Alice From "The Brady Bunch" Is a Forgotten Wolverine

Ann Arbor — Long before she moved in with the Brady Bunch as their beloved housekeeper Alice, Ann B. Davis got her start at the University of Michigan.

It’s where she got an education and the stage training that would make her one of the most beloved TV icons in history. She’s a forgotten U-M alumnus, and her alma mater truly dropped the ball by not bringing her back to campus to serve as the honorary captain of a football game or something.

How cool would it have been for Alice Nelson from “The Brady Bunch” to toss the coin for a game at Michigan Stadium?

Alas, it never happened (she died in 2014), but it’s important to know that Ann B. Davis was as proud as any Michigan Wolverine ever. And on the occasion of her 100th birthday—she and her identical twin sister Harriet were born on May 3, 1926—it’s certainly an appropriate time to look back on Alice’s time in Ann Arbor.

Davis was born in Schenectady, New York, and raised in Erie, Pennsylvania. She enrolled at Michigan in the fall of 1944 because it had a top-notch pre-med program.

“I went there to study medicine originally, but I wasn’t bright enough for that,” she said in a 1975 interview.

When she realized that she wasn’t going to be a doctor, she started looking for another career path. Her older brother Evans was in a touring company of “Oklahoma,” and that looked like fun, so she decided she wanted to become an actress.

That was a bit of an issue, though, because U-M didn’t have a theater department at the time and they didn’t offer any classes in acting or dramatic arts. The closest thing they had was a speech major, so she switched over to that.

“They called it the Speech Department,” she said. “I added the Speech and Dramatic Arts Department (when people asked what her degree was in), just so somebody thinks I read a book somewhere along the way. They didn’t teach much in the way of theater then—acting classes or acting training. Everything I’ve ever done as an actor was pretty much based on trial and error.”

In Ann’s case, the trial and error came on the stage at U-M’s iconic Lydia Mendelssohn Theater, located inside the Michigan League on the Ann Arbor campus. While U-M didn’t offer any classes in acting, the Department of Speech did put on a slew of plays at the Mendelssohn. Ann tried out for every show she could.

In 1947 and 1948, her name showed up on the cast list for almost every play, and she was acting in some iconic plays.

She was Mrs. Gibbs in “Our Town.” She was Aunt Sigrid in “I Remember Mama.” She was Gay Wellington in “You Can’t Take it With You.” She even put on a beard, used a low voice, and played a Supreme Court Justice in one show.

This was her first exposure to acting, and she loved every second of it. She was doing fine in her classes, but the stage at the Mendelssohn was her true classroom.

That same stage a few years later would host a young actor from U-M named James Earl Jones, who was also acting in his first shows. A dozen or so years after that, a U-M student named Gilda Radner was performing there. Alice from “The Brady Bunch,” Darth Vader and Roseanne Roseannadanna all got their start at the Lydia Mendelssohn Theater.

When Ann graduated from U-M in 1948, she moved to California and started appearing in productions at the Barn Theater in Porterville. She went from one production to the next over the next several years until her big break came in January 1955, when she was cast as the wisecracking assistant, Schultzy, in the sitcom “The Bob Cummings Show.”

That role made her a TV star. She was nominated for four straight Emmy Awards for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy, winning two of them. The show ran from 1955-1959, and when it ended, Ann went back to doing stage shows.

She made a triumphant return to Ann Arbor and the Lydia Mendelssohn Theater in 1960, appearing in a comedy called “Happy Birthday.” Her co-star was a guy named Larry Hagman, who would go on to great fame in “I Dream of Jeannie” and “Dallas.”

Ann sat down for an interview with the Michigan Daily when she returned to campus, reflecting on her time as a student actress there. “I did quite a bit with the Playbill, even played a Supreme Court Justice once,” she said. “We were short of men in those days. I just saw a picture of the nine justices from that play, and I couldn’t even find myself among those bearded figures.”

She spent the next few years doing as much theater as she could, with a TV appearance or two mixed in. Then in 1969, she landed the role that would define her career—even more than Schultzy did.

Just 21 years after graduating from the University of Michigan, she was cast as Alice Nelson in “The Brady Bunch,” a cheesy family sitcom about a widower with three boys who marries a widow with three girls. It aired for 117 episodes, and Ann B. Davis was in every one.

“The Brady Bunch” was never a ratings powerhouse when it originally aired, but it became iconic in the rerun years and decades that followed. We loved the Bradys, we loved their dog Tiger, and we especially loved Alice.

Those who knew her, especially her co-stars on “The Brady Bunch,” say that Ann was just as nice and sweet and down-to-earth as the characters she played; a Hollywood star who was as unassuming as you could get.

"She was a dear friend… deep, honest and true,” said Maureen McCormick, who played Marcia, when Ann passed away. “She was one of my earliest role models, and that continues to this day. She made me a better person. How blessed I am to have had her in my life. She will be forever missed."

Ann’s legacy in her college town was revived in an unusual way in the late 1980s, when a punk band called Anne Be Davis started playing the bar scene in Ann Arbor. They were regulars at the Blind Pig and Rick’s American Café before breaking up in 1991.

There’s no word that Ann B. Davis ever saw Anne Be Davis perform, but it was a cool way to pay tribute to a Michigan alum.

The real Ann B. Davis spent her post-Brady years doing a host of projects and continued to appear in most of the Brady Bunch sequels and spin-offs. Unlike some actors who hated being typecast in their iconic roles, Ann B. Davis embraced Alice Nelson.

She was also a deeply religious person, a devout Episcopalian, and spent the last four decades of her life living in an Episcopal commune led by Bishop William C. Frey and his wife.

In addition to being a proud U-M graduate, Ann had another cool connection to Michigan. Her longtime boyfriend on “The Brady Bunch” was Sam the Butcher, played by legendary character actor Allan Melvin. Their characters got engaged toward the end of the TV series and were married by the time the spinoffs started airing.

Ann B. Davis never married in real life, but if she had hooked up with Allan Melvin, she would have spent a lot more time in Michigan. Melvin had a summer house near Traverse City and was a Northern Michigan regular.

We’re guessing they would have eaten a lot of pork chops and applesauce. If you know, you know.