To Tell the Truth is an American television panel show. Four celebrity panelists are presented with three contestants, all claiming to be the subject of a story read aloud by the host. The panel then asks questions of the three contestants in an attempt to determine which is the subject.
The show was created by Bob Stewart and originally produced by Mark Goodson–Bill Todman Productions. It first aired on CBS from 1956 to 1968 with Bud Collyer as host. From 1969 to 1978, the show was revived in syndication, with Garry Moore as the first host. Former panelist and frequent guest host Joe Garagiola took over in 1977, following Moore's health issues. Garagiola hosted until the show's cancellation.
Robin Ward hosted a 1980–81 syndicated revival of the program, and a 1990–91 revival on NBC featured a succession of different hosts: Gordon Elliott, Lynn Swann and Alex Trebek. The show was revived again in syndication from 2000 to 2002 with John O'Hurley as host. The most recent version aired on ABC from 2016 to 2022 with Anthony Anderson as host.
Gameplay Three contestants are presented, all claiming to be the primary subject or "central character" of a human-interest story. Two are impostors, and one is the true subject of the story. The announcer typically introduces all three contestants by asking them, "What is your name, please?", after which all three in turn give the name of the story's subject. After the host and four celebrity guests are introduced, the host reads aloud an affidavit about the subject. The panelists are each given a period of time to ask questions of the three contestants. Questions are directed to the challengers by number (numbers one, two, and three from the viewer's left to right), with the central character sworn to give truthful answers, and the impostors permitted to lie and pretend to be the central character.
After questioning is complete, each member of the panel votes on which of the challengers he or she believes to be the central character, typically by holding up a card with the number of the contestant whom they believe is the true subject. Any panelist who knows one of the challengers or has another unfair advantage is required to disqualify themselves from both questioning and voting.
Once the votes are counted, the host asks, "Will the real [person's name] please stand up?" The central character then stands, often after some brief playful feinting and false starts among all three challengers. Occasionally, the central character may be asked to do something else related to his or her story. The two impostors then reveal their real names and their actual occupations. Prize money is awarded and divided among all three of the challengers, based on the number of incorrect votes received by the impostors.
History 1956–1968, CBS To Tell the Truth was to have premiered on Tuesday, December 18, 1956, on CBS in primetime as Nothing But The Truth, but the program title was changed to To Tell the Truth the day before the show's debut. The 1956 pilot episode, entitled "Nothing But The Truth," was hosted by Mike Wallace. The panelists were Dick Van Dyke, John Cameron Swayze, Polly Bergen and Hildy Parks and can be viewed on YouTube. Both the planned and eventual titles derive from the standard English court oath "to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."
The series was recorded in New York City, initially at CBS Studio 62 (the Biltmore Theater), then CBS Studio 59 (the Mansfield Theatre), then CBS Studio 52 (the future Studio 54), and eventually the Ed Sullivan Theater late in its run. The move to CBS Studio 52 in June 1960 resulted in the positions of the panel and challengers switched from being on the host's left and right respectively, to right and left respectively. The existence of an audience ticket for a taping indicates that the show originated in color at the CBS Broadcast Center in late 1966.
Bud Collyer was the show's host (Mike Wallace hosted the pilot); recurring panelists by the 1960s included Tom Poston, Peggy Cass, Orson Bean, and Kitty Carlisle. (Cass and Carlisle stayed on as panelists for most subsequent editions.) Earlier regular panelists included Johnny Carson, Polly Bergen, Jayne Meadows, Don Ameche, Hy Gardner, Dick Van Dyke, Faye Emerson, Hildy Parks, John Cameron Swayze, Betty White, and Ralph Bellamy. Bern Bennett, Collyer's announcer on Beat the Clock, was the inaugural announcer of To Tell the Truth in the 1950s. Upon Bennett's transfer to CBS's Los Angeles studios, Johnny Olson, who in time became the best-known of all Goodson–Todman Productions announcers, joined the show in 1960 and remained with the show until 1972.
On the pilot and the primetime run, three games were played per episode. For the pilot, a wrong vote from each of the four-member panel and one wrong vote derived from the majority vote of the audience (a total of five votes) paid $300, the total prize money divided among the three challengers. The studio audience also voted, with the majority vote counting equally with that of one by a celebrity panelist; thus, the maximum of five incorrect votes resulted in $1,500 divided among the challengers. If there was a tie for the highest vote from the audience, and for each panelist who was disqualified, a wrong vote was counted. There was no consolation prize for no wrong votes.
For the majority of the primetime run there was no audience vote, thus each wrong vote from the four-member panel paid $250, divided among the three challengers, for a possible $1,000 for a complete stump of four wrong answers. A consolation prize of $150 was awarded and divided among the three challengers if there were no wrong votes. For each panelist who was disqualified, a wrong vote was counted. A design element in the set for this series was a platform situated directly above and behind the emcee's desk. The contestants stood on this platform during their introduction, allowing the camera to pan directly down to the host. They then traveled down a curved staircase to the main stage level to play the game. Some subsequent versions would use a variation of the original set design; others did not and had all the action at floor level.
