Here Come the Nelsons

For those of you unfamiliar with that phenomenon of American culture known as Ozzie And Harriet, Here Come The Nelsons there one and only feature film will give you a good opportunity to see them and judge what you think.

Ozzie Nelson and Harriet Hilliard both individual performers became joined at the hip as performers when they went on radio and then television in a domestic situation comedy. Ozzie was a fair to middling singer and bandleader, his style could be described as Rudy Vallee lite. Harriet was an excellent singer and I always thought it a pity she never got to sing on her show. Such that was done was by their younger son Ricky, but that's in the future.

Instead they were the all American parents with all American boys, Ozzie was a nice guy if a bit of doofus at times and Harriet could always put him down with a sharp wisecrack. Ozzie's occupation was a mystery, I think it was assumed he was a musician of sorts given his background. In this the background is alluded to although he's working in an advertising agency.

He's been given an assignment by his boss Gale Gordon, come up with a winning campaign to sell Paul Harvey's girdles that he manufactures.

At the same time Harriet is persuaded by neighbor Ann Doran to visit astrologer Frank Nelson who says that Ozzie will become a chick magnet. And shortly there is evidence to prove it, but Nelson's advice is to just ride it out, it's a passing phase.

And while all this is going on, Sheldon Leonard and Edward Max are planning to rob the centennial fair that the town of Hillsdale is having at the moment. All these plot elements at the end do coalesce believe it or not.

Here Come The Nelsons is a nice film, but really nothing more than one of their half hour TV episodes stretched out for a feature film. The film is important because it does give Universal International's up and coming leading man Rock Hudson a role as a boarder in the Nelson home. So is Barbara Lawrence, trick rider at the rodeo featured at the centennial. The Nelsons were nothing if not hospitable.

For fans of Ozzie and Harriet and those who want to see what they were all about.

Sure it's old-fashioned. Yes it presents a much simpler world than the one we live in now. But that's great! It's a comedy after all.

During the 1950s many millions of Americans actually lived in a world where the nuclear family reigned supreme -- and worked. Most of those families weren't as well off financially as the Nelsons portrayed here, but they strived to be like the model shown here. It was a very commonly lived experience.

Given that, this movie is very well done. It is wonderfully acted by all involved, especially Harriet and Ozzie. Ricky and David do quite well, and Ricky gets some fun one-liners that are almost risqué. It is also quite creative. I was continually delighted by the plot twists.

So return for 90 minutes or so to the world of small city America, before the cold war became a constant worry, before rock and roll. Hurray for Ozzie and Harriet.

The one great thing about the feature film Here Come The Nelsons is that it revealed the great mystery of the Ozzie And Harriet TV sitcom that mystery being "What Was Ozzie's Job?" This movie tells us that Ozzie was an ad writer making him a kind of 1950s Darren Stephens. Yet on the TV series his job was never seen or mentioned. BTW the late great Frqnk Nelson ("EEE-yesssssss?!?!?") appears uncredited in this movie as Clifford Hastings!

Ozzie and Harriet deal with visiting friends, warnings about infidelity, two sons, an ad campaign, and the perils of visiting Rock Hudson and Barbara Lawrence. It's a movie version of their radio show, THE ADVENTURES OF OZZIE AND HARRIET. This was released in February of 1952. In October, their radio show would make its TV debut, one of a wave of shows that made the transition after radio's MY FAVORITE HUSBAND became TV's I LOVE LUCY.

It's almost strictly radio with pictures. There are only a couple of sequences that seem to play visually, and some that seem to have been set radio gags; Ann Doran entering with a passel of screaming children seems as radio as Fibber Magee's closet. The large number of radio actors bespeaks the same matter. As a pilot for a TV we never watched, it seems adequate. As a movie in and of itself, it seems obvious and dull.