The last of the Nelsons has died, David dead from colon cancer at 74. The show, “Ozzie and Harriet” was on the radio from 1946 and TV from 1952-1966.
“Ozzie and Harriet” laid the groundwork for other mild, family sitcoms like “Leave It to Beaver” and “Father Knows Best,” but it also had a weirdly postmodern and prescient aspect to it: the four Nelsons were, in some ways, television’s first reality stars.
The show was scripted, but the characters were based on the Nelsons themselves, named after the Nelsons themselves and, from 1949, when 12-year-old David and 8-year-old Ricky replaced the actors who had initially voiced their roles on the radio, played by the Nelsons themselves. Their actual Los Angeles home was used in filming, and a reproduction of its interior was built in the studio. When David and Rick married in real life, their wives were incorporated into the show.
David Nelson was probably the least prominent of the four characters, dully mature as a son, quietly sage as an older brother. (In one departure from reality, his character graduated from college and became a lawyer.) Ozzie was the know-it-all dad whose presumptions often got him into trouble and drove the story. Harriet was the wisely, teasingly understanding helpmeet, and young Ricky was the adorable one, the mischievous boy who mispronounced words, made wisecracks, grew up impossibly handsome and became a pop star.
Ozzie died in 1975, Harriet in 1994. Rick Nelson was killed in a plane crash in 1985. To anyone my age, losing a Nelson was losing a member of the family.