OZZIE NELSON AND HIS VOCALIST-SWEETHEART, HARRIET HILLIARD, IN 1935
WHEN OZZIE MET HARRIET
A whimsical family sitcom finally made the season’s Top 50 in 1950 after six years of trying. Few thought that it ever would. Even fewer would have thought that The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet would become the foundation for a legendary television series - few except its creator, a law graduate turned bandleader turned actor turned producer, Ozzie Nelson. (1)
Like Rudy Vallee, Nelson was a singing saxophone player who formed a dance band in college to make ends meet. A born promoter, he took his band on the road in the Northeast states, won a questionable New York Daily News popularity poll and signed with Brunswick Records in 1930. By 1932 the band had become a headline attraction when Harriet Hilliard joined it as the featured vocalist. (2) The addition of Harriet made the band a complete package and with a growing number of hit records going for them, the Nelson troupe began its Network Radio run in October, 1933, providing the music and “straights” for the new Fleishmann Yeast Bakers’ Broadcast starring comedian Joe Penner on the Blue Network Sunday nights at 7:30.
The first season of Bakers' Broadcasts rode the wave of Penner’s popularity and returned a 24.9 rating to easily win its time period, rank third behind Eddie Cantor and Will Rogers on Sunday night and finish eleventh in the Annual Top 50. Things got even better in the 1934-35 season when Jack Benny became the Bakers' Broadcasts’ Sunday night lead-in on Blue. Penner, Nelson and Hilliard moved up to sixth in the Annual Top Ten with a whopping 31.3 rating. A very poor recording of the Bakers' Broadcast from May 13, 1934 is posted, that illustrates how important Ozzie was to the show and the novelty duet style that he and Harriet made popular.
As historian John Dunning wrote of their duets, “…Here they became stars. They batted lyrics back and forth in a style that had been utilized a few years earlier by Phil Harris and Leah Ray. The Nelsons owned that style by 1935.” Their frequent sweetheart duets attracted fans but had an even greater effect on Ozzie and Harriet - they were married in 1935.
When Penner left The Bakers' Broadcast and Robert (Believe It Or Not) Ripley took over in 1935-36, the Nelsons stayed with the show in the dual capacity of its providing music - and skeptically interviewing Ripley about the oddities he had discovered. An episode of these broadcasts is posted from June 14, 1936, with one of their trademark novelty duets, Cmon, Get Up! (3) Penner’s over inflated ratings of the previous season were cut in half to 16.0, but the show remained in third place on Sunday night and eleventh in the Top 50 of 1935-36.
Harriet gave birth to the couple’s first son, David, at the start of the 1936-37 season, but the rug was pulled out from under The Bakers’ Broadcast when General Foods moved Jack Benny from Blue to NBC. Ripley and the Nelsons were left on Blue with the lead-in of soprano Helen Traubel and the competition of comedian Phil Baker on CBS. The Bakers’ Broadcast ratings sank to 10.6 behind Phil Baker’s 15.8 and Ripley left the show. Standard Brands kept the Nelsons but moved the program to Hollywood and featured Los Angeles Times cartoonist and columnist Feg Murray, regarded by many to be, “…a poor man’s Ripley.”
The move West suited Ozzie and Harriet just fine because Harriet actively pursued a movie career. The most notable of her 16 films was the 1936 Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers military musical, Follow The Fleet. The remainder were mostly low budget quickies with titles like Jukebox Jenny and Confessions of Boston Blackie. (4)
With no effort on Blue’s part to fight Jack Benny and provide a decent lead-in, The Bakers’ Broadcast died quietly at the end of the 1938 season in 78th place with a 5.8 rating. Ozzie hit the road with his band and Harriet continued acting while tending to young David. (5) Then she gave birth to Eric (Ricky) in 1940 and Ozzie began to looking for work closer to his home and young family. He found it in 1941.
