Biography
Born Peggy Lou Snyder on 18 July 1909 in Des Moines, Iowa, Harriet Hilliard died on 2 October 1994 in Laguna Beach, California. A show-business family provided her early environment, where she first worked as a vocalist before popular bandleader Ozzie Nelson employed her in the early 1930s; he later became her husband. Although her screen debut occurred in the 1932 picture The Campus Mystery, she launched a concurrent Hollywood career in the mid-1930s that centered on musicals and extended through the mid-1940s. Among those productions were Follow The Fleet (1936), where she performed Irving Berlin’s “Get Thee Behind Me Satan” together with Jimmy McHugh and Harold Adamson’s “Where Are You?,” New Faces Of 1937, and The Life Of The Party (both 1937, the latter featuring a screenplay by Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby and Viola Brothers Shore), as well as Cocoanut Grove (1938, co-starring Fred MacMurray), Juke Box Jenny (1942) and Swingtime Johnny (1944). She also took roles in several dramas throughout the same period.
Adopting her married name, Hilliard joined her husband on radio in 1944, where The Ozzie And Harriet Show quickly gained wide popularity. The 1952 feature Here Come The Nelsons drew directly from that series and introduced their real-life sons, David and Ricky. The same premise transferred to television as the situation comedy The Adventures Of Ozzie And Harriet, which continued for fourteen seasons. During a 1957 episode Ricky performed a number that entered the hit parade and opened the way for his solo career as rock singer Rick Nelson. In 1973 the couple appeared in the short-lived comedy Ozzie’s Girls, directed by Ozzie and David Nelson, in which the parents, now without their grown sons at home, rented rooms to two young women. From the 1950s forward she made further television appearances, sometimes as herself and sometimes in character parts, on programs that included a 1977 installment of The Love Boat, a 1978 installment of Fantasy Island and a 1982 installment of Happy Days.
Adopting her married name, Hilliard joined her husband on radio in 1944, where The Ozzie And Harriet Show quickly gained wide popularity. The 1952 feature Here Come The Nelsons drew directly from that series and introduced their real-life sons, David and Ricky. The same premise transferred to television as the situation comedy The Adventures Of Ozzie And Harriet, which continued for fourteen seasons. During a 1957 episode Ricky performed a number that entered the hit parade and opened the way for his solo career as rock singer Rick Nelson. In 1973 the couple appeared in the short-lived comedy Ozzie’s Girls, directed by Ozzie and David Nelson, in which the parents, now without their grown sons at home, rented rooms to two young women. From the 1950s forward she made further television appearances, sometimes as herself and sometimes in character parts, on programs that included a 1977 installment of The Love Boat, a 1978 installment of Fantasy Island and a 1982 installment of Happy Days.