The Picayune was enduring the “support” from AT&T India earlier in the week plus my Stars trying to advance to the next round is why this obit is late. Sometimes I would let these things slide as its timeliness has passed but I couldn’t with the lady who played Alice on The Brady Bunch. The often smiling, always cheerful live-in helper on the iconic and unrealistic sitcom was a big part of my growing up.
Although Brady was in syndication when I grew old enough to watch and remember television viewing, it made my parents’ eyes roll. They didn’t find it funny plus it was a former ABC sitcom, back then, the network was the weakest provider of commercial programming. Plus they found the family’s living situation implausible; nine people crammed into a four-bedroom house and no sign of a toilet in its only visible bathroom?The show’s humor wasn’t necessarily its primary appeal to children my age. Sure there were funny bits like Bobby overloading the washing machine or Jan wearing a wig to get out of Marcia’s shadow. Funny to someone under 13. I think what drew me to it was the family’s dynamics and mundane adventures. They got along, they faced bullies, they dealt with personal space issues, rivalries, tattle-tailing. It was an exaggerated projection of how pre-teen kids saw the world or maybe how I they idealized it.
Smack in the middle was Alice. Thanks to Ann’s performance, she was the adopted, kindly, wise and trustworthy aunt to the Brady kids. Someone they could confide in if there was a situation they weren’t comfortable disclosing to the parents. I didn’t see her as a servant, extra wife or employee, Alice was the additional helpful adult all us Gen Xers wish we had in our homes. Her ability to make snacks or assist with the laundry was just cake frosting.
Of all the cameos in the 1995 movie, I was most pleased to see the real Ann B Davis as the truck driver giving Jan a ride. Even more than Florence Henderson as Grandma Brady or Barry Williams as the recording executive ripping on Greg’s awful lyrics.
Although Ann never married nor had any of her own children, I hope she took pride in being Alice for millions of us kids. Making us chuckle with her fateful accident in the dunking tank and spreading the meme, “pork chops and apple sauce.”