RIP. Sadly, in my worldview, he would fall into the category of “God, I thought he had been dead for years.”
Sir Rhosis
Have you ever seen the Buster Keaton or Frances Farmer episodes? Agonizing.
The worst was a Rodney Dangerfield episode from one of the 80s revivals. It was clear that Rodney was NOT happy to see a couple of these people from his early days again (he’s not a good enough actor to think he was faking the grimace when one of them came out and hugged him).
I believe it was Pat Sajak with a cameo by Edwards who tried to do a This is Your Life to Angie Dickinson a few years back, and for the first time in the long long history of the show the intended star absolutely refused to participate. Since they had a deadline they went with Kathy Lee Gifford, who of course ate it up, but they were bringing out childhood friends and relatives that Kathy admitted “I saw them just last week”.
In Milledgeville, Georgia, there’s a family that’s still p.o.d over a This is Your Life episode, though not at Ralph Edwards Productions. It was for Oliver Hardy (who grew up in M’ville) and the show flew in one of his best friends, an old lady by that time, to reunite with him and it went really well. However, her employer refused to give her time off (she did something low paid and unskilled- a clerk in a hat store, as memory serves) so, wanting to see “Babe” and be on TV and get a trip to L.A. and all, she went anyway and returned to find she was fired. The hat shop went out of business soon after because people boycotted it for sacking the old lady.
I saw the Buster Keaton one. He didn’t seem to particularly want to be there, and they actually mentioned how broke he was for many years and how his share of The Buster Keaton Story paid for his home, which I think embarassed him a tad.
I saw a brief moment of the one with Oliver Hardy (maybe Laurel was with him, too). Mainly what I remember was he didn’t seem to be all there.