This is Your Life was a popular show broadcast on NBC radio from 1948 to 1952 and then it moved to NBC television where it ran until 1961 with several short-lived revivals here and there thereafter. Ralph Edwards was the host while it was on NBC and the producer of its later incarnations. Each week, the show would "surprise" a theoretically-unsuspecting celebrity and for a half-hour, the host would run down the celebrity's biography and bring out significant people from his or her past.
You may or may not have ever seen an episode of the program but you've probably seen the spoof that was done of it on Your Show of Shows in 1954. Carl Reiner played Ralph Edwards' part, Sid Caesar played the ambushed celebrity and Howard Morris stole the whole damn skit as Uncle Goopy. I've posted this before here and I'll post it again. It really was one of the funniest sketches ever done on television.
At Howie's funeral in 2005 — has it been that long? I guess it has — they opened the proceedings by showing this sketch. Everyone in the room was hysterical with laughter and the man seated directly in front of me was laughing so hard he was crying. The man seated directly in front of me was Carl Reiner…
Not long after this sketch first aired, Your Show of Shows was carved up into a couple of different programs. Sid Caesar went off to do Caesar's Hour from later in '54 until 1957 and Reiner went with him. When that show went off, Carl went over to become head writer and frequent on-camera guest on The Dinah Shore Chevy Show. As you will see in the video below, in one episode he joked about how he wanted to be a "principal subject" (as Ralph Edwards called them) on This is Your Life and a week or so after — on March 23, 1960 — that happened when Carl was so surprised…
…except that he wasn't. As you watch the video of that episode, know that Reiner later admitted that he knew in advance about it and only feigned shock and surprise. I've always been skeptical that all those celebrities were really and truly unaware that they were suddenly going to be dragged into an unagreed-to appearance on live television that would include meeting up with folks from their past. Edwards always maintained that with one admitted exception, they never informed the principal subject in advance….and that's probably true.
But I think they counted on the subject's agent and/or family telling the person…at least some of the time. The alleged surprise couldn't have been arranged without their involvement and some celebrities might not have wanted to do it at all. In one of the later revivals, Angie Dickinson flatly refused to participate and the whole taping — for which folks in her past had flown to Hollywood — was called off. Since it was a taping, as was by then standard, it could be called-off…but what if that had happened in the fifties when the show was done on live television?
And some of the stars who did want to go through with it might have wanted to make sure certain acquaintances from their past weren't brought on or that certain facts of their lives weren't mentioned. They might have wanted to be prepped and ready for the appearance. Not everyone in this world likes surprises. It also wouldn't surprise me to learn that some stars told their agents, "Try to arrange for me to be 'surprised' on This is Your Life" or "If This is Your Life ever wants to do me, you'd better tell me in advance."
I don't remember exactly how Carl Reiner found out…and the bit you'll see of him on Dinah's show the week before sure looks like he was trying to encourage it. But as you watch this if you watch it, keep in mind that he knew. Also: If you're a fan of The Dick Van Dyke Show, you'll notice some names of people and places that later turned up on the Van Dyke program. One of Carl's close friends who appears was named Joe Coogan and a few years later, Laura Petrie had an old boy friend named Joe Coogan who had turned to the priesthood…
