In June 2004 we brought you the
first news about
This Is Your Life, starring Ralph Edwards, coming to DVD. We gave you a long list of the proposed contents, and told you to expect it to sell in a direct-response infomercial campaign at first in the Fall '04 timeframe, with retail sales to follow in March 2005.
Well, we've reached the end of March, and obviously things didn't go exactly as planned by publisher Respond2 Entertainment. While we haven't heard from our friends at R2 yet, we can surmise that the delay was probably caused by the change of certain content. Perhaps the new content was preferred, or perhaps they couldn't clear the originally planned content, but a glance at the box and discs (what we can make out of the small lettering, anyway) shows that the list of episodes has changed slightly from the list TVShowsOnDVD relayed from R2 last Summer.
One change is the addition of Milton Berle to the lineup! He's featured prominently on the cover's bottom left, as you can see above. The rest of the front cover's line-up shown is Jayne Mansfield, Bobby Darin, Johnny Cash, Laurel & Hardy, and Shirley Jones. Squinting hard at the discs, it looks like Betty White may have made it to the line-up as well, a name that wasn't in the earlier list. Previously announced names that are clearly on the label art include Bette Davis, Lou Costello, Rear Admiral Samuel Fuqua (Pearl Harbor -
USS Arizona survivor), Hanna Bloch Kohner (WWII Holocaust survivor), Richard and Karen Carpenter, Boris Karloff, Vincent Price, track star Jesse Owens, and Olympic swimmer Duke Kahanamoku. Two more names are either hidden or difficult to make out, but that names 16 of the 18 episodes which will be presented on this compilation. But we seem to have one of the two missing names for you as well.
This morning
Variety is reporting that
This Is Your Life - The Ultimate Collection, Volume 1 will hit retail stores on
May 31st, after being sold for a time exclusively through a direct response campaign which starts on
April 18th. The industry newspaper mentions Dick Clark - a name from last Summer's list - as being among the tribute episodes included. The final name is probably one of the following: Don Rickles, George Burns, or Roy Rogers.
Pricing hasn't been mentioned just yet, but stay tuned and we'll include that in our release listing or with any further news update we're able to bring you.
Variety mentions that the deal between Respond2 Entertainment and Ralph Edwards Productions gives the opportunity to bring all 500 episodes of
This Is Your Life to DVD. Since this 3-disc set is labeled "Volume 1", it's clear we'll be seeing lots more of the series that spanned 41 years on the tube. Stay tuned!
