Harriet Nelson

Harriet Nelson, born Peggy Lou Snyder on July 18, 1909, in Des Moines, Iowa, was an American actress whose career spanned vaudeville, film, radio, television, and Broadway. The daughter of Hazel Dell McNutt and Roy Hilliard Snyder, she began performing on the vaudeville stage at the age of three. Before completing high school, she joined the Corps de Ballet at the Capitol Theater and subsequently danced in the Harry Carroll Revue, also working as a straight woman for comedians Ken Murray and Bert Lahr. She made her first Broadway appearance during her teenage years.

By 1932, while still active in vaudeville, she encountered bandleader and saxophonist Ozzie Nelson, who brought her on to sing with his band under the name Harriet Hilliard. The professional partnership became personal, and the two married in 1935. They had two sons, David, born in 1936, and Eric, known as Ricky, born in 1940. The marriage lasted until Ozzie's death from liver cancer in 1975.

Alongside her work with the band, Nelson pursued an independent film career. RKO Radio Pictures signed her to a one-year contract in 1936, and she appeared in three feature films during that period, including the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musical Follow the Fleet. Through the World War II years she remained in demand for leading roles in musicals, comedies, and mystery films. She and Ozzie also appeared together in films, including Honeymoon Lodge and Hi, Good Lookin'!

Nelson's Broadway career included an appearance in 1949 in the play Diamond Lil. In 1944, she and Ozzie launched a domestic-comedy radio series titled The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, which successfully moved to television and ran on ABC from 1952 to 1966, featuring their sons David and Ricky throughout its run. In 1973, the couple appeared together again in the sitcom Ozzie's Girls.

Prior to her marriage to Ozzie, Nelson had been briefly wed to comedian Roy Sedley in 1930. The marriage ended in separation after one year and was annulled in 1933. Her family extended across generations of entertainers; her grandchildren include actress Tracy Nelson and musicians Matthew and Gunnar Nelson, and she was the mother-in-law of Kristin Harmon and June Blair.

Nelson and her husband were charter members of the Hollywood Republican Committee. In 1978, she relocated permanently to the family's Laguna Beach, California, home, which had been built in 1954. For her contributions to television, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6801 Hollywood Boulevard. Nelson died of congestive heart failure on October 2, 1994, and is interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles, alongside her husband and her son Ricky, who died in a plane crash in 1985.