You Bet Your Life: Ep. 50-11

You Bet Your Life: Ep. 50-11

Originally Broadcast: Thursday, December 14, 1950 at 8 PM ET on NBC

Plot: A greeting card writer and a gadget seller, a housewife and a hosiery designer and two high school students try for the cash prize.

Analysis: Well, besides the introduction of the word duck, this is a fun one to watch just to see how fast the contestants derail the show. The gadget seller can’t keep a straight face to save his life and I would think the television censors nearly had a fit with the hosiery designer, especially when Groucho invites him to measure the housewife’s legs and the camera keeps cutting back and forth between Groucho and the woman’s legs. The high school kids are fun to watch as well, especially with the interplay with Grouch and with each other.

Bottom Line: You can see the show slowly coming together and the main reason to tune in, Groucho going back and forth with the players, is striking a great rhythm. Funny and great fun to test your own knowledge of trivia. Unfortunately, the original commercials are not included with this episode, but the episode itself does just fine by itself.

The episode is included with 17 other episodes on Groucho Marx – You Bet Your Life: The Best Episodes (http://www.amazon.com/You-Bet-Your-Life-Episodes/dp/B0002AHW3G/ref=sr_1_7?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1285792619&sr=1-7). It’s a little hard to find since Shout! Factory recently stopped production, but can be found at Amazon Sellers and eBay.com without too much difficulty and for reasonable prices.

Next time, one of the first (if not the first) Christmas television specials.