In the program, the host surprised guests and then took them through a retrospective of their lives in front of an audience, including appearances by colleagues, friends, and family.

"[1] Edwards received such positive public feedback from the "capsule narrative" of the soldier he gave on Truth or Consequences that he developed This Is Your Life as a new radio show.

"[2] The host, consulting his "red book", narrated while presenting the subject with family members, friends, and others who had affected his or her life.

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.

The first of these ways is Disneyfication, the tendency to view Hiroshima as a dramatic spectacle, an exercise in special effects: the ticking clock, the rolling kettledrums, and the image of the mushroom cloud produce an emotional frisson, and little more than that.

[7] In February 1953, Lillian Roth, a "topflight torch singer of the Prohibition era" was the subject of the show, "cheerfully admit[ting] that she had been a hopeless drunk for 16 years before being rescued by Alcoholics Anonymous.

"[1][4] 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.

The request stated, "We believe that showing of such a program would contribute materially toward the objectives of troop information, since it would create appreciation of the career of an outstanding military leader and further better understanding of certain highlights in the recent history of the Army.

[12] By October 1960, Time magazine was calling This Is Your Life "the most sickeningly sentimental show on the air"; it cited a May 1960 episode on "Queens housewife and mother" Elizabeth Hahn as evidence that the show had "run through every faded actress still able to cry on cue" and had instead "turned to ordinary people as subjects for its weekly, treacly 'true-to-life' biographies.

During the late 1980s, Edwards hosted a few single prime time network airings of This Is Your Life, most memorably an episode featuring Betty White and Dick Van Dyke.

[14][15] She later said that she had previously been approached about being a guest on the show and had declined, and that the main reason she refused to participate was that she didn't look good crying.