Big, screaming headline above the fold, "Medical Marijuana Outlet Nabbed for Overselling in Sting Operation." OK, turning to our next story of gifts and their aftermath, here's a headline that caught my eye a while back. The leather-bound book starts in a sad place. She was America's top jazz baby.īut in 1953, when she came on This Is Your Life she was pretty much forgotten. And if you'll accept a change in mood now, our last example from the show is Lillian Roth, a vaudeville singing star who made it big on Broadway and then in movies like Animal Crackers with the Marx brothers.
Once in a while, getting your life story from This Is Your Life actually changed the story of your life. Seeing him tear up on stage at the El Capitan, she stopped hating American soldiers.Īnd sometimes the show did even more. And Koko Kondo says Captain Lewis changed her whole attitude about the old enemy. In fact, the two of them started writing each other after the show. He wasn't horrified by meeting Captain Lewis, the co-pilot of the Enola Gay. His daughter, Koko Kondo, who was on the telecast as a 10-year-old told me when English-speaking guests would visit, Tanimoto would play them the episode on his gift projector. Years later, Hanna and her husband, Walter, even published a joint autobiography, Hanna and Walter: A Love Story.Īnd as brutal as his episode seems today, Reverend Kiyoshi Tanimoto had fond memories of his appearance. On Passover, the Kohner family would play it on the gift projector they got on This Is Your Life. Hanna's daughter, Julie Kohner, told me that her mother spent the year after the show traveling around the country with a copy of her episode, raising money for United Jewish Appeal. And once you had it you could do whatever you wanted with it. This Is Your Life might have exploited your story, but it also told you your story, gave it to you. And Jack Gould at the New York Times accused the show and others like it of exploiting the raw and private emotions of the unfortunate. Time magazine called Ralph Edwards a "spiritual prosecutor" to his guests. He had been flown from New York to LA and brought to the El Capitan Theater for what he thought would be a straightforward interview about his work.Įven in its heyday, This Is Your Life raised hackles. In 1955, This Is Your Life surprised Kiyoshi Tanimoto, a Methodist minister from Japan who was in the States on a humanitarian mission. Of course, the show didn't tackle epic tragedy just once.
When Hanna's episode aired, This Is Your Life donated to United Jewish Appeal and set up a fund for viewers to donate to. And Edwards used the attention to help people. One in four Americans watched This Is Your Life every week. There were just no rules for how you do it. And though Hanna Kohner's episode was, well, blunt, it was the first national television show to have a Holocaust survivor tell her story. His model for the show was love thy neighbor. The overworked language, the wholesome, all-American spirit forced into a foreigner's tragedy, the game show tactics, a Holocaust survivor asked to guess who's next to come through the curtain.
There's something undeniably strange about all of this. It's the kind of Holocaust charm bracelet you pass down to your kids. To their credit, Marshall Jewelers played it safe, with a 14 karat map of Czechoslovakia, a mountain house, a Jeep, a sergeant's hat, a suitcase, a star of David, the Statue of Liberty, the flags of Luxembourg, where Hanna was married, and the United States. Stay with us.Ĭan't be easy to design a Holocaust charm bracelet. And what to do if a certain women in Minnesota offers you an orange. Next, a cautionary tale about how anything you give may be used against you, sometimes in a court of law. Four stories, four gifts.įirst, a story about a gift that was given out every week in front of 40 million people. I'm going to call them stories, not acts today- see how that feels. Today on This American Life we will be rummaging deep into the oh, you shouldn't have gift pile to see just how fraught it all is. But plenty of others say, I thought I was thinking of you, but really I was thinking of me. Some gifts, good gifts, say I thought of you. I'm picturing- and you can picture your own pile- misguided sweaters, noise makers for children, lingerie for coworkers, et cetera, anything creepy. I feel like I got handed one of those gifts that when you tear off the wrapping paper and see what's inside, you say, "oh, you shouldn't have." And part of you means it.īut what are you going to do? A lot of gifts are complicated, if not flat out bad. I found out about it not that long before you did. I want to tell you that there wasn't some long, behind the scenes build up to this guest hosting gig.