You Bet Your Life
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You Bet Your Life was an American radio and television quiz show. The first and most famous version was hosted by Groucho Marx, of Marx Brothers fame, with the unflappable announcer and assistant George Fenneman. The show debuted on radio in 1947, then made the transition to the NBC television network in 1950. The television version was changed very little from the radio version. It was filmed before a studio audience, then slightly edited for television broadcast. In 1960 it was renamed The Groucho Show and ran a further year.
Groucho would be introduced to the music of "Hooray for Captain Spaulding", his signature song introduced in the 1930 film Animal Crackers. Much of the tension of the show revolved around whether any of the contestants, in pre-contest conversation with Groucho, would say the "secret word", a common word seemingly selected at random and revealed to the audience at the show's outset. If a contestant uttered the word, a mustachioed toy duck (wearing eyeglasses and with a cigar in its bill, resembling Groucho, although in one special episode, Groucho's brother, Harpo came down instead.) would descend from the ceiling to bring the contestant $50; Marx would sometimes slyly direct their conversation in such a way as to encourage the word to come up. The contestants were paired individuals of the opposite sex who were not married or involved in a relationship with each other; most frequently, both were married to other people. Sometimes celebrities would be paired with "ordinary" people, and it was not uncommon for the contestants to have some sort of newsworthiness about them. For example, one episode aired soon after the end of the Korean War featured Janet Wang, a Korean-American contestant who had been a prisoner of war.
In the contest itself, contestants would choose among available categories and then try to answer a series of questions dealing with the chosen category. One popular category involved attempting to name a United States state after being given a number of cities and towns within the state. Consolation questions were made easy, in hopes that no one would miss them, although some people did. The questions were in the style of "Who was buried in Grant's tomb?" "When did the War of 1812 start?" "How long do you cook a three-minute egg?" and "What color is an orange?"
Over the years, the format of the game was modified slightly, as were the prize amounts. By the early 1950s, the secret word prize had been increased to $100 and the grand prize for the winning couple was $1,000. By the late 1950s the prize had increased to $10,000. The famous "secret word duck" was also replaced from time to time with a wooden Indian figure.
One often-told, but probably apocryphal, story recounts the appearance of a woman contestant who mentioned she had many children (17 in some versions). Groucho asked, "Why so many children?" The woman said, "Well, I just love my husband." Groucho replied, "Lady, I love my cigar, but I take it out of my mouth once in a while." The remark was judged too risque to be aired at the time and was edited out before broadcast, but the audio of the audience reaction was used by NBC for many years whenever bring-down-the house laughter was called for in laugh tracks. The truth of this story is unknown; Groucho alternatively confirmed and denied it years later, and the original footage of the broadcast has not survived. George Fenneman has denied the incident took place. [link]
Early seasons were sponsored by Plymouth automobiles, with advertisements for their vehicles (most notably the DeSoto) incorporated into the opening credits and the show itself. Each show would end with Groucho sticking his head through a hole in the DeSoto logo and say "When you go into your DeSoto dealer tomorrow, tell them Groucho sent you."
Since most of the series was filmed, many episodes have survived and have been available in television syndication for years. A number of episodes have also been released to DVD.
Seven months after You Bet Your Life ended its 11-season run at NBC, Groucho had another game show in prime-time. It was titled Tell It to Groucho which aired on CBS during the winter and spring months of 1962.
There was a parody of this show on the Jack Benny Show, in which Jack pretends to be someone else to get on Groucho's show, and continually blabs in an effort to say the secret word. He gets it by accident when he says he can "tell a phony". However, he is unable to answer the final question, which ironically is about Jack Benny, simply because it asks his real age, which Jack would never give voluntarily. This episode, after its original screening, could only be watched at Groucho's home on film, and even then only if you were invited to see it. After Groucho's death the film eventually appeared in the Unknown Marx Brothers documentary on DVD.
Later incarnations of the show
In 1980, comedian Buddy Hackett hosted a similar show with the same title which failed to run a single full season.Richard Dawson hosted a pilot for a potential revival in 1988, but NBC declined to pick up the show.
Marx had suggested to Bill Cosby that he could do the show, when Cosby was still a struggling young comic. In 1992, years after Marx's death, Cosby took him up on it and taped a season of the program for the syndication market. The results were so unsatisfactory that most of the stations who initially bought it soon either stopped showing it entirely or moved it to a time slot in the middle of the night, and it was cancelled after one season.
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