Cheaper by the Dozen (1950)

Directed by Walter Lang

In this week devoted to the family, we bring you one of the most charming and poignant films about that core of human life, Cheaper by the Dozen.

So then, imagine this: A well-dressed lady arrives at the residence of the Gilbreth family in Montclair, New Jersey. Someone she had met on the train told her to look up the Gilbreths, because they would be most interested in hearing about the good work her organization does. ( The organization was early 20th century Planned Parenthood.) “I have to call my husband,” says Mrs. Gilbreth (Myrna Loy) with a twinkle in her eye that the lady misses. “He’s interested in good works too.” Mr. Gilbreth (Clifton Webb) is busy in his study — he’s what you’d call a workplace engineer, an efficiency expert dealing with time and motion. But when his wife tells him who’s at the door, he sets down his scope and gets up, like a good-humored moral crusader. Imagine the lady’s horror when, at the base of their large staircase, Mr. Gilbreth whistles, takes out his stopwatch, and waits no more than 14 seconds as his twelve children come barreling downstairs, one of the boys sliding backwards down the banister. “Why, these are all yours!” the lady exclaims in shock and dismay. When she asks how many children there are, Mr. Gilbreth knits his brows and says he doesn’t know. “The last time I checked,” says Mrs. Gilbreth, “there was an even dozen.”

That’s a great scene from the family comedy Cheaper by the Dozen (1950), based on an autobiographical novel written by two of the Gilbreth children, Frank, Jr., and Ernestine Gilbreth Corey. Their mother, Lillian Gilbreth was a highly educated woman, having earned her undergraduate and masters degrees in English literature from the University of California. She was a full partner in her husband’s industrial engineering business, and the first in her field to add a doctorate in psychology to her credentials as an efficiency expert, work she continued as a college professor and public lecturer after her husband’s death. Her many achievements put the lie to the notion that a woman with so many children must be no other than a household drudge. But making that point is not what the film is about. It is really about showing the powerful love between a most unusual husband and wife and the children who are proud of their mother and father and their big and noisy brood.

For despite the fact that Mr. Gilbreth is all about efficiency — and that’s the jest behind what he always says about children, that they’re “cheaper by the dozen” — there’s a certain rock-solid old-fashioned moral vision about him. It makes him a bit too protective of his eldest daughter Ann (Jeanne Crain, who in real life would leave her Hollywood stardom to devote her considerable energy to raising a large family of her own), so he insists on accompanying her to her school dance, as a chaperone. What happens then is utterly delightful, and, well, impossible to imagine now, because we lack the fundamental innocence that is the richest soil for mirth.

Cheaper by the Dozen never pretends to be delivering a message. Most people, even as late as 1950, assumed that big and boisterous families were good things, were blessings from God. The filmmakers felt no need to persuade anyone of that. My father was one of eleven children, my mother one of six; my wife’s father one of six, and her mother one of twelve. Raising a very large family might have been thought a challenge back then, but it was also a considered a cause for celebration. In our time, when a great many people find the idea of raising any child at all too difficult a challenge, Cheaper by the Dozen gives us a glimpse into a world that knew the sweetness of normality. Perhaps someday we will know that normality again. If you are friends with any large homeschooling families, you may perhaps have met up with such as the Gilbreth’s and their lively and cheerful brood. If you get a chance to watch this film, sit back and enjoy a hearty dose of mirth, particularly in Clifton Webb’s portrayal of a man, who despite his all-encompassing focus on efficiency at work and in the home, has never lost his ability to laugh at human foibles, even when the joke is on himself.

Clifton Webb is always fun to watch, and the chemistry between his understated humor and the similarly droll Myrna Loy is perfect. So is the warmth of father-daughter love, between him and Jeanne Crain. And don’t miss that motherly Sara Allgood as the blustery Irish maid, Mrs. Monahan. Of course this film is for the whole family, the little kids too.

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