I read, Who Gets The Drumstick?, by Helen Beardsley back in elementary school, and recognized her immediately. Yours, Mine, and Ours has always been a favorite, also.
Higgins was just beyond adorable.... He did the first Benji movie, which reunited him with "Uncle Joe" Edgar Buchanan from Petticoat Junction, but then his offspring worked on the subsequent movies. Higgins lived to be 17.
Desilu Productions acquired the rights to her story in 1961, when their marriage made news. It took six years for an acceptable script to be developed, giving her the opportunity to tell her story. I've read the book, and it shows some significant liberty the film took with the real story.
I just watched a video with one of the North kids and his story is full of horror and abuse. I think it has tainted my view of the wonderful movie. Obviously the book and the movie were far from the truth. The kids changed their names back to North eventually and Helen's ashes were buried with her first husband and she had left Frank Beardsley somewhere in there.
i dont mean to be off topic but does any of you know of a trick to get back into an Instagram account? I somehow forgot my login password. I would love any assistance you can offer me.
I've always loved Orson Bean, when he ever said....tell me # 4......I laughed so hard, still giggling as I type this. He has such a great sense of humor, so sad that he lived 92 years and his life ended recently getting hit by a car.
I like hearing the voice over at the end so I'm tuning in on Clint's advice to Rawhide and Peggy Cass was opposite Rawhide with the Marquis Chimps on The Hathaways for a while.
That's what IMDb says, but I find it hard to believe that the energetic dog who starred in the original _Benji_ movie was 14 years old. (They say that a year in a dog's life is like 7 years in a human life, so that would have made him the equivalent of a 98-year-old human!)
The reality is far less pleasant...Frank Beardsley was physically, emotionally--and sexually--abusive to his children. When Lucille Ball visited in preparation for the movie, she knew something was wrong and told Helen "Keep that man away from me!" Helen's family retook their name of North.
Tom said she told him she married Frank because he acted li m.j e hecwas going to kill his children. Helen knew what was going on but was in deep denial.
