She wasn't a knockabout clown like Lucille Ball or Joan Davis, nor an actress playing a mom in a sitcom (like Barbara Billingsley on Leave it to Beaver), she was the actual mother of her TV children! We're talking about the talented Harriet Nelson, born on this date in 1909, wife of the equally talented and business savvy Ozzie Nelson and mother of David and Ricky Nelson, her two kids who grew up to be equally talented, all of whom starred on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.
Basic facts about the show: it began on radio, airing from 1944 - 1954; the kids joined in 1949 playing themselves. The series migrated to TV in 1952 after they made the successful motion picture Here Come the Nelsons, showing the format could work visually. The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet was on network TV from 1952 - 1966 for a total of 425 episodes and still retains the title of longest-running live action American sitcom.Though it's still fashionable to mock the so-called "perfect family" construct on sitcoms like this from early TV, honestly, nobody believed that all families were like this or should have been like this. Life was indeed a little kinder and gentler back then for a few people; maybe some kids' biggest worry was whether or not they'd get a date for the prom or if they'd be jilted at the malt shop, but certainly not everybody's.
So what if Ozzie Nelson in real life was more of a hard-nosed businessman than jaunty hilarious father with no visible means of supporting his family? Or if Harriet was actually a snazzy jazz band lead singer who had enjoyed an exciting career in show biz and mostly gave it up to become the radio and TV version of herself? These two talented individuals and their creative partners put their heads together to fashion an amusing version of the idealized family zeitgeist of mid-century America. Mission accomplished.
As a child of the 1950s and as a fan of TV comedy, I enjoy watching these shows. Not because they're a refuge from life or because there are no dirty words and everyone's perfect, but because there is something ineffably sweet about their impossible version of the world. It wasn't my world and it probably wasn't yours, but it was a real place, at least on the TV set.
Here's another fun aspect to those times. Though companies still use celebrities -- those sometimes-talented motley, addled, selfish, ridiculously rewarded trivial personalities -- to try to sell their wares, back in the day when most celebrities' real personalities were well under cover thanks to round-the-clock publicist oversight, lots of companies wanted that actor endorsement. So it was with the popular Nelson family from The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. Who better to gently suggest to audiences that there were a few things for sale out there that might really make their family's life a little better?
First let's look at a few Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet clips, then a slew of the commercials which were embedded in those shows. Hotpoint and Kodak certainly got their money's worth out of the Nelsons.
Ozzie Nelson passed away in 1975 at the age of 69, Rick Nelson died in a plane crash at the age of 45 in 1985, Harriet Nelson passed away at the age of 85 in 1994, and David Nelson in 2011 at 75.
Ozzie Nelson as himself from The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. Cool, slyly hilarious, so completely relaxed, the original "no visible means of support" father (bandleader? office guy? who knew?), Ozzie Nelson was extremely personable and seemed like a lot of fun, in a Perry Como-kind of lazy, let-me-take-a-nap kind of way. Much funnier than he is generally given credit for, and that's unfortunate. Up with Ozzie!
Frank Faylen as Herbert Gillis in The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. Like so many TV fathers, Herbert was frequently exasperated by his dreamy son Dobie's girl troubles and Dobie's beatnik buddy Maynard, but he was also inspired, hep, nutty, hard-working, and realistically cynical. No sugar coating here! Credit creator and writer Max Schulman for making Herbert Gillis so unique in the annals of bland male father characters!
Robert Young as Jim Anderson in Father Knows Best. This was one of those sitcoms which wasn't particularly funny and in fact was often fraught with domestic issues. Jim Anderson was the serious kind of father, definitely employed, pretty square, but thoughtful and understanding. Good thing, because his family, consisting of smart and ambitious older daughter Betty, rambunctious teenage boy Bud, and sensitive youngest girl Kathy, seemed to have identity crises, school issues and performance anxiety incidents occuring on a regular basis. Much suburban angst was in evidence in the Anderson household, but Jim made it all better by the end of the half-hour, thank goodness!
William Bendix as Chester Riley on The Life of Riley. Closer to Herbert Gillis than Jim Anderson, Riley was a harried, blue-collar aircraft plant worker, and often perplexed by his family obligations in the form of a son and a daughter. He was a nice guy, definitely a comedy father, making The Life of Riley one of the genuinely funniest of the fatherhood series, and William Bendix one of the best and unfortunately slightly less well-known of the TV dads.
Hugh Beaumont as Ward Cleaver in Leave It To Beaver. Possibly my favorite of this bunch, Ward was a working dad, a quite modern and progressive parent, blessed with a keen wit and not unaware of the absurdities of raising kids in post-war America. He'd often mention how he was trying to parent differently from his own father, who in a different time had not spared the rod and certainly wouldn't have discussed disciplinary ethics with his kids before meting out punishment. Ward Cleaver liked his wife and wasn't afraid to show it, and also seemed to like his two boys, Wally and Theodore aka Beaver. He was a terrific father figure and funny as heck, too. Oo La La! (A quote from the wonderful episode "June's Birthday" where Beaver gives his mother a gaudy blouse with French pictures on it.) 
William Schallert as Martin Lane in The Patty Duke Show. I've been watching this show lately and have been so impressed by Schallert's calm, decent, educated, and appreciative portrayal of the man who had to put up with his daughter Patty's schemes. The Patty Duke Show is very urban -- Martin Lane is the editor of a big NYC newspaper -- and Schallert brings a keen intelligence to the role, perfectly in tune with what you'd expect an editor to exhibit. No harried suburbanite or line worker, Martin Lane is upper middle class without being a snob, and authoritative without being a bully. What a treasure! Love that Poppo!
Buddy Ebsen as Jed Clampett in The Beverly Hillbillies. Jed, the lucky mountain man who discovered oil, remained the same unaffected and kind person even after he moved to Beverly Hills -- quite a feat, then or today. He was an understanding father to his animal-loving voluptuous daughter Ellie May, who also retained her sweetness amid the money-grubbing snobs of the Hills. He was the patriarch of a very nutty bunch, including his cantankerous mother-in-law and goofy nephew, but never lost his humanity or center. Whee Doggies!
Happy Father's Day!
