I have become a big Groucho fan recently he was way ahead of his time what a cheeky host not sure he would get away with his comments these days and Philip what a story must have rich parents to support his life style and the girl with the nice thighs as Groucho put it what a beauty and the guy from Liverpool he was brilliant Groucho was stumped by his wit brilliant video
@@grouchomarx-youbetyourlife7476 Yeah, I didn’t know about this one either! And I’ve watched all of those game show pilots on the 2 You Bet Your Life DVD sets that I have. I really liked the murder mystery one, “The Plot Thickens!”
Was going through some old TV Times (A radio and TV listings magazine in the UK). Obviously looking around my birth date and found one of my heroes had actually done a TV show, in the UK the day before I was born.. It's fantastic to see it.
Unbelievable. I wish they had continued this in the UK with Groucho as the host. Also, I wonder what came of the young woman from West Africa. She was a natural.
Never knew about this UK show. It would have been better if the questions had been arranged from easy to hard like they were in his previous show You Bet Your Life.
You know, I rather thought John Lennon and the younger Groucho (when he used to wear oversized spectacles and faux mustache in his classic comedies) resembled each other.
@@adkforever6997 John Lennon (allegedly) told Mickey Dolenz that The Monkees-who were created, so to speak, in the image of The Beatles-“were not really like the Beatles at all. They were more like the Marx Brothers.”
and rightly so! I bloody love Groucho but I'm really glad that it's no longer okay to talk to a woman the way he did to the first woman in this episode.
Glenna Forster-Jones appeared in various UK TV shows and movies from 1965 to 2001. "Casualty" .... Mrs. Kierney (2 episodes, 2001) - Mix and Match (2001) TV episode .... Mrs. Kierney - Allied Forces (2001) TV episode .... Mrs. Kierney The Punk (1993) .... Actress "Brideshead Revisited" .... Blackbird Singer (1 episode, 1981) - The Unseen Hook (1981) TV episode .... Blackbird Singer Flash Gordon (1980) (as Glenna Forster Jones) .... Sandmoon Girl "Shelley" .... Nurse (1 episode, 1980) - May the Best Man Win (1980) TV episode .... Nurse The Human Factor (1979) .... Black Prostitute Rosie Dixon - Night Nurse (1978) .... Staff Nurse Smythe "Odd Man Out" .... Cleo (5 episodes, 1977) - Clunk Click (1977) TV episode .... Cleo - Who's a Pretty Baby? (1977) TV episode .... Cleo - Sink or Swim (1977) TV episode .... Cleo - Money, Money, Money (1977) TV episode .... Cleo - A Chip Off the Old Block (1977) TV episode .... Cleo "Yes, Honestly" .... Sophia (1 episode, 1977) - Entertaining Mr. Roscoe (1977) TV episode .... Sophia The Spy's Wife (1972) .... Shirley Leo the Last (1970) .... Salambo Mardi Joanna (1968) .... Beryl Stimulantia (1967) .... The naked girl As Herself: Sympathy for the Devil (1968) .... Interviewer in wrecker's yard "Groucho" (1965) … Contestant
Sadly no more of this UK show seems to exist. The US had more sense and kept a lot of classic shows, which is why on RU-vid I can still watch: What’s My Line You Bet Your Life (Groucho Marx) I’ve Got a Secret The Names the Same To Tell the Truth all better than todays rubbish.
Keith Fordyce was better known as the co-host (with Cathy McGowan) of "Ready, Steady, Go!", a rock-and-roll music series than ran on Britain's ITV from 1963-66.
Such a contrast between the show in California and this attempt in the UK. The 'cool' girl and the studious man were so uptight compared with the sassy Americans. Despite Groucho's terrific gifts - this show was a non-starter.
Africa always had a way with fashion then going to one of the big industrialized countries gave them a huge amount of access and if you look at her accent and how articulate she was she would have been a super rage in the United States in the age of the internet.
Thank you VERY much for uploading this bodacious "blast from the past" ! Fun & fascinating footage ! I never even knew about this short lived British TV program until reading about it recently in a Marx Brothers biography at our local Barnes & Noble.
He was great in the UK, but even in 2019 August almost, American and European prizes on game shows Lotto (Lottery), are massively higher rewards than what the UK offers. At this time the US Show had $300 or then roughly £248 Maximum prize and UK was £25 how sad.
Prize money is a reflection on the size of the audience and the associated advertisement/sponsorship revenue. The UK has a much smaller population, meaning fewer potential customers, leading to lower advertisement revenues and resulting in less prize money. If the show was on the BBC, which is banned from taking advertising revenue in the UK, all prize money had to come from the show's budget.
What a confluence of people from eras and places. As a Yank, I had never heard of this. I watched You Bet Your Life frequently in the late 1970s when it was reprised. There's a lot of that show in this. The man from California acted reserved and played up absurd failures to make him seem quirky was classic of YBYL guests.
