Frank Beardsley beat his sons and molested his daughters?

[LittleRickyII]

Yours, Mine and Ours will never be the same for me after reading this.

http://www.montereyherald.com/article/zz/20130824/NEWS/130828093

[Mot Morenzi]

7 hours ago, LittleRickyII said:

Yours, Mine and Ours will never be the same for me after reading this.

http://www.montereyherald.com/article/zz/20130824/NEWS/130828093

I haven't read the book, but I heard about this a while back. I think it may have been mentioned here in passing a few years ago. Truly saddening that dark undercurrents seem to run under so many things that appear wholesome and are cherished. 

 

[LittleRickyII]

4 hours ago, Mot Morenzi said:

I haven't read the book, but I heard about this a while back. I think it may have been mentioned here in passing a few years ago. Truly saddening that dark undercurrents seem to run under so many things that appear wholesome and are cherished. 

 

Utopia doesn't exist and Father Knows Best was a lie.  Billy Gray can tell you all about that.  I suppose those movies and TV shows were meant to give us something to aspire to, but they may have had a negative impact on many people who believed in those fantasies but felt like personal failures because those things could never be realized in their own lives.

[Luvsbway]

Something I see frequently in comments on Facebook in Lucy groups and other nostalgia sites is many people lamenting about how everything is crap now and how shows were so much better back then. So let me take that argument first. Yes there is a lot of crap TV now, but there is also a lot of good TV now. Movies are tanking but I think this is another golden age of TV. Problem is there is so much TV now with so many places to watch it, it’s daunting to make any sense of it. And let’s not forget for every I Love Lucy we had a My Mother The Car. There was crap on TV back then but just not as much because you can only fit so much on 3 channels. What I think many of these people are complaining about is the morals of TV now vs then. Lucy lamented this starting in the late 60s and up until she died. Yes there is more sex, violence, swearing now, but I think it’s only a reflection of a world in which we live. Another argument Lucy mentioned was making TV out of the news. Yes we do that still, but there are tons of period pieces on TV now with sex, violence and swearing in, because these are not new concepts in life.

Then the second argument is returning to “the good old days” when it was simpler. I’m not going to get political with a certain blowhard in chief’s mantra, but things I think were perceived as simpler because everything was so repressed. It wasn’t simpler. Technology has greatly improved so many things we do in life. Yes with every advancement there are drawbacks too. Yes manners have taken a dive but don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.  We have come far in recognizing mental illness, equality for all, and working through many other tough problems. Of course it’s simpler then when you just took all those problems and locked them in a closet never to be dealt with.  So back to that 1950s TV happy picture. It wasn’t like that. How many women sat in their kitchen with a pile of dishes, 3 screaming kids, pressure to put dinner on the table and wondered if this was all they were ever going to do in life? How many men faced the pressure to succeed at work because they were the bread winner and came home to drown their depression in too many after dinner cocktails? It wasn’t all roses and sunshine.

[Mot Morenzi]

23 minutes ago, Luvsbway said:

Something I see frequently in comments on Facebook in Lucy groups and other nostalgia sites is many people lamenting about how everything is crap now and how shows were so much better back then. So let me take that argument first. Yes there is a lot of crap TV now, but there is also a lot of good TV now. Movies are tanking but I think this is another golden age of TV. Problem is there is so much TV now with so many places to watch it, it’s daunting to make any sense of it. And let’s not forget for every I Love Lucy we had a My Mother The Car. There was crap on TV back then but just not as much because you can only fit so much on 3 channels. What I think many of these people are complaining about is the morals of TV now vs then. Lucy lamented this starting in the late 60s and up until she died. Yes there is more sex, violence, swearing now, but I think it’s only a reflection of a world in which we live. Another argument Lucy mentioned was making TV out of the news. Yes we do that still, but there are tons of period pieces on TV now with sex, violence and swearing in, because these are not new concepts in life.

Then the second argument is returning to “the good old days” when it was simpler. I’m not going to get political with a certain blowhard in chief’s mantra, but things I think were perceived as simpler because everything was so repressed. It wasn’t simpler. Technology has greatly improved so many things we do in life. Yes with every advancement there are drawbacks too. Yes manners have taken a dive but don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.  We have come far in recognizing mental illness, equality for all, and working through many other tough problems. Of course it’s simpler then when you just took all those problems and locked them in a closet never to be dealt with.  So back to that 1950s TV happy picture. It wasn’t like that. How many women sat in their kitchen with a pile of dishes, 3 screaming kids, pressure to put dinner on the table and wondered if this was all they were ever going to do in life? How many men faced the pressure to succeed at work because they were the bread winner and came home to drown their depression in too many after dinner cocktails? It wasn’t all roses and sunshine.

This right here. You've said it all.

[LittleRickyII]

4 hours ago, Mot Morenzi said:

This right here. You've said it all.

Ditto.  I will add that I get very tired of seeing people from my generation and older calling everything new "crap."  I'm on Youtube a lot and constantly see those comments about TV shows, movies, music.  When I see those comments, I'm reminded of when I was a kid in the '70s and listening to my father call the music of that time crap, and waxing nostalgic about music from the '40s and early '50s.  Now I see people my age holding up 1970s music as the best of all time (the music my father said was crap) while dismissing today's music as crap.  Oh, the irony.  They now sound like a bunch of old fogies.  I don't want to be one of them.

