The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet (1960)

The longest-running live-action sitcom, which began on ABC in television's early days and continued into the mid-1960s, was by and large the work of one man--Ozzie Nelson. Called a dictatorial workaholic in a 1995 documentary, Nelson directed and co-wrote most episodes and picked out everything from room furnishings to clothing worn by the actors. But in so doing he created an insular world that may have depicted mundane "adventures" of the average middle-class American family but also created a surreal landscape in which his sons sometimes had trouble distinguishing between reality and fiction. No wonder: when both David and Ricky married, their real-life wives became characters on the TV show. Relatives like Ozzie's brother Don became part of the crew, and Don's wife had a recurring role as a legal secretary. Several actors with recurring roles often had little to no other film credits to their name, meaning that their careers were defined, by and large, by Ozzie and Harriet. The music was written by a member of Ozzie's band, and Ricky's highly successful musical career was launched and promoted as a regular part of the series. Comparisons to the more recent film The Truman Show about a man who doesn't realize at first that his everyday life is a carefully orchestrated and highly popular TV show are not a stretch. The Nelson boys grew up in America's living rooms from 1952 until 1966. Their careers afterward paled in comparison to what they were during the series' 14-year span.

Other family-based sitcoms of the era, such as Father Knows Best and Leave It to Beaver, are seen as quaint today because the characters never seem to face anything but trivial adversity, and parents are constantly doling out sage advice that provided a "lesson" each week, as if the purpose of these shows was to provide a sermon in proper living. But Ozzie and Harriet is a trifle different. As others have noted, the family patriarch character played by Ozzie has no discernible profession. He hangs around the house much of the day, dispensing advice that is often not heeded or sometimes followed with ill effects, such as in "Dave and the Schoolteacher" (May 4, 1960) where his advice to Dave nearly sabotages a relationship by causing the son to assume a girl in whom he is interested is only using him for chores. Occasionally Ozzie rides the bus downtown to have lunch with a friend like Joe Randolph or goes to play golf, but he never talks about any work, except to advise Dave in "The Circus" (January 27, 1960) that some jobs require you to do unpleasant things. It's ironic that Ozzie is portrayed as such a slacker when his real life was consumed by the work required to put on a weekly television series.

He also generally doesn't get along with his so-called "friends." In "A Lawnmower for Ozzie" (December 7, 1960), Randolph comes over before leaving on a trip to borrow a few items that prove to thwart Ozzie's attempt to mow his lawn after Randolph has gone. Ozzie is irritable with Randolph during the entire visit, practically curses him for locking his garage with Ozzie's own padlock, then feels bad when he finally breaks into the garage to retrieve his lawnmower and believes that the brand new lawnmower with the bow on top sitting in Randolph's garage is for him. He also gets peeved at neighbor Doc Williams, whose power mower he is hoping to borrow, when Williams admonishes him not to hit any rocks and to be sure and clean it afterward since his yard is full of crabgrass. In "No News for Harriet" (June 8, 1960), Harriet complains that Ozzie never tells her anything about what he's been up to, while Randolph confesses to Ozzie that he embellishes or makes up stories to keep his wife Clara entertained. Ozzie is against any form of misrepresentation but Randolph gets the upper hand when he tells Clara that Ozzie had ice cream with a famous antiques author and Clara, in turn, persuades that ladies club to which she and Harriet belong to invite the author to speak at their next luncheon, using Ozzie's name as a way of introduction. Ozzie also is annoyed by his friend Darby in "The Circus" when Darby asks Ozzie to use two of his four circus tickets to take Darby and his wife instead of Ricky and Dave, who was the one who scored the tickets in the first place. And in "Dave's Almost In-Laws" (November 23, 1960) Ozzie takes an immediate dislike to Harry Wilson, father of a girl Dave has been seeing, when the two don't see eye-to-eye on modern architecture, last night's fight, or the movie currently showing at the Bijou. But Ozzie rarely confronts these characters head-on, usually insisting that he isn't mad when he obviously is at least agitated and reserving his harshest criticism of these men for Harriet's ears only. While Ozzie's soft-serve approach to his dislikes keeps everything non-confrontational, it also gives the show with a sense of dis-ease.

