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Ann B. Davis: For the Bradys —_and_us_latchkey_kids_— Alice was a saving grace
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Ubiquitous
Jun 11, 2014, 8:54:42 PM6/11/14
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By Hank Stuever
Demographically, most American TV watchers have only ever known �The
Brady Bunch� in syndication � a phenomenally successful rerun that
reruns even now, 40 years after the show was canceled at the end of its
fifth season. Beneath its perpetual ability to keep us aghast at the
fashion, d�cor, lingo and the most corny and tentative notions of
counterculture in the 1970s, �The Brady Bunch� remains a permanent
touchstone. No one will ever mistake it for Ibsen, but disdainful
critics have learned that it meant something to some of us.
Hearing about the death on Sunday of 88-year-old actress Ann B. Davis,
who is remembered best for playing the fictional Brady family�s live-in
housekeeper, Alice Nelson, I immediately and wistfully thought of what
it felt like, in grade school and middle school, to come home every
afternoon to an empty house.
Actress Ann B. Davis died Sunday, June 1. (Fred Prouser/Reuters) It
wasn�t a terrible thing; these aren�t bad memories, but Alice is
certainly in them. Like �The Brady Bunch,� being a so-called latchkey
kid was a byproduct of the �70s. Some of us had moms who were among the
first American women to boldly attempt the juggling act of earning a
paycheck and running a household. Some of us had divorced parents, or
soon would. Some of us knew it was our job to fend for ourselves for a
couple hours between 3:30 and 5:30 each day. None of us had a live-in
housekeeper.
But we were not entirely alone when we had reruns. As early as the
mid-�70s, when Paramount Television first put the show into weekday
syndication, �The Brady Bunch� felt immediately and almost profoundly
nostalgic.
No matter how quiet and empty the house was when you got home, you could
turn on the TV just as the theme song began (�Here�s the story��) and
Alice was there, in the center of that joyful, blended-family �Brady
Bunch� grid. She was in the kitchen getting dinner ready. She offered
cookies and milk and sound advice.
She was, I suppose, whatever June Cleaver had been to the previous
generation. The years went by, the 117 �Brady Bunch� episodes kept
rerunning (the Grand Canyon trip, the Hawaii trip; Davy Jones dropping
by, Joe Namath dropping by; Jan buying a wig, Peter�s voice cracking)
and Alice kept filling some need for nurture. The entire premise of the
show seemed to acknowledge, at least in subtext, that Alice was filling
the need that Carol Brady (Florence Henderson) could not fill. It�s the
great unspoken truth of �The Brady Bunch,� particularly in retrospect:
Ann B. Davis was the better mother.
But television could never let on about that. The jokes they wrote for
Alice had an outdated and intentionally broad and hammy quality to them,
as if her prior gigs had been cleaning hotel rooms in the Catskills.
Davis was already a two-time Emmy winning comic actress (as Schultzy,
the Gal Friday character on NBC�s �The Bob Cummings Show� in the 1950s)
when she took the �Brady� gig. Whether or not she believed the material
was up to her standards, she made Alice�s wisecracks and goofy
physicality seem perfectly natural. Robert Reed, who played father Mike
Brady, went to his grave still grumbling about the insipidness of the
show; Davis seemed to exult in it.
Viewers, especially children, were meant to understand that Alice was
�old,� or was at least feeling the first pangs of decline. (In fact,
Davis was in her 40s during �The Brady Bunch�s� run.) Dancing the hula
or unwisely having a go on a trampoline, Alice seemed prone to
lower-back strain and assorted pratfalls which caused her employers and
their children to squeal with laughter at her expense � oh, Alice.
Always the Gal Friday, she made frequent, self-deprecating jokes about
her spinsterhood and her futile attempts to get Sam the Butcher, her
only suitor, to come around to the idea of commitment. When Hollywood
began making big-budget �Brady� movies in the 1990s, which were
faithfully detailed and lightly subverted parodies, I remember being so
let down by their idea of Alice (played by Henriette Mantel) as a secret
freak and sexual libertine. It was one of the few times I�ve ever been
offended on behalf of a fictional character, as if my � our � Alice had
been fundamentally misunderstood.
