Oh, Alice! Remembering Ann B. Davis

By Elizabeth Michaud

Actress Ann B. Davis, best known for her iconic role as Alice Nelson on the television series “The Brady Bunch,” died Sunday in a San Antonio hospital. She was 88 years old.

Her natal chart reflects a deep emotional and spiritual core kept far below the surface of the trustworthy and matter-of-fact persona she exhibited in her acting career. While born with the Sun in simplistic and straightforward Taurus, the watery nature of Davis’s chart symbolizes a level of feeling and mysticism that went far beyond the everyday world.

Davis was born with an identical twin sister in Schenectady, New York, on May 3, 1926. Three years later, her parents, an electrical engineer and an amateur actress, decided to move the twins and their older brother to Erie, Pennsylvania. Davis, who originally wanted to become a doctor, turned to acting after seeing her brother perform in Oklahoma! She went on to graduate from the University of Michigan with a degree in theater in 1948.

Davis’s first big television success was on “The Bob Cummings Show,” where she played Charmaine “Schultzy” Schultz, a lovesick secretary, from 1955-1959. The role earned her two Emmy Awards for best featured actress in a comedy series in both 1958 and 1959.

While she was cast in other television series, Broadway productions and commercial spots, Davis is widely remembered for her portrayal of the loveable maid on “The Brady Bunch” from 1969 to 1974. Her character, Alice, was eternally cheerful, tirelessly supportive, and always ready with a wisecrack or joke, often at her own expense. She created a beloved cultural figure who represented the voice of reason and comfort to generations of Americans.

After the show went off the air, Davis joined an Episcopalian religious community led by Bishop William Frey. She became closely dedicated to her evangelical family, spending most of her time volunteering and working with the Trinity School for Ministry, and eventually moved into the Bishop’s house with him and his wife. She suffered a subdural hematoma after falling in the bathroom of their Texas home on Saturday.

Astrologically speaking, Davis’s natal chart shows her down-to-earth “plain Jane” qualities in her Taurus Sun, Taurus Ascendant, and Capricorn Moon. She was solid and reliable, with a dry humor that her audiences depended on. But this earth energy is only part of who she really was.

Davis’s chart is also indicative of the depth of longing that she not only portrayed through her characters pining for romance, but demonstrated in her religious devotion. The element of water, symbolic of the emotional realm, is incredibly strong, particularly with a cluster of planets in Cancer. Venus and Uranus are in a close conjunction in Pisces, and form a trine aspect with Saturn in Scorpio.

All three water signs are active in the chart, suggesting that there was a powerful internal life that she kept private. Venus, the ruler of her Taurus Sun and Ascendant, is exalted in Pisces, translating into a spiritual desire to break down boundaries and seek a richer sense of fulfillment, one that goes beyond the mundane physical world.

As she said in a 1992 interview with People magazine, “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.”