With Six You Get Eggroll

With Six You Get Eggroll is a 1968 American family comedy directed by Howard Morris, in which widow Abby McClure (Doris Day) and widower Jake Iverson (Brian Keith) fall in love and marry, and their combined households of children and pets resist the merger. It was Doris Day's final feature film, the first production of Cinema Center Films, the feature-film unit of the CBS television network, and the screen debut of comedian George Carlin.^{1 • 2}

Origins and production

The project began as a proposal for a television series by the husband-and-wife teleplay writers Gwen Bagni and Paul Dubov, reported by Daily Variety in September 1965. The couple based the idea on their own marriage and their children's approval of the merger between the previously widowed Gwen and Paul. The screenplay was credited to Bagni, Dubov, Harvey Bullock, and R. S. Allen, from a story by Bagni and Dubov.¹

CBS's first film. In October 1967 the newly formed CBS Theatrical Films announced plans for twenty-two movies at a combined estimated budget of $60 million; four months earlier the trade press had identified With Six You Get Eggroll as the company's first production, starring Doris Day under the first of her multi-film deal with CBS, produced by her husband Martin Melcher. Principal photography began on 3 January 1968 at the CBS Studio Center, the former Republic Studios, in Studio City, California.¹

Melcher built a $75,000 replica on Stage 12 of a Toluca Lake "dream house" his wife had often gazed at early in their marriage, presenting the finished set as a surprise to her. A March 1968 Los Angeles Times item described a location scene with 300 squawking chickens loose on Ventura Boulevard, along with stunt men falling off motorcycles; director Howard Morris noted that the only safety monitor on hand was a man from the American Humane Society. Morris summarized the children's role: "The kids are actually the heavies in the film. They've been behaving like adults and now, with the re-marriage, they've got a full set of parents so they're kids again and they hate it."¹

Release and box office

After a sneak preview in Salt Lake City on 28 June 1968, the film premiered at three Boston cinemas on 7 August 1968, grossing $165,000 there over the first three weeks. It opened in Los Angeles on 21 August in nineteen theaters and nine drive-ins, taking $220,000 in its first week, and Variety reported $1.2 million grossed after four weeks in general release. It did not reach New York City until 9 October, reportedly because another Doris Day film, MGM's Where Were You When the Lights Went Out?, was then playing at Radio City Music Hall.¹ The Numbers records a domestic total of $10,095,200, all of it domestic.³

Cinema Center Films itself lasted only four years after this debut. In January 1972 the New York Times reported that CBS chairman William S. Paley was ending production once remaining projects finished, with losses from unsuccessful films exceeding $10 million in 1971 alone.¹

Reception

Critics were divided rather than hostile. Roger Ebert, then the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times, called it "a pleasant enough comedy, some good moments, some dull ones, more or less routine," and judged that the premise had been done better in Yours, Mine and Ours with Lucille Ball and Henry Fonda, though he rated Brian Keith's dry wit favorably against Henry Fonda. His summary: "It's not great, but if you like Doris Day in pleasant family comedies with lots of kids and dogs, you could do worse."⁴ Vincent Canby of the New York Times wrote that Day's performance showed "some hints of the very real comic talent that has, over the years, become hermetically sealed inside a lacquered personality like a butterfly in a Mason jar."²

The film also drew fire for its cleanliness. The National Catholic Office for Motion Pictures, an organization otherwise concerned about the shortage of family films, criticized it as "the sort of entertainment film that gives 'family' pictures a bad name," calling it a "lesser version" of Yours, Mine and Ours and "a 'clean' joke of the sly, nudging variety." Contemporary commentary noted the irony that a clean movie, rather than the era's controversial films, was the one generating argument.⁵ On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a Tomatometer score of 65% from three reviews, with more than 2,500 audience ratings.⁶

Doris Day's last film

The film closed Day's feature career under dramatic circumstances. Her husband and manager Marty Melcher, who had run her career since their 1951 marriage and produced this film, fell ill during production with what appeared to be influenza. After filming ended he worsened, and as a Christian Scientist (religion whose members often refuse medical treatment) he refused to see a doctor until Day insisted; he was hospitalized with a heart condition and died in April 1968, shortly after filming wrapped.²

After his death Day discovered that Melcher and his business partner had embezzled and squandered her $23 million fortune, leaving nothing. Melcher had also committed her, without her knowledge, to star in a television sitcom; feeling obligated to honor the contract and needing the money to pay his debts and fight the legal battle against his partner, which she ultimately won, Day made The Doris Day Show from 1968 to 1973 and then retired after two CBS television specials.²

The film itself has been reassessed as a stronger exit than its reputation suggests. Tom Santopietro, author of Reconsidering Doris Day (2007), praised the Day-Keith pairing: "her pep gives his laconic delivery some zing, and he calms her down through some nicely calibrated understatement," adding that the movie "clearly demonstrates that with good material, she could still rise to the occasion."² The Turner Classic Movies profile credits the film's sharp writing, the two stars' chemistry, and a supporting cast that included George Carlin's bright debut as a hamburger-stand owner, Barbara Hershey's feature debut as Jake's sullen teen daughter, and Alice Ghostley as Day's harried housekeeper.²

References

1. With Six You Get Eggroll (1968), AFI Catalog of Feature Films
2. Margarita Landazuri, "With Six You Get Eggroll," Turner Classic Movies
3. With Six You Get Eggroll (1968), The Numbers
4. Roger Ebert, review of With Six You Get Eggroll, Chicago Sun-Times, September 4, 1968
5. "Clean Film Makes Them Ask: Could This Be New Trend?," The Electronic Arts, September 27, 1968
6. With Six You Get Eggroll, Rotten Tomatoes

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Comedy and romantic films (individual works) › Comedies of the 1960s

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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