The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet is an
American sitcom, airing on
ABC from October 3, 1952 to September 3, 1966, starring the real life Nelson family. The series starred
Ozzie Nelson and his wife, singer
Harriet Nelson (née Hilliard), and their young sons,
David Nelson and Eric Nelson, better known as
Ricky. The series attracted large audiences, although it was never a top-ten hit, it became synonymous with the 1950s ideal American family life. It is the longest-running "live-action"/non-animated sitcom in US TV history.
Orchestra
In the early 1930s, a booking at the Glen Island Casino landed Ozzie Nelson's orchestra national network radio exposure. After three years together with the orchestra, Ozzie and Harriet signed to appear regularly on
The Baker's Broadcast (1933-1938), hosted first by Joe Penner, then by
Robert L. Ripley, and finally by cartoonist Feg Murray. The couple married on October 8, 1935 during this series run, and realized working together in radio would keep them together more than continuing their musical careers separately. In 1941, the Nelsons joined the cast of
The Red Skelton Show, also providing much of the show's music. The couple stayed with the series for three years. They also built their radio experience by guest appearances, together and individually, on many top radio shows, from comedies such as
The Fred Allen Show, to the mystery titan
Suspense, in a 1947 episode called "Too Little to Live On".
Radio
When
Red Skelton was
drafted in March 1944, Ozzie Nelson was prompted to create his own family situation comedy.
The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet launched on
CBS on October 8, 1944, making a mid-season switch to
NBC in 1949. The final years of the radio series were on ABC (the former NBC Blue Network) from October 14, 1949 to June 18, 1954. In total 402 radio episodes were produced. In an arrangement that amplified the growing pains of American broadcasting, as radio "grew up" into television, the Nelsons' deal with ABC gave the network the option to move their program to television. The struggling network needed proven talent that was not about to defect to the more established and wealthier networks like CBS or NBC.
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]
The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet comic book (October-November, 1949)]]
The Nelsons' sons, David and Ricky, did not join the cast until the radio show's fifth year. The two boys were played by professional actors prior to their joining because both were too young to perform.
The role of David was played by Joel Davis from 1944 until 1945. Tommy Bernard and Henry Blair appeared as Ricky. Other cast members included John Brown as Syd "Thorny" Thornberry,
Lurene Tuttle as Harriet's mother,
Bea Benaderet as Gloria,
Janet Waldo as Emmy Lou, and Dick Trout as Roger. Vocalists included Harriet Nelson,
The King Sisters, and Ozzie Nelson. The announcers were Jack Bailey and Verne Smith. The music was by
Billy May and Ozzie Nelson. The producers were Dave Elton and Ozzie Nelson.
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Film
In 1952, the Nelsons starred with
Rock Hudson in the feature film,
Here Come the Nelsons. The film depicted Ozzie as an advertising executive assigned to a campaign promoting women's underwear.
Here Come the Nelsons is the first, and only, instance that Ozzie Nelson's job is clearly stated. The film opened on February 23, 1952, little more than a week before the Nelsons' TV series premiered on ABC.
Television
Before the show aired, Ozzie Nelson persuaded
ABC to agree to a 10-year contract that paid whether the series was canceled or not. The unprecedented contract and Ozzie's insistence for perfection in the show's production paid off in the show's remarkable popularity.
The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet premiered on ABC on October 10, 1952, staying until September 3, 1966. The show strove for realism and featured exterior shots of the Nelsons' actual southern California home as the fictional Nelsons' home. Interior shots were filmed on a sound stage recreated to look like the real interior of the Nelsons' home. Like its radio predecessor, the series focused mainly on the Nelson family at home, dealing with run-of-the-mill problems. As the series progressed and the boys grew up, storylines involving various characters were introduced. Many of the series storylines were taken from the Nelsons' real life. When the real David and Rick got married, to
June Blair and
Kristin Harmon respectively, their wives joined the cast of
Ozzie and Harriet, and the marriages were written into the series.
By the mid 1960s, America's social climate was changing, and the Nelsons' all American
nuclear family epitomized the 1950s values and ideals that were quickly becoming a thing of the past. Ozzie, who wrote and directed all of the series' episodes, attempted to change with the times, but most viewers related the show to a long gone era. The show made the transition from black-and-white to color in its
1965–66 season, but ABC canceled
Ozzie and Harriet in 1966.
