Ann B. Davis
Encyclopedia
Ann Bradford Davis is an American television actress.

Davis achieved prominence for her role in The Bob Cummings Show
The Bob Cummings Show
The Bob Cummings Show is an American sitcom starring Robert "Bob" Cummings which was produced from January 2, 1955 to September 15, 1959, and originally sponsored by R.J. Reynolds' Winston cigarettes...

for which she twice won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series
Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress - Comedy Series
This is a list of winners of the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series.-Superlatives:-1950s:*1953: Vivian Vance - I Love Lucy as Ethel Mertz** Audrey Meadows - The Jackie Gleason Show as Alice Kramden...

. She later played the part of Alice, the housekeeper in The Brady Bunch
The Brady Bunch
The Brady Bunch is an American sitcom created by Sherwood Schwartz and starring Robert Reed, Florence Henderson, and Ann B. Davis. The series revolved around a large blended family...

series.

Career

In the 1953-1954 season, Davis appeared as a musical judge on ABC's Jukebox Jury
Jukebox Jury
Jukebox Jury was an hour-long television series hosted by disc jockey Peter Potter which aired in the 1953-54 season on the American Broadcasting Company. It was thereafter syndicated in 1959....

.

Davis's first television success was as Charmaine "Schultzy" Schultz in the NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...

 sitcom The Bob Cummings Show
The Bob Cummings Show
The Bob Cummings Show is an American sitcom starring Robert "Bob" Cummings which was produced from January 2, 1955 to September 15, 1959, and originally sponsored by R.J. Reynolds' Winston cigarettes...

. She auditioned for the role because her friend's boyfriend was a casting director and recommended her for the part. She won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series
Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress - Comedy Series
This is a list of winners of the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series.-Superlatives:-1950s:*1953: Vivian Vance - I Love Lucy as Ethel Mertz** Audrey Meadows - The Jackie Gleason Show as Alice Kramden...

 twice out of four nominations for this role. On February 9, 1960, Davis received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
Hollywood Walk of Fame
The Hollywood Walk of Fame consists of more than 2,400 five-pointed terrazzo and brass stars embedded in the sidewalks along fifteen blocks of Hollywood Boulevard and three blocks of Vine Street in Hollywood, California...

.

For a period in the 1960s and 1970s, she was known for her appearances in television commercial
Television advertisement
A television advertisement or television commercial, often just commercial, advert, ad, or ad-film – is a span of television programming produced and paid for by an organization that conveys a message, typically one intended to market a product...

s for the Ford Motor Company
Ford Motor Company
Ford Motor Company is an American multinational automaker based in Dearborn, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. The automaker was founded by Henry Ford and incorporated on June 16, 1903. In addition to the Ford and Lincoln brands, Ford also owns a small stake in Mazda in Japan and Aston Martin in the UK...

, particularly for the mid-sized Ford Fairlane models. She also appeared on January 23, 1958, as a guest star on The Ford Show, Starring Tennessee Ernie Ford
The Ford Show
The Ford Show is a half-hour comedy/variety program, starring singer and folk humorist Tennessee Ernie Ford, which aired in color on NBC television on Thursday evenings from October 4, 1956 to June 29, 1961....

. Davis was also featured in commercials for Minute Rice
Minute Rice
Minute Rice is a brand of instant rice. The product was introduced in 1949 by General Foods, who merged with Kraft in 1990 and became Kraft General Foods, which became Kraft Foods in 1995. The product recently was sold to Riviana Foods in the United States, and to Ronzoni Foods Canada Corporation...

 until the mid-1980s
1980s
File:1980s decade montage.png|thumb|400px|From left, clockwise: The first Space Shuttle, Columbia, lifted off in 1981; American President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev eased tensions between the two superpowers, leading to the end of the Cold War; The Fall of the Berlin Wall in...

.

In the 1965–1966 television season, she appeared as Miss Wilson, a physical education
Physical education
Physical education or gymnastics is a course taken during primary and secondary education that encourages psychomotor learning in a play or movement exploration setting....

 teacher
Teacher
A teacher or schoolteacher is a person who provides education for pupils and students . The role of teacher is often formal and ongoing, carried out at a school or other place of formal education. In many countries, a person who wishes to become a teacher must first obtain specified professional...

 at a private girls' academy in John Forsythe
John Forsythe
John Forsythe was an American stage, television and film actor. Forsythe starred in three television series, spanning four decades and three genres: as single playboy father Bentley Gregg in the sitcom Bachelor Father ; as the unseen millionaire Charles Townsend on the crime drama Charlie's...

's NBC sitcom The John Forsythe Show
The John Forsythe Show
The John Forsythe Show began as a situation comedy in the fall of 1965 on NBC, but at mid-season it switched to a spy show. In the first phase of the series, John Forsythe appeared as United States Air Force veteran John Foster, who inherited the private Foster School for Girls in San Francisco,...

.

From 1969 to 1974, Davis played housekeeper Alice Nelson in The Brady Bunch
The Brady Bunch
The Brady Bunch is an American sitcom created by Sherwood Schwartz and starring Robert Reed, Florence Henderson, and Ann B. Davis. The series revolved around a large blended family...

television series. Since then, she has returned to take part in various Brady Bunch TV movies, including The Brady Girls Get Married (1981) and A Very Brady Christmas
A Very Brady Christmas
A Very Brady Christmas is a 1988 movie based on the television series The Brady Bunch, featuring all of the original actors who appeared in the series except Susan Olsen who was on her honeymoon when the film was being made; Jennifer Runyon took her place as Cindy...

