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