The Nelsons were signed for the new Raleigh Cigarette Program starring Red Skelton, MGM’s 28 year old comedy sensation who was on the studio’s fast track with a new film every three months. Ozzie provided music for the new Skelton show with occasional vocals and straight lines while Harriet doubled as the his vocalist and Red’s female counterpart to his many characters. As Harriet told Arthur Marx in his biography of the comedian, “Ozzie did all the ‘straights’ for Red and I did all the female ‘straights’ for him. If he did Clem Kadiddlehopper, I did Daisy June and when he did Junior, (the mean widdle kid), I did Junior’s mother. When he worked with a man, he worked with Ozzie. For example, Ozzie used to do the drunk along with Red when he did two drunks together. In those days you doubled in brass. But I’ll tell you one thing, it was an education in comedy to work with Red”
With black comic Wonderful Smith and announcer Truman Bradley, Brown & Williamson Tobacco and its Russell Seeds advertising agency had a neat little $5,500 package in The Raleigh Cigarette Program that fit right in with Bob Hope’s Pepsodent Show, (budgeted at $10,500), and Fibber McGee & Molly, ($7,500). The three shows that gave NBC a lock on Tuesday night. Skelton's program of March 24, 1942 in which Ozzie & Harriet paired up for Why Shouldn’t I Have You? is a sample of the first season in which the show scored a 27.7 rating and became the fourth most popular program in the country behind Fibber McGee, Bob Hope and Edgar Bergen.
Skelton and the Nelsons picked right up where they left off in the fall as the show from November 24, 1942 indicates when Ozzie and Harriet sang Rosie The Riveter. They were rewarded at the end of the season with a 32.3 rating, tied with Bob Hope for the Number One ranking in Network Radio. By the spring of 1944 the show had changed slightly but its 29.9 rating was good enough for third place in the Annual Top 50 behind Hope and the McGees. The Skelton show from May 16, 1944, is posted when Ozzie & Harriet mangled English in novelty called A Tropical Song.
A not-so-inside joke near the top of this show is contained in a conversation between Skelton and announcer Frank Nelson when the comedian is asked what he’s going to do over his summer vacation. It was common knowledge that Skelton was going into the Army and it was generally assumed that Ozzie & Harriet would take over the show until his return. It wasn’t to be. Instead, the cigarette maker opted for Hildegarde’s Raleigh Room, which put the Nelsons out of work - and lost 45% of Skelton’s ratings. (6)
Although Ozzie Nelson was often portrayed a dimwit on the Skelton shows, he had proved himself a successful bandleader and shrewd businessman. When the Nelsons’ contract with Skelton ended in June, he put into action a plan to create his own show free from the dictates of a producer assigned by a network or advertising agency. He called on a friend for guidance, independent producer John Guedel, whose successes included People Are Funny, another show sponsored by Brown & Williamson. (See A John Guedel Production on this site.)
With Guedel’s encouragement Ozzie worked on a family sitcom format for himself and Harriet that had some genesis in the duet he wrote for them years earlier, Cmon, Get Up! He kept his concept close to home, involving a young husband, his wife and their two young sons in humorous but believable predicaments. Nelson knew he would often be the bumbling fall guy and Harriet the level-headed heroine of most episodes but he kept the situations within reason as opposed to the dilemmas and verbal slapstick of Fibber McGee and Dagwood Bumstead. Ozzie aimed his more realistic concept at the young families who would be springing up after World War II, relating to them and growing with them, albeit a year or two ahead of them, with youngsters already four and eight years old.
When Ozzie’s pilot script was finished to their satisfaction, Guedel produced the audition record for The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet, employing Joel Davis and Henry Blair as David and Ricky Nelson. (7) Ozzie knew the top Hollywood voice talents and he hired them. In on-going roles John Brown played the Nelsons’ neighbor, Thorny, Lurene Tuttle was Harriet’s mother and Janet Waldo was the breathless teenager, Emmy Lou. Almost all first-call radio voices of the era worked the show at one time or another.
