𝐎𝐳𝐳𝐢𝐞

Author: Ozzie Nelson, 309 pages, hardcover.
Oswald Nelson began his spectacular career as a musician at age 14 when he and a friend were paid $5 to play for the local Women’s Club dance in his native Ridgefield Park, N.J. Before Ozzie knew it, his band was in such demand that people were willing to pay them an incredible $10 per night.
From then on, it was only up for Ozzie as he divided his free time at Rutgers University between football and music. Finally, music won out over the gridiron and within five years of his college graduation, he was the leader of one of the big bands of the 1930’s and an established radio personality. During this period he met Harriet Hilliard, who became his partner and, of course, his wife. Together, they won millions of radio fans when they joined Red Skelton on the highly popular “Raleigh Cigarette Hour.”
In 1944, “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet” was first broadcast, and ran on radio and television for a total of 22 years, a show business record of almost legendary proportions! And Ozzie’s career did not end there – he returned to the stage in plays such as The Impossible Years, State Fair and The Marriage-Go-Round, and this fall he will be back on television with a new series, “Ozzie’s Girls.”
OZZIE is more than Ozzie’s success story and more than a family album of Ozzie, Harriet, David and Ricky. It is also a nostalgic evocation of one of the most glamorous eras of show business; the Nelsons worked with virtually every big name in entertainment from Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra to Tallulah Bankhead and Charles Laughton.
Ozzie’s story, enriched by a wealth of amusing anecdotes, is a truly memorable one. It presents a genuinely nice man who writes with such warmth and unaffected charm that we end by liking the man just as much as his entertaining story.