The behavior of model sons Dave and Ricky is also slightly unsettling, not because they engage in anything immoral or even disrespectful. They are always polite and charming but have a distinct problem with communicating or displaying anything resembling a backbone. In "The Circus," Dave is asked by his boss, attorney Mr. Dobson, to serve a summons to a Roberto Cantini, but when Dave discovers that Mr. Cantini is the father of his new friend Tony and that they and their family are trapeze artists and run the circus that just came to town, he chickens out until he has a nightmare about causing Mr. Cantini to fall off the trapeze. However, he is bailed out from the unpleasant chore when Mr. Dobson sees him at the circus the next day before he has delivered the summons and decides to serve the summons himself, which turns out to be only an invitation to dinner. In "His Brother's Girl" (October 19, 1960) Ricky asks Dave to take Jane, the girl he has been seeing, to the movies since he just found out about a big exam the next day. Dave has found himself more and more attracted to Jane but doesn't have the gumption to tell him, and apparently the affection is mutual. Things progress to Jane kissing Dave and he asking her to the dance since Ricky hasn't already asked her. Still, he never tells Ricky what has developed yet is bailed out when Ricky shows up at the dance with another girl in whom he thought Dave was interested. 

Ricky takes his turn in failing to communicate in "A Sweater for Rick" (November 9, 1960) when his girlfriend Joyce decides to secretly knit him a sweater. He assumes that her lack of availability means she is no longer interested in him, and, rather than asking her, he starts dating another girl, Mary Carter. When Harriet, who has been helping Joyce with the knitting, sees that Rick is straying, she tells him about Joyce's present for him. Feeling guilty, he goes over to Mary's house to break things off with her, but when she also presents him with a sweater, he chickens out and accepts it, agreeing separately with both girls to wear their sweaters at school on Monday and having to switch between the two sweaters based on which girl he sees during the day. However, rather than having to confess his duplicity, he is let off the hook when Mary comes to tell him that she is getting back together with her basketball-playing former boyfriend, meaning that he can return to Joyce without having to explain anything. He avoids another awkward explanation in "Rick Counts the Ballots" (December 28, 1960) when, as head of the prom queen election committee, he lets slip to his girlfriend Terry that she was won the election, then finds out from his friend and fellow committee member Wally that they missed a ballot box from the chemistry building, meaning that Terry's slim 7-vote lead might be in jeopardy. But rather than telling her he had been premature in declaring the winner, especially when she leaks the "news" to her sorority sisters, he waits for the counting of the last ballot box and he escapes embarrassment when she retains the crown by a single vote. So the strange message the show seems to reinforce is that failure to communicate can cause a variety of problems, but there are never any consequences suffered as a result. The Nelsons apparently value not ruffling feathers over honesty, a code you won't find endorsed by shows like Father Knows Best.

Another curious family value is that the boys have a different girlfriend nearly every week. Rather than showing the development of a romantic relationship over time, the show treats their relationships with women as disposable at this point in their lives. As mentioned above, Ricky quickly jettisons Joyce in "A Sweater for Rick" just because she is busy and won't go record shopping or to a movie on a couple of occasions. In "Girl in the Emporium" (December 14, 1960), he and Wally take jobs at a department store to pursue a pretty salesgirl. But once she reveals that she is going on vacation for a few weeks and will be replaced by her equally attractive sister, the boys immediately forget her and take up with her sibling. The irony here is that Ricky Nelson was a notorious womanizer, once claiming to have had sex with thousands of women. He called his marriage to Kris Harmon a shotgun wedding because she was three months pregnant and did not include her in the short list of women he really loved in an interview shortly before his death. Ozzie Nelson may have been able to micromanage every detail of what went out on the air, but he couldn't control what went on behind the scenes in his model American family.

The music for the 1960 episodes is credited to Basil "Buzz" Adlam, who was born in Chelmsford, UK and educated in Canadian schools. He played saxophone in Ozzie Nelson's band, as well as for Phil Harris and provided arrangements for and conducted the Horace Heidt orchestra. His soundtrack credits are largely for the 152 episodes he worked on for Ozzie and Harriet, though he did provide orchestration for a few films in the 1940s, a few episodes of The Mr. Magoo Show in 1960, and a few episodes of Space Angel in the mid-1960s. He was also producer and musical director for the U.S. Treasury's Guest Star radio series. He passed away on November 9, 1974 in Beverly Hills at the age of 69.

