Tracy Nelson

Ricky - TV's first teen idol

Who?

Are Gunnar and Matt straight?

Who are those two middle-aged lesbians at r3?

Sam was always the cute one.

r3, Bobbie Brown was apparently engaged to one of them. in her book she says that he wasn't very good in bed but she broke up with him because he was uptight and his twin kept wanting a 3some with her and his twin. Apparently the twins did 3somes together.

Gunnar has had a lot of plastic surgery and has been insecure about his looks his whole life. Apparently Chris Nelson destroyed his self esteem and he never got over her cruelty.

I think Tracy made peace with her mother but I think she and her brothers were estranged from her for big stretches of time. Chris supposedly attached Tracy physically at Ricky’s funeral after she leaned a short time before the funeral that Ricky had changed the beneficiary of a life insurance policy from Chris to his kids and Chris blamed Tracy.

Chris had nearly bankrupted Rick when they divorced in the mid 70s. Rick got a letter from Chris attorney not long before he died that he was in arrears with child support so he added additional tour dates in late 1985 including the one that ended up costing him his life. It turned out he wasn’t behind in spousal/child support.

Played Meredith, Alison’s sister on Melrose Place.

I'll never forget her on Seinfeld as George's new girlfriend, who everyone (but George) thinks looks like a female version of Jerry. George beings to notice some resemblance, but finally realizes how true it is after she cuts her hair short to get gum out of it...how "mannish" and long her face looks...just like Jerry.

She always was fairly gawky looking. Never really seemed to find too much notice as an actor (although I never watched Melrose Place...was she good in it?). But I guess she was kind of set for life with her famous family.

Another Square Pegs favorite of mine.

"Like, who invited the Mandrell Sisters?"

She seems like a true sweetheart.

Yes I always think of Tracy as the “She Jerry” from Seinfeld. Also she was one of the littlest children - I think of Henry Fonda’s clan in Yours Mine and Ours. …. She has been through a lot.

Her name was Kris.

Kris was a kunt

TIL that Kris Nelson was Mark Harmon's sister, making him Tracy's Uncle Mark.

Tracy was married to William Moses (who played Keith on Melrose).

I did not realize she had so many battles with cancer. I just knew her for her arc on Melrose Place and playing “lady Jerry” on Seinfeld. I found it amusing Allison’s sister was married to Allison’s psycho, married ex in real life.

R15

Honestly, I need a chart for that family.

She looks really upset in OP’s photo!

I first became aware of her in the late '80s, when she played the Chicago hood rat turned nun Sister Steve on Father Dowling Mysteries.

Then USA started rerunning Square Pegs and I saw her excellent early Valley Girl on Square Pegs.

I'm surprised that with such strong character work, she didn't get more roles.

I loved the scene on “Square Pegs” when she was auditioning for the school play and she was talking about her worst memory of going to the beach and leaving her makeup in the car and it melted in the heat. She gets choked up.

“Like, I cried.”

She and Claudettte Wells, who played LaDonna on “Pegs” remain good friends.

Yep, R22, Tracy and Claudette did their interviews for the Square Pegs 2010-era DVD set together and revealed they've been besties since meeting on the show in 1982.

Another Square Pegs line: I want to work for a nail polish company and name all of the polishes. Like Really Red, and …Really Really Red.

A friend of mine was working for a county fair in PR, and was tasked with picking Rick Nelson up at the airport and taking him to some interviews ahead of his show. This was in 1981, and she was 21. She was 6’ tall. He got off the plane, sized her up and said ‘it would be amazing to have those legs wrapped around me.’ She said she kind of went mute after that. It was the first time someone around her dad’s age hit on her.

[quote]Rick got a letter from Chris attorney not long before he died that he was in arrears with child support so he added additional tour dates in late 1985 including the one that ended up costing him his life. It turned out he wasn’t behind in spousal/child support.

Kris Harmon was painted as the super cunt from the Ninth Circle of Hell. With Tracy being the eldest and neither parent really involved in the kids' lives, esp Kris who seemed determined to bring down Rick financially when she couldn't have him anymore, Tracy didn't really have much of a childhood. Instead of pulling herself together, moving on and being a mother to those kids, Kris continued being a hardcore druggie to the point they had to farm their youngest, Sam, out to Mark Harmon and Pam Dawber. Then Kris waged a war against her brother and Pam, saying Pam did cocaine, which is when, for the sake of the family, Mark Harmon gave up and threw in the towel. Kris seemed determined to not only destroy her husband but rob those kids of a secure childhood.

