As we all know, Johnny Carson hosted the daytime game show, Who Do You Trust (usually spelled without the question mark) on ABC before he took over The Tonight Show on NBC late night. A lot of folks don't know though that Who Do You Trust was originally called Do You Trust Your Wife…with similar punctuation. It started out as a prime time game show hosted by Edgar Bergen and his wooden pals. That ran from 1956 through 1957…and the premise was basically that a husband and wife would come on and the host would do one of those long, light-hearted interviews that hosts used to do on game shows. Groucho Marx was, of course, the master of that and there were many attempts to replicate that success with others. Then the show would progress to the game part where the host would ask questions for money and the husband contestant would have to decide if he thought his spouse could answer the question. The "gold" on the show would be when they'd fight a little, especially when he'd take the question for himself, get it wrong and then the wife would say, "I knew that one."
The Bergen version was shot in Hollywood and ran on CBS until March of '57. When it was cancelled, ABC picked it up as a daytime show that would be produced out of New York. Bergen declined to either relocate or do a Monday-Friday series so they hired Carson. His version debuted on ABC in the late afternoon the following September and began to evolve as Johnny made it his own. The interview portions became more important…and they'd even have contestants come on and demonstrate skills or what they did for a living so that Johnny could join in. A hula hoop champion would teach Johnny how to use a hula hoop or something like that. It worked very well but the producers began to have trouble finding married couples who gave Johnny interesting things to do. That's when they changed the name of the program and began having on "couples" that were a team of any kind — partners, brothers, mother and daughter, etc.
Another important change occurred in October of '58 when announcer Bill Nimmo (who you'll see in the episode below) left for another gig. The network suggested Carson try a female sidekick and auditions were done. The auditions left Carson unsure how to relate to a lady in that role so he asked for another man. A quick talent search came up with Ed McMahon and that combo worked out so well that when Carson left in September of '62 to go host The Tonight Show, he took Ed with him. He also dragged along some other personnel from the game show including its line producer, Art Stark. Comedian Woody Woodbury (and the returning Bill Nimmo) replaced Carson and McMahon but the program only lasted another 15 months.
This episode has Nimmo and married couples and it appears to be from January of 1958. The first contestant is a fencing master and Johnny gets a lesson. If you stick with it 'til the end — and I couldn't blame you if you didn't — you'll hear an announcement that Johnny is guest hosting "The Jack Paar Show" (i.e., The Tonight Show) that week. I guess he did all right with it…
