Goofs

When Colleen and her boyfriend are eating lunch, at school (he's talking about the "freak-out"), Colleen takes her sandwich out of the paper bag and unwraps it three or four times.

Mail sent by Frank while on the ship is addressed to 1034 Linden Avenue, but at the end of the movie the house number on the front porch is clearly shown as 346.

When the doctor examines Phillip the first night all the family is together in the new house, he wipes and puts away his thermometer twice.

When the doctor arrives he rings the doorbell, even though the house has no electrical power.

Correction: It's a Victorian era house with a mechanical doorbell that doesn't require electricity.

During Van Johnson's first visit to the Beardsley house, the kids wipe their hands on his uniform shirt, leaving raspberry jam and indelible ink stains. First is the raspberry jam, then the ink, but after the ink is applied, the jam isn't visible on the shirt front. In the very next scene, the shirt is spotless.

During their first date in a club, Frank is wearing his hat during the entire sequence. Wearing your cover (hat) indoors is a breach of military etiquette and a real Naval officer would know this.

When Frank goes to his carrier's flight deck to halt the launch of the mail plane, he is wearing a ship's ballcap. After packing, he returns to the flight deck wearing a combination cap. In fact, neither hat is permitted on the flight deck during flight operations, as they are easily sucked into a jet engine intake, causing foreign-object damage. Further, nobody is permitted on the flight deck without the cranial helmet, goggles, and hearing protection that the catapult launch officer wears, except for pilots and necessary flight crew going to and from their aircraft.

When Frank learns that his wife is pregnant, he goes to the flight deck and convinces the catapult launch officer to stop the launch of the mail plane. The catapult officer does not actually have that authority. Unless there is a mechanical or safety problem, the Air Boss (who is never on the flight deck) is the lowest ranking person with the authority to cancel a launch.

When Frank and Darrell are talking about dating while they're standing near the airfield, they're both wearing lieutenant junior grade bars on their caps. Two such older career Navy officers should be higher rank than this. Also, the officer that Frank is giving orders to has full lieutenant bars. This officer outranks Frank.

Henry Fonda's character says that Fanny Hill was written in 1742. It was actually written in 1749.

The letter from Helen to Frank and the letter from Frank to Helen are in the same handwriting.

After the wedding the family moves in the new home. While the children are being assigned their rooms "Mike" is seen bringing suitcases upstairs. A couple of scenes later he is seen bringing the same suitcases upstairs a second time.

In the dispensary, when the scene freezes so that Van Johnson can talk to the camera, a bus can be seen passing by the window (at 37:14 on the DVD).

When Mike (Tim Matheson) is walking down the sidewalk at the end of the movie in his Marine Corps uniform the tie, shirt, and trousers are different shades of khaki, something a Marine would never do; he would be considered being out of uniform.

When Helen sees Darrell in the coffee bar, her eyelash is already in her drink (you can see it if you look in her glass) then someone bumps her it "falls off".

At the urging of her daughters, who are trying to make her look more glamorous, Helen reluctantly agrees to wear false eyelashes on a date--although the actress who is playing her (Lucille Ball) is obviously is wearing false eyelashes throughout the entire film, including scenes that occur long before the one mentioned.

Lucille Ball gives birth in this movie, and she was 56 years old when the movie was made; Fonda was 61. Both of them would die at age 77.

The reflection of a cameraman is visible in the window of the school bus as it drives off.

Driving back from the Japanese restaurant, the trio are on the upper deck of the San Francisco Bay Bridge. The upper deck runs westbound, into San Francisco from the east. To return to Alameda, eastbound from San Francisco, one would drive on the lower deck. This was likely known by the filmmakers who used upper-deck footage because it's much nicer than the tunnel-like experience of the lower deck. [Edit] in 1962, when the movie is set, there was still two-way traffic on the upper deck. The rails for the trains that used to run on the lower deck until 1958 were not removed until 1963, which is when the current traffic scheme (eastbound on the lower deck, westbound on the upper deck) was put into place.

When Frank decides to call Helen, he looks her number up in the white pages. But Helen had just recently moved to the city, so her number wouldn't be in the phone book till the next issue comes out.

When Frank decides to buy Helen a gift to commemorate their first and last date, she picks a stature of Kwan Yin. The clerk says the Kwan Yin means "joyous symbol of fertility" (at 34:32 on the DVD). Kwan Yin actually means "Observing the Sounds of the World" and is primarily considered the Goddess of Mercy, Love, and Compassion. Her fertility aspects are minor and would not be mentioned by a Chinese person.

When Frank is assigning rooms, Helen says that Tommy should not sleep in the same room as Phillip while he has the flu. Despite priding himself on his organization, Frank then decides to make a mountain out of a molehill and disrupts several of the children's sleeping arrangements to relocate just one child.