"A woman's strength is her weakness." No sexism like that one TV these days. And not even close, not even a million miles close, to Groucho's wit. It's amazing how poised a nineteen year old could be back then. I don't know anyone that poised at any age these days, much less a teenager. 26:11 "Come over here you little cutie.....(anyone catch the rest of that parting line?)
In Britain they knew Groucho from the Marx Brothers films, not the real one. He also didn't know all the British idioms, so he was glad to have 4:30 Philip Nicholson from Santa Monica there. But in general it didn't work there.
Graucho excelled at making the man extremely self-conscious of his eccentric interests. You can easily read his inner-core meltdown as Marx tears his world asunder. Brilliant.
For your information: that Nicholson feller might have turned rather wealthy in the end. Because from the 2nd half of the 1960s, more and more music composed before 1800, was increasingly performed on (copies of) old instruments. The UK was one of the first countries where this Early Music Revival became popular, and where Early Music ensembles were formed, playing on those old instruments. Nowadays Renaissance and baroque music is quite popular, and almost entirely played on those oldies. Building viola da gamba's or Krummhorns most certainly can make for a good living. And how about Nicholson's interest in Arabic language and Islam? It's almost as if he could foresee that those religions/cultures/languages would be getting more important in the upcoming decades. I would almost say that Nicholson is as revolutionary as the Marx Brothers were as Vaudeville artists and comic film makers... [wink]. Apart from that, it really takes some gutz to come from the USA, go overseas and study those things in the early 1960s in London, UK. So hats off to him! The cool thing too, imho: Nicholson remained absolutely himself, a bit shy and no showing off at all, just answering Groucho's questions seriously. The girl was a different character, but I'm convinced she did not act at all, she was also just herself. She returned Groucho's sharp questions and wit with evenly sharp and witty answers. I bet Groucho was thinking "damn, ur a tough cookie and I like it." At the end, when shaking hands, she says "it was very nice to meet you." Which is almost an answer that Marx himself could have given under such circumstances. No wonder he asked for a kiss. To the uploader @Groucho Marx - You Bet Your Life: thanks for this, I really enjoyed watching it. Thumbs up!
I'd bet Mr. Nicholson was playing up his quirky interests and his record of miscues. That was something many of Groucho's You Bet Your Life guests did, to make them seem colorful and endearing.
The $/£ exchange rate from 1949 to 1967 was fixed at $2.80/£1.00 (weird, eh?) So the £35 to £36 the respective couples won would have been worth about $100 at the time. £36 in 1965 is about £670 in 2017 money (adjusted for inflation). That is $890 if you converted it today. If you converted the £36 to $101 in 1965, it would be worth $780.01 today (after adjusting for US inflation over the same period)
Assertive, yet she smiled in agreement to Groucho's awful declaration that "a woman's weakness is her strength." That kind of aphorism puts women and men on the path to abusive relationships.
First guest with the beard looked like he wished he hadn’t come! I think he must have got his personality from studying wet lettuces. Not surprised when Groucho asked if he was asleep!
The host of the show here - in the role of Fenneman - is a minor DJ and quiz show host called Keith Fordyce. I say this for the completists among you! Replacing George was never going to work, now was it?
LandondeeL Indeed so. He was a much bigger star than I gave him credit for in my comment and you're quite right to have pointed that out. All good wishes..
This is the only episode of the Groucho BBC series that's ever surfaced. That doesn't mean there aren't possibly more out there, but none accessible to the public.
She's was high-fashion sixties Modern and "with it", as they use to say back there. Thing about her is that if a single guy wanted her to give him the time of day so he''d have a fighting chance to ask her out, he'd better have his goddamn shit together intellectually for decent informed and stimulating meaningful conversation, or else she'd kick him to the curb, like she would a broken vibrator with dead batteries to boot, in nothing flat! She's dosen't strike me as the naïve sort that would blindly go in for jerk-off bs dudes who had nothing else to offer other than just a hard dick in heat for some easy pussy, satisfying himself only for cheap thrills and to cut another notch on his belt. No. I don't think so.
It's so sad to see Groucho this way, he is so out of sorts and the whole thing seems so forced. He should-have retired after the American "You Bet Your Life" was cancelled.
How did Bing Crosby go bald? Shoving the midwife up the stairs. The only people who didn't understand that joke were me and Groucho. Can anyone explain it, please?
Don't know, because he was banging his wife so much she was always around delivering, or because he was banging the midwife? Not sure but probably one of the two.
The man from Liverpool moved his head to suggest that Bing Crosby was pushing the Midwife up the stairs with his head, and he went bald because he had to do it so often that it rubbed his hair off.
