Big Red Book
Celebrating television's This Is Your Life
first-hand recollections
the man who created it all
the producers who steered the programme's success
a review of the first series
Birmingham Gazette 30 July 1955
Surprise victim of new TV programme
WHAT A SURPRISE FOR EAMONN ANDREWS
TO his amazement and consternation, Eamonn Andrews became "the guinea pig" on the BBC's first television broadcast last night of the American show This Is Your Life.
Ralph Edwards, who weekly bares a celebrity's life story to 35m United States viewers, opened the show by wandering through the studio audience in search of his victim.
He spoke with Boris Karloff, Bebe Daniels and Ben Lyon, before reaching Andrews, who sat with boxer Freddie Mills.
But it was not Mills who was to have his life publicly uncovered - it was Andrews, who had spent the day reassuring Mills for his television ordeal.
Eamonn Andrews, suave compere of so many shows, fidgeted nervously, blew out his cheeks and looked uncomfortable as his life story was unfolded.
As his mother appeared he blew his nose vigorously: then came his sisters, his brother, his former employer, the man he had beaten in a championship boxing bout, and finally - Don Cockell.
If the new show proves popular here as in America, it is expected that Andrews will be asked to become compere.
The Manchester Guardian 30 July 1955
Television Notes
AMERICAN FEATURE ARRIVES
This Is Your Life
By our Radio Critic
Ralph Edwards brought his famous American television feature This Is Your Life for the first time into British television last night.
The style so far infected the usually sedate British announcer that he declaimed the introduction with a rather uneasily glaring look; the whole thing, one felt, was going to be stupendous and smart – even though it was to be "our own version of the most-talked-about" programme in America.
But a fair guess would be that, if the show is adapted any further to British tastes, it will settle down more happily in the untidy, chummy, Ask Pickles way than in its present form.
The person chosen from an invited audience for the "chair of honour" and the unfolding of events in his past life was Eamonn Andrews, who bore the ordeal bravely and with a lot of goodwill, sincerity, and very little aplomb. One has never liked Mr Andrews so well.
For the embarrassing thing about the programme was not the unexpected entry of his mother, sisters, brother and various friends and acquaintances but the very glib and mechanical manner of Ralph Edwards, who seemed to be reeling off words with one bit of his mind but without any real personal feeling, almost in an absent-minded way.
Also the continual stream of fulsome compliments could hardly be congenial to their object, even though Mr Andrews is an excellent radio and television performer and an agreeable personality. So if Mr Edwards is to become popular here he will probably have to learn the art of British under-statement and realise that "good show" means more than half a dozen superlatives.
Last night's programme was without any exceptionally embarrassing or sentimental moments: but if This Is Your Life should go in for that kind of thing in a big way it will be one more sign that now battle is joined with the commercials the public will be shot at from both sides with the lowest common denominator of ammunition.
Daily Express 30 July 1955
This was Freddie Mills's secret
By ROBERT CANNELL
TV star Eamonn Andrews spent all yesterday looking after boxer Freddie Mills like a brother - on BBC instructions.
He believed Freddie was to be the victim in the first British presentation of America's star TV show This Is Your Life.
The essence of the show is that the victim is unaware of his fate until the cameras are on him.
But with Freddie Mills safely in the theatre, Eamonn Andrews found the cameras focused on HIMSELF. He was clearly shaken when the American host, Ralph Edwards, picked him out of the audience.
And Freddie Mills laughed loudest of all, for he had been let into the secret and he had been looking after Andrews.
ON STAGE
Eamonn Andrews had to listen to recordings made by his mother, his brother, and his three sisters telling stories about him. They appeared on the stage.
So did his first employer; a school friend; the man he beat in an Irish boxing championship; and his wife (who told a wonderful story of their wedding car driver in Dublin producing two glasses of whisky, both of which Eamonn drank).
Finally came a snatch of his commentary on the Marciano-Cockell fight, followed by the appearance of Cockell.
Eamonn Andrews has led a full life and is a good performer, so it all made a good 30 minutes of entertainment.
But if the BBC takes up This Is Your Life - which is almost certain - the personalities must be chosen from people with a story worth telling.