Guedel then put Ozzie together with Young & Rubicam Advertising and its client International Silver which were looking to replace their expensive Silver Theater on CBS Sundays at 6:00 p.m. which had sunk to single digit ratings and dropped from 40th to 91st in the annual rankings. It turned out to be an easy sell. The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet debuted on October 8, 1944, for International’s 1847 Rogers Brothers Silverplate and International Sterling. (8) Ozzie maintained tight control on the show’s scripts and paid special attention to its midway musical interlude by retaining key members from his band plus arranger Billy May and the singing King Sisters. The smooth production improved slightly on Silver Theater’s ratings over the first season, returning an 8.2 rating but far from the Top 50 at 99th place.
The sponsor and network were both pleased with The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet despite its low rating which nevertheless beat ABC’s elaborate Radio Hall of Fame in its time period. (See Radio Hall of Fame on this site.) An Ozzie & Harriet episode from August 12, 1945 is posted which presents its clever but wholesome entertainment for the family on early Sunday evenings.
Its audience grew slightly over its second season to 8.7 and the Nelsons jumped up to 78th in the annual rankings. The 1946-47 season was even better with a 10.1 rating and 59th place. International moved the show at mid-season in 1947-48 to Friday nights on CBS at 9:30 and the ratings jumped to 13.4, but in a banner year for audiences its ranking dropped to 67th.
In the season when they enjoyed their greatest sitcom audience, Ozzie and Harriet took on the challenge of a Suspense broadcast on December 26, 1947. Written by Robert Richard and produced by William Spier, Too Little To Live On is a dark, double-twisted tale of a couple trapped in their own home by a domineering rich uncle, (played by Joseph Kearns), with only one way to escape his grasp on their lives. It’s a surprising dramatic turn for the Nelsons and an enjoyable one for listeners.
Regardless, of their improvement on CBS, International Silver moved the show again in October, 1948, to NBC’s Sunday schedule at 6:30, a prime spot leading into Jack Benny’s Top Five show. An episode from October 10, 1948, is posted when Ozzie & Harriet’s ratings were on the rise in Benny’s shadow. In December, 1948, the Nelson's scored their ever highest rating, a 17.0.
Then Benny jumped to CBS in January, 1949. The bottom fell out of NBC’s ratings and Ozzie & Harriet plummeted to a 9.2. Nevertheless, the Nelson’s kept the ball rolling as this episode from March 27, 1949 illustrates.
International Silver bailed out of NBC and returned The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet to CBS as Benny’s lead-in on April 3, 1949. The audience didn’t respond, however, and Ozzie was getting tired of playing hide and seek with his show’s listeners. He was a receptive audience when ABC came calling at the end of the 1948-49 season with a multi-year contract and the promise of television in the future.
The Nelson Family, now with David and Ricky playing themselves, moved to ABC’s newly potent Friday night schedule on October 14, 1949, under the sponsorship of Heinz Foods. An episode from this transcribed run to accommodate the busy Nelson schedule is posted from June 1, 1951. Their ratings never again returned to double digits, but as the rest of the Network Radio industry faded, Ozzie & Harriet’s rankings increased over the next four years from 60th to 45th to 31st then back to 34th at the close of the Golden Age in 1952-53.
The Nelsons left ABC Radio in 1954, rounding out 20 years on the air. But they were just getting rolling in television. The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet was adapted for television in 1952 and became an ABC-TV staple for the next 14 years, joining Father Knows Best and Make Room For Daddy as symbols of 1950's family values.
Ozzie and Harriet attempted a comeback with the syndicated television sitcom Ozzie’s Girls in 1973 that only lasted for 24 episodes, a rare failure in their careers. Ozzie passed away in 1975. Ricky Nelson enjoyed a success in pop music and film, but was killed in a 1985 private plane crash. Harriet Nelson, who was a chain smoker in private, died of emphysema in 1994. David Nelson, an actor and producer until he retired, passed away in 2011 at age 74.
(1) Oswald George Nelson was born in New Jersey in March, 1906. An ambitious young man, he became an Eagle Scout at age 13 who played and coached youth football. He earned a law degree from Rutgers University in 1930.
