Harriet Nelson

Band singer and radio vocalist who began in vaudeville under the name of Harriet Hilliard while quite young and started enjoying crooning success on the airwaves during the Depression. In 1932 Hilliard was invited to be a featured vocalist with a dance band headed by Ozzie Nelson. The two married in 1935, and Hilliard soon thereafter made a prominent debut in films as Ginger Rogers' sister in "Follow the Fleet" (1936), one of the immensely popular musicals Rogers and Fred Astaire made at RKO. Hilliard sang several numbers which she delivered in her modest but pleasantly soothing style, and her romance with Randolph Scott actually formed the basis of the plot. Hilliard made a number of other films but wasn't particularly interested in a film career and essentially stuck with Nelson.