Ozzie Nelson

Nelson was born March 20, 1906, in Jersey City, New Jersey, United States. 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. During the Depression, he turned to music as a full-time career. ==Career==

Music Nelson started his entertainment career as a band leader. He formed and led the Ozzie Nelson Band, and had some initial limited success. Nelson developed and produced his own radio series, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. 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?'' 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. ==Personal life==

Nelson met singer Harriet Hilliard in 1932. She became his band's vocalist, and they married on October 8, 1935. They had two sons, David (1936–2011), who became an actor and director, and Eric (known as Ricky, 1940–1985) a popular singer with 18 top 10 hits. 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. 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". 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)". Nelson and his wife were charter members of the Hollywood Republican Committee. In 1973, Ozzie Nelson published his autobiography, Ozzie (Prentice Hall, 1973, ). ==Death==

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. 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 in Los Angeles, rather than interment in the Nelson family plot. ==Selected filmography==