I wouldn’t trust any man as far as you can throw a piano.

The line is a comic hyperbole built on the older idiom “I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him.” By substituting a piano—an object essentially impossible to throw—it intensifies the meaning to “not at all,” while also signaling a brassy, vaudeville-style skepticism associated with Merman’s public persona. Read as a quip about romantic or professional wariness, it suggests hard-earned distrust and self-protective realism, delivered with punchy theatrical timing. Its humor depends on exaggeration and the incongruity of imagining anyone throwing a piano, turning cynicism into a memorable one-liner.