There have been a plethora of DVD releases of selected episodes from this series but no complete season or series releases at this date. However, Sam Nelson, Ricky's youngest son has begun an effort to bring complete seasons to market. In 2011 he launched a Kickstarter campaign with a goal of raising $10,000 but wound up netting over three times that amount. As of September 2014, his latest update on this site says that restoration has just begun, though only contributors to the project have access to the full message. One would assume that he would begin with the first season and work forward from there, but no timetable has been released delineating when any releases will actually make it to market. In the meantime, Shout! Factory has released two 4-disc collections spanning the show's 14-year history. One is titled The Best of Ozzie and Harriet and the other is The Best of Ricky and Dave. They have also released a single disc of Christmas episodes. Mill Creek has released a 12-disc collection called The Essential Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet containing 100 episodes, again spanning the show's entire history. The video quality on this set is far inferior to that on the Shout! Factory releases, but it does include the original commercials. Alpha Video has also released over 20 single-disc DVDs, each containing four episodes, and these  are taken from the show's earlier seasons. Video quality on other Alpha releases is usually acceptable to poor. A few episodes are also available on archive.org, though video quality for the online episodes tends to be poor.

The Actors

Ozzie Nelson

Oswald George Nelson was born in Jersey City, New Jersey and played football in high school and at Rutgers University. After Rutgers he attended Rutgers Newark School of Law but did not pursue a legal career afterward because he took up a musical career after earning money playing saxophone in school and then starting his own band. The band played at various hotels and casinos along the East Coast until he manufactured his big break in 1930 by stuffing the ballot box in a contest for most popular band run by the New York Daily Mirror. Nelson knew that newspaper carriers got credit for unsold papers by merely returning the front page from unsold copies, so he and his bandmates gathered up the remaining unsold papers and filled out the ballots to beat out Paul Whiteman and his orchestra in winning the contest. From then on he was a regular in recording for the Brunswick, Vocalion, Victor, and Bluebird record labels, scoring hits in 1934 for "Over Somebody Else's Shoulder" and 1935 for "And Then Some," which went all the way to #1. He hired Harriet Hilliard as the band's female vocalist in 1932, often performing duets with her, and the couple married in 1935. In the 1940s Nelson had his band appear in several films and shorts such as Sweetheart of the Campus, Strictly in the Groove, and Honeymoon Lodge. He and his band also became regulars on Red Skelton's radio program, which eventually led to his own show in 1944, the initial incarnation of The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.

Though he was always portrayed as an easy-going character on his television series, other sources, particularly a 1998 documentary for the A&E cable channel and historian David Halberstam, have said that in real life Nelson was a controlling, dictatorial workaholic who prevented his sons from attending college in order to keep the TV series going. Son David Nelson disputed the documentary's depiction of his father, saying that while Ozzie was hard-working he wasn't a slave driver: "My father went to great pains to see that Rick and I had as normal an upbringing as possible." In 1973 he attempted to bring back Ozzie and Harriet with Harriet and he renting out the boys' rooms to a pair of young college girls on Ozzie's Girls, but the series was not picked up by a network, subjecting it to syndication roulette and lasting only a single season. That year he also published his autobiography Ozzie. Some sources say that about this time he revealed that he was a lifelong atheist, though others say this is merely a rumor. In his later years he suffered a series of malignant tumors and eventually died of liver cancer at the age of 69 on June 3, 1975.

 Harriet Hilliard Nelson

Born Peggy Louise Snyder in Des Moines, Iowa, Harriet Nelson was the daughter of stock theater performers and made her first appearance on stage by age 3 and debuted on Broadway while still a teenager. The fire to Ozzie Nelson's ice, she took up smoking at age 13, dropped out of high school to join the Corps de Ballet, and had her first marriage to abusive comedian Roy Sedley annulled in 1933, a year after joining her future husband Ozzie's band as the lead female vocalist. A friend of Ginger Rogers, she was signed to an RKO movie contract, appearing alongside her friend Rogers and Fred Astaire in Follow the Fleet and continuing to appear in one or two films a year until her family's radio program began in 1944, at which time she stuck to being Ozzie Nelson's wife on stage as well as at home.

