Ann B. Davis has joined the cast of Crazy for You

FROM BRADY TO CRAZY Ann B. Davis estimates that she has worked her way through three generations of TV fans. "There was one back in the fifties when I played Schultzy on `The Bob Cummings Show,' then the original fans of `The Brady Bunch' from 1969 to '74, and now their children, who watch the reruns," says Davis, currently on Broadway as the hero's haughty mother in Crazy for You.

Davis, of course, played the Bradys' cheerful housekeeper, Alice, and had a cameo role as a truck driver in The Brady Bunch Movie last year. "I'm always happy to talk about the show because it was fun to do, and Alice was a very pleasant character," she says. "If I'd been playing Alice the Ax Murderer, I might hate it."

The veteran actress spent most of the past 15 years living in a religious community in Denver run by an Episcopal bishop. "I never looked at it as giving up my career," she says. "When I found out that Jesus loved me, it just seemed less important whether the rest of the world did or not." After the bishop's family relocated to the East Coast, Davis decided to begin acting again. "When I got back onstage for the first time, I said, `Oh, yeah, I remember now--this is a lot of fun!' "

Back on Broadway for the first time since she replaced Carol Burnett in Once Upon a Mattress, Davis reports, "The Times Square area seems much more pleasant than it used to be. I don't think the city has changed as much as I have--it's better, and I'm 30 years older." -- by Kathy Henderson