Harriet Nelson Hospitalized in Laguna Beach

Harriet Nelson, best known for playing herself for 14 years on TV’s “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet,” is a patient at South Coast Medical Center, where she was admitted four weeks ago with congestive heart failure.

Nelson, 85, a longtime Laguna Beach resident, has suffered in recent years from emphysema.

“She has been basically stabilized,” Nelson’s son David said Wednesday. He said he will meet with his mother’s doctor to see if she can return home this weekend.

Nelson said his mother was admitted to the hospital on an emergency basis on Aug. 30.

“Her heart is fine now,” he said.

Nelson said that he and his wife, Yvonne, have driven from Los Angeles to Laguna Beach every Friday afternoon to spend the weekend visiting his mother. Other visitors have included Harriet Nelson’s brother-in-law, Don Nelson, and her grandchildren, Tracy, Matthew and Gunnar Nelson.

Asked if his mother was in good spirits, Nelson said: “I don’t think anybody is in good spirits with that type of thing. She hasn’t been in good spirits since Dad died.”

Ozzie and Harriet Nelson first bought a weekend retreat in Laguna Beach in the late ‘40s and built a beachfront home in the private community of Lagunita in 1955. Harriet moved from the family’s longtime home in Hollywood--the same white, two-story Cape Cod house shown in the opening credits of the early episodes of their TV series--to live in Laguna full time in 1977, two years after Ozzie’s death.