Ozzie Nelson

Nelson was born March 20, 1906, in Jersey City, New Jersey, United States. He was the second son of Ethel Irene (née Orr) and George Waldemar Nelson. His paternal grandparents were Swedish and his mother was of English descent. Nelson was raised in Ridgefield Park, where he was active in Scouting, earning the rank of Eagle Scout at age 13. He played football at Ridgefield Park High School and during his college years at Rutgers University. He was a member of the Cap and Skull fraternity.{{cite web|url=http://capandskull.com|title=Skulls of 1927|publisher=Rutgers University|access-date=June 16, 2008}} He graduated from Rutgers University with a bachelor's degree and earned a law degree from Rutgers School of Law, Newark, New Jersey, in 1930. Nelson was made a doctor of humane letters by Rutgers University in 1957. As a student, he made pocket money playing saxophone in a band and coaching football. Nelson was rejected to be the vocalist for the Rutgers Jazz Bandits, led by Scrappy Lambert and later Hawley Ades. Nelson was not discouraged and was gracious about this rejection when he met Ades years later.{{cite web |url=http://www.jazzage1920s.com/scrappylambert/scrappylambert.php |title=Scrappy Lambert |last=Garrick |first=David |date=April 3, 2015 |website=Jazzage1920s.com|access-date=May 29, 2016 }} During the Depression, he turned to music as a full-time career.

File:Ozzie & Harriet - Radio Mirror, October 1936.jpg

Nelson started his entertainment career as a band leader. He formed and led the Ozzie Nelson Band, and had some initial limited success. Nelson made his own "big break" in 1930, when The New York Daily Mirror ran a poll of its readers to determine their favorite band. Since he knew that news vendors got credit from the newspaper for unsold copies by returning the front page and discarding the rest of the issue, he cannily had his band's members gather hundreds of discarded newspapers and fill out ballots in their own favor. They edged out Paul Whiteman and were pronounced the winners.{{Citation needed |date=July 2020}}

From 1930 through the 1940s, Nelson's band recorded prolifically, first on Brunswick (1930–1933), then Vocalion (1933–1934), then back to Brunswick (1934–1936), Bluebird (1937–1941), Victor (1941), and finally back to Bluebird (1941 through the 1940s). Nelson's records were consistently popular, and in 1934, Nelson enjoyed success with his hit song, "Over Somebody Else's Shoulder", which he introduced. Nelson's primary vocalist was Rose Anne Stevens, who appeared in the 1942 movie Down Rio Grande Way and Tomorrow We Live. Later in his big-band career, Harriet Hilliard replaced Stevens, after the latter's marriage to Colonel Weller. Nelson's calm, easy vocal style was popular on records and radio and quite similar to son Rick's voice, and Harriet's perky vocals added to the band's popularity.

In 1935, Ozzie Nelson and His Orchestra, as they were being called, had a hit with "And Then Some", which was number one for one week on the U.S. pop singles chart. Nelson wrote and composed several songs, including "Wave the Stick Blues", "Subway", "Jersey Jive", "Swingin' on the Golden Gate", and "Central Avenue Shuffle".

In October 1935, he married the band's vocalist Harriet Hilliard. The couple had two children; the older, David (1936–2011), became an actor and director, and the younger, Ricky (1940–1985), became an actor and singer.

File:Adv of Ozzie and Harriet Nelson Family 1952.jpg

Ozzie Nelson appeared with his band in feature films and short subjects of the 1940s, and often played speaking parts, displaying a tongue-in-cheek sense of humor, as in the 1942 musical Strictly in the Groove. He shrewdly promoted the band by agreeing to appear in "soundies", three-minute musical movies shown in "film jukeboxes" of the 1940s. In 1952, when his family and he were established as radio and TV favorites, they starred in a feature film, Here Come the Nelsons, which served as the "pilot" for the TV series.

In the 1940s, Nelson began to look for a way to spend more time with his family, especially his growing sons. Besides band appearances, Harriet and he had been regulars on The Raleigh Cigarette Program, Red Skelton's radio show.{{cite book|editor-first=Wesley |editor-last=Hyatt|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=s_xUC9qpFRYC&q=richard+leukemia+%22red+skelton%22&pg=PA63|title= A Critical History of Television's The Red Skelton Show, 1951–1971|publisher= McFarland & Co.|year=2004|page=190|isbn=0-7864-1732-3|access-date=March 19, 2012}} Nelson developed and produced his own radio series, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.{{Cite book|editor-last=Adir|editor-first=Karin|title=The Great Clowns of American Television|publisher=McFarland & Company|year=2001|page=270|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5jr9L--C4tMC&pg=PA193 |isbn=0-7864-1303-4|access-date=March 19, 2012}} The show originally aired in 1944, with their sons played by actors until 1949. In 1952, it moved to television, where David and Ricky appeared on camera. The radio version continued for another two years, and the last television episode aired in 1966.

The TV show starred the entire family, as America watched Ozzie and Harriet raise their boys. Nelson was producer and director of most of the episodes, and he co-wrote many of them. Nelson's brother, Don, was also one of the writers. Ozzie was hands-on, involved with every aspect of both radio and TV programs. Throughout the 1950s, notably, Ozzie's prior bandleading career and Harriet's singing, acting, and dancing careers were seldom mentioned. The younger audience would have had no idea that Ozzie and Harriet had previously been involved in music.