Tracy looks like she’s conquered the anorexia.

Kris got herself "knocked up" by Rick when she was 17. All down hill from there.

When I first moved to L.A. in 1975, I had an apartment on the corner of Hollywood Bl. and Camino Palmero. The Nelson's house was up the street above Franklin where it turned into a cul de sac, and was featured in the beginning of the show and replicated on a soundstage. 1975 was not exactly a banner year for the Nelsons. Ozzie died, Rick's marriage fell apart, and .Kris began her campaign to destroy Rick, which finally ended in 1982 with their divorce. At Rick's funeral Kristin showed up late and David Nelson muttered “murderer” when she walked by.

With those blue eyes and long dark lashes, pouty lips and hot body, Rick became the first teen idol and the wet dream of teen girls and gay boys. He was so shy and self-effacing you couldn't help but love him.

Kris later married Mark Tinker, son of Grant, which in a way made her Mary Tyler Moore’s step daughter in law.

On top of everything else, Rick Nelson was hung. Here he is with Angie Dickinson.

He was to the 50s and 60s what JFK Jr. was to the 80s and 90s.

R32, I met him in person in 1962 and to this day he remains one of the most handsome men I’ve ever seen.

OMG R33 #NV

Kris was 12 years old when they met and started dating when she was 16 and he was 21.

Tracy looks great. I always loved her

The ultimate nepo baby. Both sets of grandparents and both parents were celebrities.

Mark never spoke to kris again after she took him and Pam to court and I think Sam still ended up spending his later childhood living with mark and Pam.

Here’s Tracy making a cameo in the Nelsons after the rain video.

Nepo kids did well on the charts in 1990 with Nelson, Wilson Phillips, Janet Jackson and Whitney Houston all having number one hits.

I know who she is but not much of her body of work. That family sounds fucked up as hell.

I remember her mainly from some weird back door episode of The Nanny. It made zero sense.

I used to find her and Lori Petty indistinguishable

I first saw Ricky Nelson in the 1970s when he used to wear this absolutely awful wig. His music, meh.

Wow, that IS a horrible wig. Although I'm 55, I really know very little about Ricky Nelson. Was he balding to wear that rat's nest? Again, I really grew up not knowing about this guy at all. My parents were hippies and he would not have been in purview.

Your hippie parents would be too embarrassed to play a Ricky Nelson record, R42.

Were they really freebasing on the plane?

R41, Believe me, that is not a wig.

Rick went grey and dyed his hair.

"It took the National Transportation Safety Board a year and a half to complete its investigation. They were impeded by the lack of physical evidence due to the plane’s near-total destruction. Although the reports revealed a small amount of cocaine in Rick’s and two other passengers’ bodies, there was no evidence of freebasing; and in 1986 when the NTSB made public the toxicology reports, they had discounted the freebase theory altogether. The damage to Rick’s reputation had already been done, however, even though the NTSB report blamed a faultily repaired gasoline heater for causing the plane’s fire."

I believe Tracy was also in Down and Out in Beverly Hills, which was a hit in the mid-1980s. As a wee gayling her Jennifer Denuccio on Square Pegs was everything I aspired to be. I love the episode where for some reason the girls are playing football and at one point, she is putting eyeblack on her eyelids and one of the girls tells her, "Jennifer, you're supposed to put that under your eyes, not over them!" And she responds, "Oh...I thought it was like...shadow"

The girls were playing football because back then, every year, there was a football game at most high schools called "Powder Puff" wherein the (girl) cheerleaders (or other non-cheerleading girls) played a football game instead of the guys, and the football players would become the cheerleaders. The old switcheroo. This was an annual tradition.

Sounds like they don't do that anymore.

I echo those who say that Rick’s beautiful head of hair was all his own.

[quote]I remember her mainly from some weird back door episode of The Nanny. It made zero sense.

It was a backdoor pilot at the end of Season 2 about Fran's favorite beauty salon, The Chatterbox. Co-starred Patrick Cassidy. It was bad.

Ozzie Nelson was an incredibly controlling husband and father, and neither David nor Ricky had much freedom or independence growing up. From the beginning of their lives the boys were part of the family business, exploited and robbed of any normal sense of themselves, distorted by being forced to play showbiz versions of themselves on their parents’ successful radio show and later their even more successful and long-running TV series.

