To Tell The Truth

From: Wikipedia.org
To Tell the Truth premiered on Tuesday, December 18, 1956, on CBS in prime time as Nothing But The Truth, but the program title was changed to To Tell The Truth the following week. A daytime five-day-per-week edition was introduced on Monday, June 18, 1962, running at 3 p.m. Eastern, and 2 p.m. Central.

Bud Collyer was the host of this version; major panelists by the 1960s included Tom Poston, Peggy Cass, Orson Bean, and Kitty Carlisle. Earlier regular panelists had included Johnny Carson, Polly Bergen, Jayne Meadows, Don Ameche, columnist Hy Gardner, Dick Van Dyke, John Cameron Swayze, and Ralph Bellamy. Betsy Palmer also appeared on several episodes in 1956.

The daytime show featured a separate panel its first three years with actress Phyllis Newman as the only regular. However, the evening panel took over the afternoon show in 1965, and in early 1968, Bert Convy replaced Poston in the first chair. In the prime time version, three panel games were played per show; the producers reduced it to two games on the daytime version. Each wrong vote from the panel paid the challengers $250 on the prime time run, for a possible $1,000. But if the entire panel correctly identified the central character and the impostors failed to fool any of the panelists, the challengers would split $150. A design element in the set of this series was that the challengers were introduced from an upper level stage directly above and behind the host's desk, and then traveled down a curved staircase to the main stage level.

On the CBS daytime run, each wrong vote paid the team $100. During the show's final year and a half, the studio audience also voted, with the majority vote counting equally with that of each of the celebrity panelists. If two or all three challengers tied for highest vote from the audience, that counted as a wrong vote and a guaranteed $100 for the contestants.

Bern Bennett, Collyer's announcer on Beat the Clock, was the lead voice of To Tell The Truth in the 1950s. Upon Bennett's transfer to CBS's Los Angeles studios, Johnny Olson joined the show in 1960 and remained through the end of its CBS runs. Other CBS staff announcers filled in as the show's voices during various times.

On May 25, 1967 and May 26, 1967, during one of Collyer's absences from the show, the guest host was producer Mark Goodson himself. Robert Q. Lewis, a comedian and game show host as well, also hosted in place of Collyer, often in the 1960s being the one asked to sub-host in the place of Bud when Bud was ill or on vacation. Lewis substituted during Collyer's extended illness from May through July of 1967, beginning with the episode following the two that Mark Goodson himself had hosted. One episode during this stretch, from the nighttime edition, is one of the few from the CBS run preserved on color videotape. This was as opposed to kinescope, which at the time was still being used to record television shows. Other game show hosts who took over for Collyer during the show included Bert Convy, Merv Griffin, and Orson Bean.

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