Uploaded July 2015 | Updated September 2026, 5 hours ago
Well, this is it: the last episode of YBYL. There's no reference made to this being the final episode, primarily because no one at the time knew that it would be.
Groucho would continue to limp along in unsuccessful follow-up formats for the next few years, but the end of YBYL basically meant the end of Groucho's time as a major force in television. It was poor scheduling rather than genuine audience disinterest that caused the ratings to plumet prematurely in the last two years, which is a real shame: Groucho was as sharp as ever, the era of prime time game shows was still going strong, and this whole final season demonstrates that the program still had plenty of juice left in it.
So where are the rest of the episodes? There were over 400 episodes produced for television. Of these, around half are totally unaccounted for and quite possibly lost forever. The films we know to survive are the 16mm prints made for syndication. After many years of dedicated collecting I'm still missing a few *dozen* of these. This is an impossibly difficult series to track without a good log, which makes filling in missing episodes a major uphill battle. No one knows what episodes they have (not unless they have a copy of Mark Petty's log, "Tell 'em Groucho Sent You", and too few people have it.)
I've shared all the shows I've been able to find-- if anyone out there has episodes that I haven't posted yet and is willing to share them, please send me a message. This series has been all but totally inaccessible to the public for over 20 years, and deserves to be much better remembered and more widely seen than it is!
COUPLE #1: Jackie Niles, restaurant hostess / Mal Merritt, father of 11 children who runs a rooming house, and does a nutty dance number that would have made Rowena proud
COUPLE #2: Molly Magruder / Jerry Sherman, USC student
-----------------------------------
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
New 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
----------------------------------
Episode identification and basic description based on "Tell 'em Groucho Sent You", © 1997 by Mark Petty. Used by permission.
Well, this is it: the last episode of YBYL. There's no reference made to this being the final episode, primarily because no one at the time knew that it would be.
Groucho would continue to limp along in unsuccessful follow-up formats for the next few years, but the end of YBYL basically meant the end of Groucho's time as a major force in television. It was poor scheduling rather than genuine audience disinterest that caused the ratings to plumet prematurely in the last two years, which is a real shame: Groucho was as sharp as ever, the era of prime time game shows was still going strong, and this whole final season demonstrates that the program still had plenty of juice left in it.
So where are the rest of the episodes? There were over 400 episodes produced for television. Of these, around half are totally unaccounted for and quite possibly lost forever. The films we know to survive are the 16mm prints made for syndication. After many years of dedicated collecting I'm still missing a few *dozen* of these. This is an impossibly difficult series to track without a good log, which makes filling in missing episodes a major uphill battle. No one knows what episodes they have (not unless they have a copy of Mark Petty's log, "Tell 'em Groucho Sent You", and too few people have it.)
I've shared all the shows I've been able to find-- if anyone out there has episodes that I haven't posted yet and is willing to share them, please send me a message. This series has been all but totally inaccessible to the public for over 20 years, and deserves to be much better remembered and more widely seen than it is!
COUPLE #1: Jackie Niles, restaurant hostess / Mal Merritt, father of 11 children who runs a rooming house, and does a nutty dance number that would have made Rowena proud
COUPLE #2: Molly Magruder / Jerry Sherman, USC student
-----------------------------------
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
New 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
----------------------------------
Episode identification and basic description based on "Tell 'em Groucho Sent You", © 1997 by Mark Petty. Used by permission.