The reality shows these days, like the Kardashians, I agree are crap, yet they're very popular.  But Gilligan's Island was also very popular and I think it's crap, too.  No offense intended; it's all in the eye of the beholder.  There's always been crappy entertainment, and there's also always been great entertainment.  I try to be open-minded about that.  I think HBO puts on some amazing shows, for example.  And among musical entertainers, I think Bruno Mars is phenomenal.  And although hardly new -- they've been around awhile -- I love Maroon 5 and Coldplay.  I think Lady Gaga is amazing (but I wish she'd change that stupid name; makes think of an utterance from a newborn baby).  I think Adele is fantastic.  And I can't get enough of John Legend.  But if I were told I had to spend the rest of my life on a desert island with only a limited amount of music I could listen to for the rest of my life, what would I pick?  ELO, Led Zepellin, Elton John, the Bee Gees, Paul McCartney, John Lennon and George Harrison.  And yes, I would rather listen to the music those last three artists made independently rather than as the Beatles, because that's what I grew up with in the '70s; the Beatles were before my time.  I'd also add Juan Gabriel (the Elton John of Latin America), who I discovered as a young adult living in Mexico.  The reason, I think, I'd pick '70s music is I believe there must be some psychological component that causes us to be most attracted to those things that were surrounding us during the developmental stages of our lives.  It touches something innate and nurturing, maybe subconsciously connects us to good feelings we had in those days when we didn't have the pressure of work, and had special nurturing people in our lives, some of whom may no longer be here.  It has nothing to do with whether those were better times or better entertainment; we were just more protected, nurtured, had never experienced loss.   The old shows and old music, I think, reconnect us to all of that.  But only to an extent.

Like what Luvsbwy wrote, life was simple back then for those who didn't have to deal with discrimination, and didn't have to think about issues affecting those who were discriminated against:  they were powerless and had to stay silent, so the rest --the majority -- could just live carefree.  But if you were black and suffered from job discrimination, and other forms of discrimination, and had to suck it up, keep your mouth shut about it, just suffer through it in order to get through the day, then your life was not simple; it was complicated.  If you were a woman who yearned for an exciting career, but there were constant barriers preventing you from achieving it, life was complicated. If you were LGBT and had to hide and pretend every day of your life, your life was not simple, it was very complicated.  Or if you were a kid, such as what this article indicates, who was molested or assaulted by your father, and you had to hide that reality from a world that thought your family was perfect, then your life was was not simple; it was complicated.  People who want to return to that world are self-absorbed and don't want to have to care about the concerns of others.

We can appreciate and enjoy many of the good things from that past, like actual great entertainment.  It's all on film or recordings, and instantly at our fingertips thanks to the technology we have now..  But we can discard the unsavory things from those times and move forward.

[Neil]

On 10/24/2017 at 8:56 AM, LittleRickyII said:

Yours, Mine and Ours will never be the same for me after reading this.

http://www.montereyherald.com/article/zz/20130824/NEWS/130828093

Well this certainly would have made a different movie.  Next thing we'll find out is that each day Helen had one of her vodka-gin-scotch cocktails mid-afternoon and when the kids came home from school, she pelted them with mashed potatoes. 

Seriously, it's naive to believe that 18 kids in one household in the volatile 60s headed by a military man experienced nothing worse than 'mayhem'.  The author's last name is North.  Does that mean he changed it back or that Frank adopting them all was made up for the movie?   (I too would pick North over BEARDSLEY, BEARDSLEY, BEARDSLEY.) Interesting that Lucy's real-life counterpart is only 30.  Nobody pointed out her real age when Lucy/Helen gave birth.  Contrast that with the age reference in every review or article written about Mame just 6 years later.  The CD-Sountrack booklet uses the word "aging" THREE times!

In reference to today's music:  I'm not up to speed but some of the stuff I hear.  Miracatelacosa!!  I cannot conceive that a future generation will have an envelope left to push. 

[LittleRickyII]

7 hours ago, Neil said:

Well this certainly would have made a different movie.  Next thing we'll find out is that each day Helen had one of her vodka-gin-scotch cocktails mid-afternoon and when the kids came home from school, she pelted them with mashed potatoes.

Seriously, it's naive to believe that 18 kids in one household in the volatile 60s headed by a military man experienced nothing worse than 'mayhem'.  The author's last name is North.  Does that mean he changed it back or that Frank adopting them all was made up for the movie?   (I too would pick North over BEARDSLEY, BEARDSLEY, BEARDSLEY.)

I was wondering about that, too.  Either he changed his name or, contrary to the movie, the North kids were never officially adopted by Frank Beardsley.

 

Interesting that Lucy's real-life counterpart is only 30.  Nobody pointed out her real age when Lucy/Helen gave birth.  Contrast that with the age reference in every review or article written about Mame just 6 years later.  The CD-Sountrack booklet uses the word "aging" THREE times!

 

Well honestly, seeing a pregnant 56 year-old Lucille Ball towards the end of the movie makes me cringe a bit.  She was an attractive woman at that time, but nevertheless she still looked like a woman in her fifties.  And women in their fifties in those pre-IVF days did not get pregnant.