Customer Reviews

You Bet Your Life Vol.1 [VHS]

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Prior to seeing this DVD, I hadn't watched any episodes of You Bet Your Life, though I'd heard a few of the radio episodes. This was an older Groucho than I was used to seeing in the movies, but he is still as witty as ever. I thought these 4 episodes were quite funny, with a few absolutely classic one-liners both from Groucho and his guests (he is completely upstaged at one point by a 78-year-old woman who has some hilarious remarks about being a spinster and then makes Groucho put out his cigar.)

This DVD is well worth checking out if you've never seen the show before, especially if you're considering getting the larger, more expensive boxsets like I am. Just don't expect a very substantive gameshow component - it's mostly about banter between Groucho and the guests, with the actual quiz show being more of an afterthought.

The production quality is weak - the image hasn't been cleaned up, there are occasional audio glitches, minor editing jumps, etc. It appears to be a straight-to-DVD pressing of The Best of Groucho, since that title screen appears before the first episode. I also had navigation problems with the scene selection screen, though that may have been due to my remote. But it's very watchable and for a $5 DVD, it's hard to complain too much.

The DeSoto commercials (and direct pitches from Groucho and announcer George Fenneman) appear throughout and appear to have been left mostly unedited, though I think that's actually a plus. I think at least two of the episodes are from 1954, since they're hawking a 1954 DeSoto. He does refer at one point to having sat in his chair for 7 years, but he's probably counting back to 1947 when the radio show began. Also, in one of the episodes Groucho reads a telgram announcing that George Fenneman was voted best TV announcer by his fellow broadcasters, if that helps anyone identify the episodes.

If you're a Groucho fan, this is too good of a deal to pass up.

Word of warning; I recently bought this DVD and Volume 2 only to discover that all 4 episodes on Volume 1 and all 4 on Volume 2 are also available on the "Groucho Marx:You Bet Your Life" DVD from Platinum Disc Corp.(Which has 13 episodes).

I bought this for $3.00 and i must say it is awesome! I have never seen the show before but i knew Groucho was ganna have knock em dead jokes. And he did have a lot of one liners. Even an old lady had the best lines by making fun of Groucho, and putting his cigar out. With four episodes and a total of an hour and 48 minuts, its well worth it.

This 2 tape set contains ONLY FOUR EPISODES. I bought it because I was told that the featured set (7-tapes, 21 episodes) was no longer available. This was December 2001. Why is the featured set still being adverstised? Can anyone say "BAIT & SWITCH"?

I am a baby boomer and I loved watching the interaction between Groucho and his guests. People were more interested in knowing things then.

I wish the DVD producers would get organized and list the episodes by the date they originally aired, the secret word for each episode, and the names of the first two guests, on both the DVD covers and on Amazon and other sales web sites, so collectors of "YOU BET YOUR LIFE" episodes can figure out which ones they have, and which ones they still need to buy,

Far too many 'YOU BET YOUR LIFE" DVDs are just re-hashes of the same episodes that have appeared on other DVDs, and VHS tapes, repackaged with different artwork and names for the covers, some leaving out some episodes to cash in on the interest in "YOU BET YOUR LIFE" episodes by splitting them into multiple volumes from larger compilations.

Several hundred episodes were filmed and aired over a period of almost 14 years, and so it's frustrating to find the same relatively few episodes cropping up again and again on almost every DVD compilation.

This volume is another one of those re-hash collections, and thus isn't worth the effort to buy.

Until it's re-released with the above-mentioned specifics about all the episodes contained in it, this gets only one star in my book.

Dan Fiebiger