Groucho Marx in You Bet Your Life

Julius Henry "Groucho" Marx needs no introduction. So we'll dispense with one, unlike most biographies that say no introduction is needed - and then spend ten pages introducing their subject.

Originally famous as the wisecracking, mustachioed, and cigar smoking Marx Brother in hit films like Duck Soup, Animal Crackers, and A Day at the Races, Groucho really became a household word when he was asked to host the radio program You Bet Your Life. That was in 1947 and three years later, the show was adapted to the then infant medium of television. So once a week the whole family got not only to hear Groucho's wiseacre barbs but see them delivered with all the famous Groucho mannerisms. It was the perfect fit of comedy blended with the new television genre, the quiz show. You Bet Your Life was a hit and lasted for eleven years (or fourteen if you count the radio program).

The format of the show was simple. Two guests, often a man and a woman, would be invited by announcer George Fenneman to "Come out and meet - Groucho Marx". The contestants started out with a total of $20 and would select a quiz category: hit tunes, American Presidents, animals, or what have you. Then they would bet a certain amount which could be up to their current total. Groucho would ask the question, and the couple would come up with a single answer between them. By the end of the show, the pair who had won the most money would have a chance to try for the grand prize. The latter involved a pretty tough question, and most contestants didn't get it.

Today the prize money seems miniscule - $20, $50, $100, and a "Grand Prize" of $1000 - and even by the standards of the other quiz programs of the day the money wasn't much. But in 1950, the median family income was less than $3500 a year, and so there was never a lack of volunteers. If the guests didn't end up with $25 or more (and some of them went broke), Groucho would ask a final question like, "Who was buried in Grant's tomb?" or "What kind of fruit can you find on a cherry tree?". Over the course of the show's run, the rules change somewhat, and the winnings had climbed to where the Grand Prize could be as much as $10,000.

Of course, there was always the duck who dropped down with the secret word. It was a common ordinary word, something you would see everyday. If a contestant said the word while talking to Groucho, the duck would drop down with $100. Once Groucho remarked that because he realized their show paid less than other quiz programs, they were upping the amount to - $101.

But prior to the actual money questions, Groucho would ask the contestants about their jobs, their families, or if there was anything unusual in their backgrounds. Since the guests were often selected for their unique interests, Groucho had plenty of opportunities to interject his wisecracks. This preliminary banter was really the whole point of the show, and Groucho's timing, mannerisms, and comments can have even a modern audience rolling on the floor.

In a day when much television was live (because it was cheaper), You Bet Your Life was actually filmed for broadcast at a later date. The producers (and Groucho) were all too aware that the conversation between host and guests offered too many opportunities for intentional (from Groucho) or unintentional (from the guests) risqué repartée. Although the quips and slips were mild by today's standards, in the 1950's some of them would have caused a sponsor to drop the show like a hot potato, and many exchanges did indeed end up on the cutting room floor.

Ironically the most famous of Groucho's deleted bon mots never occurred. This is the famous banter between Groucho and a woman with ten (or eleven or twelve or even seventeen) children (because it never happened there are various versions of the story). Typically the telling runs something like:

"Eleven children?" Groucho exclaimed. "Why do you have so many kids?"

"I love my husband," the woman replied.

"I love my cigar, too," said Groucho, "but I take it out once in a while."

The story became firmly fixed in the You Bet Your Life lore even appearing in a number of books and in "Groucho: A Life in Revue", a play written by Groucho' son, Arthur, and co-author Robert Fisher. This in turn might have been inspired by a Kermit Schaeffer "blooper" album which were popular in the 1950's and 60's.

However, no one associated with the show could remember the exchange, no clip of it could ever be found, and Groucho himself flat out said it never happened. Furthermore, the supposed blooper in the album is, as were many on the Kermit Schaeffer albums, clearly a recreation and in this case the actor playing Groucho is doing a pretty poor imitation. But as with most legends, the lack of documentary proof never fazes the true believers, and some Groucho fans can get quite huffy if the account is questioned.

But as in many legends, there is a grain of truth lurking in the wings. Groucho certainly would drop the occasional double entendre when speaking with contestants with large families, considerably flustering both husband and wife and convulsing the audience. In one case a couple did have eleven children, and at Groucho's request, the parents brought everyone on stage. The father got the biggest laugh of the show when he was seen visibly making a tally of everyone present. The couple answered Groucho's quiz questions surrounded by their brood while Groucho himself held the baby.

