You Bet Your Life – The Lost Episodes starring Groucho Marx

(Classic TV Boxed Set)

 

Picture: C+     Sound: C+     Extras: B     Episodes: B

 

 

After their Vaudeville days, The Marx Bros. became legends with a string of classic films at Paramount and the original Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, but their luck ran out when M-G-M’s Irving Thalberg passed away suddenly at a young age.  No matter what they did, they could never quite get the act back together.

 

As Network Radio moved on, Groucho suddenly found himself with a huge hit game show on his hands unexpectedly, then The Groucho Marx Show – You Bet Your Life went on Television and actually duplicated its commercial success there.  This was unheard of and NBC had reason to celebrate.  This new 3-DVD boxed set, Groucho Marx - You Bet Your Life: The Lost Episodes offers some shows not seen in 50 years, though it seems parts of some of them are familiar from somewhere.  Nevertheless, they are collected here for the first time and it is a surprisingly good set.

 

It is also one of the only game shows not tainted by the infamous game show scandal at NBC where all the shows had been rigged.  This is the show where the bird comes down from the ceiling holding the secret word.  There are 18 shows here that run nearly 9 hours, but the series actually ran 423 episodes, plus 105 radio-exclusive shows, which means Groucho did this 528 times!

 

The total TV run goes from October 5, 1950, to June 29, 1961, and is the first mega-hit of the Game Show genre.  The radio show began in 1947.  More impressive, though, is the fact that Groucho remained witty and clever throughout all of them.  The producers were very choosy about who they put up on stage with the comic legend, and long before today’s hack TV producers were choosing people on pathetic reality shows so these people would hate, fight, and even kill each other, these producers were cleverly making choices that made for the greatest of comic impact with the questions at hand and Groucho’s wit.

 

The full screen images might have slight variances in the black and white gray scale, black level and clarity, but all the shows were shot on film and hold up exceptionally well for their time and especially for both TV and game shows.  You can see the grain, and the Library of Congress and UCLA film and TV archives have done an exceptional job of preserving the shows.  In an era of TV known for its live and kinescoped product, too often lost, Groucho got the film treatment and we now have these shows over half a century later and counting.  Not unlike the three-camera I Love Lucy set up, the set up for this show had even more cameras to make sure there was plenty of excess footage to edit together to make sure great moments with the guests and Groucho would never be missed.  This is better coverage than most TV shows ever got, even up to today!  Oddly, the elaborate video camera set-ups for Paramount’s syndicated Solid Gold are one of the only TV shows that come to mind.

 

The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono is very clean and clear for its time, though shows its age.  I cannot think of many TV series from the period that sound this good, because there are not many monophonic feature films that sound this good from that same period either.  It seems like optical mono is the storage source, especially from the few sections of film where there is minor trouble.  It would be safe to say that You Bet Your Life was way ahead of its time technically in both respects.  The early shows also have the plus of having the great Jerry Fielding as musical director.  Fielding went on to do many TV (Kolchak: The Night Stalker, The Bionic Woman) and feature film (see my review for the limited edition CD soundtrack of Demon Seed with Soylent Green elsewhere on this site) projects for which he was an exceptional composer/conductor.  In so many of the early name-the-song moments of the show, it is Fielding doing the music.

 

The three DVDs also are surprising in their extras.  All three have Stag Reels (not naked women showing up on the set, but material that could never make it past the censors at the time), outtakes that can be seen within the show or separately, and commercials that are split into two ways they can be viewed.  There is limited promotion that you can watch when you see the episodes, but longer commercials can be seen only through the menus by selecting them as if you would only watch a single show.  In most of the cases, these are DeSoto ads, commercials for the now-defunct division of Chrysler (i.e., Daimler-Chrysler) that went out of style after the series wound up.  However, Lever Brothers was another big sponsor later and the products seen here include Pepsodent toothpaste, Lifebuoy soap, White Rain shampoo, Wisk cleaner and Geritol.  There are also two that are no longer in production: Handy Andy cleaner and “Creamy” Prom permanent wave kits for your hair.  The products are also plastered on the sets, even if this is done optically in camera.

 

Other extras include a booklet available with the box the DVDs come in, a 17-minutes-long behind-the-scenes hosted by Groucho and the show’s staff, the 1947 radio audition for the show, Groucho actually driving DeSoto’s in ads, great animation done for these ads, a Groucho/Bob Hope radio appearance, the audio of a 78-rpm vinyl record (9:04) issued as a DeSoto promo, and the Prom perm girl substituting for the secret word bird.  The guest stars include TV legend Ernie Kovacs, TV legend Art Linkletter, boxer Archie Moore, unforgettable guest Pedro Gonzalez-Gonzalez, Tarzan #11 Gordon Scott (the first one in color and scope), and unknown guests that become a riot.

 

This is an archival-quality collection and Shout! Intends to issue a second box.  If it is this good and has this many surprises, I can’t wait.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo