Edwards, Ralph Livingstone

(b. 13 January 1913 in Merino, Colorado; d. 16 November 2005 in West Hollywood, California), humanitarian, pioneer broadcaster, and three-time Emmy Award winner who created, produced, and hosted over twenty radio and television shows, including Truth or Consequences, This Is Your Life, and The People’s Court.

Edwards was born in Merino, Colorado, where his parents, Henry Livingstone Edwards and Minnie May (Browns) Edwards, along with a brother, were homestead ranchers. His family moved to Oakland, California, when he was thirteen. While attending Oakland High School, he appeared in school plays. Encouraged by his mother to write, Edwards began to script skits, and during his junior year, in 1929, he wrote and prominently acted in one skit that was broadcast locally on radio. An Oakland station manager heard the show and hired the sixteen-year-old to write fifteen-minute shows, at a dollar per script, and to be a part-time announcer and actor.

In 1931, after graduating from high school, Edwards enrolled in the University of California, Berkeley, where he majored first in English but later switched to a major in drama. Also, for four years he was a cheerleader (then called a yell leader). While attending college, he also enrolled in the Merritt Business School, and he paid tuition by working for two local radio stations as a producer, writer, and announcer. After graduating with a BA in 1935, Edwards moved to New York City, where for two years he was a part-time announcer at several radio stations. He became a staff announcer for Columbia Broadcasting System radio in 1938, and by 1939 he was announcing and acting in forty-five shows per week, including The Fred Allen Show, Life Can Be Beautiful, Lucky Strike Hit Parade, and Major Bowes’s Amateur Hour. On 19 August 1939 Edwards married Barbara Jean Sheldon, who died in 1993; they had three children.

In 1939 Edwards created Truth or Consequences for National Broadcasting Company radio, basing the show on a game he played as a boy. It became enormously successful, ranking as the number one audience-participation radio show from 1940 to 1943 and altogether running for thirty-nine years, until 1978, first on daytime radio and then on daytime television. On the show, contestants were asked a trivia question, and before they could possibly answer, “Beulah the Buzzer” sounded, signaling their obligation to perform a highly laughable and embarrassing stunt. Stunts sometimes took place outside the studio and sometimes lasted for days. In 1948, one stunt featured a contestant who gathered 500,000 signatures to give Hollywood its own postmark. On the show’s tenth anniversary, in 1950, Edwards proposed that a small town rename itself after the show. Hot Springs, New Mexico, indeed renamed itself Truth or Consequences, and Edwards visited the town annually thereafter. Also in 1950, the show won an Emmy Award. Often, emotional surprises awaited participants, some of whom were reunited with long-lost relatives. In 1956 Bob Barker succeeded Edwards as the show’s host.

This Is Your Life, which began on radio in 1948, repackaged the surprise reunion stunt of Truth or Consequences into a prime-time, half-hour biographical television program. Each show began with Edwards ambushing a surprised celebrity, who was then brought to the nearby studio. There, the guest would listen to Edwards narrating his or her life from a scrapbook. An off-camera voice would describe an event in the person’s life, and Edwards would then identify the voice as that of a long-ago friend, relative, teacher, or associate, who would then run onstage for a tear-filled and joyful reunion. On the other hand, some guests, like the broadcast journalist Lowell Thomas, would be dismayed at the proceedings. While Hollywood’s biggest stars and other notable personalities often appeared, also profiled were ordinary Americans, whom Edwards called “the heroic unknowns,” who had made significant impacts on local communities. Broadcast on NBC television from 1952 through 1961, then in syndication from 1971 to 1973 and from 1983 to 1984, the show was the first to feature a live, multiple-camera format, which became the standard for game shows and also sitcoms. The show won two Emmy Awards, in 1953 and 1954. Also, a version was aired by the British Broadcasting Corporation from 1955 to 2003. This Is Your Life became a hallmark of popular culture, as imitated at countless family reunions and anniversary celebrations.

Edwards himself pioneered what is known in broadcasting as “cause marketing,” in which programs benefit charitable causes. During World War II Truth or Consequences raised over half a billion dollars in war bonds, and Edwards received the Eisenhower Medal for that effort. He created the Jimmy Fund, assisting children with cancer, in 1948; he raised millions of dollars for the March of Dimes; and his “Walking Man” contest on Truth or Consequence, featuring Jack Benny, launched the American Heart Association as a national organization. A 1958 This Is Your Life show, honoring Rear Admiral Samuel G. Fuqua and broadcasting from Honolulu, Hawaii, appealed to viewers to provide seed money for the USS Arizona Memorial, in Pearl Harbor.

Ralph Edwards Productions created more than twenty quiz and reality programs after 1950. Among these shows was Name That Tune (1954–1961), in which players would competitively bid to provide the title of a popular tune in the fewest possible notes; on occasion, a one-note bid would be guessed correctly, to great audience applause. Another show was The Cross-Wits (1975–1980), in which contestants completed a crossword within a time limit.

The People’s Court, running in syndication since 1981, is a reality show operating as a form of binding arbitration. Members of Edwards’s staff research filings in small claims courts in southern California and ask both sides to appear on the show’s courtroom set. From 1981 to 1993, before and after each “case,” Doug Llewelyn interviewed participants, while the retired judge Joseph Wapner presided, with Rusty Burrell acting as bailiff. To conclude each show, Wapner would say, “Don’t take the law into your hands. You take ’em to court!” Those words became a cultish 1980s catchphrase. The show’s thousandth episode aired in 2003, and the program spawned several imitations, including Judge Judy and Judge Hatchett.

Edwards continued producing shows through 2003. He died at the age of ninety-two from heart failure. He is buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. As a compassionate humanitarian, genial show host, and highly successful producer, Edwards was a broadcasting-business legend.

Obituaries are in the Los Angeles Times and New York Times (both 17 Nov. 2005).

Patrick S. Smith