After their TV series ended, Harriet made rare appearances with Ozzie on shows such as Night Gallery, Love American Style, and Bridget Loves Bernie. After his death in 1975, she moved to their beach home in Laguna Beach and led a somewhat reclusive life, though she did appear in a few TV movies and occasional guest spots on shows like The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, Happy Days, and The Father Dowling Mysteries, on which her grand-daughter Tracy Nelson had a starring role. She died from congestive heart failure at the age of 85 on October 2, 1994.

 

 

David Nelson

David Oswald Nelson was born in Manhattan in 1936; the Nelsons moved to California when he was 5. At age 12 he and Ricky took over playing themselves on the radio version of Ozzie and Harriet. From then until the TV series ended in 1966, his career was largely defined by his role on the show. He did, however, find time to attend USC, where he was a member of the Kappa Sigma fraternity, and besides the pseudo TV pilot Here Come the Nelsons, he starred in a few feature films in the late 1950s, most notably Peyton Place, The Remarkable Mr. Pennypacker, and The Big Circus, a film that got him interested in the trapeze and led to his performing with a troupe called the Flying Viennas. This interest was worked into the show in the 1960 episode "The Circus" in which both Dave and Ricky perform on the trapeze in a dream sequence.

In 1961 he married former Playboy Playmate and actress June Blair, who then became a regular member of the cast, having played a few different characters before the marriage. Toward the end of the show's run, David developed an interest in directing and directed four episodes in 1963-64. After the series ended, he directed a few episodes of OK, Crackerby! as well as single episodes of Ozzie's Girls, Adam-12, and Goodnight, Beantown. He also directed a few feature films, including Childish Things with Linda Evans and Don Murray, Last Plane Out with Jan-Michael Vincent, and Rare Breed with George Kennedy and Forrest Tucker. His marriage to Blair ended in divorce in 1975 and he remarried that same year to Yvonne Huston, to whom he remained married until his death from colon cancer in 2011. Of all the Nelsons he was the most candid in expressing the confusion over distinguishing between the real and fictional Nelsons. In a 1971 interview with Esquire magazine he said, “For your sanity you had to keep that clear,” he said. “Rick and I had to distinguish between our father and the director telling us what to do. If we got the lines crossed, that’s where the arguments started, and I would end up putting my fist through a wall behind the set, because I was that angry.”

Ricky Nelson

Eric Hilliard Nelson was born in Teaneck, New Jersey, though the family soon settled in Tenafly. Six months later, Ozzie, Harriet, and David moved to Hollywood where the parents became regulars on Red Skelton's radio show. Baby Ricky was left in the care of his paternal grandmother until 1942. As a child he was shy, introverted, and suffered from asthma. At age 8 he joined brother David in replacing the professional actors who had been playing the boys on their parents' hit radio show. While attending Hollywood High School, Ricky became involved with a greaser gang called the Rooks after being shunned by the club most of his friends belonged to, the more conservative Elksters. Ricky was arrested twice for delinquent activities with the Rooks and barely avoided a third arrest when he punched a police officer but was rescued by the intervention of Ozzie. His parents eventually had to banish his delinquent friends from his life and their home to prevent him from getting into further trouble. He became interested in music when a girl he liked said that she loved Elvis Presley, so he immediately told her that he was a recording artist as well and then had his father with his musical connections set up a recording date in which he cut Fats Domino's "I'm Walkin'" and performed it on Ozzie and Harriet as well as Perry Como's TV show. The song reached #4 on the charts, and the B-side, "A Teenager's Romance," reached #2. Soon thereafter Ozzie got him a 5-year contract with Imperial Records, which led to a string of hit singles and albums and performances of his songs on the family's TV show. He also had a couple of notable film roles in The Wackiest Ship in the Army with Jack Lemmon and in Rio Bravo with John Wayne and Dean Martin. In 1963 he signed a new 20-year contract with Decca Records and married Kris Harmon, daughter of football legend Tom Harmon and older sister of actor Mark Harmon. However, his musical career began to wane, and the marriage, which produced four children--actress Tracy Nelson, musicians Gunnar and Matthew Nelson, and musician/actor Sam Nelson, ended in a bitter, very public 5-year divorce that dragged on until 1982.

