Ozzie Nelson was casting about for a way to make a living in the aftermath of the 1929 stock market crash when he turned to music.
Born in Jersey City, New Jersey, in 1906, Nelson went to Rutgers, where he earned both his bachelor’s degree and, in 1930, his law degree. He earned money by playing the saxophone in bands on the side during college.
When job prospects grew dim following his graduation during the Depression, he decided to return to music. He formed a big band, the Ozzie Nelson Band, playing gigs mostly in and around New York City.
Nelson’s easygoing singing style and sense of humor helped make the group popular, and Brunswick Records quickly signed them to a contract. In 1932, aspiring actress Harriet Hilliard became the group’s lead singer.
The pair’s relationship eventually blossomed into romance, and Ozzie and Harriet married in 1935. She continued to perform with the band, which had a Number One hit that year, “And Then Some.”
Hilliard acted in several movies, including “Follow the Fleet” alongside Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Ozzie’s show business sense led him into movie appearances and a series of humorous musical short subjects featuring him leading his band.
All roads seemed to lead to California, and the couple moved there in 1941 in order to appear as guests on Red Skelton’s new radio show. At first, they lived in San Rafael, then decided to move south to be closer to the movie studios for Harriet and Los Angeles-area nightclubs for Ozzie’s band.
Since summer was approaching, they chose to rent a house in Hermosa Beach, which was close enough to the Culver City studios where Harriet still worked to allow the family to spend the summer together enjoying beach life.
The family would rent the house at 3133 The Strand every year for more than a decade to use as their summer retreat, except in years when they traveled abroad.
In November 1941, they bought a house at the foot of the Hollywood Hills, at 1822 Camino Palmero St.
Its Cape Cod-style exterior would become familiar to millions when it became part of the opening credits in the early years of “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet” on television. (When the house was sold after Nelson’s death, the new owners claimed it was haunted by his ghost.) It became the permanent family home for the next three decades.
On Oct. 8, 1944, “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet” debuted on radio, using child actors to play David and Ricky. Its naturalistic portrayal of everyday American family life was a revelation at the time, and the show was an instant success. It became even more popular after the real Nelson children began portraying themselves in 1949.
According to John R. Holmes’ biography, The Adventures of Ozzie Nelson: The Life and Career of America’s Favorite Pop (McFarland, 2021), after its successful first season on television ended in the spring of 1953, the Nelson family had looked forward to a vacation in Paris to unwind. But, worn out from the rigors of filming, they decided to return to the Hermosa Beach house for the summer instead.
During this welcome break, the 13-year-old “irrepressible” Ricky learned how to dive and how to surf at Hermosa. He would use his diving skills the next season, performing a one-and-a-half somersault on the family TV show.
He and his family also learned about the reach of television fame when total strangers would ring their doorbell, including a four-year-old girl who asked Harriet, “Can Ozzie come out and play?”
The house right on the beach at the western terminus of Longfellow Ave. originally was built in 1905, and has been remodeled many times over the years. It last sold in March 2021 for $7.35 million.
The family’s summers in Hermosa Beach came to an end after the summer of 1955. That year, the Nelsons purchased a lot in the Lagunita section of Laguna Beach, where they built their own permanent summer home.
The elder Nelsons returned to the Lagunita house to relax after “Ozzie and Harriet” ended its then-record 14-year run on network television in 1966. It became the family’s permanent home in 1977, when Harriet sold the Hollywood Hills home two years after Ozzie’s death from cancer in 1975.
Rick Nelson pioneered rock music on television with his appearances on “Ozzie and Harriet” from 1957 onward. (He became “Rick” instead of “Ricky” in 1961.) He went on to a highly successful singing career and became one of the first rock stars to release a country album, “Bright Lights & Country Music” (1966).
He and his touring band died in an airplane crash in 1986. His brother David died from colon cancer in 2011. Harriet Nelson died of congestive heart failure in 1994.
Rick’s sons Matthew and Gunnar formed the successful rock band Nelson in the early 1990s, and daughter Tracy became a successful actress.
A generation of younger baby boomers wondered why Ozzie’s occupation was never mentioned on “Ozzie and Harriet,” leaving it to the older generation to inform them of his pre-TV success as a musician and bandleader.
Sources:
The Adventures of Ozzie Nelson: The Life and Career of America’s Favorite Pop, by John R. Holmes, McFarland and Co., 2021.
Daily Breeze archives.
Footnotes on the Sand: An Incomplete Compendium, an Arbitrary Selection of Events, Rumor, Speculation, Some Fact and Some Fiction About Hermosa Beach, by Patricia A. Gazin, self-published, 1991.
Los Angeles Times archives.
Ozzie, by Ozzie Nelson, Prentice-Hall, 1973.
Wikipedia.
Zillow.com.