On Monday, June 18, 1962, a daytime five-day-per-week edition was introduced, running at 3 p.m. Eastern Time. The daytime show, also hosted by Collyer, featured a separate panel for its first three years, with actress Phyllis Newman as the only regular. The evening panel took over the afternoon show in 1965; in early 1968, Bert Convy replaced Poston in the first chair.
The daytime show was reduced to two games to accommodate a five-minute CBS news bulletin towards the half-hour mark. On the CBS daytime run, each wrong vote paid the three challengers $100 for a possible total of $400 divided among the three challengers for a "complete stump" of all four wrong votes. If all the votes were correct, the challengers split a consolation prize of $75. During the show's final year and a half, the studio audience also voted, with the majority vote counting equally with that of one of the celebrity panelists, thus a maximum of $500 divided among the challengers could be awarded for the maximum five incorrect votes. If there was a tie for the highest vote from the audience, and for each panelist who was disqualified, a wrong vote was counted. The audience vote was utilized on the nighttime show for its final six episodes (increasing the maximum possible payout to $1,250).
One CBS daytime episode featuring Dorothy Kilgallen, best known as a regular panelist on What's My Line?, was broadcast in the Eastern, Central, and Mountain time zones on Monday, November 8, 1965, as news of her sudden death was circulated by wire services. The breaking news story prompted CBS newscaster Douglas Edwards to announce her death immediately after the episode ended. She had videotaped the program six days earlier, according to the New York Herald Tribune. The newspaper added that Kilgallen and Arlene Francis both pretended to be Joan Crawford while sitting next to the real Crawford in a celebrity segment that the daytime series featured regularly starting in 1965. The episode was one of the large majority of To Tell the Truth daytime episodes that were destroyed because of the common practice of wiping videotape for reuse, prior to the development of less expensive technology. This was a different half-hour telecast from the 1962 primetime episode on which Kilgallen can be seen and heard as one of the panelists. Game Show Network repeated that episode decades later.
The primetime show ended on May 22, 1967, with the daytime show ending on September 6, 1968. The latter was replaced by the expansions of Search for Tomorrow and The Guiding Light, the last two remaining 15-minute programs on daytime television, to 30 minutes apiece, in a scheduling shuffle with The Edge of Night, The Secret Storm, and Art Linkletter's House Party. Like the primetime version, the daytime show's popularity underwent a steady decline toward the end of its run, as it faced two daytime dramas on ABC and NBC, General Hospital and Another World, respectively.
Metropole Orchestra leader Dolf van der Linden composed the show's first theme, "Peter Pan", used from 1956 to 1961. From 1961 to 1967, the show switched to a Bob Cobert-penned theme with a beat similar to "Peter Pan", and then to a Score Productions tune during its final CBS daytime season.
Most episodes of the original nighttime run of the series were preserved on black-and-white kinescope, along with a few color videotape episodes."The G-T Big 4: To Tell the Truth (CBS Nighttime)" Retrieved 3 July 2007 Only a handful of shows remain from the CBS daytime series' first three years because of the then-common practice of wiping videotapes and reusing them due to their high cost and limited storage space. Many daytime episodes (including some in color) from 1966 to 1968 exist, including the color finale.
Reruns of the black-and-white kinescopes have been shown on Buzzr and Game Show Network.
1969–1978, syndication To Tell the Truth returned only a year later, in autumn of 1969, in first-run syndication. During the early years of its run, the syndicated Truth became a highly-rated component of stations' early-evening schedules after the Federal Communications Commission imposed the Prime Time Access Rule in 1971,"Prime Time Access Rule" Retrieved 24 September 2007 opening up at least a half hour (a full hour, usually, on Eastern Time Zone stations) to fill with non-network fare between either the local or network evening newscast and the start of their networks' primetime schedules for the evening. Other stations found success running the program in place of a daytime network game or soap opera, or in the afternoon fringe time period between the end of network daytime programming at 4:30/3:30 Central and the evening newscasts.
Like the network editions that preceded it, the syndicated To Tell the Truth taped its episodes in New York for its entire run. Initially occupying the same studio space at the Ed Sullivan Theater that it had for the last few years of the network series, the show would eventually move operations to NBC's studios at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in April 1971.
Each wrong vote in this version was worth $50 to the challengers; complete stumps of the entire panel won the challengers a total of $500. There were two games per episode, and there was often a live demonstration or video clip to illustrate the central character's story after many of the games.
The show was first released to local stations on September 8, 1969. A total of 1,715 episodes of this version were produced, with the series ending on September 7, 1978. Some markets that added the series after its initial 1969 release opted to carry the show for another season or two after 1978 in order to catch up on the episodes that had not aired in their viewing area.