(1988). She also reprised her role as Alice Nelson in two short-lived Brady Bunch spin-off television series: The Brady Brides (1981) and The Bradys
The Bradys
The Bradys is a six-episode American drama series that aired on CBS in 1990. It was a revival of the early 1970s sitcom, The Brady Bunch , and was about the trials and tribulations of the extended Brady family some 15 years after the end of the earlier series...

(1990), both of which lasted only six episodes. She also made a cameo appearance
Cameo appearance
A cameo role or cameo appearance is a brief appearance of a known person in a work of the performing arts, such as plays, films, video games and television...

 as a truck driver named "Schultzy", a reference to her days on The Bob Cummings Show, in The Brady Bunch Movie
The Brady Bunch Movie
The Brady Bunch Movie is a 1995 American comedy film based on the 1969–1974 television series The Brady Bunch.The film features all the original regular characters, all played by new actors...

in 1995.

In the early 1990s, Davis focused on theater. She performed in a production of Arsenic and Old Lace
Arsenic and Old Lace (play)
Arsenic and Old Lace is a play by American playwright Joseph Kesselring, written in 1939. It has become best known through the film adaptation starring Cary Grant and directed by Frank Capra. The play was directed by Bretaigne Windust, and opened on January 10, 1941. On September 25, 1943, the...

, and a world tour production of Crazy For You
Crazy for You
Crazy for You is a musical with a book by Ken Ludwig, lyrics by Ira Gershwin, and music by George Gershwin. Billed as "The New Gershwin Musical Comedy", it is largely based on the songwriting team’s 1930 musical, Girl Crazy, but interpolates songs from several other productions as well...

.

Davis never completely retired from acting; in her later years she appeared in several disposable mop commercials featuring famous television domestics, and has appeared in a number of Brady Bunch reunion projects, most recently TV Land
TV Land
TV Land is an American cable television network launched on April 29, 1996. It is owned by MTV Networks, a division of Viacom, which also owns Paramount Pictures, and networks such as MTV and Nickelodeon...

's The Brady Bunch 35th Anniversary Reunion Special: Still Brady After All These Years
The Brady Bunch 35th Anniversary Reunion Special: Still Brady After All These Years
-About The Special:The Brady Bunch 35th Anniversary Reunion Special: Still Brady After All These Years was a TV special hosted by Jenny McCarthy that aired September 26, 2004, on TV Land. It featured all the living cast members from the 1969-1974 ABC sitcom The Brady Bunch, who spoke about the...

. On April 22, 2007, The Brady Bunch was awarded the TV Land Pop Culture Award on the 5th annual TV Land Awards. Davis and other cast members accepted the award, and she received a standing ovation.

Personal life

Davis was born in Schenectady, New York
Schenectady, New York
Schenectady is a city in Schenectady County, New York, United States, of which it is the county seat. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 66,135...

, the daughter of Marguerite (née
Married and maiden names
A married name is the family name adopted by a person upon marriage. When a person assumes the family name of her spouse, the new name replaces the maiden name....

 Stott) and Cassius Miles Davis. She has an identical twin, Harriet, and an older brother Evans.

When Davis was three, she and her family moved to Erie, Pennsylvania
Erie, Pennsylvania
Erie is a city located in northwestern Pennsylvania in the United States. Named for the lake and the Native American tribe that resided along its southern shore, Erie is the state's fourth-largest city , with a population of 102,000...

. She graduated from Strong Vincent High School, and is a graduate of the University of Michigan
University of Michigan
The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...

. She originally enrolled in the University of Michigan as a pre-med major, however, she changed her mind and went into drama after seeing her older brother's performance of Oklahoma!
Oklahoma!
Oklahoma! is the first musical written by composer Richard Rodgers and librettist Oscar Hammerstein II. The musical is based on Lynn Riggs' 1931 play, Green Grow the Lilacs. Set in Oklahoma Territory outside the town of Claremore in 1906, it tells the story of cowboy Curly McLain and his romance...

Davis graduated from the University of Michigan
University of Michigan
The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...

 in Ann Arbor in 1948 with a degree in drama and speech.

In 1976, she sold her home in Los Angeles to move to Denver, Colorado, where she joined an Episcopal
Episcopal Church (United States)
The Episcopal Church is a mainline Anglican Christian church found mainly in the United States , but also in Honduras, Taiwan, Colombia, Ecuador, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, the British Virgin Islands and parts of Europe...

 community
Intentional community
An intentional community is a planned residential community designed to have a much higher degree of teamwork than other communities. The members of an intentional community typically hold a common social, political, religious, or spiritual vision and often follow an alternative lifestyle. They...

 led by Bishop William C. Frey. The community later relocated to Ambridge, Pennsylvania
Ambridge, Pennsylvania
Ambridge is a borough in Beaver County in Western Pennsylvania, incorporated in 1905 and named after the American Bridge Company. Ambridge is located 16 miles northwest of Pittsburgh, alongside the Ohio River. In 1910, 5,205 people lived in Ambridge; in 1920, 12,730 people lived there, and in...

. Davis has long been a volunteer for the Episcopal church, working at the General Convention, attending services at churches around the country, and is not cloistered.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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