In the gauzy bliss of Bradydom, where the bathroom was only ever used
for staring at the mirror in a spell of pubescent unease, we rarely, if
ever, saw Alice in the act of completing the household�s hardest chores,
such as scrubbing a toilet and bathtub shared by six children. People
look at �The Brady Bunch� now and bring too many questions to it,
starting with: Why did the Bradys need a full-time, live-in housekeeper?
Why did Mike Brady, the architect paterfamilias, design the house with
just one bathroom for the kids? If they loved her like family, why did
they make Alice wear a uniform? Too many questions and too many cheap
jokes to be made until, finally, one day, �The Brady Bunch� won�t be on
anymore.
I hardly questioned it as a child. I had everything a kid could ever
want and still found myself watching �The Brady Bunch� from a place of
envy.
I envied the activity, the noise, the laughter, the good cheer, the
sunshine, the talent shows, the vacations. I envied the brothers, the
sisters, the cohesion, the Alice-ness of it all. I envied it and on some
level I feared it. Their lives were too clean, too ordered, too right.
�If there�s anything I can�t stand, it�s a perfect kid,� Alice once
said, piercing that veneer, celebrating faults and spats and mistakes.
Latchkey kids were especially attuned to �The Brady Bunch�s� nonsense,
but we sensed the safety in it.
So maybe you didn�t come into the kitchen through a sliding glass door
from a backyard covered in Astroturf.
So you most likely didn�t have five siblings.
So they were Chips Ahoy cookies, not homemade.
So no one had remembered to buy milk.
So Alice was imaginary.
What a wonderful person to have around anyhow, if only on TV, just in
case we felt alone.
--
Q: Why is ObamaCare like a turd?
A: You have to pass it to see what's in it.
Demographically, most American TV watchers have only ever known �The
Brady Bunch� in syndication � a phenomenally successful rerun that
reruns even now, 40 years after the show was canceled at the end of its
fifth season. Beneath its perpetual ability to keep us aghast at the
fashion, d�cor, lingo and the most corny and tentative notions of
counterculture in the 1970s, �The Brady Bunch� remains a permanent
touchstone. No one will ever mistake it for Ibsen, but disdainful
critics have learned that it meant something to some of us.
Hearing about the death on Sunday of 88-year-old actress Ann B. Davis,
who is remembered best for playing the fictional Brady family�s live-in
housekeeper, Alice Nelson, I immediately and wistfully thought of what
it felt like, in grade school and middle school, to come home every
afternoon to an empty house.
Actress Ann B. Davis died Sunday, June 1. (Fred Prouser/Reuters) It
wasn�t a terrible thing; these aren�t bad memories, but Alice is
certainly in them. Like �The Brady Bunch,� being a so-called latchkey
kid was a byproduct of the �70s. Some of us had moms who were among the
first American women to boldly attempt the juggling act of earning a
paycheck and running a household. Some of us had divorced parents, or
soon would. Some of us knew it was our job to fend for ourselves for a
couple hours between 3:30 and 5:30 each day. None of us had a live-in
housekeeper.
But we were not entirely alone when we had reruns. As early as the
mid-�70s, when Paramount Television first put the show into weekday
syndication, �The Brady Bunch� felt immediately and almost profoundly
nostalgic.
No matter how quiet and empty the house was when you got home, you could
turn on the TV just as the theme song began (�Here�s the story��) and
Alice was there, in the center of that joyful, blended-family �Brady
Bunch� grid. She was in the kitchen getting dinner ready. She offered
cookies and milk and sound advice.
She was, I suppose, whatever June Cleaver had been to the previous
generation. The years went by, the 117 �Brady Bunch� episodes kept
rerunning (the Grand Canyon trip, the Hawaii trip; Davy Jones dropping
by, Joe Namath dropping by; Jan buying a wig, Peter�s voice cracking)
and Alice kept filling some need for nurture. The entire premise of the
show seemed to acknowledge, at least in subtext, that Alice was filling
the need that Carol Brady (Florence Henderson) could not fill. It�s the
great unspoken truth of �The Brady Bunch,� particularly in retrospect:
Ann B. Davis was the better mother.
But television could never let on about that. The jokes they wrote for
Alice had an outdated and intentionally broad and hammy quality to them,
as if her prior gigs had been cleaning hotel rooms in the Catskills.