Nelson appeared as a guest panelist on the June 9, 1957, episode of What's My Line?{{cite web|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3Fzkdi61So |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211212/o3Fzkdi61So| archive-date=2021-12-12 |url-status=live|title=What's My Line? - Johnnie Ray; Ozzie Nelson [panel]; Janet Blair [panel] (Jun 9, 1957)|last=What's My Line?|date=January 13, 2014|via=YouTube}}{{cbignore}}

His last television show, in the fall of 1973, was Ozzie's Girls, which lasted for a year in first-run syndication. The premise involved Ozzie and Harriet renting their sons' former room to two college girls—actresses Brenda Sykes and Susan Sennett—and portrayed the Nelsons' efforts at adjusting to living with two young women after raising two sons.

For his contribution to the television industry, Ozzie Nelson has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6555 Hollywood Boulevard. He has an additional star with his wife at 6260 Hollywood Boulevard for their contribution to radio.

File:Nelson family 1960.JPG

He married band singer Harriet Hilliard in 1935. They had two sons, David (born in 1936) and Eric (known as Ricky, born in 1940). The couple remained married until Ozzie's death in 1975. His grandchildren include actress Tracy Nelson and musicians Matthew and Gunnar Nelson. He was also the former father-in-law of Kristin Harmon and June Blair.

Cultural historians have noted that the on-screen laid-back character was very different from the real-life Ozzie Nelson, who has been characterized as an authoritarian figure who monitored every aspect of his children's lives.{{cite book|last=Felder|first=Deborah G.|title=A Century of Women: The Most Influential Events in Twentieth-Century Women's History|year=1999|publisher=Carol Publishing|location=Secaucus NJ|isbn=1-55972-485-4|page=[https://archive.org/details/centuryofwomen00feld/page/198 198]|url=https://archive.org/details/centuryofwomen00feld|url-access=registration}} In 1998, A&E broadcast a documentary entitled Ozzie and Harriet: The Adventures of America's Favorite Family, which depicted Ozzie Nelson as a dictatorial personality who "thwarted his sons, preventing them from attending college and reminding them that they were obliged to work on television".{{cite news|last=Weinraub|first=Bernard|title=Dousing the Glow Of TV's First Family; Time for the Truth About Ozzie and Harriet|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1998/06/18/arts/dousing-the-glow-of-tv-s-first-family-time-for-the-truth-about-ozzie-and-harriet.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm|access-date=November 3, 2013|newspaper=New York Times|date=June 18, 1998}} Author David Halberstam has written, "the Nelsons arguably were a dysfunctional family. In real life, Ozzie was a workaholic who stole his sons' childhood (by having them grow up in show business)".{{cite news|last=Van Matre|first=Lynn|title=Back To The '50s With David Halberstam|url=https://www.chicagotribune.com/1993/06/22/back-to-the-50s-with-david-halberstam/|access-date=November 3, 2013|newspaper=Chicago Tribune|date=June 22, 1993}}

Nelson and his wife were charter members of the Hollywood Republican Committee.{{Cite news |date=1947-10-20 |title=Film Notables Open Drive for G.O.P. President |pages=8 |work=Los Angeles Times}}

In 1973, Ozzie Nelson published his autobiography, Ozzie (Prentice Hall, 1973, {{ISBN|0-13-647768-2}}).

Nelson suffered from recurring malignant tumors in his later years, and eventually succumbed to liver cancer. He died at his home in the San Fernando Valley on June 3, 1975, with his wife and sons at his bedside.

Services were held at the Church of the Hills at Forest Lawn, Hollywood Hills, California, on Friday, June 6.United Press International, "Ozzie Nelson Dies, 69", Playground Daily News, Fort Walton Beach, Florida, Volume 30, Number 101, page 9A. He is interred with his wife and son Ricky in the Forest Lawn – Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles, California.

When his elder son David died in 2011, he was cremated, having chosen a niche in Westwood Memorial Park's outdoor Garden of Serenity columbarium rather than interment in the Nelson family plot.

{{reflist}}

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• {{iMDb name|625651}}
• [https://adp.library.ucsb.edu/names/104563 Ozzie Nelson recordings] at the Discography of American Historical Recordings.
• {{AllMusic|class=artist|id=p11282|label=Ozzie Nelson}}
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20050207091942/http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/N/htmlN/nelsonozzie/nelsonozzie.htm Museum of Broadcast Communications: Ozzie and Harriet Nelson] (archived)
• {{Find a Grave|1833}}
• [https://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:/80444/xv929418 The Ozzie and Harriet Nelson papers], at the American Heritage Center

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Category:1906 births

Category:1975 deaths

Category:20th-century American businesspeople

Category:20th-century American male actors

Category:20th-century American saxophonists

Category:American male film actors

Category:American male radio actors

Category:American male television actors

Category:American people of English descent

Category:American people of Swedish descent

Category:American television directors

Category:American jazz bandleaders

Category:American big band bandleaders

Category:Burials at Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Hollywood Hills)

Ozzie Nelson

Category:Deaths from liver cancer in California

Category:Film directors from New Jersey

Category:Male actors from Jersey City, New Jersey

Category:People from Ridgefield Park, New Jersey

Category:Players of American football from Jersey City, New Jersey

Category:Ridgefield Park High School alumni

Category:Rutgers Scarlet Knights football players

Category:Rutgers School of Law–Newark alumni

Category:Swing saxophonists

Category:Television producers from New Jersey