The Groucho Marx Show: American Television Quiz Show - Book / Chair / Clock Episodes
The interviews on the Groucho Show were sometimes so memorable that the contestants became celebrities. More Groucho:
Nature boy health advocate Robert Bootzin; hapless Mexican laborer Pedro Gonzalez-Gonzalez and his offhandedly comic remarks; a witty housewife named Phyllis Diller; author Ray Bradbury; virtuoso cellist Ennio Bolognini; blues singer and pianist Gladys Bentley; strongmen Jack LaLanne and Paul Anderson; actors John Barbour and Ronnie Schell all appeared as contestants while working on the fringes of the entertainment industry.
Harland Sanders, who talked about his finger-lickin' recipe for fried chicken which he parlayed into the Kentucky Fried Chicken chain of restaurants, once appeared as a contestant. A guest purporting to be a wealthy Arabian prince was really writer William Peter Blatty; Groucho saw through the disguise, stating You're no more a prince than I am because I have an Arabian horse and I know what they look like. Blatty won $10,000 and used the leave of absence the money afforded him to write The Exorcist. No one in the audience knew who contestant Daws Butler was until he began speaking in Huckleberry Hound's voice. He and his partner went on to win the top prize of $10,000. Cajun politician Dudley J. LeBlanc, a Louisiana state senator, demonstrated his winning style at giving campaign speeches in French. General Omar Bradley was teamed with an army private, and Marx goaded the private into telling Bradley everything that was wrong with the army. Professional wrestler Wild Red Berry admitted that the outcomes of matches were determined in advance, but that the injuries were real; he revealed a long list of injuries he had sustained.
Other celebrities, already famous, occasionally teamed with their relatives to win money for charity. Arthur Godfrey's mother Kathryn was a contestant and held her own with Marx. Edgar Bergen and his then 11-year-old daughter Candice teamed up with Marx and his daughter Melinda to win $1,000 for the Girl Scouts of the USA; Fenneman played quizmaster for this segment. Ernie Kovacs, Hoot Gibson, Ray Corrigan, John Charles Thomas, Max Shulman, Sammy Cahn, Joe Louis, Bob Mathias, Johnny Weissmuller, Sam Coslow, Harry Ruby, Liberace, Lord Buckley, Don Drysdale, Tor Johnson, and Frankie Avalon also appeared on the program, among others. Harpo Marx appeared in 1961 to promote his just-published autobiography, Harpo Speaks.
A much-recounted moment centers around a female contestant named Charlotte Story who had borne eleven children. Supposedly, when Marx asked why she had chosen to raise a large family, the contestant replied, I love my husband, to which Marx responded with, I love my cigar, but I take it out of my mouth once in a while! According to the anecdote, the remark was judged too risqué to be aired, and was edited out before broadcast, but the audio of the audience's explosive laughter was used by NBC for years whenever a wild reception was called for in laugh tracks.
No recorded outtake of the exchange exists, and both Marx and Fenneman denied the incident took place. Interviewed for Esquire in 1972, Marx flatly stated I never said that. However, Hector Arce, Marx's ghost writer for his 1976 autobiography The Secret Word Is Groucho recounted the claim as fact, but Arce compiled the 1976 book from many other sources in addition to Marx himself, who was ailing then.