In 1952, my parents appeared on “You Bet Your Life” — a sort of game show hosted by Groucho Marx.

My mother mentioned this once or twice when I was young. How they had been on TV before they were married and had a chance to win the big prize, but missed the final question.

It was 1952. And I figured all we ever would know about their TV appearance … was what she remembered.

And then my brother-in-law made a discovery.

Leah’s brother Mike is into genealogy. His family’s … and of late the families of the people married to his siblings.

While doing his investigations … he came across the audio tape of my parents’ 1952 appearance.

Listen to it here.

My parents, Sally and Al, are up first on the show. At the time, they were 21 and 18. Impossibly young. My father had just taken over a Chevron service station in the Belmont Shore area of Long Beach. My mother was going to school at Long Beach City College. They were to be married on July 5.

It’s fascinating stuff. We didn’t have home movies from the time. Just a few photos from when they were married, later in the year.

Groucho Marx, of course, was an entertainment superstar of the era. He had been making movies and lots of money for years.

He was known for his wit. For good reason. And he says several amusing things while talking to my parents (to be).

He makes light of their names. Oberjuerge, of course, but also of my mother’s maiden name, Smoot.

He asks when they are to be married, and my father says, “around the Fourth of July” and Groucho makes a quip about “so much for Independence Day.”

All in good fun, and then my parents correctly identified four consecutive songs “pertaining to colors”  (“Blue Moon”, etc.) to win $320.

Two more couples appeared later in the show (sponsored by DeSoto … a car manufacturer) … and neither won as much money as did my parents. So they came back for the final question, and I believe they had a shot to win a DeSoto car worth about $3,500. The question seemed quite obscure — which U.S. corporation had been given the responsibility of developing the H-Bomb. (Answer later.)

So, talking to my mother about this the other day … we discovered that it was fun, but not quite the spontaneous fun the producers would have us believe. They had been to the studios twice before, once for screening and the second time so that writers could ask about their background and prepare “ad libs” for Groucho to drop on them.

The writers liked the strange names, and they liked the Fourth of July wedding, and he got some laughs from those. They also instructed my father to suggest his surname is Polish, when it is German … apparently only so Groucho could ask, “What part of Poland?” and my father was instructed to say “Jacksonville, Illinois” — which was his home town.

And then Groucho said, “Well, that’s soitanly behind the Iron Curtain.”

But as my mother recalls (my father died in 1995), the bad information caused some consternation among relatives watching (live) back in the Midwest.  Had Al lost his mind? It had to be smoothed out.

Anyway, I find it fascinating. We rather assume that so much of what we do these days will be recorded, somehow, for people to look at later. Pictures and videos and blogs. For good or ill, it’s out there.

But not even 60 years ago … well, almost nothing exists from that era.

This audio is an exception, and it’s fun to listen to people who were young and vital back then, a time that technology has made seem distant and remote.

And the corporation asked to make the H-Bomb?

DuPont.  Whose slogan, from 1935 until 1982, was “better living through chemistry.”