Davis was already a two-time Emmy winning comic actress (as Schultzy,
the Gal Friday character on NBC�s �The Bob Cummings Show� in the 1950s)
when she took the �Brady� gig. Whether or not she believed the material
was up to her standards, she made Alice�s wisecracks and goofy
physicality seem perfectly natural. Robert Reed, who played father Mike
Brady, went to his grave still grumbling about the insipidness of the
show; Davis seemed to exult in it.
Viewers, especially children, were meant to understand that Alice was
�old,� or was at least feeling the first pangs of decline. (In fact,
Davis was in her 40s during �The Brady Bunch�s� run.) Dancing the hula
or unwisely having a go on a trampoline, Alice seemed prone to
lower-back strain and assorted pratfalls which caused her employers and
their children to squeal with laughter at her expense � oh, Alice.
Always the Gal Friday, she made frequent, self-deprecating jokes about
her spinsterhood and her futile attempts to get Sam the Butcher, her
only suitor, to come around to the idea of commitment. When Hollywood
began making big-budget �Brady� movies in the 1990s, which were
faithfully detailed and lightly subverted parodies, I remember being so
let down by their idea of Alice (played by Henriette Mantel) as a secret
freak and sexual libertine. It was one of the few times I�ve ever been
offended on behalf of a fictional character, as if my � our � Alice had
been fundamentally misunderstood.
In the gauzy bliss of Bradydom, where the bathroom was only ever used
for staring at the mirror in a spell of pubescent unease, we rarely, if
ever, saw Alice in the act of completing the household�s hardest chores,
such as scrubbing a toilet and bathtub shared by six children. People
look at �The Brady Bunch� now and bring too many questions to it,
starting with: Why did the Bradys need a full-time, live-in housekeeper?
Why did Mike Brady, the architect paterfamilias, design the house with
just one bathroom for the kids? If they loved her like family, why did
they make Alice wear a uniform? Too many questions and too many cheap
jokes to be made until, finally, one day, �The Brady Bunch� won�t be on
anymore.
I hardly questioned it as a child. I had everything a kid could ever
want and still found myself watching �The Brady Bunch� from a place of
envy.
I envied the activity, the noise, the laughter, the good cheer, the
sunshine, the talent shows, the vacations. I envied the brothers, the
sisters, the cohesion, the Alice-ness of it all. I envied it and on some
level I feared it. Their lives were too clean, too ordered, too right.
�If there�s anything I can�t stand, it�s a perfect kid,� Alice once
said, piercing that veneer, celebrating faults and spats and mistakes.
Latchkey kids were especially attuned to �The Brady Bunch�s� nonsense,
but we sensed the safety in it.
So maybe you didn�t come into the kitchen through a sliding glass door
from a backyard covered in Astroturf.
So you most likely didn�t have five siblings.
So they were Chips Ahoy cookies, not homemade.
So no one had remembered to buy milk.
So Alice was imaginary.
What a wonderful person to have around anyhow, if only on TV, just in
case we felt alone.
--
Q: Why is ObamaCare like a turd?
A: You have to pass it to see what's in it.
Michael Black
Jun 11, 2014, 10:04:34 PM6/11/14
to
On Wed, 11 Jun 2014, Ubiquitous wrote:
> No matter how quiet and empty the house was when you got home, you could
> turn on the TV just as the theme song began (?Here?s the story??) and
> No matter how quiet and empty the house was when you got home, you could
> Alice was there, in the center of that joyful, blended-family ?Brady
> Bunch? grid. She was in the kitchen getting dinner ready. She offered
> cookies and milk and sound advice.
>
That wasn't my childhood, I knew about the show, but didn't see it until
>
later, maybe not till the Christmas movie.
I was babysat by Star Trek and Get Smart, and Truth or Consequences.
Michael
A Friend
Jun 11, 2014, 10:59:02 PM6/11/14
to
In article <alpine.LNX.2.02.1...@darkstar.example.org>,
I've never seen The Brady Bunch, unlikely as that sounds. To me, Ann
B. Davis has always been Schultzy.
I was babysat by daytime game shows and soap operas. *Lots* of soap
operas. My mom was pretty fond of 'em.
B. Davis has always been Schultzy.
I was babysat by daytime game shows and soap operas. *Lots* of soap
operas. My mom was pretty fond of 'em.