Meanwhile,  Ricky's music career continued to flag until he was booed from the stage at Madison Square garden for not dressing like he did in his hit years and performing his old songs. The humiliating experience ironically led to a comeback and his biggest hit in years, "Garden Party," in 1972. His divorce from Kris Harmon also made public his rampant drug use and incessant infidelity. But his later musical career was said to be an inspiration for the burgeoning country rock scene made famous by artists such as Jackson Browne and Linda Ronstadt. It all came to a tragic end in May 1985 when a privately leased jet taking him to a show in Dallas caught fire and crashed in DeKalb, Texas, killing all on board except the two pilots. Nelson's will left his entire estate to his children, cutting out Kris Harmon and the woman he was living with and who died with him in the crash, Helen Blair. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987.

Skip Young

Born in San Francisco as Ronald Bix Plumstead, Young served in the Navy during the Korean War and made his first appearance on film in an uncredited role in the Elvis Presley 1957 vehicle Loving You. Like many of the regular actors on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, Young's filmography is brief outside of the long-running series on which he appeared 92 times beginning in 1956. While still appearing on Ozzie and Harriet he made single appearances on One Step Beyond, Father Knows Best, and My Three Sons. After the series ended he had single appearances on Green Acres, Adam-12, Starsky and Hutch, and his final appearance on a 1989 episode of Growing Pains. He also found occasional feature film work in fare such as Earth vs. the Spider, A Cold Wind in August with Lola Albright, WUSA, and Lobster Man From Mars. In 1973 he moved to Apple Valley in California, where he hosted a talk radio program and participated in community events such as judging beauty contests. He was found dead at his home on March 17, 1993 after suffering a heart attack at the age of 63. Diabetes was also said to be a contributing factor in his death.

Lyle Talbot

 He was born Lysle Hollywood Henderson in Pittsburgh, PA, the son of Mississippi River boat performers. At age 17 he began performing himself as a magician's assistant, working his way up to magician in traveling tent shows. From there he moved into repertory theatre and founded his own troupe in Nashville. He was spotted by a Hollywood agent at a performance in Houston and invited to screen test for then brand new talking pictures. His screen test was approved by studio boss Darryl F. Zanuck and director William Wellman, and he began appearing in a variety of roles beginning in 1931. He was soon playing alongside the likes of Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. in 1932's Love Is a Racket, with Bette Davis, Joan Blondell, and a young Humphrey Bogart in Three on a Match later that same year, and again with Davis and Spencer Tracy in 20,000 Years in Sing Sing. By the following year he was the leading man opposite Loretta Young in She Had to Say Yes and Ginger Rogers in A Shriek in the Night. But when he became one of the founders of the Screen Actors Guild, and the only founder then under contract to a major studio, Warner Brothers allowed his contract to expire and he would no longer be cast in leading roles after that. He still found a lucrative career as a character actor and appeared in some 150 films during his career. He was also the first actor to portray Commissioner Gordon in the 1949 serial Batman and Robin and the first to play Lex Luthor in Atom Man vs. Superman in 1950. That year he also made his first foray into television, playing The Brain in a 5-part installment on Dick Tracy. Talbot once boasted that he never turned down a role, and this included appearances in three Ed Wood, Jr. films--Glen or Glenda, Jail Bait, and, arguably the worst movie ever made, Plan 9 From Outer Space. He also found regular work on a variety of TV shows throughout the 1950s, from westerns to crime dramas to science fiction series, including 6 appearances as Baylor on Commando Cody: Sky Marshal of the Universe. In the later 1950s he began showing a knack for comedy with repeat performances on The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show, 6 turns on December Bride, and a recurring role as Bob Cummings' friend Paul Fonda on The Bob Cummings Show.