Who will be master of ceremonies if the show becomes permanent? Eamonn Andrews.
Evening Telegraph 30 July 1955
LAST NIGHT'S TELEVIEW
Of course we are all morbidly fascinated at seeing Eamonn Andrews weep when confronted with his grey-haired Irish mother all the way from Dublin. But have the BBC any right to encourage our prurient curiosity in this fashion?
This is your Life carries us still further down the steep and slippery slope of phoney entertainment. Wilfred Pickles manages to balance along the thin dividing line between pathos and bathos. His North Country shrewdness usually tells him when the ice grows too thin.
Ralph Edwards treads the tightrope with transatlantic exuberance which leads to many a fall from grace. His pretentious commentary veers from being offensively effusive to the portentously patronising.
What will they do to twitch our jaded appetites when we begin to grow tired of people like Eamonn Andrews weeping in the arms of a grey-haired Irish, Dutch, Turkish, Russian, or Hawaiian mother?
Maybe concealed cameras and hidden microphones might bring us even more candid glimpses of the famous and the phoneys eating, sleeping, washing and cleaning their teeth? How the invited audience - and we at home - would roll in the aisles as we watched the victims' faces as they saw their private lives thus turned into a variety show.
Western Mail and South Wales News 30 July 1955
ON TV LAST NIGHT
Irony of keeping a secret
By John Lyne
The BBC went to fantastic lengths yesterday to keep the secret of This Is Your Life from the man who was going to take part in it - Eamonn Andrews.
Mr Andrews was told Freddie Mills, the boxer, was to be the first "victim." So he wanted to attend rehearsals of the show.
How could they keep him out of the way? The BBC decided the only thing they could do was to organise a panel programme yesterday afternoon in which Freddie Mills was invited to take part with Eamonn Andrews as his "keeper."
Said Producer Leslie Jackson, "Keep an eye on him Eamonn, and don't let him get away." The panel programme was called "Keeping Fit in Sport." It was filmed. It will never be broadcast. It was a completely "spoof" programme made specially for Eamonn Andrews's benefit.
Eamonn Andrews was taken aback in This is Your Life. He rubbed his chin, dropped his head in embarrassment. The irony is that Andrews himself will run This is Your Life if it is taken on as a series.
This is Your Life is a winner as a programme. However, one's better instincts may shrink from these biographical exposures: it must be admitted that it is a sellable idea.
If the BBC buy the idea then they must clean up the worst excesses of trans-Atlantic presentation to make it fit for British consumption.
Daily Herald 30 July 1955
This Is Your Life injects bit of life into BBC
By Andrew Smith
THE American TV programme, This Is Your Life, went on the BBC last night and made most of our panel games look like committee meetings.
Its author, Ralph Edwards, glib as an auctioneer, held up a book and announced that it contained the life story of someone in the studio audience.
The BBC had intended Stanley Matthews to be the victim, but the secret leaked out last Wednesday, and he was withdrawn.
Edwards went among the star-spangled audience, stopped tantalisingly before Boris Karloff, Bebe Daniels, Ben Lyon ... and as they sighed with relief, he passed to Eamonn Andrews, who sat next to Freddie Mills.
Yoo-Hoo...
Eamonn, who said he had been trying to allay Freddie's fears, slumped into a chair on the stage looking a bundle of nerves.
"February 20, 1950 - does it mean anything in your life?" asked Edwards. It was Eamonn's first day as compere of Ignorance Is Bliss.
From behind the curtain came a woman’s voice, "Yoo-hoo, you've got to be rude to me."
Out stepped Gladys Hay and gave Eamonn a big hug. "When I first asked him to be rude to me," said Gladys, "he replied, 'My dear Miss Hay, I could not possibly talk that way to a lady.'"
Back to Eamonn's birthday, December 9, 1922. Through the curtain came another voice: "The way he used to cry I knew his voice was going to be important to him." Out stepped mother. Another big hug.
On they came, brothers and sisters with tales of childhood, his wife to talk about their romance, his first boss, when he worked as an insurance clerk, a Dublin school pal to remind him of his first play, the amateur boxer he beat in the final of the middleweight championship.
