Pomona’s Richard Armour is rightly revered as one of the great storytellers of the last century.

Author of more than 60 books, he garnered awards both military and literary.

Yet for all of the accolades heaped on Armour throughout his lifetime, the event that resonates with the widest audience in the electronic age is the fact that he once bested the great Groucho Marx on a live television program – with only three words.

Pomona days With his bestselling 1959 autobiography “Drug Store Days – My Life Among the Pills and Potions,” Armour recalled growing up in Pomona where his grandfather Elmer Eugene “E.E.” Armour moved in 1887, after learning the druggist trade in Chagrin Falls, Ohio.

E.E. purchased a small wooden building and opened a pharmacy at the corner of West Holt and North Main, where he became one of Pomona’s leading citizens with the family drug store a center of Pomona’s business and social life, according to noted educator and historian Dr. F. P. Brackett “He was wrapped up in Pomona – her interests were his interests and he gave liberally of his time and means” to advance the growth of the valley.

After attending Pomona College, in 1927, Armour attained his doctorate at Harvard Uni- Eisenhower.

Claremont Graduate School and was named years that Armour achieved renown as an poets, then lampooned the dry, dusty style of scholarly treatises in a series of humorous By mid -century, Armour’s verse and witty observations became a staple of Sunday newspaper supplements.

Yet for the millions of Americans who enjoyed Armour’s work on the moment occurred on his appearance on the popular “You Bet Your would reveal a secret word that, if uttered by one of the contestants, testant said the word, the band would break into $100 bill.

When Armour appeared, Groucho reviewed the rules of the usual “say the secret - While the band broke into the ‘victory’ tune, the duck did not descend. writer Will Carlin “was - for one of the only moments in his career -