Thomas Yohn Ok. For a more thorough explanation that can be derived from the joke (a rather clever one, if a bit racy), this episode was televised in 1965, right? Way before then, Bing had been married twice and had a total of 7 kids in these marriages. So because of this, the midwife comes into play and every time called upon.......and well, you know the rest from previous comments.
The audience seemed to get that joke. Now I do that I understand how many children he had (something I, even as a U.S. person, was not aware of). Still, I think it is asking a lot to expect the audience to get the image of someone using their head to shove anyone upstairs. Is that some British expression?
The first female contestant seemed so disdainful of Groucho and his wit that I wonder why she even volunteered to go on his program. In fact, I'd go so far as to say she was a rude #%@&@!
@@Juscz : Actually, most English women---and men, for that matter---are quite self-effacing and humble, unlike this young lady, who, was combative and pompously defensive.
To what degree do people generally have a sense of humour, most need help, few would admit they do because they want to appear smart, and here is one individual with immense talent trying to pull that sense out of strangers, he should have been Knighted while in the UK, not die like his father before him, simply plain Mr Chamberlain. Mind you, Westminster Abbey has a sculpture image of plain Mr Chamberlain. The cigars in Europe are going out, we may not see them lit again in our lifetime. Karl Marx.
groucho opinion on this show " horrible " ....i think as you can see is americans have problems understanding english accent as seen with woman in beginning and elsewhere in show [ a lot of repeating of words going on in show ] ....groucho ain,t the problem , the british audience loved him .....it just does not run smoothly as in u.s because of the different way of speaking ....thats all
Is it me, or is Groucho unusually cruel, pestering the first young man by asking him condescending questions? Groucho always would probe his contestants with quite personal questions, but he always tempered potentially embarrassing ones with his wry charm. However, that wry charm was utterly lacking, This wasn't a repartee; it was an interrogation. This was quite the embarrassing experience for not only the young man but for the viewer. Quite unwatchable.
Groucho was from a generation where they believed it was wrong for people to withdraw into themselves and be morose, so when he encounters people like that he does prick them, but I think he does it to try to wake them up. There is no malice in it. And there was going to be no repartee as you say, because he was a block of wood - he wasn't volunteering anything. That guy was so withdrawn into his own world it had become a world of idiocy. He was in england to sell sundials (in a country with no sun) so he could go back to the US and make machine to fix instruments nobody plays anymore so he could take them to morocco, sell them, and then fund his plans to find a star plotter that no longer exists... and nobody needs or wants. It's like a deranged woody allen movie staring Biff Loman.
Total cringe material, with the exception of the beautiful young woman from Sierra Leone.(and Groucho) I wonder what became of Her, she is mentioned as working with the BBC during her intro? Groucho was wiped out by the Stock Market 1929 crash, I guess this show means he still needed to work, what pitiful prizes the contestants could win. Compare to early episodes of "The Price is Right" from the late '50' and 60's. People won airplanes, top of the line cars and sometimes even entire houses! Check it out on You Tube.
@@sakibear4478 Shiiid. And how many of them "lucky" blokes had to soon after relinquish them non-cash prizes, esp. the homes, to the Gov because they simply couldn't afford the goddamned taxes??? Yeah, mm hmm. You didn't think of that, "A" student.
SwarthySkinnedOne Your comment greatly improves my GPA from long ago. Not sure why I called Groucho's show what I did because I think it was way ahead of its time.Being on the same stage with Groucho was the biggest prize of all. Also I think you are correct about the Tax people being the biggest winners and thanks again for the ""A" promotion, now I feel like the cringe worthy part of this is my comment.
@@sakibear4478 Ain't no "think" to it! I KNOW I'm correct! Shid! I'd take a cash prize anytime anywhere (don't care how small the amount) on any game show over something like a new car, yacht, a two prop Beachcraft, some goddamned 6 bedroom 3.5 bath 2 story red brick Colonial with bay windows and wet bar, etc. I think back on all them dumb stupid mother fuckers in all the Price Is Right shows with Bob Barker I've seen growing up in the 1970s, who "won"r, hoping up and down, like oversized Mexican jumping beans, screaming and hollering in shit-happy glee gone wild, all from the announcer wailing out to these poor slobs "You won, A NEW CAR!!!", and few months later and most of them having to give it up, ending up with NOTHING, and feeling like more of a dope than they pathetically looked on the show, on account of Uncle Sam wanting his cut and they juuuust couldn't quite kick in, due to the 25% of the retailed cost of the vehicle demanded (to say NOTHING on something more extravagant like a new home). But with a cash prize, you see, you'll still come out with something after the Fed takes it's slice, even if you're left with only 50 bucks. That'll get you (well, at least me) a Burger King whopper, some onion rings, and a strawberry shake, and a box of Trojans, a pack of cigarettes, and a beer......and maybe enough left over for some bus fare with a transfer.