Anything for Laughs

While the audience screamed with laughter, six simpering oldsters pranced onstage in ballet costume; a blindfolded man, expecting to kiss a pretty girl, kissed a cow instead; an unwary young woman sat--just for an instant--on an electrically charged chair.

For the past decade, such loutish antics have kept Truth or Consequences among the top-ranking radio shows. Last week, sponsored by Philip Morris, hearty, toupee-wearing M.C. Ralph Edwards moved his slapstick-and-bladder show onto television (Thurs. 10 p.m., CBS-TV). "This is just the genesis, the little seed," he boasted of his first TV performance. "I have the feeling that, within the first half-dozen shows, we'll get into the top five TV programs."

Based originally on the familiar parlor game, Truth or Consequences has made nonsense of the questions (sample: "What was the largest island in the world before Australia was discovered?" Answer: "Australia"), and concentrated on outlandish penalties. But Edwards shrewdly mixes the humiliation of contestants with what he calls the "good-gesture type of act" involving "a personal rehabilitation or something along that line." One projected good gesture: the televised reunion of a wounded Korean war veteran and his mother.

Of the hundreds of volunteer contestants who have been hit in the face with custard pies or suffered similar indignities on Truth or Consequences, only one made any active protest. After being pushed into a tankful of water, he managed to pull Edwards, dinner jacket and all, in after him. "He was just being playful," explains Edwards. And, what is really important: "It got a great laugh from the studio audience."

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