Sermon on the Air

Ralph Edwards, who once taught Sunday school, thinks of his TV shows as sermons, and regards his millions of viewers as a congregation. But he is quick to add: "Of course, our prime target is entertainment." Last week, on This Is Your Life (Wed. 10 p.m., NBC), his sermon was a real shocker.

The idea behind the program is to dramatize the life of a living person. As exhibit A, Edwards brought on Lillian Roth, 40, a topflight torch singer of the Prohibition era, who cheerfully admitted that she had been a hopeless drunk for 16 years before being rescued by Alcoholics Anonymous. Also on hand to underline the horrors of strong drink: a psychiatrist who had treated her (Announcer Edwards described Lillian as having suffered from "impending blindness, an inflamed sinus and a form of alcoholic insanity"); a brother-in-law who had paid her bills; such glamorous foul-weather friends as Lita Grey Chaplin and Ruby Keeler.

Distress & Tragedy. With the help of an echo chamber, 39-year-old Edwards gets an eerie, disembodied quality into his voice, but everything comes back to happy normality in time for the Hazel Bishop No-Smear Lipstick commercial. Last week Edwards addressed Lillian Roth as if he were a supernatural prosecutor: "Confusion, distress and tragedy walked by your side even as you rose to the top--and soon all glamour was stripped from you, as drink follows drink, and you sink into a stupor that was to last for 16 years. These are the years to come before us in just a moment . . ."

If anyone complains that his show is in doubtful taste, Edwards can retort by pointing to a long list of good works. On the air he has sold more than half a million dollars' worth of Government E bonds. He raised $1,639,000 for the American Heart Association and more than $3,000,000 for the March of Dimes. Of the Lillian Roth episode, he says: "The good it will do will far outweigh the thoughts that people might have against it. It's even good for kids to know that certain people can't handle liquor."

Talking It Out. Ralph Edwards got into broadcasting before he finished high school. By the time he graduated from the University of California, he was chief announcer at San Francisco's station KSFO. In 1938 he was announcing 45 shows a week for CBS. But because "I got so I was seeing boxtops in front of my eyes," he decided to do only one show a week--his own. He worked out the slapstick Truth or Consequences, which is still on the air (Thurs. 9 p.m., NBC Radio).

This Is Your Life grew out of a stunt performed on Truth or Consequences when the U.S. Army asked Edwards to "do something" for the paraplegic soldiers at Birmingham General Hospital. Edwards selected a particularly despondent young soldier and hit on the idea of presenting his life on the air, in order to integrate the wreckage of the present with his happier past and the promise of a hopeful future. Among the people brought before the mike were the boy's old track coach and the head of his draft board. Says Edwards: "It was just a matter of talking it out. Did we help him? Damn right!"

Two years later to the day, the rehabilitated soldier was wheeled into Edwards' studio by his new bride. Edwards still remembers it as one of the most emotional scenes of his highly emotional career: "I told him, 'Here's your year's rent, and here's your key. Come and get it.' And he got up and walked to the mike. It was the greatest thrill I ever had. The crowd stood up and cheered. I knew then & there that there must be a show in this sort of thing. There must be a show in it somewhere."

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