But his most enduring role was as Ozzie's Nelson's irritating friend Joe Randolph starting in 1956 until the series' end. After Ozzie and Harriet he continued working into the late 1980s, appearing on shows such as The Beverly Hillbillies, Dragnet, Green Acres, Here's Lucy, Adam-12, The Dukes of Hazzard, St. Elsewhere, Charlie's Angels, and Newhart. He married five times, the last to Margaret "Paula" Epple lasted from 1948 until her death in 1989. They had four children, including son Stephen who played Beaver's friend Gilbert on Leave It to Beaver and later become a producer of documentaries, son David, founder and editor of salon.com and author of a recent book about the Kennedy assassinations titled Brothers, and daughter Margaret, currently writing for The New Yorker magazine. Lyle Talbot died of congestive heart failure at his San Francisco home on March 2, 1996 at the age of 94.

Mary Jane Croft

Croft was born in Muncie, Indiana, where she began her performing career in local theatre. After moving to Cincinnati, she worked in local theatre there before finding work as a voice actress on radio station WLW, which, in turn, led to a long and prolific career in radio on shows such as The Mel Blanc Show, Suspense, Blondie, The Great Gildersleeve, Our Miss Brooks, and Lucille Ball's My Favorite Husband. These last two programs helped launch her career in television, as she reprised her role as Eve Arden's adversary Daisy Enright on the TV version of Our Miss Brooks and appeared on I Love Lucy in a couple of guest spots in 1954 and 1956 before being cast as Lucy's Connecticut neighbor Betty Ramsey in the show's final season. She then provided the voice for Jackie Cooper's basset hound Cleo on The People's Choice from 1955-58, and after a couple of guest spots on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, settled in as Joe Randolph's wife Clara beginning in 1956 and continuing for the duration of the series.

But while still working on Ozzie and Harriet she teamed up with Lucille Ball again on The Lucy Show, first playing Audrey Simmons in 8 episodes from 1962-64 and then becoming Mary Jane Lewis (her real married name as she was then the wife of Lucy producer Elliott Lewis) for the remainder of the series, replacing Vivian Vance as Lucy's best friend when Vance left the series. When Ball launched her third TV series, Here's Lucy, in 1969, Croft returned as Mary Jane Lewis, appearing 21 times during the show's 5-year run. Her last appearance on film was in Ball's 1977 TV movie Lucy Calls the President. She died of natural causes 22 years later on August 24, 1999 at the age of 83.

Constance Harper

Constance Garland Harper was born in Los Angeles in 1930. Other than a single appearance on The Donna Reed Show in 1962 and a short titled Sonic Boom in 1974, her entire acting career consisted of her 62 appearances on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, most often as secretary Connie Edwards in the law office where David worked. Her entry into acting was no doubt helped by being married to Ozzie Nelson's brother Don, who co-wrote exactly half of the show's 436 scripts. Little else is known about Harper. She is apparently still living.

 

 Jack Wagner

Jack Bernard Wagner was born to French parents in 1925 and by age 4 was dubbing French into  American movies for foreign release. Wagner played the soda jerk Jack and many clerks, announcers, and other minor characters in 92 episodes of The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet during the show's entire 14-year span. He had a few uncredited roles in feature films for MGM while still a teenager, but then found work as a radio announcer for KNX in Los Angeles. Starting in 1955 he began working for Disneyland doing special announcements and narrating Christmas parades until becoming a full-time announcer for Disney in 1970. He eventually became known as The Voice of Disneyland and added voicework for Walt Disney World Resort, as well as producing music used at Disneyland, Walt Disney World, and Tokyo Disneyland. Vocal cord surgery in 1991 effectively ended his career as a Disney announcer. His acting career beyond Ozzie and Harriet included the role of Alfred on The Ann Sothern Show from 1958-60 as well as occasional appearances on shows such as Sea Hunt, Dragnet, and Bat Masterson. He died June 16, 1995 at the age of 69.

Notable Guest Stars

Season 8, Episode 15, "The Circus": Francis de Sales (shown on the right, played Lt. Bill Weigand on Mr. & Mrs. North, Ralph Dobson on The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet, Sheriff Maddox on Two Faces West, and Rusty Lincoln on Days of Our Lives) plays Dave's boss Mr. Dobson. Nick Dennis (starred in A Streetcar Named Desire, East of Eden, and Kiss Me Deadly and played Nick Kanavaras on Ben Casey and Constantine on Kojak) plays trapeze patriarch Roberto Cantini. Karl Kindberg (Dink in later episodes of The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet) plays his son Tony. 