A number of actors had supporting roles on
Ozzie and Harriet, including
Jimmy Hawkins,
Don DeFore,
Mary Jane Croft,
Lyle Talbot,
Frank Cady,
Skip Young, and
Kent McCord.
Ozzie's Girls
In 1973, David Nelson produced a short-lived syndicated
spin-off to
Ozzie and Harriet entitled,
Ozzie's Girls, in which Ozzie and Harriet rented the boys' old room to two college students, portrayed by Susan Sennett and Brenda Sykes. Storylines centered around the Nelsons attempting to aid in the problems of two girls after having raised two sons.
The series premiered on January 1, 1973, and was canceled on September 1, 1974.
Recordings
The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet made the Nelsons' youngest son, Rick, into a music
teen idol. Unlike many American parents of the era, Ozzie Nelson actually liked
rock and roll and encouraged his son's obvious talent. Ozzie also realized the impact his musically gifted son could bring to the series, and went on to write storylines featuring Rick singing. Rick first sang in the April 10, 1957, episode, "Rick the Drummer," performing a version of
Fats Domino's hit, "I'm Walkin", and later signed a recording contract with Domino's label,
Imperial Records. Subsequent episodes that aired after Rick became one of the nation's most successful musicians were some of the show's highest-rated episodes.
Television and home video releases
It has been suggested that at least most of the series is in the
public domain, and has been unofficially released on home video, including
VHS and
DVD, on many different low-budget company labels. Five DVDs containing episodes from the show are available from
Alpha Video.
The Rick Nelson Company, LLC, currently owns the rights to the original film elements. An officially released video version of
The Best of the Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet was released May 1, 2007 by
Shout! Factory under license from The Rick Nelson Company. Both the Nelson company and David Nelson hold copyright ownership for any new material derived from the film elements.
Episodes of this television series have been screened at the non-profit
Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Convention held annually in Aberdeen,
Maryland. Original 16 mm negatives were used.
Collector/historian
Martin Grams, Jr. presently owns more than 12 storage bases of production materials, scripts, casting call sheets, contracts, telegrams, letters and other materials significant to the radio and television series.
Author
Jim Cox wrote an article for SPERDVAC's Radiogram in early 2008, discussing the cultural significance of the radio program.
Syndication
In the decades since the show's cancellation, the series has been continuously shown on stations in public domain prints. In the late 1980s and early 1990s,
The Disney Channel aired the show as remastered from original
35 mm film elements, with new introductions by Harriet Nelson.
The series was also aired on the
Nostalgia TV Network and currently airs on the
ION Television Network.
The Nelsons' post-TV lives
Ozzie Nelson continued to work in show business after the failure of the short lived sitcom
Ozzie's Girls. He took on the role of producer and director for some of TV's popular shows, most notably:
Adam-12,
The D.A., and
Bridget Loves Bernie. In 1975, Ozzie Nelson died of
liver cancer at the age of 69.
In the years after
Ozzie and Harriet was canceled, Rick Nelson's career and personal life changed drastically. Rick never regained the same momentum of his early career, though he continued to pursue a career in music. He shied away from his teen idol image and sound, forming the rock and roll/country fused Stone Canyon Band. Rick and the Stone Canyon Band had success with the 1972 single, "
Garden Party". Ironically, Rick and the Band wrote the song in response to having been booed off the stage at a rock and roll revival concert at
Madison Square Garden when he refused to play his old hits from his teen idol days. Throughout the 1970s, Rick's life was riddled with debt and drug abuse. In 1981, he and wife Kristin Harmon
divorced. While touring the United States, Rick Nelson was killed in a plane crash on
December 31,
1985, in
DeKalb in
Bowie County near
Texarkana, Texas in northeast Texas. He was en route to a
New Year's Eve concert in
Dallas.
In 1987, he was inducted
posthumously into the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Following Ozzie's death in 1975, Harriet turned somewhat reclusive. In 1989, she made her last onscreen appearance in her granddaughter
Tracy Nelson's TV series,
Father Dowling Mysteries. Harriet never fully recovered from son Rick's death and she herself died of
congestive heart failure and
emphysema in 1994.
Ozzie, Harriet, and Rick are interred together in
Forest Lawn, Hollywood Hills Cemetery in
Los Angeles, California.
David Nelson continues to produce feature films and television commercials and owns his commercial production company.
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