This Is Your Life
Season 1
16 listed hours · 1952–1961 · NBC
From the desk
How this season is filed
This Is Your Life had Ralph Edwards ambush a guest with their entire biography, tissues mandatory. Invented the life-tribute ambush still used at reunions and award-show montages. Watch it now as live television that felt dangerous and sweet — genuine shock, occasional discomfort, and biography as a surprise party with cameras.
TV Flash files Season 1 of This Is Your Life (1952–1961) on NBC as the first listed season of 20 — 16 listed hours, 1955-07-29–1956-05-20 from “Eamonn Andrews” (S01E01) to “These Were Your Lives” (S01E16). Broadcast log — titles and dates, not a plot bible.
Desk essentials in this season
- S01E01 Eamonn Andrews
Eamonn Andrews: the life-tribute ambush opens on a host name, tissues mandatory, live television feeling dangerous and sweet.
- S01E11 Ida Cook
Ida Cook — early named life, the format already treating a civilian biography as prime-time theater with a surprise door.
- S01E01 Eamonn Andrews
- S01E02 Yvonne Bailey
- S01E03 Ted Ray
- S01E04 James Butterworth
- S01E05 Charles Burgess Fry
- S01E06 Johanna Harris
- S01E07 Donald Campbell
- S01E08 Joe Brannelly
- S01E09 Stanley Matthews
- S01E10 Henry Starling
- S01E11 Ida Cook
- S01E12 Lupino Lane
- S01E13 Hugh Oloff de Wet
- S01E14 Beth Wilde
- S01E15 Robert Stanford Tuck
- S01E16 These Were Your Lives
More from the 1950s.