Trivia: The Crown Prince of TV sitcom dads, American actor Ozzie Nelson was famous as a bandleader long before television had established itself. Married to actress/singer Harriet Hilliard, Ozzie Nelson guided his orchestra through nightclub dates, radio programs, and minor films on the order of Sweethearts of the Campus (1941). He'd had speaking parts on Red Skelton's program and other radio series of the '40s, wherein he displayed a hitherto untapped gift for comic delivery. This led to the Nelsons' own weekly radio starrer in 1944, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, which related the humorously fictionalized home life of a popular bandleader, his wife, and their two very young sons (Ozzie's own kids Ricky and David were impersonated by professional child actors in the first few years of the program, but eventually strong-armed Ozzie into letting them play themselves). Typical of the era were the radio show's wisecracking dialogue and musical interludes; but when Ozzie and Harriet entered television in 1952 (with the whole family along for the ride), the series opted for gentler, more realistic comedy. The year prior to the TV show's debut, Ozzie and entourage appeared in a Universal-International picture, Here Come the Nelsons, which is worth noting if only for the presence in the cast of Rock Hudson and the fact that it was directed by future Tonight Show mainstay Fred De Cordova. Here Come the Nelsons was only a modest success, but the Ozzie and Harriet TV series was an unadulterated hit, running 14 seasons (a record still unbroken for a sitcom). Though there were endless joking speculations as to what TV's Ozzie Nelson did for a living on a series, the "real" Ozzie produced, directed, edited the stories, chose the wardrobe, supervised the casting, and even designed the main "home" set to look like the real Nelson living room. Unlike his stammering, scatterbrained TV image, Ozzie was a stern and well-organized taskmaster, seeing to it that Ozzie and Harriet conformed to his image of what a good TV show should be, rather than the usual TV status quo. One of the byproducts of Ozzie and Harriet was the spectacular singing career of son Ricky Nelson, and the less spectacular but prolific directing career of Rick's brother David. By the time Ozzie and Harriet entered the '60s, Rick's then-wife Kris Nelson (daughter of sports great Tom Harmon and actress Elyse Knox, and brother of film star Mark Harmon) had joined the cast...as Rick's wife Kris. The series finally breathed its last in 1966, but workaholic Ozzie stayed busy with stage appearances and a supporting role in the very non-Ozzie and Harriet sexy film comedy The Impossible Years (1968). Cashing in on the nostalgia craze of the early '70s, Ozzie revived his series with a new title: Ozzie's Girls had Ozzie and Harriet renting out Ricky and David's old rooms to a pair of nubile female college students. Squeezed off the network schedules at the last minute, Ozzie's Girls was syndicated to local stations in 1973, but lasted only one season, as much the victim of changing tastes as inaccessible timeslots. Shortly before his death, Ozzie Nelson published his autobiography, in which he shocked many of his Bible-belt fans by revealing that he was a lifelong atheist.

Trivia: Those who know Harriet Nelson only for her two decades' worth of services as "America's Favorite TV Mom" on Ozzie and Harriet and Ozzie's Girls may be surprised to learn that she enjoyed a healthy career as a singer/actress long before network television was a commercial viability. Born Peggy Lou Snyder into a show business family, she chose the alliterative professional cognomen of Harriet Hilliard when she was hired as a vocalist by bandleader Ozzie Nelson. She was signed to an RKO Radio movie contract in 1936, and one year later married Nelson, though she remained Harriet Hilliard for the rest of her years in films. Most of her movie assignments were musicals and comedies, though she was capable of dramatic performances in such films as Confessions of Boston Blackie (1941) and The Falcon Strikes Back (1943). After several years of experience as a radio actress and singer on other people's programs (she briefly played the mother of "the mean widdle kid" on The Red Skelton Show), she and her husband Ozzie launched their own radio sitcom in 1944, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. Featured on the series were the Nelson's two sons, David and Ricky Nelson (who were played by anonymous child actors until the boys insisted upon appearing as themselves). After a joint appearance in the 1952 Universal comedy Here Come the Nelsons, Ozzie, Harriet, David, and Ricky Nelson brought their successful radio program to television, where they remained until 1966. In 1973, Ozzie and Harriet, minus their offspring (Ricky Nelson was by now a successful recording artist, while David Nelson was a TV director) tried to make the magic happen again in the syndicated sitcom Ozzie's Girls, which proved to be a failure. After the death of her husband in 1975, Harriet Hilliard occasionally made appearances in such TV productions as Once an Eagle and Smash-Up on Interstate 5 (both 1976), and on more than one occasion made nostalgic guest appearances in her established TV series persona. In addition to her own sons, Harriet Nelson was the mother-in-law of actress Kristine Harmon (sister of actor Mark Harmon) and the grandmother of actress Tracy Nelson.