The genesis of the famous "cigar" exchange itself was most likely a combination of two or more separate events. In one a young lady said she came from a family of seventeen chidren.

"How does your father feel about this rather startling turn of events?" Groucho asked.

"Oh, my daddy loves children," the lady replied.

"Well," Groucho said, "I like pancakes, but I haven't got closets full of them."

Another time Groucho, speaking with a lady who had ten children, asked her husband's occupation. His job, it turned out, was as an oxygen salesman who presumably catered to hospitals and businesses requiring specialty gases.

"How is the oxygen business?" Groucho asked.

"Well," the wife said, "It keeps him pretty busy. He's on call 24 hours a day".

"He's on call 24 hours, and you have ten children?"

"He does come home between calls," she said.

Groucho turned to the audience.

"Can you imagine what it would be like if he worked at home?"

This exchange was cut from the show and was even used in Your Bet Your Life "stag" reels that circulated about college campuses. As we said, times were milder then. But if such a comment was cut from the show then you can bet a comment of even greater risqueréepartée would have been scissored out as well.

The show and Groucho became such an institution that it was satirized by Groucho himself. One of the funniest skits on the Jack Benny Show was when Groucho appeared as Jack's guest in 1955. Naturally they spoofed You Bet Your Life. Jack, decked out in a false mustache, a huge wavy pompadour, and calling himself Ronald Forsythe ("It was Rodney during rehearsal," Groucho remarked), walked on stage with actress Irene Tedrow. Naturally the skit played on the ongoing gags about Jack's stinginess and his constantly understating his age to be 39. As usual, Groucho told them if they said the secret word the duck would come down with $100. The word, Groucho reminded them, was a common everyday word, something you find around the house.

"Where do you live - uh - Rod?" Groucho queried.

"Right now I'm living in Glendale," Jack said occasionally looking up to where the duck would drop down. "I have a little home there with six rooms and windows and window shades and venetian blinds and tables and chairs and spoons and saucers and dishes and rugs and knives and forks ..." Finally Jack got the word (it was "telephone") by accident and a bit of subterfuge.

The final part of the skit was when Groucho asked the bonus question. For years, he said, the comedian Jack Benny had been lying about his age. For $3000, Groucho asked with a typical Groucho smile and a raising of his eyebrows, what was Jack Benny's real age. After a long pause (to give time for the laughter to die down), Jack uttered a clipped "Thirty-nine." Which was not, of course, the correct answer.

There were frequent special guests on You Bet Your Life which included boxer Joe Louis, movie "Tarzan" Johnny Weissmuller (who did his famous "Tarzan yell"), his replacement Gordon Scott (who didn't), humorous writer Richard Armour (who also got the secret word pay off using a bit of skullduggery), colorful Louisiana state senator Dudley Le Blanc, western actor Gary Cooper's 84 year old mother (who easily held her own with Groucho), PGA Champion Jim Ferrier, Congressional Medal of Honor Winner Joseph Ramirez (who said he was more nervous on the show than when he was fighting on Pork Chop Hill), Olympic Decathalon champion (and later US Senator) Bob Mathias and his wife Melba (Groucho introduced Bob as the male "Babe Didrikson"), and Ruth Elder, the first woman who attempted to fly the Atlantic.

Then there were the - quote - "ordinary guests" - unquote - like the man who could chew up a board of wood, the former strongman would blow into and explode a full size car innertube (and demonstrated his ability while answering the quiz questions), the woodcarver who could carve a functional set of pliers from a single block of wood in five minutes, an African American family whose young children could (and did) sing in four part harmony (Groucho invited the family back to sing on his Christmas show), and a woman who ran one of the first self-service laundromats in the United States and told of her misadventure while swimming au naturelle in the Pacific ocean. There were also some ordinary people who later rose to fame such the Mexican American actor, comedian, and entertainer Pedro Gonzalez-Gonzalez (then working as a courier for a San Antonio radio station) and a surprisingly quiet-spoken and gracious Phillis Diller, who had just begun appearing in night clubs.

