Oswald George Nelson was born on March 20th, 1906 in Jersey City, New Jersey. The second son of Ethel and George Nelson, he grew up in Ridgefield Park, a village in Bergen County. Both of his parents had been local musicians and entertainers, and it wasn’t long before Ozzie and his brother Alfred joined in. 

In February of 1921 the local Women’s Club was hosting a dance when, thanks to a blizzard, the big city orchestra couldn’t arrive, and Ozzie’s mother volunteered he and Frank. They were a smash. At the end of the night the boys received five dollars each. It was the first time Ozzie was a paid musician. Before long they were playing all over New Jersey and even occasionally in New York City.

For larger events Ozzie and Frank’s brothers joined, adding a drummer and violin. They called themselves the Syncopation Four, and earned up to ten dollars a night. That’s the modern equivalent of roughly $150, and they sometimes played three nights per week.  

Both Ozzie and his brother Alfie attended Rutgers University. While at Rutgers, Ozzie played football and took in as much vaudeville as possible. But, unfortunately, his father passed away in 1927 at just forty-eight years old.
After Ozzie graduated from Rutgers he went to New Jersey Law School. He was both studying law and playing music. Torn between what to do, one Sunday night in 1930, he was listening to a local New York program coming over WMCA. It featured a dance band and singing orchestra. Milton Roemer of Roemer Furniture, was emcee. 

An announcer Ozzie knew introduced him to the program director. They gave Ozzie twenty-four hours to assemble a band. 
Roemer and Ozzie worked out a partnership. The band would appear on Roemer’s radio show and he would become their manager. By the next year, Ozzie was appearing all over the tri-state area and recording records with Brunswick. 

Good publicity from Roemer’s friend and radio editor Nick Kenny, helped Ozzie finish third in a New York Daily Mirror poll for most popular radio emcee. 
The next summer the band became the first to play the Glen Island casino, and Ozzie Nelson debuted on CBS. 

Network radio in the early 1930s had a loose schedule. Its rapid rise helped catapult Ozzie and his Orchestra to fame, as they packed the hall with throngs of young dancers. 

On New Year’s Eve 1931, Ozzie was playing New York’s Edison Hotel. The emcee that evening was a poised, self-assured twenty-two year-old who danced and announced the acts. Ozzie was struck by everything about her.
Her name was Harriet Hilliard. 
She was born Peggy Lou Snyder on July 18th, 1909 in Des Moines, Iowa. Her parents Roy and Hazel were noted performers who helped guide the stage careers of famous actors, including Clark Gable and Ralph Bellamy. 

Harriet was on stage from almost birth. By fifteen, she came to New York with her mother to study ballet, and starred on Broadway the following year in The Blonde Sinner. Soon after she was playing two-a-days at RKO’s vaudeville theaters throughout the country.

When she was booked at the Hollywood Restaurant in New York, it was originally supposed to be a limited engagement. Before long she was earning $150 per week—or roughly three grand today—right in the heart of the Great Depression.  

In the fall of 1932 the band played the Paramount Grill on 46th street and Broadway. They were on from 8:30 to 1AM, not only for the dancing crowds, but playing two radio broadcasts each night, developing a conversational style that became a musical comedy routine.
By the middle of the year, Ozzie and Harriet were dating.

In the fall of 1933, they signed to do their first weekly radio series, The Baker’s Broadcast, which was sponsored by Standard Brands and produced by the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency. Joe Penner was the star for the next two seasons, and the audience peaked in 1935 with a rating of 31.3, sixth-highest on radio.

Penner was replaced in the fall of 1935 and Robert Ripley took over. ​​​​​​​
Ozzie and Harriet were married in Hackensack, New Jersey on October 8th, 1935. David Oswald Nelson, the couple’s first child was born on October 24th, 1936 at Doctors Hospital in Manhattan. 

Ozzie and Harriet knew they needed to settle down and saw radio as their medium of choice. By the fall of 1939, Harriet was again pregnant. Eric Hilliard Nelson was born on May 8th, 1940. 
On Tuesday October 7th, 1941 at 10:30PM Eastern time on NBC, Ozzie and Harriet debuted with Red Skelton on the Red Skelton Show. By March of 1942, the show’s rating had climbed to 32.5, fourth-highest on radio. Roughly twenty-four million people were tuning in. 
For three seasons the group’s popularity soared as they became some of the most loved entertainers in America, but then Skelton got divorced. It meant that he lost his married deferment and could now be drafted. The army called for him in 1944. MGM and Raleigh Cigarettes tried to get a deferment to no avail. Skelton’s last radio program was on D-Day, June 6th, 1944. The next day he was formally inducted as a private. Without its star, the program was discontinued. 