Season 8, Episode 21, "Dave Goofs Off": Joe Flynn (shown on the left, starred in Lover Come Back, The Love Bug, and The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes and played Frank on The Joey Bishop Show, Capt. Wallace B. Binghamton on McHale's Navy, and Herbert T. Kenworth on The Tim Conway Show) plays Dave's other boss Mr. Kelley. 

 

 Season 8, Episode 27, " Dave and the Schoolteacher": Madge Blake (shown on the right, see the biography section for the 1960 post on The Real McCoys) plays Dave's former teacher Mrs. Hastings. Paula Winslowe (Martha Conklin on Our Miss Brooks) plays Dave's former teacher Mrs. Stevens. Cynthia Chenault (Carol Potter on The Tom Ewell Show) plays Dave's former classmate Carol Wilson. Stanley Livingston (see the biography section for the 1960 post on My Three Sons) plays Wilson's pupil Stanley Livingston.

Season 8, Episode 31, "No News for Harriet": Paula Winslowe (see "Dave and the Schoolteacher" above) plays women's club president Mrs. Peabody. Vera Marshe (Vera Franklin on Meet Corliss Archer) plays another women's club member. Sally Hughes (Sally Darby many times on Ozzie and Harriet) plays another women's club member. Constance Harper (see the biography section above) plays another women's club member.

Season 9, Episode 4, "His Brother's Girl": June Blair (later married Dave Nelson and played his wife June in later seasons on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet) plays Ricky's date Jane. Pat McCaffrie (Chuck Forrest on Bachelor Father)  plays a movie theatre manager's brother-in-law. 

Season 9, Episode 7, "A Sweater for Rick": Roberta Shore (Laura Rogan on Walt Disney Presents: Annette, Henrietta Gogerty on The Bob Cummings Show, and Betsy Garth on The Virginian) plays Ricky's girlfriend Joyce. Linda Evans (shown on the left, played Audra Barkley on The Big Valley, Marty Shaw on Hunter, and Krystle Carrington on Dynasty)plays Ricky's replacement girlfriend Mary Carter. Sharyn Hillyer (Wanda on The Man From U.N.C.L.E.) plays Carol, a girl who knitted a tie for Ricky. 

Season 9, Episode 9, "Dave's Almost In-Laws": John Hubbard (starred in One Million, B.C., The Mummy's Tomb, and What's Buzzin', Cousin? and played Mr. Brown on The Mickey Rooney Show, Col. U. Charles Barker on Don't Call Me Charlie, and Ted Gaynor on Family Affair) plays Dave's girlfriend's father Harry Wilson. 

Season 9, Episode 10, "Dave Hires a Secretary": Joe Flynn (see "Dave Goofs Off" above) returns as Mr. Kelley. Lori Saunders (shown on the right, played Bobbie Jo Bradley on Petticoat Junction, Green Acres, and The Beverly Hillbillies and Betsy on Dusty's Trail) plays Rick's girlfriend Susan. June Blair (see "His Brother's Girl" above) plays Susan's friend Cathy Carson. 

Season 9, Episode 11, "A Lawnmower for Ozzie": Frank Cady (Sam Drucker on The Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres, and Petticoat Junction) plays Ozzie's neighbor Doc Williams. Billy Hummert (Cornell Clayton on Margie) plays a curious boy named Billy. Barry Livingston (Ernie Douglas on My Three Sons and Murray "Moose" Kerner on Sons and Daughters) plays his friend Barry.

Season 9, Episode 12, "Girl in the Emporium": Judi Meredith (shown on the left, played Bonnie Sue McAfee on The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show and The George Burns Show, Monique Devereaux on Hotel de Paree, and Betty Cramer on Ben Casey) plays attractive salesgirl Terry. Lori Saunders (see "Dave Hires a Secretary" above) plays her sister Mary Jane. 

Season 9, Episode 14, "Rick Counts the Ballots": Linda Bennett (popular singer who recorded for RCA and Mercury) plays Rick's girlfriend Terry Johnson.