The first shows were aired over sixty years ago, and so some of the more elderly guests were born during what is now the remote past. One of Groucho's contestants was a hale and hearty gentleman of 91 years who had taken his first job as a newsboy shortly after the end of the Civil War and later went on to become an engineer at General Electric. Another guest was a veteran of the Spanish American War who appeared alongside a young African American soldier inducted for the Korean Conflict.

The aspect of having minority contestants on the show and even appearing alongside white guests rarely elicits comment today because it so unexceptional. But racial mixing on television was virtually unheard of even into the mid-1960's, and in 1950 it was something that would have made most sponsors shudder. But there can be no doubt that the appearance of such an ethnically diverse and international list of contestants was at the insistence of Groucho himself who had (as had his brothers) encountered anti-Jewish sentiment when he was growing up. True to his principles, though, Groucho would dish out his zingers to everyone, without regard to race, creed, or national origin.

But there is one aspect of Groucho's Q and A that can raise hackles today. Groucho never ceased playing the part of the skirt-chasing wise guy, and so on the show his comments and quips would often drift into the realm of what we now call the "politically incorrect". Virtually every attractive young lady got more than a few appreciative Groucho glances and accolades, and one time Groucho had a (male) salesman of feminine hoisery measure the calf size of the lady contestant.

Today this stuff probably wouldn't fly, but we are talking about Groucho. Still, on other quiz shows of the time - and even into the mid-1960's - the appearance of an attractive female guest would often elicit wolf-whistles from the audience. Watch a few episodes of the otherwise excellent original "What's My Line" - probably the most intellectual of all the quiz programs then and now - and you'll see what we mean.

You Bet Your Life ended in 1961 as The Groucho Show. Within a year, Groucho attempted to launch a similar program but the effort lasted only a season. Before mid-decade Groucho had retired from network television as a regular host.

Beginning in the late sixties, Groucho became a familiar figure on the talk show circuit, but his conversation began to lose much of its trademarked Grouchoisms. By the 1970's, an interviewer would find himself talking with a somewhat distant and serious old gentleman who would lament the "dirty" humor of the new comedians. Growing increasingly frail and some say failing mentally, Groucho continued to appear on stage and in television specials, some of his family and friends felt, encouraged to do so by an overly opportunistic lady friend who was acting as his de facto manager. Nevertheless in his appearance at Carnegie Hall in 1972 there was a lot of the old Groucho still there, and Groucho was sincerely happy to accept a special Oscar at the Academy Awards ceremonies in 1974. His final appearance on television was in 1976.

Of course we can't end a story about You Bet Your Life without a little more about George Fenneman, Groucho's unflappable announcer, foil, and straight man. George began as a local radio announcer in San Francisco and was a correspondent during World War II. With his clear and resonant baritone and perfect diction, George was a natural as an announcer for radio and television. He found constant work for commercials and shows, including the first (and later) Dragnet episodes starring Jack Webb. George was only 30 when he began working for Groucho, and he stayed with the show until the end.

George and Groucho remained friends after the show closed, and on a visit near the end, George was helping the then extremely frail comedian back to his bed. Groucho could barely walk, and George literally had to hold him upright in a bear hug.

"Fenneman," Groucho managed to whisper. "You always were a lousy dancer."

Groucho died in 1977 at age 86.

References

What started the researching of Groucho and You Bet Your Life was hearing of the famous "cigar" incident. As always, CooperToons did not care what the truth was, but he did want to learn what the truth was.

Despite the fact that the story had already been convincingly refuted by a number of researchers, CooperToons found some of the faithful would still go into spittle flinging diatribes that, by heaven, the incident really did happen. When queried as to why it was true if it had been denied by Groucho, no one on the show remembered it, and no one could find either a clip or recording of it, the holders of the theory would resort to conspiratorial machinations that it was such a horrible thing to say that Groucho had to deny it lest he be reviled and pilloried by the then Puritanical American Good Housekeeping Seal of Moral Approval. So the clips all destroyed. So they say.

After diligent research CooperToons has, as have others, concluded the incident is clearly an urban legend, and those who still hold it true might be well advised from searching for real estate in the swamps of Florida. The only credible source of the legend - for which no reasonable person can doubt - was the conversations about girl from the family with seventeen children and the husband who was on call 24 hours.

