Yours, Mine and Ours (1968)

Interesting facts

• Budget: $2.5M

Yours, Mine and Ours is a 1968 American family comedy drama film directed by Melville Shavelson. The film stars Lucille Ball, Henry Fonda and Van Johnson.

Production

Henry Fonda and Lucille Ball take turns providing voice-over narration throughout the film, and in at least one scene, Van Johnson talks directly to the camera, as does Henry Fonda in one scene.

Lucille Ball portraying Helen Beardsley was never in doubt. However, a long line of distinguished actors came under consideration, at one time or another, for the role of Frank Beardsley. They included Desi Arnaz, James Stewart, Fred MacMurray, Jackie Gleason, Art Carney, and John Wayne. Henry Fonda finally accepted, and indeed asked for, the role in a telephone conversation with Robert F. Blumofe in 1967.

One account says Ball recalled in 1961 that Desilu Productions first bought the rights to the Beardsley-North story in 1959, even before Helen Beardsley published her biography, but this is highly unlikely because Frank and Helen Beardsley married on September 6, 1961, and their first spouses were both alive in 1959.

Production suffered multiple interruptions for several reasons. It began in December 1962 after Ball's abortive attempt at a career on the Broadway stage. In 1963, production was halted after the box-office failure of her comedy effort Critic's Choice (with Bob Hope).

At this point in the production cycle, Helen Beardsley's book Who Gets the Drumstick? was actually released in 1965. Like many film adaptations, exactly how much the book informed the final shooting script is impossible to determine.

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