The Yorkshire Post 30 July 1955
New show embarrasses
Too personal TV
By our television critic, BARRY HEADS
INTRODUCED from the United States where it is reported to be a considerable popular success, the TV show This is Your Life was on BBC TV last night. It reached into hideous depths of embarrassment.
The wholly misguided idea of the programme is to present someone with his or her life story and some of the main characters from it - without the central figure knowing in advance. Last night the unsuspecting victim was to have been Stanley Matthews but the news leaked out.
Instead an obviously unprepared Eamonn Andrews was put before the cameras and confronted in rapid succession with his mother, brother, and sisters, with an old colleague from an insurance company, a school friend and an old boxing opponent.
High-flown cliches
The programme was in the charge of Ralph Edwards, who runs the American programme of the same name. Mr. Edwards is bland of manner, not to say slick, highly sentimental in his approach to matters of biography, and much given to using high-flown, resounding cliches reminiscent of certain film advertising.
He seems to like his job in this programme and I cannot think why.
The programme - which has been much heralded by the BBC - left this critic at least much embarrassed and with a feeling of acute discomfort verging on nausea. I bought a TV set, not a key-hole, and the TV screen is no place to present a person's very personal life for the sake of so called entertainment. Let there be no more of it.
Manchester Evening News 30 July 1955
OUR TELEVIEW
Yes, life with the Andrews was fine
NOW we know why the programme This Is Your Life is one of the best-sellers of American television. This experimental showing to British viewers revealed the same ingredients that mean success - suspense, a dose of shock tactics and yet, overall, sheer simpleness.
Here was surprise and success. Ralph Edwards, who came over from America, had the bright and brisk approach as we relived Eamonn Andrews's past. Producer Leslie Jackson completed the probe with his quizzing cameras - M. N.
The Evening News 30 July 1955
Last Night's Viewing
IT is not hard to believe that This is Your Life of which we had a special sample edition is a vastly popular programme in America. For there is a warm human quality about it that is just right for the home screen.
We were assured that Eamonn Andrews had no idea that he was to be the person chosen from the audience to watch the people and events of his past life being paraded before him, and certainly he did seem to be completely taken aback by it all.
Belfast Telegraph 1 August 1955
TALKING OF TELEVISION
TOP VIEWING NIGHT FOR OUR 'MIRROR'
For many a day
Programme for which there should be a long and triumphant future arrived on Friday night - This is Your Life. The man who has made it a hit in the U.S. introduced it and it now remains to be seen whether the BBC, left to their own devices, can follow up the outstanding success he achieved on bringing the life of Eamonn Andrews to the screen.
For sheer human interest and sentiment This is Your Life could well replace "Ask Pickles" as the most popular of all our television features.
Robert Ray
The Yorkshire Observer 3 August 1955
Television and Radio Commentary
WIDE NET IS ESSENTIAL TO "CAPTURE" PRIVATE LIVES
"THE proper study of mankind is man," says the poet. "There's nowt so queer as folks," adds the Yorkshireman.
Each, in his own way, holds the key to the secret of the success of This Is Your Life, introduced to British viewers for the first time last Friday. Most of us are incorrigible Paul Prys, actuated by an interest in the affairs of others that ranges from the mildly curious to the ghoulish.
When the object of our gaze is a current celebrity the combination becomes irresistible. as American television has long ago discovered.
Last week's version was a little unhappy in that it had been anglicised in subject matter but not in presentation. Ralph Edwards - so ingenuously described by RADIO TIMES as that "genial, beaming, superlatively persuasive American" - found himself at times out of touch with the British temperament, to which superlatives are not quite the thing.
DOUBTLESS this minor maladjustment will be corrected before the programme takes a regular place, as I have no doubt it will, subject to copyright arrangements, in our television entertainment. And it would be churlish not to record the pleasing impact that the Private Life of Eamonn Andrews made upon millions of viewers.
