The One, The Only, Fenneman

George Fenneman was more important to the success of You Bet Your Life than people realise and his absence may explain why revivals of the show have failed.

Groucho Marx was wonderfully caustic and insulting to contestants, but his show needed to have a bit of a balance. It couldn’t look like the naïve people coming onto the set were being unmercifully picked on. On You Bet Your Life, Fenneman helped soften the blow. He came across as someone at kin with the contestants because he’d get insulted, too. It was like he was on their side and, because he was involved in the show, he gave the viewer the impression he’d speak up for, and defend, the contestants if Groucho went too far.

Fenneman’s fame came with Groucho. He wasn’t one of the big name announcers, a guy like Jimmy Wallington or Ken Carpenter, when he was hired in 1948 for the second season of the radio version of You Bet Your Life. He was an ABC staff announcer in Los Angeles who had done a couple of network shows, Hilltop House and (briefly) I Deal in Crime. The way he put it, he ran into Groucho’s director, someone he had worked with in San Francisco, who urged him to audition for the job and got the job. That’s not quite it. He replaced Jack Slattery, who left the show after the first year for some reason. Fenneman stayed it until the end, and used it as a springboard for his own hosting and producing career.

How did Fenneman cope on You Bet Your Life? Let’s find out. Here’s a story from November 19, 1953. The show had jumped from ABC to CBS to NBC and then to television in 1950 where it prospered.

Acid Ribbing Defended By Groucho Announcer
By ALINE MOSBY
United Press Hollywood Correspondent
HOLLYWOOD (U.P.)—Groucho Marx should not be cited for cruelty to contestants, his announcer insisted today, because any amateur felled by Groucho's barbs "is somebody who deserves them."
Some television and radio fans Groucho's top NBC shows mourn while the master of sharp wit breaks up an audience with laughter at a hapless contestant's expense.
But George Fenneman, the handsome announcer on the program who is mercilessly ribbed himself by Groucho, defended the mustached comedian.
"Most people he gives a bad deserve it," said Fenneman as relaxed at home out of reach the eyebrow-wiggling Marx.
Stuffed Shirts
"Sometimes he's tough on a person who doesn't deserve it, because opportunity for good gags is there, but usually it's some stuffed shirt who's out of relation with the world—somebody who takes himself too seriously."
One of Fenneman's pre-show duties is to calm contestants who tremble over what Groucho may to them. But not one contestant has ever stomped home after the program in anger or embarrassment, he said.
Fenneman himself is one of the "Patsies" who is squelched by Groucho's piercing humor, and the announcer humbly thinks he deserves it, too.
In Category
"Groucho's wit takes apart things that at are supposed to be dignified and sacred, and an announcer of commercials is in that category," he admitted.
"The whole show for me is a nightmare. When I start to introduce a contestant, Groucho will say, 'Smile, smile, this is a fun show, look idiotic, Fenneman. Show them your teeth.'
"I smile so much Groucho calls me Laughing Boy. Now when I go into service stations and barber shops people say, 'Hello, Laughing Boy,' and howl."
Fenneman for years tried to deliver his commercials under Groucho's heckling. Now he has learned the only way to keep the sponsor from ulcers is to film the blurbs in advance when Marx isn't around to blow cigar smoke in his face.
Job Is Fun
Now I used to be flustered on the show, but now it's fun," George said. "I'm the underdog, which is wonderful. The fans have sympathy for me."
Once a contestant, name of Gonzales Gonzales, was so hilarious he was signed to a movie contract. "Believe me, he got the better of Groucho only because Groucho let him," said the announcer, nodding wisely. "You don't have the last word with Groucho if he doesn't want you to."

You Bet Your Life went off the air in 1961. Groucho came back without Fenneman in 1962. A success it wasn’t. Fenneman was still busy, though. Here’s a story that’s cobbled together from a couple of papers that subscribed to the Los Angeles Herald Examiner’s syndicate. It appeared in 1961. Yes, the woman in the photo accompanying the article later went on to work on Let’s Make a Deal.

