Although often remembered as the quipping leader of the team of brothers who starred in anarchic film comedies of the 1930s and 1940s, Groucho Marx reached a far larger audience through his solo television career. As the comic quizmaster of the long- running You Bet Your Life, Marx became an icon of 1950s television, maintaining a weekly presence in the Nielsen top ten for most of the decade.

The familiar Groucho persona served as a comedic anchor for the popular quiz-show format when the 60-year-old Marx made the transition to television in 1950. Groucho replaced his trademark greasepaint mustache with a real one, but his attributes were otherwise unchanged. The show simply let Groucho be Groucho. He unleashed his freewheeling verbal wit in repartee with contestants, scattered good-natured insults at his willing participants, and lived up to his billing as “TV’s King Leer” by greeting female guests with his characteristic raised eyebrows and waggling cigar. Groucho’s personality and gift for gab drove the program, with the quiz playing only a minor role. So immediate was his success in the medium that Groucho received an Emmy as Outstanding Television Personality of 1950 and was on the cover of Time a year later.

Groucho’s move to TV was not surprising, but the magnitude of his success was. Like many of early television’s “vaudeo” stars, he was a show business veteran with roots in vaudeville and an established presence on national radio. However, his radio career had been erratic. He lacked a successful show of his own until program packager John Guedel brought You Bet Your Life to ABC Radio in 1947. Guedel modeled the show on his other popular series, People Are Funny and House Party, which featured host Art Linkletter interacting with audiences. The format showcased Groucho’s talents well. He gained a large listenership and moved to the more powerful Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) after two seasons. Like other radio hits, You Bet Your Life moved into television.

A pilot was made at CBS with Groucho simply filmed performing one of his radio episodes. A bidding war for Groucho’s services ensued (the star later wrote that he chose the National Broadcasting Company [NBC] over CBS because CBS’s William Paley displeased him by trying to appeal to their Jewish solidarity). You Bet Your Life remained a staple of NBC’s Thursday night TV lineup for 11 seasons and played on the network’s radio stations each Wednesday until 1957. Television episodes were different editions of performances aired on radio the previous evening.

The show’s idiosyncratic production methods had as much to do with the nature of Groucho’s performance style as they did with the logistics of working in two media simultaneously. Both the radio and the television version of The Groucho Show (as it was retitled in its final season) were somewhat pioneering in that they were recorded and edited for later broadcast. Visually, the TV edition was quite static, using a single set: Groucho sitting on a stool chatting with contestants. A multi-camera system used two cameras to film the interviews from each of four angles, including a slave camera on Groucho. The look was simple, but the setup allowed the producers to edit and sharpen Groucho’s performances. He could venture into risqué banter, knowing that anything too blue for broadcast could be cut. Dull bits of his unrehearsed, hour-long interviews were deleted, leaving only the comic highlights for the 30-minute telecasts.

Putting the program on film (and paying a star’s salary) gave You Bet Your Life a higher production cost than other game shows. The investment was returned, however, by both high ratings and the ability to repeat episodes. During the 13-week summer hiatus, NBC aired The Best of Groucho, helping to innovate the programming convention of the rerun. When production ceased in 1961, The Best of telefilms also went straight into daily syndication for several years.

Throughout its run, You Bet Your Life’s formula remained unchanged. Announcer and straight man George Fenneman began, “Here he is: the one, the only . . . ,” prompting the studio audience to shout “Groucho!” The quizmaster previewed the week’s “secret woid,” and a wooden duck (in Groucho guise) descended with $100 whenever the word was spoken. Male and female contestants were paired up to talk with Groucho, who often played matchmaker. The show recruited entertaining, oddball contestants as well as celebrities. Many performed vaudeville-style numbers, making You Bet Your Life as much a variety show as a talk or quiz program. After each interview, Groucho posed trivia questions. Winners received modest amounts of money, while losers received a consolation prize for answering a variation of Groucho’s famous query, “Who’s buried in Grant’s Tomb?”

The routine thrived because of Groucho’s rapport with guests. He was a living encyclopedia of showbiz patter, gags, and lyrics and possessed a genuine gift for witty ad libs. Yet his material was more scripted than it appeared. A staff of writers provided teleprompted jokes. Working off these, Groucho maintained a palpable spontaneity, never meeting with the screened contestants before the show.

While You Bet Your Life was Groucho’s greatest contribution to television, he was a popular TV raconteur until the latter years of his life. After a short-lived series revival on CBS (Tell It to Groucho) and appearances on British TV in the early 1960s, he hosted variety programs, did cameos, and sat in on panel shows. However, he found his most comfortable niche as a talk show personality with an intellectual edge. His acerbic manner fit well with fringe late-night programming, such as Les Crane’s controversial talk show (on its 1964 premiere Groucho served as a metacritic to political dialogue among William F. Buckley, John Lindsay, and Max Lerner). Of more lasting importance, Groucho served as an interim host for The Tonight Show when Jack Paar stepped down, and he introduced Johnny Carson when he debuted as host. Groucho also developed a famous friendship with Tonight Show writers Dick Cavett and Woody Allen, thereby influencing a new generation of TV and film comedians.

In the 1970s, Groucho’s celebrity was revived by a surprisingly successful resyndication of You Bet Your Life (though later imitations of it by Buddy Hackett and Bill Cosby flopped). Books, films, and records by and about Groucho also sold well. His popularity extended to both those nostalgic for a past era and those who made his antiauthority comedy style part of the younger counterculture.

This contradiction was appropriate for the performer who was simultaneously an insightful intellectual critic and a pop icon. Groucho is attributed with a memorable put-down of television: “I find television very educational. The minute somebody turns it on, I go into the library and read a good book.” Yet, in true contrarian fashion, when promoting his own show’s premiere, he added a seldom-quoted rejoinder : “Now that I’m a part of television, or ‘TV’ as we say out here on the Coast, I don’t mean a word of it.”