Ultra Rare Photo & Video…In More Than One Way
Ultra Rare Photo & Video…In More Than One Way
It’s not often that we (1) find a color shot from television’s black and white days, or (2) get a great look out into CBS Studio 33 from the control room, but what we have here goes even deeper.
At first glance, you may think this is ‘You Bet Your Life’ with Groucho Marx, but it’s not. This is ‘Tell It To Groucho’ which only aired for five months in 1962. At the link is one of only a few surviving clip of the show and this is the pilot episode.
https://youtu.be/sdME_oCXcug
This was his last regular series, and when it ended, he went directly to New York as the guest host of the ‘Tonight’ show in the last weeks of the gap between Jack Paar and Johnny Carson. If fact, Groucho introduced Carson on his first night as host, but only the audio of that intro survives.
‘You Bet Your Life’ was actually one of the first television series to be filmed before a live audience…eight months before ‘I Love Lucy’ began doing the same thing. ‘YBYL’ started October 5, 1950 and was filmed in NBC’s Studio D at the old Radio City West location. Eight cameras were used with four shooting and four being reloaded as the 1000 foot magazines could only shoot ten minutes at a time. They would break for commercials and switch the cameras on the dollies in just a couple of minutes.
‘YBYL’ ended it’s run on NBC in September of 1961, but began syndication immediately. With only five months off, ‘Tell It To Groucho’ debuted on CBS on May 31, 1962. Enjoy and share!
There is a hard to find book “Love Groucho” by his once-troubled daughter. He sent her dozens of candid typewritten letters during the YBLY era, revealing that the show secretly had writers, and that he didn’t think he was all that funny.
There is a gently risque outtakes reel on one of the YBYL DVDs. One of the contestants makes a clearly “censor-able” comment and keeps going. Finally Groucho looks into camera and says “You know what this is? This is a waste of film.”
That photo looks very very familiar, is this photo from an early 1960s National Geographic magazine? I have some old 60s NG mags and recall seeing this pic in one of them.
This is a rare shot of Groucho Marx preparing to introduce Johnny Carson on his first night as host of ‘Tonight’ in NBC Studio 6B.