Skelton’s producer John Guedel and Ozzie Harriet both agreed, it was time for the Nelsons to launch a radio show of their own. It would come to be known as The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.
In the summer of 1944, William Morris sold what became The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet to the International Silver Company. The program would debut on CBS in the fall.  

They were to be billed as “America’s favorite young couple.” Ozzie’s big mouth would get him in trouble each week. Harriet would gently try to guide him back to reason, but once Ozzie’s mind was made up, nothing could dissuade him. 

The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet
debuted on Sunday October 8th, 1944 at 6PM eastern time. It was the couple’s ninth wedding anniversary.

The program remained in its time slot for three seasons, but never rose above a rating of 13.0. Then, in the fall of 1947 with radio audiences peaking, the show pulled a rating of 15.5. Roughly fourteen million people were tuning in.

Meanwhile on Thursday evenings, Roma Wines had recently cut ties with Suspense. CBS temporarily moved the series to Fridays at 9:30. On December 26th, 1947, Ozzie and Harriet appeared in the final Friday night broadcast. 
The next week, CBS moved The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet to Suspense' time slot. In February of 1948, the show’s rating reached 16.6.

Both International Silver and Young and Rubicam saw an opportunity. They moved the show to NBC. The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet would now air Sundays at 6:30PM, and serve as lead-in for The Jack Benny Program
The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet debuted on NBC On Sunday, October 3rd, 1948. 

Because they were serving as Jack Benny’s lead-in for Eastern and Central markets, the show’s rating was expected to jump. But while Benny’s rating that month was 20.3, Ozzie and Harriet’s was just 8.9. The writing was good and the shows were enjoyable to listen to, but even during its fifth season on the air, something was still missing. 

The couple had begun to allow David and Ricky to play themselves during dress rehearsal, but Tommy Bernard and Henry Blair still played the Nelson children for the live broadcast. 

It seemed like the right idea. That month, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet peaked with a rating of 17.0, their highest ever. But then, something unimaginable happened: Jack Benny was leaving NBC. Without Benny’s show, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet lost half their audience in a single month. It left Ozzie, Harriet, and director Glenhall Taylor scrambling to come up with a solution. In February, the program’s ratings slipped further.

Desperate, in February, Ozzie and Harriet finally allowed David and Ricky to appear as themselves on the live broadcast. 

At the end of the 1948-49 radio season, the Nelson contract with International Silver was up. They were willing to continue on a year-to-year basis, but Ozzie wanted to hold out for a longer deal. They parted on friendly terms. 

At the same time, Ozzie negotiated a settlement with William Morris and signed with the Music Corporation of America.

Wanting to compete with CBS and NBC, The American Broadcasting Company signed The Nelsons to a ten-year, non-cancellable contract on July 14th, 1949. Under the sponsorship of Heinz Foods, The Nelson Family moved to ABC’s newly potent Friday night schedule on 
October 14th, 1949. Ozzie Nelson had negotiated a ten year, non-cancellable contract. It guaranteed him complete creative control. 

ABC also had the option to bring the show to TV after 1951. 

Ozzie and Harriet were weary of the new medium. Universal Studios gave them the opportunity to make a film, and in 1952 the family starred in Here Come The Nelsons.
The film was a hit, and everyone was convinced the Nelsons could all make the transition from radio's airwaves to TV’s small screen. The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet made its TV debut on Friday, October 3rd, 1952. 
Although The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet never cracked radio’s top-fifty season ratings during the 1940s, they did so in each of their final three seasons on ABC. The radio version of Ozzie and Harriet remained on the air until 1953-1954. The TV series would turn Ricky into a teenage heartthrob. It helped springboard his music career in 1957. 
In 1959, then eighteen, Ricky made his film debut opposite John Wayne, Dean Martin, Angie Dickinson, Walter Brennan, and Ward Bond in Rio Bravo

Meanwhile The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet remained on television until April 23rd, 1966, becoming one of the longest-running sitcoms in history.

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