You Bet Your Life

You Bet Your Life was a long-running quiz show hosted by Groucho Marx; George Fenneman served as Groucho's foil and sidekick for most of the run of the show. You Bet Your Life started on ABC in 1947, moved to CBS in 1949, then settled in for a ten-year run on NBC. For most of its run on NBC, it was broadcast simultaneiously on radio and television.

Over the years, the format of the quiz changed somewhat, but the general outline remained the same: Contestants were given a stake to wager on trivia questions. A correct answer won the "bet," leading to chance to try for a larger pot at the end of the show.

The quiz, however, was peripheral to the main feature of the program, which was Groucho Marx's offbeat sense of humor and talent for twisty wordplay. Groucho's conversations with the contestants were the essence of the show; the quiz was almost an afterthought. I read somewhere, I think in one of the collections of celebrity anecdotes by Bennett Cerf, that (I'm paraphrasing from memory here) Groucho did not find double-meanings in words; he shook them out and twisted them about, finding interpretations and connections that no one else could have imagined. These episodes give proof to that.

For more information, see Wikipedia.

Series description provided by Frank Bell.