Trivia: The oldest son of bandleader Ozzie Nelson and songstress Harriet Hilliard Nelson, David Nelson was famous before ever making his professional debut. David and his brother Ricky both "appeared" on their parent's radio sitcom The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, albeit portrayed by professional child actors. The boys bugged O and H until their parents relented and allowed David and Ricky to costar in person on the radio series. When Ozzie and Harriet shifted to TV in 1952, the boys went along for the ride. Ricky unexpectedly became a teen idol in the late '50s, while David more or less played "straight" for the rest of the family. Except for a good supporting role as a homicidal trapeze artist in 1959's The Big Circus, David's acting career was colorless enough to encourage him to seek some other form of creative expression (though he'd later occasionally accept guest-star cameos in such projects as 1991's Cry Baby). In the early '60s, he turned to directing, first for the Nelson Family series, and then for several other TV situation comedies. David Nelson worked steadily but unspectacularly as a producer/director in the years to follow: in the early '80s he directed three theatrical films, the most prominent of which was the 1981 George Kennedy starrer The Rare Breed. Nelson, the last surviving member of his family, died of complications from colon cancer at age 74 in January 2011.

Trivia: The famous offspring of actors Ozzie Nelson and Harriet Hilliard Nelson, Rick Nelson (born Eric Hilliard Nelson) began performing on his parents' radio show when he was only four. When Ozzie and Harriet moved to television in 1952, Rick went with them and while on the show, grew up to become a teen idol, loved not only as an actor but also as a rock & roll singer who racked up hits with such singles as "Hello Mary Lou," "Travelin' Man," and "Garden Party" (his biggest and last big hit). Nelson made his feature-film debut in A Story of Three Loves. He earned critical acclaim as a cocky young gunfighter in Rio Bravo (1959) starring opposite John Wayne and Dean Martin. He continued appearing in films, in concert, and on television through the early '80s. Nelson, the father of actress Tracy Nelson and twin pop stars Matthew and Gunnar Nelson, died in a plane crash along with his fiancée and his band on New Year's Eve 1985.

Trivia: Even when she was only in her early forties, Isabel Randolph specialized in middle-aged "grand dame" roles on stage and radio, continuing in this vein when she entered films in 1940. Randolph gained nationwide popularity as the pompous Mrs. Uppington (aka "Uppy") on radio's Fibber McGee and Molly. She re-created this character onscreen in RKO's Look Who's Laughing (1941) and Here We Go Again! (1942), and in the Republic cornpone musical O, My Darling Clementine (1943). She went on to play scores of small roles in A-pictures and major assignments in B's; in at least one Republic Western of the early '50s, she was cast radically against type as a criminal mastermind. On TV, Isabel Randolph was seen as private-school proprietress Mrs. Nestor during the final (1955-1956) season of Our Miss Brooks.

Trivia: Born into a family of travelling show folk, Lyle Talbot toured the hinterlands as a teen-aged magician. Talbot went on to work as a regional stock-company actor, pausing long enough in Memphis to form his own troupe, the Talbot Players. Like many other barnstorming performers of the 1920s, Talbot headed to Hollywood during the early-talkie era. Blessed with slick, lounge-lizard good looks, he started out as a utility lead at Warner Bros. Talbot worked steadily throughout the 1930s, playing heroes in B pictures and supporting parts in A pictures. During a loanout to Monogram Pictures in 1932, he was afforded an opportunity to co-star with Ginger Rogers in a brace of entertaining mysteries, The 13th Guest and The Shriek and the Night, which were still making the double-feature rounds into the 1940s. In 1935, Talbot and 23 other film players organized the Screen Actors Guild; to the end of his days, he could be counted upon to proudly display his SAG Card #4 at the drop of a hat. As his hairline receded and his girth widened, Talbot became one of Hollywood's busiest villains. He worked extensively in serials, playing characters on both sides of the law; in 1949 alone, he could be seen as above-suspicion Commissioner Gordon in Batman and Robin and as duplicitous Lex Luthor in Atom Man Vs. Superman. He remained in harness in the 1950s, appearing on Broadway and television. Two of his better-known assignments from this period were Joe Randolph on TV's The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet and as Bob Cummings' lascivious Air Force buddy Paul Fonda on Love That Bob. Seemingly willing to work for anyone who met his price, Talbot had no qualms about appearing in the dregs of cheapo horror films of the fifties. He was prominently cast in two of the estimable Edward D. Wood's "classics," Glen or Glenda (1953) and Plan Nine From Outer Space (1955). When asked what it was like to work for the gloriously untalented Wood, Talbot would recall with amusement that the director never failed to pay him up front for each day's work with a handful of stained, crinkly ten-dollar bills. Though he made his last film in 1960, Lyle Talbot continued touring in theatrical productions well into the late 1970s, regaling local talk-show hosts with his bottomless reserve of anecdotes from his three decades in Hollywood.

Trivia: Balding, long-necked character actor Frank Cady was a stage actor of long standing when he moved into films in 1947. He was usually cast as a quiet, unassuming small town professional man, most memorably as the long-suffering husband of the grief-stricken alcoholic Mrs. Daigle (Eileen Heckart) in The Bad Seed (1957). A busy television actor, he spent much of the 1950s on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet as Ozzie Nelson's neighbor Doc Willard. The "TV Generation" of the 1960s knows Cady best as philosophical storekeeper Sam Drucker on the bucolic sitcoms Petticoat Junction (1963-1970) and Green Acres (1965-1971). Whenever he wanted to briefly escape series television and recharge his theatrical batteries, Frank Cady appeared with the repertory company at the prestigious Mark Taper's Forum.