By most accounts, despite his extraordinary beauty and laid-back demeanor, Ricky was a cold fish, a selfish man who never cared much for other people, and who learned early how to manipulate the people around him to his advantage.

Meanwhile, Tom Harmon, the handsome and famous football star, was also a controlling, authoritarian father who ran his home like a boot camp where corporal punishment was a first resort. It’s not surprising that Kris developed an early crush on Ricky (along with hundreds of thousands of others) that they bonded over their respective over-bearing fathers and dreams of freedom and independence, and that Kris got herself pregnant to get away from her miserable family.

None of that excuses her cuntery then or later, but their comfortable-but-terrible upbringings certainly explain the depression, detachment and lack of feeling both Ricky and Kris exhibited later. One hopes that their kids had more self-knowledge and insight into all that, which may have helped them come to terms with their unreal early lives in show business.

R48 I love when she’s trying out for the school play. She does a monologue about her makeup melting at the beach ending with “I, like, cried.”

[quote]One hopes that their kids had more self-knowledge and insight into all that, which may have helped them come to terms with their unreal early lives in show business.

Well said! Yes, kids are generally equipped to accept and manage childhoods where the parents are at odds and family life is difficult as long as they feel loved by at least one parent, which can replace the feeling of domestic security kids need. Sam was the youngest and probably had to deal with the most, with Dad not around and Kris barely there herself and, when she was around, spending her time trying to sour him and the other kids on their father.

[quote]Believe me, that is not a wig.

Um, yeah

It's just a bad haircut and style.

It’s a “bad” haircut by today’s standards. And yeah, haters, it really was his hair.

Your maternal grandfather determines whether you'll have a full head of hair, at least that's what I've heard, and it's true in my case.

Harriet's father:

Like, a women's place is in the mall!

Ooh, man, I would’ve been in love with Ricky Nelson if I had been alive back then. He was beautiful.

I know Kris Harmon as the inferior Jean Reed on Adam-12. The first actress they had playing her was better.

Not familiar with Tracy, but sucks she had so much cancer and family issues.

It was not a follicly-challenged family.

R57, unless you personally pulled it to see, your word is worthless.

As I've told this story before, I had a straight female friend in the '80s who had a female friend who worked at one of the smaller forums Rick was then performing who passed on the gossip that Rick was known to fool around with other guys.

Tracy Nelson used to be quite active on Facebook, but hasn't posted since June of last year. I hope she's okay. She really is a kind person.

I've heard a rumor he might've been "experimental" when it came to sexuality, esp on coke. But you can't trust rumors. I know a nurse who SWEARS he was in the room when they removed that fictional gerbil from Richard Gere's ass.

"Was Rick Nelson bi? Just based off of rumours of 1 single story from a man who's alleged to have been with him, It is at least confirmed within an older circle of friends I know from the Hollywood scene back in the day, yes (or at the very least experimental or bi)"

Met Rick as a fan as a 12 yo?

Announced publicly dating Rick as a 16 yo?

Married and mom at 17 yo?

That my sources were straight woman lent more credibility than if they were gay wishcasters, R65.

Wasn't the Tic Tac lady her aunt? The one who was John DeLorean's first wife. Kelly Harmon. She was a beauty and on a few soaps. What crazy connections in that family dynamic of the Nelsons/Harmons. I believe they lived in Brentwood and Rick and Kris married at the church where Nicole Brown Simpson's funeral Mass was held.

R48 Tracy was fantastic in Down and Out. Her role was all too brief.

Fun fact, former Supermodel turned actress, Pam Dawber is Tracy's aunt!

Wow, R70. Did you also know Elizabeth Taylor was married to Richard Burton?

R67 now you got me feeling all tingly......

Aunt by marriage, r70

The first time I noticed Rick Nelson's bulge was on Hardy Boys Mysteries when he played Johnny Eagle. I wouldn't have noticed if it had been well hidden.

The plane crash itself didn't kill Rick Nelson and the other passengers. They survived the crash and actually died from smoke inhalation. Their bodies were found at the front of the plane's cabin, in front of the cockpit door, which was locked. The pilot and co-pilot survived the crash and jumped out of the burning plane through the shattered cockpit windows and they only had minor injuries. If the cockpit door had been unlocked Rick and the others would also have survived with just minor injuries.

How's that for some shit luck?