Joys!

Mr. MacIntyre's review is quite accurate. Groucho sits with his beret on, glassy-eyed and weak-voiced, along side George Burns, who still has a few good decades left in him. Billy Barty provides some movement, while Groucho can't even follow him with his eyes.

This is from memory. I saw the show when it was originally aired 26 years ago.

When I was 12, I saw this Bob Hope Special and thought it was one of the strangest shows I had seen. In addition, it must have been memorable as I've remembered it and wanted to see it once again. And, I was thrilled when I found it on YouTube today!

The show begins like other Bob Hope TV specials...with Hope doing a stand-up routine which was occasionally quite funny. However, the camera follows him from the stage and he keeps hearing from friends that they can't wait to see him at the big party at Hope's house tonight. However, Hope didn't organize any party nor did he invite anyone. Soon, his guests start getting killed and who and why this happening are to be seen.

The show essentially is like a long, extended Hope monologue...as his guests also spout the same sort of humor as they talk. What's odd is that many of them AREN'T comedians, such as David Jansen and Jack Albertson and Charro. However, most guest ARE comedians...ranging from A-list to D-list. One of the big guests is actually very sad to watch, as Groucho Marx looks half dead and had difficulty with his lines....and considering how quick-witted he HAD been, it was tough to watch.

So is the show worth seeing? Well, I think much of it depends on your age. Younger viewers won't recognize most of the actors (particularly the likes of Jerry Colonna)...so they might not enjoy it very much. For people my age and older, it's great to see all the old faces...even if they are often D-listers like Marty Allen and Jack Carter.

Overall, while the jokes are hit or miss, the overall effort is far more interesting that Hope's other 1970s-80s TV specials.

"Joys" was a 1976 Bob Hope TV special: its title is meant to be a parody of "Jaws", a hot film at the time ... but "Joys" doesn't follow the plot of "Jaws", and it isn't very funny. Even the title, "Joys", isn't funny.

This TV special features plenty of Borscht Belt comedians (of Jewish extraction), and American comedy has always drawn heavily on the great legacy of Yiddish humour, so it would have been funny if this parody of 'Jaws' was called "Jews" ... but that decision would have taken some guts, and this show is dead gutless.

In "Joys", Bob Hope invites several dozen famous comedians to his house for a party. A lot of big-name talents appear very briefly in "Joys" - including Groucho Marx, George Burns, Sid Caesar, Phil Silvers and Milton Berle - but most of them have nothing funny to do. One comedian disappears, and then he turns up dead, floating face-down in Hope's pool. Then another dies, then another ... then they start dying in bunches, and all the corpses end up face-down in Hope's pool. (All of these famous comedians are playing themselves, so it's unnerving to see them getting killed off and then shown as corpses ... even though the face-down "corpses" of the famous comedians are obviously stand-ins.) Eventually, we see that a mysterious man in a domino mask is killing all the comedians. IMDb's cast list has already given away the (unfunny) killer's identity, so I shan't reveal it here. (BIG HINT: Which American showbiz personality, circa 1976, held the power of life and death over most comedians' careers?) At the end, ALL of the comedians die, and Hope's pool is chock-full o' corpses.

The most notable scene in "Joys" is Groucho Marx's very last-ever performance, and it's painfully depressing. Groucho, frail and ill, sits stiffly on a couch while midget actor Billy Barty runs around in a Groucho disguise and delivers some of Groucho's famous lines in a bad Groucho imitation. Groucho looks at Barty wistfully, and asks: "Am I having fun?" No, Groucho, you're NOT having fun, and neither are we. (Trivia note: way back in 1931, as a child actor, Billy Barty appeared with Harpo Marx in "Monkey Business". Around that same time, Barty did an outright imitation of Harpo in a Mickey McGuire short ... making Barty the only actor to imitate two different Marx Brothers four decades apart.)

"Joys" also features the last-ever performance of Bob Hope's long-time sidekick Jerry Colonna. (Colonna's last movie role, filmed before "Joys", was released a few months afterwards.) Colonna isn't in the party scenes: he does a brief bit as a man who gets a wrong-number phone call. Colonna plays his whole scene propped up in bed, and it's obvious that he's too ill to stand up.

Desi Arnaz gets lumbered with a really bad Abbott and Costello routine here. Shortly before "Joys" was televised, Arnaz had published his autobiography, which he modestly titled "A Book". In "Joys", people keep asking Desi Arnaz what his book is called: he keeps telling them "It's 'A Book'" and nobody gets it. Ha ha ha. Arnaz's thick Cuban accent doesn't add to the hilarity. Into the pool, Desi!