(2) Harriet was born Peggy Lou Snyder to show business parents in Des Moines on July 18,1909. She was coming off a bad 1930 marriage to actor Roy Snedley when she joined Ozzie Nelson’s band in 1932. Her first marriage was annulled in 1933.
(3) Ozzie later divulged that many of Robert Ripley’s Believe It Or Not discoveries came from the imagination of the show’s producer, Ed Gardner, later the star of Duffy’s Tavern. (See Duffy Ain’t Here on this site.)
(4) After his first film, a Warner Brothers ten-minute short with his band in 1940, Ozzie appeared with Harriet in four films - Sweetheart of The Campus starring Ruby Keeler for Columbia Pictures in 1941, Universal’s Honeymoon Lodge in 1943, Paramount’s 1944 Jack Haley comedy Take It Big, and Harriet’s only starrng vehicle, Hi, Good Lookin’, released by Universal in 1944. Ozzie appeared without Harriet in Strictly In The Groove from Universal in 1943 and Paramount’s 1946 comedy, People Are Funny, loosely based on the NBC radio show.
(5) A sample of the Ozzie Nelson band in 1940 is found in the GOld Time Radio post Big Band Remotes.
(6) The Incomparable Hildegard (Snell) had hosted Skelton’s summer replacement show, Beat The Band, in 1943 and stayed with the show when Brown & Williamson gave it a slot on NBC’s Wednesday night schedule in 1943-44 where it received a 10.6 rating and lost its 8:30 time period to Dr. Christian on CBS during an otherwise strong night for the network. Hildegarde’s Raleigh Room, an informal music and guest interview show based on her popular night club act, finished the 1944-45 season with a 16.6 rating, 14th in the Annual Top 50.
(7) Tommy Bernard replaced Joel Davis as David after the show’s first season. Ozzie and Harriet didn’t put their real sons in the cast until 1949 when David was 13 and Ricky was 9.
(8) International Silver believed in hard sell as evidenced by its repeated slogans in every broadcast and the not-too-subtle address of Nelson family’s radio home, 1847 Rogers Road.
Copyright © 2017, Jim Ramsburg, Estero FL Email: tojimramsburg@gmail.com
A whimsical family sitcom finally made the season’s Top 50 in 1950 after six years of trying. Few thought that it ever would. Even fewer would have thought that The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet would become the foundation for a legendary television series - few except its creator, a law graduate turned bandleader turned actor turned producer, Ozzie Nelson. (1)
Like Rudy Vallee, Nelson was a singing saxophone player who formed a dance band in college to make ends meet. A born promoter, he took his band on the road in the Northeast states, won a questionable New York Daily News popularity poll and signed with Brunswick Records in 1930. By 1932 the band had become a headline attraction when Harriet Hilliard joined it as the featured vocalist. (2) The addition of Harriet made the band a complete package and with a growing number of hit records going for them, the Nelson troupe began its Network Radio run in October, 1933, providing the music and “straights” for the new Fleishmann Yeast Bakers’ Broadcast starring comedian Joe Penner on the Blue Network Sunday nights at 7:30.
The first season of Bakers' Broadcasts rode the wave of Penner’s popularity and returned a 24.9 rating to easily win its time period, rank third behind Eddie Cantor and Will Rogers on Sunday night and finish eleventh in the Annual Top 50. Things got even better in the 1934-35 season when Jack Benny became the Bakers' Broadcasts’ Sunday night lead-in on Blue. Penner, Nelson and Hilliard moved up to sixth in the Annual Top Ten with a whopping 31.3 rating. A very poor recording of the Bakers' Broadcast from May 13, 1934 is posted, that illustrates how important Ozzie was to the show and the novelty duet style that he and Harriet made popular.
As historian John Dunning wrote of their duets, “…Here they became stars. They batted lyrics back and forth in a style that had been utilized a few years earlier by Phil Harris and Leah Ray. The Nelsons owned that style by 1935.” Their frequent sweetheart duets attracted fans but had an even greater effect on Ozzie and Harriet - they were married in 1935.