Rhino
Jun 12, 2014, 8:44:01 AM6/12/14
to
On 2014-06-11 8:54 PM, Ubiquitous wrote:
> By Hank Stuever
>
> Demographically, most American TV watchers have only ever known �The
> By Hank Stuever
>
> Brady Bunch� in syndication � a phenomenally successful rerun that
> reruns even now, 40 years after the show was canceled at the end of its
> fifth season. Beneath its perpetual ability to keep us aghast at the
> fashion, d�cor, lingo and the most corny and tentative notions of
> fifth season. Beneath its perpetual ability to keep us aghast at the
> counterculture in the 1970s, �The Brady Bunch� remains a permanent
> touchstone. No one will ever mistake it for Ibsen, but disdainful
> critics have learned that it meant something to some of us.
>
> Hearing about the death on Sunday of 88-year-old actress Ann B. Davis,
> who is remembered best for playing the fictional Brady family�s live-in
> critics have learned that it meant something to some of us.
>
> Hearing about the death on Sunday of 88-year-old actress Ann B. Davis,
> housekeeper, Alice Nelson, I immediately and wistfully thought of what
> it felt like, in grade school and middle school, to come home every
> afternoon to an empty house.
>
>
> Actress Ann B. Davis died Sunday, June 1. (Fred Prouser/Reuters) It
> wasn�t a terrible thing; these aren�t bad memories, but Alice is
> it felt like, in grade school and middle school, to come home every
> afternoon to an empty house.
>
>
> Actress Ann B. Davis died Sunday, June 1. (Fred Prouser/Reuters) It
> certainly in them. Like �The Brady Bunch,� being a so-called latchkey
> kid was a byproduct of the �70s. Some of us had moms who were among the
> first American women to boldly attempt the juggling act of earning a
> paycheck and running a household. Some of us had divorced parents, or
> soon would. Some of us knew it was our job to fend for ourselves for a
> couple hours between 3:30 and 5:30 each day. None of us had a live-in
> housekeeper.
>
> But we were not entirely alone when we had reruns. As early as the
> mid-�70s, when Paramount Television first put the show into weekday
> paycheck and running a household. Some of us had divorced parents, or
> soon would. Some of us knew it was our job to fend for ourselves for a
> couple hours between 3:30 and 5:30 each day. None of us had a live-in
> housekeeper.
>
> But we were not entirely alone when we had reruns. As early as the
> syndication, �The Brady Bunch� felt immediately and almost profoundly
> nostalgic.
>
> No matter how quiet and empty the house was when you got home, you could
> turn on the TV just as the theme song began (�Here�s the story��) and
>
> No matter how quiet and empty the house was when you got home, you could
> Alice was there, in the center of that joyful, blended-family �Brady
> Bunch� grid. She was in the kitchen getting dinner ready. She offered
> cookies and milk and sound advice.
>
> She was, I suppose, whatever June Cleaver had been to the previous
> generation. The years went by, the 117 �Brady Bunch� episodes kept
>
> She was, I suppose, whatever June Cleaver had been to the previous
> rerunning (the Grand Canyon trip, the Hawaii trip; Davy Jones dropping
> by, Joe Namath dropping by; Jan buying a wig, Peter�s voice cracking)
> and Alice kept filling some need for nurture. The entire premise of the
> show seemed to acknowledge, at least in subtext, that Alice was filling
> the need that Carol Brady (Florence Henderson) could not fill. It�s the
> show seemed to acknowledge, at least in subtext, that Alice was filling
> great unspoken truth of �The Brady Bunch,� particularly in retrospect:
> Ann B. Davis was the better mother.
>
> But television could never let on about that. The jokes they wrote for
> Alice had an outdated and intentionally broad and hammy quality to them,
> as if her prior gigs had been cleaning hotel rooms in the Catskills.
> Davis was already a two-time Emmy winning comic actress (as Schultzy,
> the Gal Friday character on NBC�s �The Bob Cummings Show� in the 1950s)
>
> But television could never let on about that. The jokes they wrote for
> Alice had an outdated and intentionally broad and hammy quality to them,
> as if her prior gigs had been cleaning hotel rooms in the Catskills.
> Davis was already a two-time Emmy winning comic actress (as Schultzy,
> when she took the �Brady� gig. Whether or not she believed the material
> was up to her standards, she made Alice�s wisecracks and goofy
> physicality seem perfectly natural. Robert Reed, who played father Mike
> Brady, went to his grave still grumbling about the insipidness of the
> show; Davis seemed to exult in it.
