What happens
Frank Gilbreth, an industrial efficiency expert, runs his household of twelve children with the same precision he brings to factories. His wife Lillian helps keep the family organized as the children move to Montclair, New Jersey, where the household adopts democratic family councils to divide chores and the older children are sent to school. Frank insists on showing the principal how advanced his children are, and the family's efficiency methods are tested when illness spreads through the house. This adaptation of the Lux Radio Theatre series, based on the book by Frank Gilbreth Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey, aired on May 7, 1951, with Clifton Webb in the lead role.
Rhode Island and Montclair, New Jersey, in the early twentieth century, at the Gilbreth family home.
Characters: Frank Gilbreth, Lillian Gilbreth, Ernestine, Martha, Lillian, Bill, Frank Jr., Dr. Burton
Listen for: Frank Gilbreth's whistle and stopwatch routines, the family council meeting, and the tonsil operations in the dining room.
Written from the episode itself; it never gives away the ending. Every recording is remastered for the stream: cleaned of rumble, hiss and mains hum (and the old TV whine where we found it), then levelled in two passes to steady broadcast loudness, so one show is never quieter than the next.