Posted on 06/04/2014 7:17:45 PM PDT by ReformationFan
Ann B. Davis, who played the beloved housekeeper Alice in The Brady Bunch, died over the weekend.
New information is coming out about her faith and her life. The Associated Press reports:
For many years after “The Brady Bunch” wound up, Davis led a quiet religious life, affiliating herself with a group led by [Episcopal Bishop William] Frey.
“I was born again,” she told the AP in 1993. “It happens to Episcopalians. Sometimes it doesn’t hit you till you’re 47 years old.
“It changed my whole life for the better. … I spent a lot of time giving Christian witness all over the country to church groups and stuff.”
The snippets of her life are fascinating. This 1977 People magazine article paints a picture of a woman whose life was radically transformed by her faith:
Ann B. Davis, the wisecracking housekeeper of TV’s Brady Bunch, has joined a new bunch—a religious commune in Denver. At 51, Davis, who also played Schultzy on the ’50s Bob Cummings Show, gets her Rocky Mountain highs with 6:30 a.m. Bible study. “I was tired of show business—tired of running around with my head cut off,” she says. Born an Episcopalian, Davis practiced her faith but “with little understanding of it.” She often found herself alone with a drink after a hard day of rehearsing or during layoffs between series.
In 1974 when she was playing summer stock in Denver she met Episcopal Bishop William C. Frey and his family, who were planning to bring together several families under one Christian roof. “I decided to sell my house in L.A. and yield control to the Lord,” the unmarried Davis says. She and 19 others, aged 3 months to 69 years, now occupy a remodeled Victorian home.
This later People Magazine profile of the Brady cast, written when the tragic news broke that Robert Reed, who played Mr. Brady, died of AIDS when that was a new, terrifying, and scandalous disease, paints a picture of contentment in Davis’s life: By the end of Brady’s run—and after a 40-year showbiz career that included two Emmys for playing peppery gal Friday Schultzy on The Bob Cummings Show in the ’50s—Davis realized that her life lacked the fundamental contentment of, say, Alice Nelson’s. “I wasn’t satisfied,” she says. “I thought, ‘What is it I haven’t got?’ ” She explains the answer with a memory from her childhood in Erie, Pa.: “My mother would write letters when I was away at camp and say, ‘There’s an Ann-shaped space around the house. Nobody fills an Ann-shaped space except an Ann.’ I’m convinced we all have a God-shaped space in us, and until we fill that space with God, we’ll never know what it is to be whole.”
Unlike Robert Reed, though, Davis did not consider the show hell on earth. The cast “got along beautifully,” she says, and adds that as an avid knitter, “I had the boys hooking rugs and the girls doing needlepoint.”
Surprisingly, she says, “I basically don’t do that well with children, although my sister [an identical twin, Harriet Norton, a mother of three living in Leonia, N.J.] says I’m a great aunt.” Also unlike Alice, Davis hates to cook: “When it’s my turn in the house, we just eat out.” Davis, never married, still acts occasionally (including a Canadian production of the comedy The Cemetery Club last year) but lives comfortably on her Screen Actors Guild pension. (She recently bought a bright red Mazda Miata.) And she takes classes—aerobics in town, theology at the seminary.
“It is obvious,” she says, “I am where the Lord wants me to be.”
This 1994 interview with the Orlando Sentinel (I love that she was sipping zinfandel as she talked) gives more detail:
For the next several years, she spent most of her time, three or four days a week, giving my Christian testimony. It was very exciting, while also doing laundry at a homeless shelter. She didnt work except to perform in an occasional Brady Bunch special or television commercial. Three years ago, she moved with Frey and his wife to Ambridge, Pa., near a seminary. She began working in theater again. These days Davis spends free time stuffing my head with wonderful things, such as courses in church history, the Old Testament and gender roles in history at the Episcopal School for Ministry.
In 1989, her mentor Bishop William C. Frey resigned his position as Episcopalian Bishop of Colorado to become dean and president of Trinity School for Ministry. Trinity was an Evangelical seminary associated with conservative theology and the charismatic movement. Davis moved with Bishop Frey and his wife to live in in community with them there.
