When I tried on that cardigan, I immediately thought of Ozzie.
Not Osbourne of course. Nelson. I grew up with Ozzie Nelson: my father Perry Grant had co-written every episode of The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, whose 14-year run (1952-1966) was one of the longest in television history. One night a week for much of my childhood our family (Perry, Edie, Cheryl and Ricky) would watch the Nelson family (Ozzie, Harriet, David and Ricky). The show was in essence TV’s first reality show (Ozzie before Ozzy), featuring the actual Nelson family and a set duplicated from the Nelson’s actual home.
Ozzie often wore cardigans on the show, and when I recently tried on a speckled purple variety in a Palm Desert men’s store, I made the immediate association. But beyond association was connection, a kind of visceral portal for me to embrace or at least take a look at both my childhood and advancing age. And it seems I’m not the only one channeling Ozzie; our culture also uses him as an archetype for discussions of family and the essence of normality.
To some, Ozzie and his show symbolize the mindless fluff of the 50’s Eisenhower era where the perfect family was conflict-free and conversed in banalities (“Want to go to the malt shop Oz?” “Sure Thorny. Then we can drop off Harriet at the hairdresser.”). To others the show emphasized traditional family values and exuded normality when normal was still a virtue. Today to say a couple is “like Ozzie and Harriet” can either be a put down or a complement.
I sometimes wonder if my parents modeled their parenting on Ozzie and Harriet. Growing up in a “perfect” neighborhood in Pacific Palisades, California with my father head of the household and my mother a homemaker, they certainly patterned our family around a 50’s ideal and lived to have a marriage of almost 60 years before my father died. But there was much that wasn’t ideal about my family upbringing; we didn’t deal with conflict well and glossed over many challenging personal and societal issues when the 60‘s and 70‘s unfolded.
But when I tried on the cardigan earlier this year, I wasn’t thinking about family ideals or dysfunction: I was thinking about my age. I’m 58, and I have to admit most of my fashion choices (i.e. the tendency of wearing athletic attire) are made in attempts to look younger. On the other hand, cardigans speak gentility, staidness, old school, Ozzie. And something within me embraced this.
In my den at home I have a sarcastic photo Ozzie Nelson sent to my father “expressing the fondness we of the writing community have for each other.” Taken on the set of the show, there is a massive moose head on the mantle and Ozzie is wearing a smoking jacket and ascot with a smug look on his face. It’s nice to see Ozzie didn’t seem to take himself too seriously, and I imagine he might laugh at his current role as a cultural icon.
But I know he’s had a role in my life, and next time I’m at the men’s store I’ll see if they have any smoking jackets and ascots to try on.
Not Osbourne of course. Nelson. I grew up with Ozzie Nelson: my father Perry Grant had co-written every episode of The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, whose 14-year run (1952-1966) was one of the longest in television history. One night a week for much of my childhood our family (Perry, Edie, Cheryl and Ricky) would watch the Nelson family (Ozzie, Harriet, David and Ricky). The show was in essence TV’s first reality show (Ozzie before Ozzy), featuring the actual Nelson family and a set duplicated from the Nelson’s actual home.
Ozzie often wore cardigans on the show, and when I recently tried on a speckled purple variety in a Palm Desert men’s store, I made the immediate association. But beyond association was connection, a kind of visceral portal for me to embrace or at least take a look at both my childhood and advancing age. And it seems I’m not the only one channeling Ozzie; our culture also uses him as an archetype for discussions of family and the essence of normality.
To some, Ozzie and his show symbolize the mindless fluff of the 50’s Eisenhower era where the perfect family was conflict-free and conversed in banalities (“Want to go to the malt shop Oz?” “Sure Thorny. Then we can drop off Harriet at the hairdresser.”). To others the show emphasized traditional family values and exuded normality when normal was still a virtue. Today to say a couple is “like Ozzie and Harriet” can either be a put down or a complement.
I sometimes wonder if my parents modeled their parenting on Ozzie and Harriet. Growing up in a “perfect” neighborhood in Pacific Palisades, California with my father head of the household and my mother a homemaker, they certainly patterned our family around a 50’s ideal and lived to have a marriage of almost 60 years before my father died. But there was much that wasn’t ideal about my family upbringing; we didn’t deal with conflict well and glossed over many challenging personal and societal issues when the 60‘s and 70‘s unfolded.
But when I tried on the cardigan earlier this year, I wasn’t thinking about family ideals or dysfunction: I was thinking about my age. I’m 58, and I have to admit most of my fashion choices (i.e. the tendency of wearing athletic attire) are made in attempts to look younger. On the other hand, cardigans speak gentility, staidness, old school, Ozzie. And something within me embraced this.
In my den at home I have a sarcastic photo Ozzie Nelson sent to my father “expressing the fondness we of the writing community have for each other.” Taken on the set of the show, there is a massive moose head on the mantle and Ozzie is wearing a smoking jacket and ascot with a smug look on his face. It’s nice to see Ozzie didn’t seem to take himself too seriously, and I imagine he might laugh at his current role as a cultural icon.
But I know he’s had a role in my life, and next time I’m at the men’s store I’ll see if they have any smoking jackets and ascots to try on.
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