brief period following the format change, couples who won the front game could wager half on another question worth $2,000. 1957–1959 – Winning couples now faced a wheel with numbers from 1–10, selecting one number for $10,000. If the number selected was spun, a correct answer to the jackpot question augmented the team's total winnings to that amount; otherwise, the question was worth a total of $2,000. 1959–1961 – For the last two seasons, the format was slightly altered to eliminate the risk and add a second number for $5,000. Nielsen ratings Seasonal Nielsen ratings covered the period between October and April of the following year. The rating number represents the percentage of homes tuned into that program. Nielsen also measured the radio version at tenth among radio shows in 1955. Despite not being involved with the quiz show scandals, the show's popularity waned and You Bet Your Life fell out of the top 25. NBC stopped making the show in 1961. Sponsorship The radio program was sponsored by Allen Gellman, president of Elgin American, maker of watch cases and compacts, during its first two and a half seasons. Later, seasons of the television show (as well as the radio show, after January 1950) were sponsored by Chrysler, with advertisements for DeSoto automobiles incorporated into the opening credits and the show itself. Each show would end with Marx sticking his head through a hole in the DeSoto logo and saying, "Friends...go in to see your DeSoto-Plymouth dealer tomorrow. And when you do, tell 'em Groucho sent you." Still later sponsors included the Toni Company (Prom home permanent, White Rain shampoo) with commercials featuring Harpo and Chico Marx, Lever Brothers (Lux liquid, Wisk detergent), Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Geritol), and Lorillard Tobacco Co. (Old Gold cigarettes). In 1953 the show became embroiled in controversy when its musical director, Jerry Fielding, was called to appear before the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities and refused to testify, citing his Fifth Amendment privileges. The show's sponsor, the DeSoto-Plymouth Dealers of America, demanded that Marx fire Fielding, and he complied. Fielding later accused the House committee of calling him up to testify because they wanted him to name Marx as a Communist sympathizer, and Marx himself later wrote, "That I bowed to sponsors' demands is one of the greatest regrets of my life." Contestants The interviews were sometimes so memorable that the contestants became celebrities: "nature boy"