Tom North dishes about the real "Yours, Mine and Ours" family

Then maybe Bing Crosby should have played him in the movie?

W&W for R1. Wit AND wisdom.

Movie versions of true life events are frequently whitewashed, especially if the subject matter is family fare. I mean really; a widow with eight children and a widower with 10 children get married and they live happily ever after? That only happens in the movies. Real life is a lot more messy and complicated than that, and real people are frequently dangerously flawed. Anyway, the real story is probably a lot more interesting than the G-rated movie version.

I never believed in the story the movie told. I couldn't believe that there was no conflict between the two camps of children, that the two single working parents didn't cope by making the elder parents care for the little ones, and that a nurse and an army officer could afford a huge Victorian mansion in San Francisco. And that an army officer wasn't an authoritarian asshole to his children.

Still, I'd hoped the real story was better than this. How sad.

How did the Lucille Ball character conceive when she was in her late 50s? Huh?

LET'S HAVE SOME ANSWERS, HOLLYWEIRD!

BEARDSLEY!

Dude, the mansion was dilapidated, remember the rain and the electricity? And they did show fighting North! Beardsley!

Was he abusive to all the kids or just his step-children?

I ... ah ... I've heard that it can sometimes work out that way, with the step-kids and all.

It says in that article that the woman Lucille Ball played in the movie was only 30 years old when she became a widow and was at the time pregnant with her EIGHTH child. Evidently she was a baby machine. Not long after she became a widow she remarried to an Army officer who had ten children. Obviously that was a recipe for disaster. I guess she just needed a man. But it's too bad her children had to suffer because their mother didn't want to be alone. The mother must have been pretty screwed up; what made her want to marry an authoritarian guy with ten kids? For the "security?" How much security can you have with a guy who has ten kids? It all seems just so crazy.

"The Sound of Music" also reversed the facts that it was Maria who was a cold, unfeeling bitch whereas the Baron was very loving.

Next you'll be telling us that Joan Crawford was really a warm, loving mother.

[quote]One thing that made production especially difficult was the condition of Ball's face. Years of make-up had taken their toll, and she was very much concerned about whether the cinematographer could light her face properly. The measures that the cinematographer and make-up crew took appear to have been successful, by all accounts.

Yeah. Makeup.

Smoking and booze destroy your face, too. Lucy did awful, painful things to make herself look younger, they worked. Lucy looked so bad in person she scared children, seriously...

So, "Stone Pillow" Lucy was the real Lucy?

Well Henry Fonda could be a pretty cold-blooded SOB himself. So he could have played the real Frank very well indeed.

Who could have 18 kids, and not want to beat some of them?

Supposedly Lucille Ball had very thin, sensitive skin that didn't heal very well. She had some kind of plastic surgery, an eye job I think, but it took months to heal so she didn't attempt to have anything else done. For the rest of her life she wore heavy makeup and was filmed with a soft-focus (VERY soft focus) lens in order to appear younger, but it didn't work. She always looked like a heavily made up old woman with incongruous bright orange hair.

This movie confused me as a child. Henry Fonda and Lucy both looked older than my grandparents, but there they were with young children. I also didn't understand why they didn't move to a bigger house with more bathrooms.

[quote]I also didn't understand why they didn't move to a bigger house with more bathrooms.

Tell us about it.

Which of the kids were sleeping with each other?

If you google reviews for the book, there are dozens of interesting articles about it, as well as interviews given by Tom North --

Here's some I found:

*After they were married, Helen Beardsley's tunnel-visioned goal was to maintain the family's "Yours, Mine and Ours" image at all costs, her son says. Denial became her armor — so much, says North, that his mother genuinely seemed stunned when she was confronted by one of her children during their 1988 family therapy session.

"One of my younger brothers said, 'Where were you when he was beating your sons? Where were you when he was molesting your daughters? You took your eight children into a dangerous environment and you abandoned us to that man.'" North said. "It hit her like a shovel in the face. I watched this startled look come across her face and she said, 'Oh, my God ... I did!' I'm not sure it had ever occurred to her before. And she started to cry because she finally realized what she had done."

*Lucille Ball, the iconic comedienne of "I Love Lucy" fame, became enamoured with the story after reading newspaper articles and Helen North Beardsley's own book, "Who Gets The Drumstick?" and the wheels began turning at Desilu Studios in Hollywood. The cast of the movie also included Van Johnson, Tom Bosley and child actor Tim Matheson.

"The Queen of Comedy" visited the Beardsleys' large Carmel home on Rio Road for several days in advance of the shoot to get a feel for the family, and, according to "True North," apparently sensed something wasn't quite right with the family she had expected to meet.

"At the end of Lucy's first day, she approached my mother and in a serious, almost-threatening tone, admonished her, 'You keep that man (Frank Beardsley) away from me.' She left and stayed at The Lodge in Pebble Beach for the duration of her visit," North wrote in his book.

North says Lucy's instincts were on the money. Frank Beardsley, a former Navy boxer, had an unpredictable, volcanic temper around his children and stepchildren, often erupting without provocation. Closed-fisted beatings were commonplace for the boys, open-handed slaps for the girls. He made sexual advances toward his daughters (abuses he eventually acknowledged years later, during family therapy, North says), and, on at least one occasion, "he also approached me with dark intent," North wrote.

The original movie was one of the top 5 films of its year. Lucy made a windfall fortune on her share of the gross but she lost almost all of it to taxes. She had no idea the film would be that popular and she had neglected to set up a tax shelter.

There was considerable Oscar buzz for Lucy with this film, but 1968 was such a competitive year for actresses, including eventual tied winners Streisand and Hepburn, that she was edged out of a nomination.

It's on my list now

As a young boy I saw this film when it came out and Tim Matheson was a gorgeous young man to me. Now I look at him in the movie and think dear god I was lusting after a boy!

If you're REALLY interested in this family . . .

Actually, I can imagine the webmistress as a DLer.

You think HE was abusive? Did he make you sit through "Mame" ten times?