The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet - The Nelsons' Post-TV Lives

The Nelsons' Post-TV Lives

Ozzie Nelson continued to work in show business after the failure of the short lived sitcom Ozzie's Girls. He took on the role of producer and director for some of TV's popular shows, most notably: Adam-12, The D.A., and Bridget Loves Bernie. In 1975, Ozzie Nelson died of liver cancer at the age of 69.

In the years after Ozzie and Harriet was canceled, Rick Nelson's career and personal life changed drastically. Rick never regained the same momentum of his early career, though he continued to pursue a career in music. He shied away from his teen idol image and sound, forming the rock and roll/country fused Stone Canyon Band. Rick and the Stone Canyon Band had success with the 1972 single, "Garden Party". Ironically, Rick and the Band wrote the song in response to having been booed off the stage at a rock and roll revival concert at Madison Square Garden when he refused to play his old hits from his teen idol days. Throughout the 1970s, Rick's life was riddled with debt and drug abuse. In 1981, he and wife Kristin Harmon divorced. While touring the United States, Rick Nelson was killed in a plane crash on December 31, 1985, in DeKalb in Bowie County near Texarkana, Texas in northeast Texas. He was en route to a New Year's Eve concert in Dallas. In 1987, he was inducted posthumously into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Following Ozzie's death in 1975, Harriet turned somewhat reclusive. In 1989, she made her last onscreen appearance in her granddaughter Tracy Nelson's TV series, Father Dowling Mysteries. Harriet never fully recovered from son Rick's death and she herself died of congestive heart failure and emphysema in 1994.

Ozzie, Harriet, and Rick are interred together in Forest Lawn, Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles, California.

David Nelson continued to produce feature films and television commercials and owned his commercial production company until his death from cancer in January 2011.