When Penner left The Bakers' Broadcast and Robert (Believe It Or Not) Ripley took over in 1935-36, the Nelsons stayed with the show in the dual capacity of its providing music - and skeptically interviewing Ripley about the oddities he had discovered. An episode of these broadcasts is posted from June 14, 1936, with one of their trademark novelty duets, Cmon, Get Up! (3) Penner’s over inflated ratings of the previous season were cut in half to 16.0, but the show remained in third place on Sunday night and eleventh in the Top 50 of 1935-36.
Harriet gave birth to the couple’s first son, David, at the start of the 1936-37 season, but the rug was pulled out from under The Bakers’ Broadcast when General Foods moved Jack Benny from Blue to NBC. Ripley and the Nelsons were left on Blue with the lead-in of soprano Helen Traubel and the competition of comedian Phil Baker on CBS. The Bakers’ Broadcast ratings sank to 10.6 behind Phil Baker’s 15.8 and Ripley left the show. Standard Brands kept the Nelsons but moved the program to Hollywood and featured Los Angeles Times cartoonist and columnist Feg Murray, regarded by many to be, “…a poor man’s Ripley.”
The move West suited Ozzie and Harriet just fine because Harriet actively pursued a movie career. The most notable of her 16 films was the 1936 Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers military musical, Follow The Fleet. The remainder were mostly low budget quickies with titles like Jukebox Jenny and Confessions of Boston Blackie. (4)
With no effort on Blue’s part to fight Jack Benny and provide a decent lead-in, The Bakers’ Broadcast died quietly at the end of the 1938 season in 78th place with a 5.8 rating. Ozzie hit the road with his band and Harriet continued acting while tending to young David. (5) Then she gave birth to Eric (Ricky) in 1940 and Ozzie began to looking for work closer to his home and young family. He found it in 1941.
The Nelsons were signed for the new Raleigh Cigarette Program starring Red Skelton, MGM’s 28 year old comedy sensation who was on the studio’s fast track with a new film every three months. Ozzie provided music for the new Skelton show with occasional vocals and straight lines while Harriet doubled as the his vocalist and Red’s female counterpart to his many characters. As Harriet told Arthur Marx in his biography of the comedian, “Ozzie did all the ‘straights’ for Red and I did all the female ‘straights’ for him. If he did Clem Kadiddlehopper, I did Daisy June and when he did Junior, (the mean widdle kid), I did Junior’s mother. When he worked with a man, he worked with Ozzie. For example, Ozzie used to do the drunk along with Red when he did two drunks together. In those days you doubled in brass. But I’ll tell you one thing, it was an education in comedy to work with Red”
With black comic Wonderful Smith and announcer Truman Bradley, Brown & Williamson Tobacco and its Russell Seeds advertising agency had a neat little $5,500 package in The Raleigh Cigarette Program that fit right in with Bob Hope’s Pepsodent Show, (budgeted at $10,500), and Fibber McGee & Molly, ($7,500). The three shows that gave NBC a lock on Tuesday night. Skelton's program of March 24, 1942 in which Ozzie & Harriet paired up for Why Shouldn’t I Have You? is a sample of the first season in which the show scored a 27.7 rating and became the fourth most popular program in the country behind Fibber McGee, Bob Hope and Edgar Bergen.
Skelton and the Nelsons picked right up where they left off in the fall as the show from November 24, 1942 indicates when Ozzie and Harriet sang Rosie The Riveter. They were rewarded at the end of the season with a 32.3 rating, tied with Bob Hope for the Number One ranking in Network Radio. By the spring of 1944 the show had changed slightly but its 29.9 rating was good enough for third place in the Annual Top 50 behind Hope and the McGees. The Skelton show from May 16, 1944, is posted when Ozzie & Harriet mangled English in novelty called A Tropical Song.
