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Hilarious 1950s You Bet Your Life incident

D

dustintv

Saw a public domain episode of You Bet Your Life with Groucho Marx recently from the mid-late 50s and the subject was hilarious. Singer John Charles Thomas was denouncing Elvis for not being real music.  A young woman was arguing with him and he said her generation would soon forget all about Elvis. An older woman about Thomas' age denounced him for not being real music and said Elvis would be far more important than he ever was. Um, John Charles Thomas who?

I just find it amusing that Thomas was very smug and arrogant and couldn't have been more wrong, while a 60-something woman in the 1950s was a huge Elvis fan. Maybe the sight of his Elvis gave her the last vestiges of excitement in her life?

Marx seemed to stay out of the argument although it appeared he was inclined to agree with both the young woman and the old woman.
 
I really don't think Groucho was an Elvis fan...or a
fan of any rock 'n' roller, for that matter, although he
tried to push his daughter Melinda into a career as a
rock singer (and she pushed back, choosing private life
in northern California). Groucho's own musical tastes
ran heavily to Gilbert and Sullivan. But at least on the show you
saw (and I saw it back in the '70s) he was smart enough
to stay neutral.

Besides, who in 1955 and '56 could have guessed that
Elvis would become more than just a passing fad? If
Groucho's show had been on in 1964, this same conversation
could have been repeated using the Beatles instead of Elvis,
since (likewise) many saw them as a fad as well.

If you can find it, though, there is an episode of You Bet
Your Life with Frankie Avalon as a contestant.
 
bpatrick said:
Besides, who in 1955 and '56 could have guessed that Elvis would become more than just a passing fad? If Groucho's show had been on in 1964, this same conversation could have been repeated using the Beatles instead of Elvis, since (likewise) many saw them as a fad as well.
Click to expand...
...film director Richard Lester claims that he worked with Groucho Marx on a TV project of some sort circa '65 (a commercial?), and one of the first things Groucho did after finding out Lester had directed A Hard Day's Night was to voice his strong displeasure at The Beatles being compared to The Marx Brothers in most of the critiques he'd read of the film. From what Lester recalls, it wasn't the music so much that Groucho was angry at, as it was that each of the Marxes could be identified individually, while he couldn't tell George from Paul (at that time). There's also some KABC-TV/7 Los Angeles footage of various celebrities being led into a party for The Beatles during their SoCal stop on their 1965 tour. Groucho's among them, telling the reporter he's there to get drunk; Edward G. Robinson appeared to be looking forward to it; and Jack Benny looks clearly annoyed to have been there. Perhaps the most interesting reaction (not caught by the KABC-TV cameras) was that of Stan Freberg, until then a major badmouther of rock 'n roll (remember his "Old Payola Roll Blues"?). Stan and his daughter were so favourably impressed with the Liverpudlians that Stan changed his mind about rock 'n roll, and even guested on an episode of The Monkees the following year...
 
although he tried to push his daughter Melinda into a career as a
rock singer (and she pushed back, choosing private life in northern California).
Click to expand...

She was right to push back. I've seen a couple clips of her performing on "The Hollywood Palace" when Groucho was hosting, (1965, in the era of Gary Lewis, Nancy Sinatra, and Dino, Desi and Billy), and she was, maybe not horrible, but just OK at best, and you could tell her heart wasn't really in it.
 
Corky Marlowe said:
although he tried to push his daughter Melinda into a career as a
rock singer (and she pushed back, choosing private life in northern California).
Click to expand...

She was right to push back. I've seen a couple clips of her performing on "The Hollywood Palace" when Groucho was hosting, (1965, in the era of Gary Lewis, Nancy Sinatra, and Dino, Desi and Billy), and she was, maybe not horrible, but just OK at best, and you could tell her heart wasn't really in it.
Click to expand...
...her Wikipedia listing suggests that she's much more a folkie at heart, while the stuff she did on Hollywood Palace and Shindig was more along the lines of imitating Lesley Gore. Perhaps Groucho should have pushed her onto Hootenanny instead ;D ...
 
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