Word: groucho
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When he played master of ceremonies on a quiz show last season, Groucho Marx worked a radio wonder by winning the prized Peabody Award as the best comedian on the air. This week he worked another one. After Variety had reported that giveaways are giving way to "entertainment without the gimmicks," Groucho sold his radio giveaway, You Bet Your Life (Wed. 9 p.m. E.S.T., CBS), to a new sponsor (De Soto) for five years starting...
...Marxian formula is simple, scriptless, and enormously successful. Each couple of contestants (three for each half-hour show) is given $20 and a chance to bet on their answers to questions in a given field. Quizmaster Groucho perches on a stool by the microphone, and chats with them between questions. He encourages them to tell their life stories, and as they talk, he festoons the impromptu dialogue with strings of rapid-fire gags, or simply guides his victims into verbal traps and lets them writhe. "Women are the best ones on this program," says Marx, carefully flicking cigar ashes...
After the breakup of the stage & screen team of the Marx Brothers (The Coconuts, Animal Crackers, A Night at the Opera), Groucho was on & off radio for ten years before anyone found him particularly funny on the air. Then Producer John Guedel saw him ad lib for ten minutes on a network show when Bob Hope accidentally dropped his script. Shortly thereafter Guedel put Groucho into You Bet Your Life. He still has some qualms: "Having Groucho as emcee of a quiz show is like using a Cadillac to haul coal...
...Your Life (Wed. 9 p.m., CBS). Groucho Marx returns...
...first job in Wall Street ("I went right up the ladder: runner, board boy, bond salesman-and then I was fired"). A script he wrote for Mimic Eddie Garr gave him a start in radio. Then he began satirizing Tin Pan Alley songs at private parties and convulsed Connoisseurs Groucho Marx and Danny Kaye with such numbers as The Girl With the Three Blue Eyes and I Looked Under a Rock and Found...