[1][2] She achieved prominence for her role in the NBC situation comedy The Bob Cummings Show (1955–1959), for which she twice won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series, but she was best known for playing the part of Alice Nelson, the housekeeper in ABC's The Brady Bunch (1969–1974).

[2] She won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series twice out of four nominations for this role.

As early as 1958 she appeared in a national touring company of the Thornton Wilder play The Matchmaker, costarring her Bob Cummings Show castmate, Lyle Talbot, who played Bob's Air Force buddy,[9] and on June 27, 1960[10][11] she replaced Carol Burnett in the starring role of Princess Winnifred in the Broadway production of the musical Once Upon a Mattress.

During this period she also performed as a comedian; before Sherwood Schwartz could cast her in The Brady Bunch, Paramount Studios had to buy her out of a multiweek booking in Seattle.

She also made a cameo appearance as a truck driver named "Schultzy", a reference to her days on The Bob Cummings Show, in The Brady Bunch Movie in 1995.

[20] In 1976, Davis sold her home in Los Angeles to move to Denver, Colorado, where she joined an Episcopal community led by Bishop William C.

[21] The community later relocated to Ambridge in Beaver County in far western Pennsylvania after Frey became dean of the seminary Trinity School for Ministry.

Earlier in the day, she had sustained a subdural hematoma from a fall in her bathroom in her San Antonio residence, in which she lived with Bishop Frey and his wife, Barbara.