By far, the best sequence in "Joys" is a song performed by Harry Ritz, the leader of the Ritz Brothers. Harry Ritz had a profound influence on many American comedians (most notably Sid Caesar and Mel Brooks), and this song is Ritz's chance to acknowledge the debt. Seated at Bob Hope's piano, Ritz sings: 'Any schtick you have done, I have done sooner. You do a schtick, I'll prove I did it first.' Then he pulls faces and makes funny noises. I wish that 'Joys' had more moments like this, instead of assembling so many of history's greatest comedians and then giving them nothing to do. Some of the comedians in 'Joys' were never funny in the first place, such as the detestably smug Freddie Prinze.

'Joys' is the only-ever occasion when a Marx Brother and a Ritz Brother were in the same cast list ... but Groucho's and Harry's scenes were filmed separately.

Bob Hope's TV specials tended to offer quantity rather than quality. In 'Joys', he tries (and fails) to sweeten the deal by bringing in several crime-show actors to reprise their roles as TV detectives, including Telly Savalas as Kojak. People like Glen Campbell and Vincent Price show up briefly, for no discernible reason beyond padding the cast list.

'Joys' is a tragic waste of some major comedy talents, many of them in the twilight of their careers. If you watch this show, fast-forward to Harry Ritz's comedy song, then hit Rewind. If you love Groucho Marx, you DON'T want to see how sad and ghastly he looks in this mess.

I only saw this once as a kid as well, but obviously it left an impression.

I found a copy of it on VHS....I believe the official title is Special Joys.

The cast included: Don Adams, Jack Albertson, Marty Allen, Steve Allen, Desi Arnaz, Billy Barty, Rona Barrett, Milton Berle, Foster Brooks, Les Brown, George Burns, Red Buttons, Pat Buttram, John Byner, Sid Caesar, Sammy Cahn, Glen Campbell, Jack Carter, Charo, Jerry Colonna, Mike Connors, Scatman Crothers, Bill Dana, Angie Dickinson, Phyllis Diller, Jamie Farr, George Gobel, Jim Hutton, David Janssen, Alan King, George Kirby, Don Knotts, Fred MacMurray, Dean Martin, Groucho Marx, Jan Murray, Wayne Newton, Vincent Price, Freddy Prinze, Don Rickles, Harry Ritz, Telly Savalas, Phil Silvers, Larry Storch, Abe Vigoda, and an uncredited villain! 90 minutes.

This was Groucho's final public appearance, and he hadn't been on television since his honorary Academy Award in 1974.

Marx was showing the signs of senility as early as January of 1973, and it's noticeable in his Tonight Show appearance in May of that year. By the time the 1974 Academy Awards show came around, he was very frail and had trouble making a short speech to accept the award. Groucho's son Arthur, who was embroiled in legal battles with his father's live-in companion Erin Fleming (for which litigation continued into the mid 1980's), was cognizant of this, and out of protection for his father, he made it known that Groucho was not accepting any further offers for public appearances.

When "Joys" was being cast, Bob Hope (out of courtesy) offered Marx a role in it. Arthur Marx was opposed to the idea but relented to persuasion by both Johnny Carson (who idolized Marx) and George Burns. Burns offered to do the scene with Groucho. It was said that the shooting of this short scene took quite a while, as Marx was somewhat disoriented and had trouble concentrating. The scene is a compilation of many takes (as is evident by the different sitting positions of Marx and the slightly different positions of his cap in seemingly contiguous time). The patient Burns worked with Groucho until they had enough decent footage to patch together the minute and a half scene, and the applause and laugh track were dubbed over it later.

But even in old age and senility, you can still see some of the old Groucho. When Burns notes that nobody is getting younger, Groucho asks George how hold he is. Burns (who was pushing 80 at the time) states that he's 76. Groucho retorts "You're getting younger." We even get to see a bit of the famous Groucho leer.

To correct another review, the final comment Groucho makes to Billy Barty (who played a miniature version of him in the scene) is "Don't just stand there, mingle; I want to have a good time."

It's a tribute to Marx that he even attempted this, and while it's obvious that this isn't Groucho in his prime (nor should that be expected), it's a darned good effort nonetheless.

You can find this clip on YouTube.