Groucho Marx kicks things off with an episode of “You Bet Your Life.”  He trades barbs with a taxi driver from Vienna, and an Irish-American Texan tells how he met his wife when he ruined her cake at a St. Patrick’s Day party.  Then, on “Vic and Sade,” their teen-aged son Rush is staying up late hoping to finish off the leftovers from a neighbor’s party.  Later, both Rush and Vic have to fight the temptation to draw a mustache on a sleeping man.

Episodes

You Bet Your Life

December 6, 1950

“The Secret Word is ‘Hair’”

2:08

Vic and Sade

1940

“Too Many Faces in the Windows” 

aka “Ice Cream and Salted Peanuts at Midnight” 

“Mr. Sludge Grows a Mustache”

aka “Sleepers Beware”

31:48

"Arrival"

UK Airing: September 29, 1967

US Airing: June 1, 1968

Your Chronic Rift host, John S. Drew, is joined by author/editor Jim Beard to explore this cult limited series in the first of our limited series summer podcasts.  You know Jim from such podcasts as The Batcave Podcast, The Hornet's Sting Podcast, and right here on The Chronic Rift.  Together, as a pair of fans with some knowledge of the series between them, they will explore each episode and try to come up with their only answer to what it is we all want - information.

In the first episode, John and Jim discuss the pilot episode, the Village, and Patrick McGoohan as an actor.  Please make sure you comment here or by writing us at chronicrift@gmail.com.

 We start off this week with some clever science fiction in the form of “X Minus One.”  In this episode, some hapless humans find themselves at the mercy of an alien lifeboat bent on saving their lives no matter what.  It’s an adaptation of Robert Sheckley’s “The Lifeboat Mutiny.”  Then, on “The Jack Benny Show,” Jack obsesses about the $4.75 he lost on a horse race, and the event manifests itself in the form of a hilariously strange dream. Also, the gang sings a parody of that ballad of a fighting Irishman, “Clancy Lowered the Boom.”

Episodes

X Minus One

September 11, 1956

“The Lifeboat Mutiny”

1:46

The Jack Benny Show

May 2, 1954

“Jack Loses $4.75 at the Race Track”

31:56