Word: scriptful
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...incidentals are the best of all. Faced with scores of temptations to slip into patches or melodrama, the script escapes nimbly every time. Bits like the execution of a priest and the shooting game of the drunken German commandant acquire a power above their importance to the story...
...Marx Brothers (The Coconuts, Animal Crackers, A Night at the Opera), Groucho was on & off radio for ten years before anyone found him particularly funny on the air. Then Producer John Guedel saw him ad lib for ten minutes on a network show when Bob Hope accidentally dropped his script. Shortly thereafter Guedel put Groucho into You Bet Your Life. He still has some qualms: "Having Groucho as emcee of a quiz show is like using a Cadillac to haul coal...
...Groucho likes it fine. "In the old days they almost threw me off the air if I deviated from the script," he says. "I had to sign a written pledge that I would read only what was before me. But now I'm doing what comes naturally. It's like stealing money [$3,000 a week] to get paid for this...
Director John Farrow not only helped to write a pretty lively script, but managed to keep his highly volatile star and story under control. Also doing double duty is Songwriter Frank Loesser who, besides contributing a nice burlesque of a marcelled thug named Hair-Do Lempke, composed the songs which Betty sandwiches in between her Keystone clowning...
...just as well. Judging from the remainder of John Whedon and Sam Moore's script, it seems doubtful that they are capable of the kind of light-handed satire required for the Luce spoofing; particularly since they ride so clumsily down two already well-worn musical comedy ruts--Texas and Southern politics...