Once upon a time -- before there were handheld television cameras you could bob and weave with, dip and spin and tilt until the audience was reaching for the Dramamine with every quick cut -- TV producers had to make do with actual content to carry a program.
And sometimes, in glorious black-and-white, this was achieved by mere conversation between interesting people who talked in actual strings of sentences and paragraphs, instead of quick soundbites.
When one half of these conversations was rooted in the comic genius of Groucho Marx, You Bet Your Life that sooner or later viewers across the country would be doubled over with laughter and gasping for air. Just from listening to a conversation and waiting for somebody to say "the secret word."
Imagine.
Join me back in 1955, when TV was primitive, people were interesting -- bizarre, even --and America was a very, very different place. You bet your life, it was.
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