Hot Out of Vassar

A year ago, Groucho Marx's You Bet Your Life (Wed. 9 p.m. E.S.T., CBS) was fighting it out for 75th place in the Nielsen-Ratings with such tired old rivals as Roy Rogers, County Fair and Dr. I.Q. Last week, by sitting on a stool before a microphone and trading comment and insult with a succession of quiz contestants, Groucho had piloted his show in a skyrocketing climb to sixth place.

The propulsion was supplied by Groucho's trademarked wit, which tends to ricochet off the commonplace and explode in star shells of mutual misunderstanding. Beginning with a casual question about the contestant's background, Groucho is soon off in a blaze of barbed and ribald non sequiturs. "And do you have any little thieves at home?" he once asked a baseball umpire. Introducing a dealer in war surplus, he inquired solicitously: "How many times have you been indicted?" Learning from a dress designer that women dress for themselves, he observed with a happy leer: "If they dressed tor me, the stores wouldn't sell much --just an occasional sun visor."

Broadcasting from Los Angeles, Groucho has a naturally fertile field for zany contestants. But, not content to take just what turns up in studio audiences, his scouts are out beating the bushes for people with strange jobs and enough gabbiness to heighten Marx's verbal asides. He is often topped, as he was when he asked an elderly woman what people were wearing when she was a baby. Her answer: "Diapers." And he was almost speechless for once when a burlesque-show employee identified a stripteaser as "an anatomy award winner."

Groucho's ambition is to keep You Bet Your Life neatly balanced between human interest and acerb comment. "I like it when George Kaufman or Moss Hart tell me the show is funny," he says, "but I like it better when it appeals to the mass audience. Now we've got Moss Hart and the yahoos, too."

In New York last week for the opening of the baseball season, Groucho was being wined & dined by NBC executives who were trying to lure him away from CBS. To Marx, a scarred veteran of four radio flops in the past 15 years, this was heady business. Said Groucho : "I'm being wooed for the first time in my life. I'm like a dame hot out of Vassar."

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