Notable Guests
Some celebrities were unpleasantly surprised. Stan Laurel of Laurel and Hardy was angered by being "tricked" into what would be the team's only American television appearance, on December 1, 1954. Laurel later said, " and I were always planning to do something on TV. But we never dreamed that we would make our television debut on an unrehearsed network program...I was damned if I was going to put on a free show for them." Lowell Thomas "displayed obvious anger and embarrassment"; when host Ralph Edwards tried to assure him that he would enjoy what was to come, Thomas replied, "I doubt that very much." In 1993, Angie Dickinson refused to appear on a retrospective show.
One of the show's subjects was Rev. Kiyoshi Tanimoto, a survivor of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. During the episode Edwards introduced Tanimoto to Robert A. Lewis, the co-pilot of the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. Hanna Bloch Kohner, a Holocaust survivor, was a subject on May 27, 1953.
In February 1953, Lillian Roth, a "topflight torch singer of the Prohibition era" was the subject of the show, "cheerfully admitt that she had been a hopeless drunk for 16 years before being rescued by Alcoholics Anonymous." Edwards described Roth's condition as "impending blindness, an inflamed sinus and a form of alcoholic insanity" and brought on a psychiatrist who had treated her, a brother-in-law "who had paid her bills" and several "glamorous foul-weather friends" such as Lita Grey Chaplin and Ruby Keeler. Roth's story became the basis of her autobiography and the film, I'll Cry Tomorrow, with Edwards appearing as himself.
Kate Newcomb, a doctor who practiced in a "70-mile circle" around Woodruff, Wisconsin and was later honored as the namesake of that town's Dr. Kate Newcomb Museum, was the subject of a 1954 episode, bringing attention to her "million pennies" drive to raise funds for a small community hospital; viewers of the episode donated over $112,000 in pennies.
According to The Complete Directory of Prime-Time Network TV Shows, one celebrity that was definitely off-limits was Edwards himself, who supposedly threatened to fire every member of his staff if they ever tried to turn the tables on him and publicly present Edwards' own life.
Johnny Cash was caught off guard while filming a 1971 episode of The Johnny Cash Show. He had finished welcoming the audience to the stage when his wife, June Carter Cash, walked onstage and introduced Ralph Edwards. He tried to keep his composure, but was still seen nervous.
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