Harriet Hilliard Nelson

Harriet Hilliard Nelson was born Peggy Lou Snyder in Des Moines, Iowa in 1909. As Harriet Hilliard, she was hired by Ozzie Nelson to sing for his band. That was in 1932. They were married three years later. Harriet recorded such classics as “I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire,” “Breathless,” and “Dust Off That Old Pianna.” In 1944, she and Ozzie made the jump to radio with “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.” The radio show was quite a bit zanier than the television show that followed. It featured broadly-drawn wacky characters, vaudevillian style jokes (Ozzie: My mother-in-law was bowlegged because she hitchhiked out here from the East on oil trucks.), and – shockingly – Ozzie had a job (he was a bandleader & Harriet was a singer). Harriet went on, of course, to star in fourteen years of “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet” on television.

Biographies for: |Ozzie | Harriet | David | Ricky