A not-so-inside joke near the top of this show is contained in a conversation between Skelton and announcer Frank Nelson when the comedian is asked what he’s going to do over his summer vacation. It was common knowledge that Skelton was going into the Army and it was generally assumed that Ozzie & Harriet would take over the show until his return. It wasn’t to be. Instead, the cigarette maker opted for Hildegarde’s Raleigh Room, which put the Nelsons out of work - and lost 45% of Skelton’s ratings. (6)
Although Ozzie Nelson was often portrayed a dimwit on the Skelton shows, he had proved himself a successful bandleader and shrewd businessman. When the Nelsons’ contract with Skelton ended in June, he put into action a plan to create his own show free from the dictates of a producer assigned by a network or advertising agency. He called on a friend for guidance, independent producer John Guedel, whose successes included People Are Funny, another show sponsored by Brown & Williamson. (See A John Guedel Production on this site.)
With Guedel’s encouragement Ozzie worked on a family sitcom format for himself and Harriet that had some genesis in the duet he wrote for them years earlier, Cmon, Get Up! He kept his concept close to home, involving a young husband, his wife and their two young sons in humorous but believable predicaments. Nelson knew he would often be the bumbling fall guy and Harriet the level-headed heroine of most episodes but he kept the situations within reason as opposed to the dilemmas and verbal slapstick of Fibber McGee and Dagwood Bumstead. Ozzie aimed his more realistic concept at the young families who would be springing up after World War II, relating to them and growing with them, albeit a year or two ahead of them, with youngsters already four and eight years old.
When Ozzie’s pilot script was finished to their satisfaction, Guedel produced the audition record for The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet, employing Joel Davis and Henry Blair as David and Ricky Nelson. (7) Ozzie knew the top Hollywood voice talents and he hired them. In on-going roles John Brown played the Nelsons’ neighbor, Thorny, Lurene Tuttle was Harriet’s mother and Janet Waldo was the breathless teenager, Emmy Lou. Almost all first-call radio voices of the era worked the show at one time or another.
Guedel then put Ozzie together with Young & Rubicam Advertising and its client International Silver which were looking to replace their expensive Silver Theater on CBS Sundays at 6:00 p.m. which had sunk to single digit ratings and dropped from 40th to 91st in the annual rankings. It turned out to be an easy sell. The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet debuted on October 8, 1944, for International’s 1847 Rogers Brothers Silverplate and International Sterling. (8) Ozzie maintained tight control on the show’s scripts and paid special attention to its midway musical interlude by retaining key members from his band plus arranger Billy May and the singing King Sisters. The smooth production improved slightly on Silver Theater’s ratings over the first season, returning an 8.2 rating but far from the Top 50 at 99th place.
The sponsor and network were both pleased with The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet despite its low rating which nevertheless beat ABC’s elaborate Radio Hall of Fame in its time period. (See Radio Hall of Fame on this site.) An Ozzie & Harriet episode from August 12, 1945 is posted which presents its clever but wholesome entertainment for the family on early Sunday evenings.
Its audience grew slightly over its second season to 8.7 and the Nelsons jumped up to 78th in the annual rankings. The 1946-47 season was even better with a 10.1 rating and 59th place. International moved the show at mid-season in 1947-48 to Friday nights on CBS at 9:30 and the ratings jumped to 13.4, but in a banner year for audiences its ranking dropped to 67th.
In the season when they enjoyed their greatest sitcom audience, Ozzie and Harriet took on the challenge of a Suspense broadcast on December 26, 1947. Written by Robert Richard and produced by William Spier, Too Little To Live On is a dark, double-twisted tale of a couple trapped in their own home by a domineering rich uncle, (played by Joseph Kearns), with only one way to escape his grasp on their lives. It’s a surprising dramatic turn for the Nelsons and an enjoyable one for listeners.
Regardless, of their improvement on CBS, International Silver moved the show again in October, 1948, to NBC’s Sunday schedule at 6:30, a prime spot leading into Jack Benny’s Top Five show. An episode from October 10, 1948, is posted when Ozzie & Harriet’s ratings were on the rise in Benny’s shadow. In December, 1948, the Nelson's scored their ever highest rating, a 17.0.
Then Benny jumped to CBS in January, 1949. The bottom fell out of NBC’s ratings and Ozzie & Harriet plummeted to a 9.2. Nevertheless, the Nelson’s kept the ball rolling as this episode from March 27, 1949 illustrates.
