed, Ms. Davis made a cameo appearance with a wink to older moviegoers. She played a truck driver named Schultzy. (The comedian Henriette Mantel played Alice.)

Ms. Davis also did television commercials for products including instant rice, floor cleaner and cars (including a surprisingly sexy ad for the Ford Fairlane in the 1960s).

In the mid-1970s Ms. Davis became involved with an evangelical religious group headed by Bill C. Frey, a retired Episcopal bishop. At her death she had been living with Bishop Frey and his wife while continuing to act from time to time on television and stage.

Ms. Davis is survived by her sister, Harriet Norton, Bishop Frey said.

People often asked Ms. Davis for child-rearing advice, she said, because of Alice’s perceived wisdom when counseling the young, fictional Bradys. But she professed to know absolutely nothing about children. Nor, she said, was she really a comedian, because she relied completely on scripts and had never ad-libbed in her life. In a 2004 Archive of American Television interview, she summed up her expertise.

“I need a writer — and I have always been very conscious of and dependent on writers,” she said. “I was just terribly, terribly grateful to them.”

When she entered the University of Michigan, she wanted to become a doctor. But after seeing her brother in the national company of “Oklahoma!” she had a change of heart. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in theater in 1948 and began appearing in small stage productions.

By Anita Gates June 1, 2014 ()

A version of this article appears in print on June 2, 2014, Section B, Page 8 of the New York edition with the headline: Ann B. Davis, 88, the Maid on ‘The Brady Bunch’.

Luther M. Davis

Skeeter's 1983 album " Heartstrings"

Last photo of born name Clifford Davis AKA Clifford Davis-Seymon

Taken in Gatlinburg Tennessee.

This is Aunt Mabel with her sons Charles and Ken. I have no idea who is who, as Mom, Nancy Diehl Singer (d. 1/26/2024), did not label this. Her mother and my grandmother Babette DeBinder Davis Diehl was Mabel's younger sister.

Mabel and her son Charles.

As said, this is Mabel's Dad.

Taken on my daughter’s birthday🎂💐❤️

Carleen Kile Cope and son Richard Carl Cope

Carleen Kile in various stages of her life. Married first
Dale Nunnley, her mother had it annulled. Second Dick Cope, and third to E. J. Davis

Strolling through Shubert Alley.

Bette Davis Portrait in Sepia.

Portrait.

Ruth visiting Clementine Henry residence

The May 17th 1990 Daily News cover paying tribute to Sammy Davis Jr. and Jim Henson.