A couple of observations of Yours, Mine, And Ours (1968).
Did I mis-see something?
The Wikipedia entry for the movie says that Fonda’s character is a Chief Warrant Officer, which appears to be a very senior non-commissioned officer rank.
In the United States Armed Forces Warrant Officers (W-1) and Chief Warrant Officers (W-2~W-5) are not non-commissioned officers. They are senior to enlisted personnel (E-1~E-10) and junior to Commissioned Officers (O-1~O-10). The one thing to make it confusing is Chief Warrant Officers are, in fact and by law, commissioned.
If you look at Fonda’s rank insigna in the movie, you’ll notice it’s not just a single gold stripe. It’s a single gold stripe with a single blue break. That’s the insignia for Chief Warrant Officer (W-4).
The Navy recently restored the rank of Warant Officer (W-1). That was originally just for Cyber Warfare, but is also now for that and for drone pilots.
BTW Warrants and Chief Warrants salute personnel senior to them and are saluted by personnel junior to them.
I don’t know what he was or what his pay grade was.
I know in the Military with that many kids to feed they were starving.
Doubtful. They wouldn’t be living large, of course, but the pay for W-4 along with other special pays and allowances should have been sufficient, even then, to stave off starvation.
I forgot to mention Beardsley’s specialty. The insignia looks to me to be that of an Aviation Boatswain.
Just wanted to mention that this was a movie I would watch pretty often with my Mom while growing up (along with the similar With Six You Get Eggroll) whenever it showed up on TV and given it was Mother’s Day I had been thinking about her and seeing this randomly pop up made me smile so thanks.
Also according to Wikipedia, the real-life Frank Beardsley was a Chief Warrant Officer who was Personnel Officer at the Naval Postgraduate School.
I stand corrected. It sure looked like a silver bar on his collar.
My mom used to volunteer at Navy Relief. Back then, enlisted did need additional help.
A W-4 would get a base $582.00 and another $145.05 in Quarters allowance.
Here are the pay chart for the Military in 1968.
I can’t recall, was he assigned to a base or a ship? A ship could bring in Sea Pay also.
FTR: All the rates shown are Monthly.
I always liked that movie, partly because I had a small family and liked the idea of a big one.
About the same time this movie came out, my widowed mother married a divorced man, so we had eight kids plus four kids in our case (the youngest about 12). My mother scoffed at the grocery store scene, where the total ran to an incredible $100. “I pay much more than that!”
This movie, and The Brady Bunch, really waved away the whole step-family issues by solving everything with everyone getting adopted. Not in our family.
Wasn’t that the base exchange?
No, the grocery stores on military bases are called commissaries. The base exchange or post exchange were like retail chains and sold a variety of goods.
A friend of mine knew the Beardsley family, so I watched it. Even as a teen I wasn’t crazy about it. And my friend said it was kind of fakey.
Thank you for the clarification!
Helen Beardsley was working and was a widow, surely she had some kind of income (although she probably retired to take care of that mob and have some more).
I’d like to know the real story, I thought the movie was fakey, too. One of the kids wrote a book about abuses that went on.
Gawd, it’s been 50 years! My friend was a kid when she knew them, so I don’t think she saw too many serious problems, but she said the movie was nothing like how the family dynamic was IRL. I don’t remember any details now. Especially for movies of that vintage and earlier, most bio pics were pretty artificial (polite term for fake).
He’s interviewed about it here: