Who Gets the Drumstick?: A Story of a Widow and Widower Who Met, Fell in Love, Married and Lived Happily Ever After
Helen Eileen Beardsley was the mother of the famous blended family of twenty children — eight by her first marriage to Richard North, ten stepchildren from the first marriage of her second husband Frank Beardsley, and two that she and Frank had during their marriage. She wrote Who Gets the Drumstick? about her family's experience. The book inspired two motion pictures titled Yours, Mine and Ours, a 1968 version starring Lucille Ball and a 2005 remake with Rene Russo.
Release Date: April 24, 1968
Release Time: 111 minutes
Director: Melville Shavelson
Cast:
Henry Fonda as CWO Frank Beardsley, USN
Lucille Ball as Helen Brandmeier North Beardsley
Van Johnson as CWO Darrell Harrison
Walter Brooke as Howard Beardsley
Nancy Howard as Nancy Beardsley
Sidney Miller as Dr. Ashford
Louise Troy as Madeleine Love
Tom Bosley as a family doctor
Frank's Children:
Tim Matheson as Mike (credited as "Tim Matthieson")
Gil Rogers as Rusty
Gary Goetzman as Greg
Nancy Roth as Rosemary
Morgan Brittany as Louise (Credited as "Suzanne Cupito")
Holly O'Brien as Susan
Michele Tobin as Veronica
Maralee Foster as Mary
Tracy Nelson as Germaine
Stephanie Oliver as Joan
Helen's Children:
Jennifer Leak as Colleen
Kevin Burchett as Nick
Kimberly Beck as Janette
Mitch Vogel as Tommy
Margot Jane as Jean
Eric Shea as Philip
Greg Atkins as Gerald
Lynnell Atkins as Teresa
Awards:
1969 Golden Globes
Robert F. Blumofe - Best Motion Picture-Musical or Comedy - Nominated
Lucille Ball - Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture-Musical or Comedy - Nominated
Trailer
Clips
Author Bio:
Helen Eileen Beardsley, whose life with a brood of 20 children inspired a best-selling book and a movie starring Lucille Ball, died Wednesday in Healdsburg at the age of 70.
Helen Brandmeir was born in Seattle and studied nursing at Seattle University before marrying Lt. Richard Dale North in 1949. As a mother of eight children, the then-Mrs. North was widowed in 1960. She moved to California and met Navy Chief Warrant Officer Francis L. Beardsley, a widower with 10 children.
The two were married in 1961 in Carmel, and by 1964 had added two more children to their family. Because of the family's enormous food consumption -- they bought 50 loaves of bread at a time -- the Navy listed the Beardsleys as a restaurant, entitling them to buy at wholesale prices from the Fort Ord Army Base commissary.
In 1963, Beardsley adopted Mrs. Beardsley's eight children in the biggest mass adoption to date in California.
Mrs. Beardsley recounted the trials and adventures of raising 20 children in a best-selling book, "Who Gets the Drumstick?" published in 1964 by Random House.
The book was made into the movie "Yours, Mine, and Ours" starring Lucille Ball and Henry Fonda.
Beardsley family members said the film was a "fairy tale" account of their life.
"The movie was very Hollywood. Our family was a normal Navy family," said daughter Jean Murphy of San Francisco. "My mother wrote the original script, but it was too boring, so Lucille Ball wrote a funny script."
The movie's scenes of Ball in false eyelashes, with her slip showing in a bar, were not derived from Mrs. Beardsley's life, Murphy said.
"My mother was very much the lady. She was very traditional, with a Catholic upbringing," Murphy recalled. "She was the peacemaker, the wise mother."
Mrs. Beardsley received the National Campfire Girls Mother of the Year Award in 1963, and later was appointed by then-Gov. Ronald Reagan to the state's Advisory Commission on the Status of Women.
"Family was the most important thing to her," Murphy said. "She was very much of a homemaker, but also very much of a pioneer for women."
When Beardsley retired from the Navy in 1968, the couple opened three bakeries in the Monterey area. Mrs. Beardsley pursued her desire for an independent career in 1973, taking the first of several jobs in the medical field.
Mrs. Beardsley and her husband retired in 1986 to the Santa Rosa area. In the early 1990s, she began a long battle with Parkinson's disease.
Mrs. Beardsley is survived by her husband, Francis; 20 children, Michael Beardsley, Rusty Beardsley, Gregory Beardsley, Rosemary Beardsley-Dorn, Louise Ingram, Colleen Powell, Janette North, Mary Beardsley, Nicholas North, Susan Bazsuly, Thomas Beardsley, Veronica Rothgeb, Jean Murphy, Phillip North, Germaine Anderson, Gerry North, Joanie Rodewald, Teresa Wyble, Joseph Beardsley and Helen Beardsley; 44 grandchildren; two great-grandchildren; and eight siblings, Mary Miniter, Jane Brandmeir, Robert Brandmeir, Rita Daubensteck, Frank Brandmeir, Jack Brandmeir, Sister Patricia Brandmeir and Kathleen Hartman.
The rosary will be recited tomorrow at 7 p.m. at the Daniels Chapel of the Roses, 1225 Sonoma Ave., Santa Rosa. A memorial Mass is scheduled for 1 p.m. Monday at St. Rose Cathedral, 398 Tenth St., Santa Rosa.
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