Welcome to Saturday Night at the Movies.

I'm your host, Glenn Holland.

Tonight's movie is a family comedy drama released by United Artists in 1968, Yours, Mine and Ours.

The film is a screen adaptation of the real life story of a blended family made up of two widowed parents with 18 children between them.

The screenplay, based on a story by Bob Carroll Jr. and Madelyn Davis, was written by Mort Lachman and Melville Shavelson, who also directed it.

Yours, Mine and Ours stars Lucille Ball, Henry Fonda and Van Johnson, with support from Tom Bosley and Ben Murphy.

The film also features a dozen and a half youngsters whose ranks include actors who later went on two greater fame in films and television, including Tim Matheson, Morgan Brittany, Tracy Nelson, Mitch Vogel, and Eric Shea.

Yours, Mine and Ours is the story of Helen North, a widow with eight children, and Frank Beardsley, a widower with 10 children.

Frank is a Navy Chief Warrant Officer at the Naval Air Station in Alameda on the San Francisco Bay.

Helen is a civilian nurse at the dispensary.

They first meet at the base commissary, then again when Frank brings one of his daughters to the dispensary.

This leads to their first date at a crowded bar.

But each is reluctant to tell the other about their children for fear that such a disclosure would immediately end any possibility of a serious relationship.

When in time they both confess how many children each of them has, they agree would be best depart amicably.

But Frank's buddy, Chief Warrant Officer Darrell Harrison, is determined to bring the two of them back together.

He offers to set up a blind date for each of them, but he makes sure their dinner partners are entirely inappropriate and arranges for the dates to take place at the same restaurant at the same time, hoping Frank and Helen will end up together at the end of the evening.

They do, and continue to date afterwards, but the same problem remains.

If they want to marry, how will they manage to create a new single family with 18 children ranging in age from toddlers to high school students?

And how will the children themselves feel about being part of a new and huge blended family?

Yours, Mine and Ours started out as a project titled The Beardsley Story, a feature film to be based on the story of Frank Beardsley and Helen North who met after each had lost his spouse, and married in 1961, creating a blended family of 18 children.

Their story appeared in the news, and Bob Carroll Jr and Madelyn Davis, television writers who collaborated on the first four seasons of I Love Lucy, brought the story to Lucille Ball.

Ball loved the idea and bought the rights with the plan that Carroll and Davis would write the screenplay and Ball would play Helen North, the female lead.

But there were delays, first due to Ball's involvement with a Broadway show in 1962.

Then again in 1963 when her fourth co-starring feature with Bob Hope, Critic's Choice, proved a box office disappointment.

Then Ball was unhappy with Carroll and Davis's screenplay, which she felt bore too strong a resemblance to an episode of I Love Lucy, and commissioned a rewrite.

Desilu Productions publicly announced its plans for the motion picture in November, 1964.

Not too long afterwards, in 1965, Helen North Beardsley published Who Gets the Drumstick?, a book about her marriage to Frank, reigniting public interest in the Beardsley family's story and providing Desilu with an additional incentive to get on with the picture.

When Henry Fonda heard about the project, now titled His, Hers and Theirs in 1967, he got in touch with Lucille Ball to let her know he was interested in playing the part of Frank Beardsley.

Ball and Fonda had previously starred together in the 1942 RKO film, the Big Street, and had also been a romantic item at the time.

To no ones surprise, Lucille Ball was delighted with the idea of working with Fonda again.

Around the same time, Melville Shavelson, who had started as a writer for Bob Hope's radio show in 1937 and later wrote the screenplays for some of Hope's most popular films, was hired to direct.

He also co-wrote the final script with Mort Lachman, another longtime writer for Hope.

Principal photography for what was now titled Yours, Mine and Ours, finally got underway in July, 1967 with location shooting in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

You may have seen some familiar, if very young, faces among the North and Beardsley children.

Tim Matheson, billed as Tim Matthieson, later played Otter in "Animal House" in 1978 and Vice President John Hoynes in "The West Wing" from 1999 to 2006.

Suzanne Cupito had already appeared as Baby June Hovick in "Gypsy" in 1962 and later became famous for playing Katherine Underwood on "Dallas" from 1981 to 1987 under the name Morgan Brittany.

Tracy Nelson, daughter of singer Rick Nelson, began a long career in television in 1982 as Jennifer DiNuccio in "Square Pegs" and later appeared as Sister Stephanie Steve Oskowski in the "Father Dowling Mysteries" with Tom Bosley from 1989 to 1991.

The filmmakers said they wanted to make the story of the Beardsley family a family film with pathos, as well as humor.

In the event, this meant crafting a screenplay that deviated in major respects from the family's actual experience.

For example, in real life, Helen North and Frank Beardsley knew about each other's children from the outset of their relationship.

When Helen first visited Frank at home, she took her five oldest children with her and when the children met, they immediately became friends.

Although the Beardsleys enjoyed the completed film, Frank ventured the opinion that the screenwriters probably thought they'd created a better story than what had actually happened.

A good example is the scene in the film when Helen North first visits the Beardsley home and the three oldest sons individually add extra doses of alcohol to her drink.

The scene is entirely made up, but it does take full advantage of Lucille Ball's ability to find humor in drunkenness, as she did so memorably while downing Vitameatavegamin in the "Lucy Does a TV Commercial" episode of "I Love Lucy" back in 1952.

Producer Robert F. Blumofe later said Ball practically orchestrated it herself.

"She went from laughter to tears from laughter, back and forth.

It was a brilliant tour de force."

Director of Melville Shavelson added, "it took about an hour of arguing to get her to go out and try it, and it was one of her best performances.

She was afraid of combining the drama with the laughter.

On the other hand, nobody else could have done it like she did."

Critics had mixed reactions to "Yours, Mine And Ours".

Some felt that Ball, at 56, and Fonda, at 61, were about 15 years too old to play the middle-aged parents of children ranging from newborns to teenagers.

Despite their ages, Roger Ebert praised their performances in "The Chicago Sun Times" and Leonard Maltin called the film "a wholesome family picture".

Audiences flocked to the movie and made it the eighth highest grossing film of the year.

"Daily Variety" attributed the success of "Yours, Mine And Ours" in part to backlash from films of violence.

1968 was the year the Motion Picture Production Code, enforced since 1934, was replaced by the Motion Picture Association Film Rating System of G, M, R, and X. Sexuality and nudity became common in mainstream releases.

Movie violence became more graphic.

Producers attempted to accommodate the burgeoning youth culture and brash, young directors worked to create a new Hollywood.

"Yours, Mine and Ours", while acknowledging the changing times, came down resolutely on the side of traditional values.

The Beardsley family was presented as staunchly Roman Catholic the same year a papal encyclical was released condemning the use of artificial birth control.

At the height of protests over the war in Vietnam, the climax of the film sees the oldest Beardsley son, Mike, joining the Marine Corps, with the unspoken assumption that he will soon ship out for Southeast Asia.

Helen North accepts a mod makeover from her daughters, involving false eyelashes and a knee-length skirt, but is still afraid she'll look like a teeny bopper.

And the oldest North daughter, Colleen, firmly resists pressure from her guitar playing boyfriend to abandon her strict morality and indulge in unspecified hanky panky.

Nothing else in the movie reflects its time and mood quite so well as her final words as she sends him packing, "get a haircut!"

Please join us again next time for another "Saturday Night at the Movies".

I'm Glenn Holland.

Goodnight.