Beat The Clock

Beat the Clock was a Goodson-Todman Productions game show which ran on CBS from 1950 to 1958 and ABC from 1958 to 1961. The show was hosted by Bud Collyer.

Contestants were required to perform tasks (called "problems") within a certain time limit as counted down on a large 60-second clock. If they succeeded, they were said to have "beaten the clock"; otherwise "the clock beat them". The show had several sponsors over its run, with the most longstanding being the electronics company, Sylvania.

Contestants were chosen from the studio audience and were usually married couples, or occasionally engaged, dating, or other family relationship. Collyer would ask them general questions usually including where they were from and how long they'd been married. He would usually ask if they had children and if they did, their ages and genders. Sometimes the couple would bring some or all of their children with them on the show. Collyer would usually take some time out to talk to the children and ask them questions like what they wanted to be when they grew up, or if the kids were not at the show to have their parents wave to them at home. The husbands on the show usually wore a business suit. Collyer would often ask the husband to take off his coat for stunts to make it less cumbersome (there were a few hooks on the contestants' podium for this purpose, or Collyer would just hold the coat). Occasionally, if there was going to be a messy stunt, the husband would come out dressed in a plastic jumpsuit to keep his own clothes clean. Similarly, wives would sometimes play in their "street clothes", but sometimes the women would appear in a jumpsuit issued to them by the show due to the fact that their own clothing might be too cumbersome or perhaps fragile. The women's jumpsuits, unlike the men's, which were rather plain, were patterned to look like a pair of overalls with a collared blouse underneath. The women would also often be issued running shoes instead of their own high heels.
From: Wikipedia.org