WFMU's Beware of the Blog: Groucho Saves The Day

WFMU's Beware of the Blog: Groucho Saves The Day: "For the 1969 Fall TV season, ABC tried to make waves with Music Scene, a new music variety show that combined Shindig and Laugh-in. Musical guests included a lot of variety, as well as the A-list likes of Janis Joplin, Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Jerry Lee Lewis, and James Brown. Unfortunately, the show presented many of these artist in pre-recorded scenes that lacked any real verve.

Originally, the show was hosted by a rotating cast of six comedians (including a young Lily Tomlin), but six un-funny episodes later, only one remained, David Steinberg. His intellectual sarcasm made him a more than affable host, but the format change didn't help the ratings, and the show was canceled after only a few months on the air.

But that lead to a moment of inspired brilliance. For the final episode, Steinberg was able to convince a very good friend of his to appear and co-host the show. Since this was the end of the series, I'm guessing nobody really cared if the co-host had anything to do with the context of the show. And so, much of the last episode of Music Scene was given over to un-scripted moments with the original cultural anarchist: 79-year-old Groucho Marx."