International Silver bailed out of NBC and returned The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet to CBS as Benny’s lead-in on April 3, 1949. The audience didn’t respond, however, and Ozzie was getting tired of playing hide and seek with his show’s listeners. He was a receptive audience when ABC came calling at the end of the 1948-49 season with a multi-year contract and the promise of television in the future.
The Nelson Family, now with David and Ricky playing themselves, moved to ABC’s newly potent Friday night schedule on October 14, 1949, under the sponsorship of Heinz Foods. An episode from this transcribed run to accommodate the busy Nelson schedule is posted from June 1, 1951. Their ratings never again returned to double digits, but as the rest of the Network Radio industry faded, Ozzie & Harriet’s rankings increased over the next four years from 60th to 45th to 31st then back to 34th at the close of the Golden Age in 1952-53.
The Nelsons left ABC Radio in 1954, rounding out 20 years on the air. But they were just getting rolling in television. The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet was adapted for television in 1952 and became an ABC-TV staple for the next 14 years, joining Father Knows Best and Make Room For Daddy as symbols of 1950's family values.
Ozzie and Harriet attempted a comeback with the syndicated television sitcom Ozzie’s Girls in 1973 that only lasted for 24 episodes, a rare failure in their careers. Ozzie passed away in 1975. Ricky Nelson enjoyed a success in pop music and film, but was killed in a 1985 private plane crash. Harriet Nelson, who was a chain smoker in private, died of emphysema in 1994. David Nelson, an actor and producer until he retired, passed away in 2011 at age 74.
(1) Oswald George Nelson was born in New Jersey in March, 1906. An ambitious young man, he became an Eagle Scout at age 13 who played and coached youth football. He earned a law degree from Rutgers University in 1930.
(2) Harriet was born Peggy Lou Snyder to show business parents in Des Moines on July 18,1909. She was coming off a bad 1930 marriage to actor Roy Snedley when she joined Ozzie Nelson’s band in 1932. Her first marriage was annulled in 1933.
(3) Ozzie later divulged that many of Robert Ripley’s Believe It Or Not discoveries came from the imagination of the show’s producer, Ed Gardner, later the star of Duffy’s Tavern. (See Duffy Ain’t Here on this site.)
(4) After his first film, a Warner Brothers ten-minute short with his band in 1940, Ozzie appeared with Harriet in four films - Sweetheart of The Campus starring Ruby Keeler for Columbia Pictures in 1941, Universal’s Honeymoon Lodge in 1943, Paramount’s 1944 Jack Haley comedy Take It Big, and Harriet’s only starrng vehicle, Hi, Good Lookin’, released by Universal in 1944. Ozzie appeared without Harriet in Strictly In The Groove from Universal in 1943 and Paramount’s 1946 comedy, People Are Funny, loosely based on the NBC radio show.
(5) A sample of the Ozzie Nelson band in 1940 is found in the GOld Time Radio post Big Band Remotes.
(6) The Incomparable Hildegard (Snell) had hosted Skelton’s summer replacement show, Beat The Band, in 1943 and stayed with the show when Brown & Williamson gave it a slot on NBC’s Wednesday night schedule in 1943-44 where it received a 10.6 rating and lost its 8:30 time period to Dr. Christian on CBS during an otherwise strong night for the network. Hildegarde’s Raleigh Room, an informal music and guest interview show based on her popular night club act, finished the 1944-45 season with a 16.6 rating, 14th in the Annual Top 50.
(7) Tommy Bernard replaced Joel Davis as David after the show’s first season. Ozzie and Harriet didn’t put their real sons in the cast until 1949 when David was 13 and Ricky was 9.
(8) International Silver believed in hard sell as evidenced by its repeated slogans in every broadcast and the not-too-subtle address of Nelson family’s radio home, 1847 Rogers Road.
Copyright © 2017, Jim Ramsburg, Estero FL Email: tojimramsburg@gmail.com
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