Uploaded November 2015 | Updated September 2026, 2 days ago

---

From March 27, 1947, here's the fabled radio segment with Groucho and Bob Hope exchanging ad libs-- many of which were totally unacceptable for radio-- that inspired producer John Guedel to create a quiz show for Groucho.

This is a funny bit-- and clearly has a lot of ad libs. But the way it's been described over the years-- by Guedel, by Arthur Marx, and practically anyone else-- is typically far removed from the reality. One legend goes, the script fell out of Hope's hands, and Groucho took the cue to toss away his script, leading to a 10 minute totally off script, wild ad lib session. Another version claims that Groucho was fuming offstage because he was called onto the program far later than expected, which led to him being surly and complaining, "Desert? Hell, I've been been waiting in the dressing room for an hour."

Both stories have grains of truth, but it's undeniably clear from this clip that (a) They were still reading from a script, both of them, however many deviations. No one dropped a script. Nonsense. (b) This had nothing to do with Groucho being angry over being kept waiting offstage too long.

But it's still a funny, funny bit.
----------------------------------
Click here to subscribe to the YBYL channel, where you'll find well over a hundred complete episodes you can't find anywhere else, as well as some rare Burns and Allen material that doesn't really belong there:
youtube.com/channel/UCUIbTdEI7D1AMyLATIdKq5w?sub_confirmation=1

Facebook group for You Bet Your Life! If you've already been sucked into the Facebook vortex, you might as well check it out, right? facebook.com/groups/1643223392577688/?ref=bookmarks