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fact which is never mentioned on the show except in the credits at the end. It is filmed in Hollywood by a devot¬ ed, sport-shirted crew under the di¬ rection of a rather remarkable man named Herman W. Gockel. Gockel is a Lutheran pastor who was forced by a chronic sore throat to give up the pulpit some years ago. Assigned by the church to create a good religious format for television, he is today preaching to 20,000,000 people through This Is the Life. “It is not a religious show, actually,” Gockel explains. “A religious show plays pretty much to a captive audi¬ ence, people who watch it because it is of a religious nature. Our job is to reach the non-religious audience, peo¬ ple who wouldn’t tune in if they thought they were going to get noth¬ ing but religion.” Gockel’s solution, through This Is the Life, has been to tell a purely dramatic story for the first 10 or 15 minutes of the show. “The viewer will watch a dramatic plot unfold,” Gockel says, disarmingly. “We hook him with that, then we throw him the pitch.” The pitch, which is the show’s art¬ fully hidden commercial, is generally delivered by a member of the Fisher family, the show’s permanent cast. The Fishers are a typical Midwest family living in Middleburg, 100 miles from Chicago “in any direction you care to take.” Father and Mother Fish¬ er are played by Onslow Stevens and Nan Boardman. Their three children are played by Randy Stuart, Michael Hall and David Kasday, with Randy recently adding to the family by marrying one David Wainwright, played by Bob Clarke. Patriarch of the family is Grampa Fisher, played by Forrest Taylor, and it is he who generally winds up de¬ livering the pitch. “We set up a problem, a conflict,” Gockel explains, “which can only be resolved by the application of one Christian precept or another. The problem can involve the Fisher family directly or some neighbors or some¬ times complete strangers. But the Fishers are invariably in there, and it is Grampa who generally saves the day. Emily (Randy Stuart), too, is pretty good with a pitch. And then there’s Pastor Martin, played by Nel¬ son Leigh, who appears in perhaps 30 per cent of the films.” Filmed by Family Films, headed by Sam He rsh, This Is the Life currently is at work on its third series of 26 shows. The films are given without charge to any station that wants them. “Every station,” Gockel says, “has to give a certain amount of its time to shows of a public service nature. So we’ve just tried to be better than most public service film series, and apparently we’ve succeeded.” Station managers agree, for This Is the Life draws a phenomenal amount of mail, most of it asking for help and advice. The Lutheran Church Mis¬ souri Synod answers every letter, often referring the writer to a min¬ ister of his own church. “We’re not 23