And for the benefit of those of our Paul Prys who are at the same time Doubting Thomases, let me assure you all that the whole thing not only appears to be spontaneous but is indeed so. Mr. Andrews was entirely unsuspecting of the ordeal that lay ahead of him. Nor were his expressions of astonishment other than entirely genuine.
IT is to be hoped that the victims of future programmes will be chosen from outside the ranks of the ephemeral celebrities of the entertainment world. Otherwise I fear that the producer will find it hard to find an adequate supply of subjects whose personal lives will enthral us for 30 minutes.
But for Mr. Andrews' half-hour, his mother, sisters and brothers were joined by Gladys Hay, Don Cockell and Mrs. Andrews as the pages of the album were turned.
Perhaps more surprising for Mr. Andrews, the manager of the insurance company for which he had once worked was there to add his mite - the sort of thing that is the making of the programme.
It was all, save for Mr. Edwards, very informal, very entertaining and far from owing all to novelty.
The Stage 4 August 1955
TWO THIS IS YOUR LIFE-S IN A WEEK
On Radio and Television
IT was a This is Your Life week for this writer last week. The idea is that a celebrity is shown "his life" and meets people from it, brought secretly to the studio.
On Wednesday I saw the first commercial radio recording of the programme at the Fortune Theatre, London, and on Friday watched the first television presentation in this country from Lime Grove.
The radio version was recorded by Ross Radio, with Monty Bailey-Watson producing. The subject was Bert Trautmann, and much was made in William Wordsworth's script of German unpopularity and how Trautmann, a massive blond, overcame it with his sterling soccer in goal for Manchester City.
Leonard Sachs acted as Master of Ceremonies, and Trautmann, chosen from various celebrities in the audience, was asked up on to the stage and there was confronted by various people who had helped him in his life - his father-in-law. who got him a place in a soccer side; his wife and four-year-old son, various soccer players and a German who was a P.O.W with him.
The sponsors seemed to be the National Playing Fields Association, for they had three plugs during the recording. Trautmann's mother and father were brought from Germany and Trautmann was told he and his family could fly back to Germany free for a holiday.
Television's version of This Is Your Life followed the same pattern, with Ralph Edwards, the man who devised it and is Master of Ceremonies in America, in the same rôle here.
The original "victim" was to be Stanley Matthews, but this news leaked out and a big 36-hour switch took place, with Eamonn Andrews picked (although he thought it was Freddie Mills).
Andrews looked more embarrassed about it all than Traumann, and was almost weeping when his mother came out on to the stage. She was only one of many flown from Dublin - his three sisters, a brother, the boxer he beat for the Irish amateur middleweight championship, his wife, two heavyweights - Don Cockell and Gladys Hay, his old boss in the insurance office, etc.
Thanks to the smooth compèring of Edwards and Leslie Jackson's production, the show was a great success. Next time we see it Eamonn Andrews will be doing this job. He should know now how the "victim" feels!
The Illustrated Chronicle 4 August 1955
LOOKING IN With Guest Critic Bob Russell
ORDEAL BY LIMELIGHT
"THROW him to the lions" cried a BBC back room Nero. And into the arena shambled Eamonn Andrews, shorn of his poise and aplomb, as a human sacrifice to TV's newest American import This Is Your Life.
I thought at first I might enjoy seeing this slick, fast talking commentator get an unexpected mouthful of his own medicine. Until the show's inventor Ralph Edwards prised him out of the studio audience he had no inkling that his own life story was to be told to the viewing millions.
From behind the scenes came, his mother, his brother, his three sisters, an insurance manager who had been his first boss, a playwright friend, a boxer he had once defeated and finally Don Cockell.
Mr. Andrews was seen to dab his eyes with his handkerchief. There were indeed emotional moments that must have brought lumps to millions of throats. If nothing else, this programme is a superbly efficient tear jerker.
But I found it embarrassing to watch a man demoralised before the very people he is employed to impress with his charm, wit and self possession. It was obvious in spite of a brave attempt to laugh it off, that Mr. Andrews never fully rode the shock of finding himself in the ring instead of a ringside seat.
I do not think the experience did him any harm or hurt his reputation. More likely it endeared him still further to his admirers.