George Fenneman Isn’t a Softie Anymore
Life With Groucho Did It
By CHARLES DENTON
THE commercial announcer is to television what the plate umpire is to baseball—a guy everyone loves to hate. The only difference is that the announcer is spared direct physical contact with his multitudes of detractors. The beer bottles toned at him crash harmlessly through the picture tubes of irate viewers instead of bouncing off his noggin.
Still, it isn't the sort of career many parents would pick for their offspring, which may be a grave mistake when you consider what electronic salesmanship has done for George Fenneman, as slick a hand with a jug of hair tonic or a new brand of canned eels as you're apt to find.
Not only has the dapper Fenneman managed to slap out a better than average living for quite a spell—14 years on Groucho Marx's radio and TV shows alone —spreading sponsorial messages, but he has become host of his own daytime show. Your Surprise Package and has a panel show, Take My Advice, in the works.
• • •
AND WHILE GEORGE is far too honest a gent to say that he's never had a twinge of conscience over some of his spiel-binding, he doesn't feel that his psyche has been permanently damaged by it.
"I've been lucky, I guess,” he conceded. "With a few exceptions I've been associated with sponsors and products I could believe in.
"Oh, I've done a few things I've been ashamed of, sure, but the grand average has been pretty good. Anyway, I feel that if people watch me do a bad commercial, they shouldn't be watching."
Fenneman admitted that he's had his share of beefs from the buying public about video huckstering. "And by now they're pretty unfunny, too." he said grimly, "because I've heard them all. My rejoinder is that if the complainers exercise restraint, if they stop buying the products, sponsors will change their commercials. You can always turn that set off, you know?"
• • •
AS A MATTER OF fact, Fenneman detects an upswing in the quality of TV commercials.
"At least now I can negotiate with sponsors," he explained. "Maybe it's just because I'm better known, but I can get things changed in commercials if I feel uncomfortable about them. And I don't have to yell any more, either. I just tell them to get another boy.
"Of course," he shrugged, "you can do that when you don't need the money. When you need it, you yell."
One development in parlor playhouse pitching that disturbs George is the increasing use of actors to deliver the commercials on their own shows.
"I'm always glad when they fall flat," he said gleefully. "Not only because they're taking a job away, but also because they don't do commercials well. Just as I'm no actor, actors should realize there's more to selling than holding up the pack of cigarets."
• • •
FOURTEEN YEARS (including radio) of taking rapier insults from Groucho have toughened Fenneman, yet left him sad with memories.
"I actually, in the beginning, went home and cried in my pillow every night over the insults from Groucho, and then I suddenly realized that this was Groucho's work, and that all I needed was 'this show.' And now look at me," says George, the biggest quiz show winner of all time.
George recalls the time on Groucho's show when a weight-lifter picked him up like a rag doll and perched George on his shoulder and how Groucho laughed that maniacal laugh and how George would have liked to kill both of them.
• • •
THEN THERE were the LeGarde twins, a pair of bullwhip artists. George was just recovering from a double hernia operation, and Groucho knew his quiz helper was walking around very gingerly. But when the LeGardes needed a sucker to pose with a cigarette and have it whipped from his lips, Groucho offered up George. At the last second Groucho relented, and George was let off the hook—but not before he had sweat off two pounds and nearly another hernia.
George relived, too, that thrilling moment when his hero, Gen. Omar Bradley, came on the show as a contestant. It was the only time he ever asked any of Groucho's guests for an autograph.
Remember the dame that brought 65 of her 159 cats to the show? George does, because he is allergic to cat hair and becomes an asthmatic case if a cat brushes him.
That was the night he flatly told Groucho he would not appear on stage with the cats. He did, though, and didn't sneeze once.
George was more afraid of Groucho than his allergy, apparently.
• • •
THE ONE TIME Groucho advised George was after the latter hired his own press agent, the high powered pressure artist, Russell Birdwell.
"Fire him," Groucho told George. "All you need is the show."
George decided Groucho was right, but before he could shake off Birdwell, he had cost George $16,000, and George says all he has to show for it is some mentions of his name in the tradepapers and two lunches at Romanoff's.
Besides hosting his own weekday show, Your Surprise Package. George has become "the Lipton Tea man." The Lipton people snapped up George last summer to do their commercials at the political conventions, after actor Eddie Albert had failed to cast the right image.

Groucho was not in the best of shape, physically or mentally, in 1977 when he died. Fenneman went to see him, hugged him, and Groucho’s mind clicked and came up with “Fenneman, you were always a lousy dancer.” It seems their on-camera relationship wasn’t Hollywood phoniness at all.