RICKY NELSON at 12 has achieved many a veteran actor's dream. He works steady. He's well on his way to stardom on ABC's Ozzie and Harriet Show. He earns $1,600 a week.
His "I don't fool around, boy" is becoming almost as much of a trade-mark as Jackie Gleason's "and away we go" or Milton Berle's "I'll give you a shot in the head."
Like brother David, who is 16, his $1,600 salary is the total of $1,100 for the weekly television show and $500 a week for the radio series.
But the money for both boys is going into a trust fund. Ricky is getting along on $1.50 spending money a week. And the rest of the family makes sure that he doesn't develop any tendency toward becoming a "ham."
Ricky-his full name his Eric Hilliard Nelson-gets different treatment from each member of the family. Papa Ozzie and Mama Harriet like to talk out his problems with him. David reserves the big-brother right to box his ears.
When these fail, they have one sure-fire approach. "Don't be a child actor," they tell him.
But getting the best of Ricky isn't easy. Recently David was going to a church dance. His brother asked to go along. "Sure," agreed David, although all the girls there would be 16 to 18 years old.
At the party the girls asked to dance with Ricky. He played all the games. Afterward they went to a restaurant for a late snack. The next day his Dad asked how Ricky, only 12, could get girls who were four and five years older to dance with him.
"Well," said Ricky, "I told them I was 13."
He apparently knows what he wants and goes directly for it, as another incident reveals. Both boys were borrowing their father's neckties. Ozzie finally ordered them to buy some for themselves on the family account.
That Tattersall Vest
A few days later Ozzie was in the shop. "Tell Ricky his Tattersall vest is in," said a salesman.
"What Tattersall vest?"
"Ricky said you have a Tattersall vest so he wanted one tailored, too." "Well, from now on you check with me before you charge anything."
Until recently, Ricky attended public school but the absences for work made a private tutor more desirable.
Like Ozzie, a letterman in several sports at Rutgers, Ricky is a lithe athlete, all 90 pounds of him. He is particularly adept at basketball. "We call him 'featherfingers,"" says David, praising his brother's speedy coordination. Ricky also is waterboy for the Hollywood High School football "B" team, on which David stars.
"Ricky is intelligent and understanding of adults," his mother appraises. "He's straightforward and not a troublemaker. But he just won't pick up his own clothes."
"He has remarkable mental and physical coordination," says his father. "Just try to put something over on him," says David, ruefully.
"He's a free soul," admiringly says the principal of the school Ricky attended . . . a very free soul."
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