As happens with urban legends, such real events became distorted and transformed from being inoffensive comments to the more salacious leer about the cigar. The cigar story went into oral (no joke intended) circulation, and was picked up by a number of people. Because some of them did have connections with Groucho, the renderings gave them an unwarranted credibility. For instance one book vouching for the story was written by a ghost writer but as if it was Groucho's own telling. At that time, though, Groucho was in such poor health he could not have provided significant first hand material. Furthermore, the account completely contradicted Groucho's flat denial in an interview a few years earlier and when Groucho was perfectly lucid. But when the play Groucho: A Life in Revue was performed, the legend was fully solidified as authentic.

That a play can be accepted as authority equal to primary source material illustrates an increasing tendency in modern education. That is, entertainment, including stage productions, but particularly movies and television shows which are "based on" the life of a famous celebrity or historical event, are assumed to relate actual history. Of course, not only are screenwriters not held to any standards of accuracy, they are expected to embellish and fabricate. At least if it makes a good story. And yet people still accept the fantasy as fact.

The truth is docudramas, biopics, or whatever they are called are not held to any factual standards whatsoever any more than the "dime novels" of the nineteenth century were. Things have even deteriorated that even on - quote - "educational" - unquote - programming, the ubiquitous talking expert heads have related Internet legends as fact.

UPDATE 9/29/2009: It was inevitable no doubt, but CooperToons has already gotten the first spittle flinging diatribe from a reader claiming the cigar story could very well be true and should be given proper credibility. So perhaps a specific itemization of the items is (sigh) once more warranted.

1. First and foremost, Groucho denied the story in 1972 during an interview with Roger Ebert in Esquire magazine. In the 1970's, the remark would have been humorous and not at all shocking. Why would Groucho, who was never a prude and at the time and was old but still mentally lucid, deny the story? There's really just one reason. It never happened.

2. The actual circumstances of the story changes depending on who tells it. The number of kids ranges from 10 to 17 and in one version Groucho was talking to the father, not the mother. Such lack of consistency and fact in flux are sure sign of an urban legend.

3. The only book which has Groucho telling the story himself was in fact ghost written after Groucho's undisputed denial. Again we must repeat at that time the comedian was so old and frail that most of the material had to have been gathered from other sources. But because the story was written in the first person it had no references but nevertheless acquired the authority of primary source material.

4. No one associated with the show actually remembers it happening. The one producer who was quoted that he later thought the story was true had just stated that earlier that he had always assumed it was not true. Clearly he had no real memory of the event.

Put together each incident is best explained as the telling of an urban legend. Using Bayesian methods, CooperToons has arrived at a probability for each event (in order) being an urban legend as 0.9, 0.6, 0.6, and 0.7. The totality of the "cigar comment" being an actual event on these four points alone is a measly 0.5 %. This is, the statisticians say, a virtual impossibility.

So how to avoid such stupid errors of belief (for those who want to avoid such errors)? Well there are available those funny non-electronic devices with white flappy things in the middle called books. If you read the right ones and employ proper reasoning skills (something rarely taught in American schools), you can easily sort the wheat facts from the fantasy chaff. And of course, for learning about Groucho and You Bet Your Life, you can go to the source itself, that is, the episodes You Bet Your Life which are still available.

Some good places to start:

Groucho: The Life and Times of Julius Henry Marx, Stefan Kanfer, Alfred Knopf (2000). Probably the definitive biography now.

You Bet Your Life: The Best Episodes with Groucho Marx and George Fenneman, DVD Collection (Shout Factory). Selected episodes. On the special features section you can see the deleted part of the conversation with the lady with the ten kids. Sadly these discs were not remastered. But Groucho is funny.

You Bet Your Life: The Lost Episodes with Groucho Marx and George Fenneman, DVD Collection (Shout Factory). Some more You Bet Your Life shows.

And you can also buy and read

Groucho: A Life in Revue, Arthur Marx and Robert Fisher (Samuel French). The play based on Groucho's life which has the "cigar" episode of You Bet Your Life.

But be sure to remember this is a play, not verbatim, academic, and documented biography.

"The Secret Word", Snopes: Rumor Has It, http://www.snopes.com/radiotv/tv/grouchocigar.asp. This is the most complete refutation of the "cigar" quote and an excellent example of how to research and refute an urban legend. Very clear illustration of how supposedly first hand information is actually invention by third parties.