>
> Viewers, especially children, were meant to understand that Alice was
> �old,� or was at least feeling the first pangs of decline. (In fact,
> Brady, went to his grave still grumbling about the insipidness of the
> show; Davis seemed to exult in it.
>
> Viewers, especially children, were meant to understand that Alice was
> Davis was in her 40s during �The Brady Bunch�s� run.) Dancing the hula
> or unwisely having a go on a trampoline, Alice seemed prone to
> lower-back strain and assorted pratfalls which caused her employers and
> their children to squeal with laughter at her expense � oh, Alice.
> lower-back strain and assorted pratfalls which caused her employers and
>
> Always the Gal Friday, she made frequent, self-deprecating jokes about
> her spinsterhood and her futile attempts to get Sam the Butcher, her
> only suitor, to come around to the idea of commitment. When Hollywood
> began making big-budget �Brady� movies in the 1990s, which were
> Always the Gal Friday, she made frequent, self-deprecating jokes about
> her spinsterhood and her futile attempts to get Sam the Butcher, her
> only suitor, to come around to the idea of commitment. When Hollywood
> faithfully detailed and lightly subverted parodies, I remember being so
> let down by their idea of Alice (played by Henriette Mantel) as a secret
> freak and sexual libertine. It was one of the few times I�ve ever been
> let down by their idea of Alice (played by Henriette Mantel) as a secret
> offended on behalf of a fictional character, as if my � our � Alice had
> been fundamentally misunderstood.
>
> In the gauzy bliss of Bradydom, where the bathroom was only ever used
> for staring at the mirror in a spell of pubescent unease, we rarely, if
> ever, saw Alice in the act of completing the household�s hardest chores,
>
> In the gauzy bliss of Bradydom, where the bathroom was only ever used
> for staring at the mirror in a spell of pubescent unease, we rarely, if
> such as scrubbing a toilet and bathtub shared by six children. People
> look at �The Brady Bunch� now and bring too many questions to it,
> starting with: Why did the Bradys need a full-time, live-in housekeeper?
> Why did Mike Brady, the architect paterfamilias, design the house with
> just one bathroom for the kids? If they loved her like family, why did
> they make Alice wear a uniform? Too many questions and too many cheap
> jokes to be made until, finally, one day, �The Brady Bunch� won�t be on
> Why did Mike Brady, the architect paterfamilias, design the house with
> just one bathroom for the kids? If they loved her like family, why did
> they make Alice wear a uniform? Too many questions and too many cheap
> anymore.
>
> I hardly questioned it as a child. I had everything a kid could ever
> want and still found myself watching �The Brady Bunch� from a place of
>
> I hardly questioned it as a child. I had everything a kid could ever
> envy.
>
> I envied the activity, the noise, the laughter, the good cheer, the
> sunshine, the talent shows, the vacations. I envied the brothers, the
> sisters, the cohesion, the Alice-ness of it all. I envied it and on some
> level I feared it. Their lives were too clean, too ordered, too right.
> �If there�s anything I can�t stand, it�s a perfect kid,� Alice once
>
> I envied the activity, the noise, the laughter, the good cheer, the
> sunshine, the talent shows, the vacations. I envied the brothers, the
> sisters, the cohesion, the Alice-ness of it all. I envied it and on some
> level I feared it. Their lives were too clean, too ordered, too right.
> said, piercing that veneer, celebrating faults and spats and mistakes.
> Latchkey kids were especially attuned to �The Brady Bunch�s� nonsense,
> but we sensed the safety in it.
>
> So maybe you didn�t come into the kitchen through a sliding glass door
>
> from a backyard covered in Astroturf.
>
> So you most likely didn�t have five siblings.
>
>
> So they were Chips Ahoy cookies, not homemade.
>
> So no one had remembered to buy milk.
>
> So Alice was imaginary.
>
> What a wonderful person to have around anyhow, if only on TV, just in
> case we felt alone.
>
>
That was a nice tribute to both the actress and the character. It's a shame
> So they were Chips Ahoy cookies, not homemade.
>
> So no one had remembered to buy milk.
>
> So Alice was imaginary.
>
> What a wonderful person to have around anyhow, if only on TV, just in
> case we felt alone.
>
>
such reminiscences only seem to come to light AFTER the actor has died.
Imagine how it would have made Davis' day to have read this a few weeks
or months ago....
--
Rhino
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