Les tiens, les miens, le nôtre

I'm big on believability, so I'd have to agree that both Lucille Ball and Henry Fonda were a bit long in the tooth to be portraying parents whose oldest children were about sixteen and about fourteen at the time of their marriage. I read the original book by Helen Beardsley, "Who Gets the Drumstick," on which this film was based, long before seeing the film, so I remember from the book that at the time she was widowed, Helen North was 32 years old. No way would Lucy in her nurse's mufti pass for 33 in that infirmary scene with Henry Fonda. I can't remember how old Frank Beardsley was -- at least 8 or 10 years older than Helen, though. Still, Henry Fonda didn't pass for fortysomething when he opened the film with "Oh-nine-hundred" and looked at his watch on the way home to his kids.

Second, the situation with Louise (which was not based on anything that happened in the book -- Frank Beardsley actually met Helen North through his sister, a nun in the school where Helen's kids enrolled after their father's death and their move from Washington State to the San Francisco area) struck me as completely incredulous. She was one of ten children, including seven sisters, and she's mad about having to share her room? Surely by the time she hit fourteen, she would've tried to make the best of the situation and learned that complaining did no good.

Third, in the scene where Frank is away on the shakedown cruise and Helen opens one of his letters, the first thing you notice is La Lucille's flawlessly polished long nails and beautifully manicured hands. A mother of eighteen who spends her days scrubbing, cooking, and doing laundry does not have hands like this. My own mother only had five kids, and trust me, it doesn't work that way. LOL

I have no idea what the real Beardsley family thought about the movie that portrayed their story. The original story as related in the book was really heartwarming, and I think the screenwriters should've been more faithful to the book. Helen Beardsley died on April 26, 2000 of complications from Parkinson's Disease. She was 70. I understand that Frank is still living.