The 1950 20th Century Fox movie Cheaper by the Dozen was based on the 1948 autobiographical book of the same name, written by two of the grown children from the real-life Gilbreth family. When the parents of this brood were first married in 1904, they agreed that they wanted a large family and that six girls and six boys would be ideal—and that’s just what they got.
The father, Frank Bunker Gilbreth, born in 1868 in Maine, was an engineer and time-motion expert. At age 17, Frank began work as a bricklayer rather than