Frey was also a bit of a wild Jesus child. Frey and his family were also deported from Guatemala in 1971 for advocating there when he was Bishop of Guatemala. NEW YORK, N.Y. — The Rt. Rev. William C. Frey, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Guatemala, together with his wife and their five children, arrived in Miami, Fla., Sunday, October 3, under orders of deportation by the Department of Immigration of the Republic of Guatemala, according to Dr. Paul A. Tate, the Presiding Bishop’s Deputy for Jurisdictions of the Episcopal Church. The reason given by the Immigration Department for the expulsion of the Bishop was “interference in political affairs of the country.”
Bishop Frey and nine other Christian leaders had signed a statement two weeks earlier “calling for the cessation of violence and restoration of constitutional guarantees,” Dr. Tate said.
I love the picture this paints of the woman we knew as Alice. She was a Jesus person, a Christian hippy, someone who apparently joyfully gave up her stardom for a life that had more meaning to her.
We have heard so much of the sad stories of the former Brady Bunch cast, their addictions and sexual liaisons. How delightful to hear of something different.
When you never marry, there will always be speculation.
Especially considering the fact that Christ Himself was chaste His entire life in human form on this earth.
and we’re not even mentioning Mr. Brady
Hollywood chews up a lot of people then spits them out. Most people figure out when to call it quits. Some keep hanging on believing that next role is going to put them on the “A” list. Very few people make it. In my opinion it’s an evil business.
Exactly. I am Catholic, so I don’t memorize verses (not that there is anything wrong with that), but I believe it was actually a preferred state for those who had the strength to do it.
Years later, my brother's then non-Catholic wife commented, "Oh, she was gay!" My brother couldn't contain his laughter.
To nearly everone's surprise, on her death in her early eighties, she was buried in full Carmelite canonicals.
We are not all meant for married life. The price is chastity. It appears probable Ms. Davis chose this path upon leaving Hollywood.
Davis never married, saying she never found a man who was more interesting than her career.
"By the time I started to get interested (in finding someone)," she told the Chicago Sun-Times, "all the good ones were taken."
http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2014/06/01/ann-b-davis-known-for-role-on-brady-bunch-dies-at-88-medical-examiner-says/
Now let the good lady rest in peace.
Not according to Sam the butcher.
Why make the assumption that a person is asexual because he or she has never married? Sometimes God does not bring a spouse and this is just a burden one has to bear.
Loved Ann B. Davis as Schultzy in “Love that Bob”. It was one of my favorite tv shows. She was a very talented and interesting woman. May she rest in peace.
Absolutely! I adored her as Schultzy. I was too old for The Brady Bunch (at least 17) and it as an awful show anyway.
I was too old for the Brady Bunch as well (also 17). I loved the episode where Schultzy was all glammed up and referred to as the “glamorous Charmaine Schultz”. She looked so 1950s chic.
I don’t remember individual episodes - I just remember I loved that show and Schultzy in particular. She was very similar to Miss Jane on The Beverly Hillbillies - another hilarious actress and a great character. RIP Schultzy!
Too bad tv has gone downhill. The golden age of tv is a distant memory.
Thank God for dvds and ME TV. ME TV has so many of the classic tv shows of the 50s and 60s. I have NO interest in today’s comedy shows. Seinfeld was the last sitcom I really liked.
Well, if you "just thought you'd throw a truth bomb" in there, what part of what you said did you think would be a "bomb," and why?
Let's see, your post really wasn't that long, so it's not hard to figure out what the bomb was. As for the truth, you gave no references. So maybe it wasn't actually a truth bomb. Maybe it was a slander bomb, seeing how you can't prove otherwise.
And as this is a memorial thread, what was the point? To crap on the memory of someone with slander? That's fun for you? Does seeing other people happy always make you want to attack? Have you gotten any help for that, or do you just go around wrecking things?
And seeing that this is FR, did you really have to guess how your slander would be interpreted from a religious point of view? I think not - it wouldn't be much of a "bomb" if you tossed this out on DU, right?
So the fact that you call it "truth" without proof of something that would otherwise be slander, and the fact that you call it "bomb" because you know if the religious impact it would have on FR, means that there was a lot of thought behind your slander crap.
So your shocked dismissal by trivialization is, in fact, the representation of the exact opposite of your careful efforts.
And BTW, none of it speaks of Ann Davis - all of it speaks of you alone.
You can’t slander the death, fool. Look it up.
Dead, lol, not death.
But you can trash a memorial thread and deny you're own actions, while hiding behind legalisms.
Fool.
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