NJ/NY -- circa 1940

1940
Gallery 04
Big Band

The Strand Theater, showing movies from Warner Brothers Studio, was a few blocks north on Broadway at 47th Street. This performance featured Ozzie Nelson’s band with Harriet Hilliard. The trumpet player here, Johnny “Scat” Davis, had gained attention in 1937 in Warner Brothers production “Hollywood Hotel” singing Johnny Mercer’s “Hooray for Hollywood” (“…that phony, super-Coney, Hollywood.”).
Ozzie and Harriet left their band behind in 1944 to do a radio show called “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet,” which went to early television in 1952. Their boys David and Rick soon joined them to create the premier personification of America’s 1950s nuclear family. Harriet’s housewife was always elegantly dressed; Ozzie’s dad was often slightly befuddled. No one knew what he did for a living but they had a lovely home.