The real story that this film was based on was much darker.

'Yours, Mine and Ours' child shares a darker version of his all-American family

By DENNIS TAYLOR
Herald Staff Writer
08/24/13

The character Henry Fonda created in the 1968 movie "Yours, Mine and Ours" — a wise, affectionate, all-American dad — was not the person Tom North knew as his real-life stepfather while growing up in Carmel.

North's autobiographical book, "True North: The Shocking Truth About 'Yours, Mine and Ours,'" depicts the real Frank Beardsley as a violent, wild-eyed tyrant who abused his children physically, emotionally and sexually, and paints North's mother, Helen, as a woman so image-conscious that she became complicit in her children's nightmare.

What North describes as "the myth of the movie" made the Beardsley/North family internationally famous. Frank Beardsley was a widower with 10 children who, in 1961, married Helen North, a widow with eight kids of her own, including Tom. Together they had two more, creating the clan of 20 kids that Fonda and Lucille Ball (as Helen) parented in the movie.

For North, now 59 and still living in Carmel, writing "the real story" was cathartic — another step in a lifelong healing process for himself and many of his siblings. But "True North" also has driven a wedge between two sides of the family. Greg Beardsley, one of Frank's three biological sons, said he and his siblings don't agree with his stepbrother's depiction.

"There's so much crap in that book that I'd be talking for the next 10 hours if I tried to counter it all," he told The Herald last week. "So I'll go with our standard, family statement, which is that the Beardsley family doesn't approve or agree with Tom North's depiction of our family. It's absurd."

North was 6 years old, living on Whidbey Island, northwest of Seattle, when his biological father, Dick North, died in a plane crash in military service. His mother, just 30, suddenly found herself alone with seven children (the oldest was 10) — and she was pregnant.

Helen North moved her family to California, where she met 45-year-old Frank Beardsley, a personnel officer at the Naval Postgraduate School. They merged the two families on Sept. 9, 1961, in a huge wedding at the Carmel Mission, then produced two more children of their own within three years, creating a household of 22.

Lucille Ball, the iconic comedienne of "I Love Lucy" fame, became enamoured with the story after reading newspaper articles and Helen North Beardsley's own book, "Who Gets The Drumstick?" and the wheels began turning at Desilu Studios in Hollywood. The cast of the movie also included Van Johnson, Tom Bosley and child actor Tim Matheson.

"The Queen of Comedy" visited the Beardsleys' large Carmel home on Rio Road for several days in advance of the shoot to get a feel for the family, and, according to "True North," apparently sensed something wasn't quite right with the family she had expected to meet.

"At the end of Lucy's first day, she approached my mother and in a serious, almost-threatening tone, admonished her, 'You keep that man (Frank Beardsley) away from me.' She left and stayed at The Lodge in Pebble Beach for the duration of her visit," North wrote in his book.

North says Lucy's instincts were on the money. Frank Beardsley, a former Navy boxer, had an unpredictable, volcanic temper around his children and stepchildren, often erupting without provocation. Closed-fisted beatings were commonplace for the boys, open-handed slaps for the girls. He made sexual advances toward his daughters (abuses he eventually acknowledged years later, during family therapy, North says), and, on at least one occasion, "he also approached me with dark intent," North wrote.

Throughout years of abuse, Helen Beardsley looked the other way, admonishing any child who complained, he says.

"My mother told me (as an adult) that when she met Frank Beardsley and his children, she saw 10 kids living in terror. She said, 'If that's how he treats them when I'm here, what must happen when I'm not around?'" North said. "My mother was a good Irish-Catholic martyr from the World War II era, and she told me her intent in marrying him was to save his children from him, then save him from himself."

After they were married, Helen Beardsley's tunnel-visioned goal was to maintain the family's "Yours, Mine and Ours" image at all costs, her son says. Denial became her armor — so much, says North, that his mother genuinely seemed stunned when she was confronted by one of her children during their 1988 family therapy session.

"One of my younger brothers said, 'Where were you when he was beating your sons? Where were you when he was molesting your daughters? You took your eight children into a dangerous environment and you abandoned us to that man.'" North said. "It hit her like a shovel in the face. I watched this startled look come across her face and she said, 'Oh, my God... I did!' I'm not sure it had ever occurred to her before. And she started to cry because she finally realized what she had done."

A large contingent from both sides of the family participated in the therapy sessions (three separate weekends of 10 hours each day, 60 hours total) — including, on the final day, Frank Beardsley.

The patriarch showed his stripes that day, North says, turning beet red and balling his fists at least once. He tried to justify beating his children and molesting his daughters, arguing that it was his paternal right, but later offered a tearful apology.

Tom North says his own healing continues day by day, but has been aided through the years by transcendental meditation and a therapeutic program called "Breakthrough for Men," which encourages participants to confront their most painful memories.

Writing "True North" was a cathartic experience, he says, inspired in part by an agreement among several family members (including his mother) "to never again support the lie that was 'Yours, Mine and Ours.'"

Despite the disclaimer from the Beardsley siblings, North says he has no regrets.

"I couldn't have expected them to say anything else. In fact, I thought it was relatively kind and courteous," he said of the Beardsley statement about his book. "I've had no interaction at all with the Beardsley side of our family since the book came out, but I spoke with two of their cousins — Frank's nieces — who told me they'd always run and hide when 'Uncle Frank' came to visit because he creeped them out so bad. They also thanked me and said, 'What you are doing is giving us a voice we never had.'"

In 1981, Tom North married Connie Willert, who literally lived next door to the Beardsley home (though a quarter mile away) when she was a child, and graduated two years behind him at Carmel High. They're still in love after 32 years and have two adult daughters, Elyse and Diana.

Helen Beardsley left Frank late in life, but never divorced him. She died in April 2000, shortly after her 70th birthday. At her own request, she was buried in Washington alongside Richard North, her first husband. Frank Beardsley died in 2012 at age 97.

You can find the book at http://www.amazon.com/True-North-Shocking-Truth-about/dp/0615416373