But the BBC was wrong, in my opinion, to subject one of its own proteges to this sort of ordeal by limelight, just because the original victim, Mr. Stanley Matthews, had been warned in time to escape.
The programme itself will, I'm sure, become a howling success. It has the delicious essence of surprise. smothered though it is by too-sugary sentiment.
The Advertiser 5 August 1955
Morbid curiosity is the keynote
HOW WIDE the gap may be between the pleasures of the English and those of the Americans is shown by the new and much-heralded venture, This Is Your Life, imported under the aegis of its inventor, Ralph Edwards, and introduced by him with a relentless bonhomie hardly likely to commend itself to English viewers.
This programme. which strikes a false note in this country, sets out to confront some well-known person, without his previous knowledge, with events, friends - and enemies, for all I know - from earlier years, and to parade the luckless victim before us in the moment of his discomfiture, embarrassment, joy, surprise or whatever the relevant emotion may be.
It may well be imagined that this procedure has all the makings of a thoroughly unpleasant scene, except for those whose curiosity reaches out into the private regions of other people's lives, and who batten on the morbid hope of some emotional revelation or embarrassing memory being fished up by the wretched members of the BBC staff whose job this will become. Nor does it need much imagination to foresee that the programme is doomed to crashing boredom if such matters are mercifully avoided.
On Friday, the first subject to be picked out of the studio audience was the unfortunate Eamonn Andrews, who was apparently modest enough not to have considered himself a possible choice. He appeared thoroughly ill at ease for once, as members of his family were trotted out one by one, preceded by recordings of their voices. There is hardly likely to be a rush to join future studio audiences for this rather ghoulish affair or to go anywhere near the studio on those evenings for anything less than a fat fee.
Sunday Dispatch 7 August 1955
THIS IS MY LIFE
I DIDN’T see the new television programme This Is Your Life, in which Eamonn Andrews's past was paraded before him, with a smile and a tear. I was playing truant at the time from my obligations as a licence-holder - rebelliously sitting outside in the sunshine.
I read about it, however, the following day in the newspapers and it gave me a fright.
The BBC, sooner or later, will come to the end of its private supply of national celebrities - Harding, Barnett, Peters, Wilf, Sir Morty and all those Groves. After scraping the bottom of the barrel, probably with Sooty, they'll have to send a raiding party, after full-scale inoculation, into the outside world in search of someone to do next.
Well and good. A breath of fresh air would be more than welcome. But here's a word of advice. Don't come knocking at my door, men, unless you want a bucket of water all over your fancy suits. My past is dead and buried, and that's the way I'm going to keep it, sternly encamped on the grave.
Evening Express 10 August 1955
I ASKED Eamonn Andrews for his honest opinion of This Is Your Life.
"I think it's a great programme," he said.
Mr Andrews will have the opportunity of substantiating this statement when TV starts running the show as a regular series at the end of next month.
The BBC has bought a two-year option on it.
This ebullient young Irishman is to be the man in charge of the ‘Lives’. I expect you know the technique by now - a celebrity is lured into the studio on one pretext or another and then his biography is exposed to the watching millions.
Eamon Andrews ironically enough was the first victim in the trial run. They flew his entire family over from Dublin and threw in Don Cockell for good measure.
"Is it true that you wept when your mother appeared?" I asked Mr Andrews.
Turn to Page 19.
Acton Gazette and Post 28 October 1955
He fought Eamonn
A MAN who has punched Eamonn Andrews on the nose is living in one room with his wife and two children.
Patrick Fitzgerald, 32, who lives at 7, Avenue-gardens, Acton, fought Eamonn in the Irish Junior Middleweight Boxing Championship in 1944.
"We never set eyes on each other again until I appeared in This Is Your Life on television in July - the one centred on Eamonn's life."
"I think we both had a shock when we saw each other. After the show we had a party and a talk about the old days."
And what were the old days like? In training, Mr. Fitzgerald would go for a 10-mille run every morning. After lunch he would punch the ball for six 3-minute rounds, punch the bag for six rounds and finish up with about 10 rounds of sparring.
He started boxing when he was 10, and fought over 200 bouts.