Speaking Ill of the Dead: Because They Cannot Sue for Libel

This is the first installment of Speaking Ill of the Dead, a column born of the belief that just because someone has taken the long dirt nap is no reason to endure the sanctimonious whitewashing of their sins. Here, we peel back the velvet curtains of nostalgia to reveal the frightening  portraits underneath because the dead cannot sue for libel.

We begin with a man who built an empire out of domestic surveillance while wearing a sweater that suggested he was perpetually between naps–Ozzie Nelson.

I have begun watching Mr. Nelson in reruns of The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet on the Roku channel, a decision that suggests I have reached a state of ultimate Zen or my cognitive functions are rapidly deteriorating.

Ozzie Nelson spent fourteen years on that show, from 1952 to 1966, without once going to work even though he had a wife and two kids to support, a mortgage, car payments, and grocery bills. He was simply there—snacking in the kitchen, reading the newspaper in the living room, available in a cardigan at all times and never needing a shave. The show didn’t explain this. Viewers didn’t ask. It was the ultimate middle-class grift.

The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet was an ambitious title for a program in which nothing adventurous ever happened in 435 episodes, unless you count the time Ozzie misplaced a ham sandwich. No one was seriously inconvenienced in “America’s favorite family.” Meals appeared. Problems were resolved. The boys always did their homework. Harriet smiled in a manner suggesting either profound contentment or mild sedation. America watched and felt that things were in order, oblivious to the fact that they were witnessing a televised hostage situation.

What America did not see was the man behind the cardigan. Off camera, Ozzie Nelson was the father of all control freaks, a man who possessed the  warmth of a refrigerated meat locker. He was, to put it plainly, a dick. He cast his family in the show, installing them in a house that was a replica of their real one, creating a hall of mirrors from which there was no escape. He produced the show, wrote it, and ran the household that supplied the material. This was not a father. This was a vertically integrated operation wearing a man’s clothing.

When Ricky Nelson, at seventeen already a teenage idol, developed a serious romantic attachment to Lorrie Collins—the teenage singing star of the Collins Kids and by all accounts a perfectly suitable human being—Ozzie cooperated with Lorrie’s parents to end it. The relationship was an unscripted variable, and Ozzie Nelson did not do unscripted variables. That Ricky was old enough to have hit records but apparently not old enough to choose a girlfriend was a distinction Ozzie never found troubling. He treated his sons like props in a long-running play.

To ensure that Ricky remained a Nelson-branded asset, Ozzie famously refused to let him perform on The Ed Sullivan Show for years. If the youth of America wanted to see the “Teen Idol,” they had to watch ABC on Ozzie’s terms. He even forbade Ricky from performing in nightclubs for a time, fearing it would smudge the family’s squeaky-clean, Ipana-tooth-paste-approved image.

College presented a similar threat to the Nelson brand. Ozzie discouraged his sons from attending on the practical grounds that higher education would conflict with their work schedules. Worse yet, young men who attend college occasionally develop opinions, read books not approved by their fathers, and in extreme cases begin to question authority. Ozzie Nelson had not built a family enterprise to subsidize that kind of independent thinking. He wanted employees, not graduates.

Before the television years, Ozzie Nelson had been a bandleader of genuine accomplishment. He surrendered that for total domestic sovereignty and appears to have considered the trade a bargain. He swapped the music of the spheres for the ability to tell his wife exactly how to tilt her head while serving a tuna casserole.

Ricky eventually escaped, at least partially, into legitimate rock-and-roll stardom—which was, structurally, a repudiation of everything the show stood for. Ozzie’s response was fatherly pride on screen, but predatory opportunism off. He incorporated Ricky’s  performances into many episodes, converting  rebellion into content and  content into revenue. He was a man who saw his son’s soul and used it to sell more Hotpoint appliances.

Ozzie Nelson died in 1975, having never, on camera, earned a dime, and having never, off camera, loosened his grip on the throats of those he claimed to love. The cardigan, we assume, died with him.

For more character assassinations of those who have gone before, click Speaking Ill of the Dead