Profile of Arthur Godfrey on Famous Like Me

Arthur Morton Godfrey (August 31, 1903 – March 16, 1983) was an American broadcaster and entertainer, born in New York City.

While his family was originally well off, his mother was an unsuccessful performer, his father a failed sportswriter who left the family. With the family in sudden poverty, Godfrey tried to help them keep going, then went on the road doing odd jobs and hoboing. He served in the United States Navy from 1920 to 1924, assigned to radio training and learned to become a radio operator, serving in that capacity on naval destroyers. Additional training in radio came in his service in the Coast Guard from 1927 to 1930. It was during his Coast Guard stint in Baltimore that he appeared on a local talent show and became popular enough to land his own brief weekly program.

On leaving the Coast Guard, he became a radio announcer for Baltimore station WFBR and moved the short distance to Washington, D.C. to become a staff announcer for NBC-owned station WRC that same year and remained there until 1934. He was already an avid flyer and in 1933, nearly died following a violent car crash outside Washington that left him hospitalized for months. During that time, he decided to listen closely to the radio and realized the stiff, formal announcers could not connect with the average radio listener, as the announcers spoke as if to a crowd, and not one person. Godfrey vowed that when he returned to the airwaves he would affect a relaxed, informal style as if he were talking to just one person. He also used that style to do his own commercials and became a regional star.

In addition to announcing, Godfrey sang and played the ukulele. In 1934 he became a freelance entertainer, but eventually based himself on a daily show over CBS-owned station WJSV in Washington, titled Arthur Godfrey's Sun Dial. Godfrey knew President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who listened to his Washington program, and through Roosevelt's intercession, he received a commission in the U.S. Navy Reserves during World War II. He eventually moved his base to CBS' New York City station, then known as WABC, and was heard on both WJSV and WABC for a spell. In the autumn of 1943, he also began a short stint as announcer for Fred Allen's Texaco Time show on the CBS network, but a personality conflict between Godfrey and Allen led to Godfrey's early release from the show.

As he provided a first-hand account of Roosevelt's funeral, broadcast live over CBS in April, 1945, Godfrey broke down in tears. The entire nation was moved by his emotional outburst. It led to him joining the CBS Radio network in his own right, where he was given his own daily program, Arthur Godfrey Time, a Monday-Friday morning radio show that featured his monologues, interviews with various stars and music from his own in-house combo and regular vocalists on the show. Godfrey's monologues and discussions were all totally unscripted, and went whatever direction he chose.

That program was supplemented by Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts, a program featuring rising young performers. In 1948 "Arthur Godfrey Time" began to be simultaneously broadcast on radio and television. The radio version ran three hours; the TV version an hour, expanded to an hour and a half. Godfrey's skills as a commercial pitchman brought him a number of loyal sponsors including Lipton Tea, Frigidaire, Pillsbury cake mixes, Chesterfield cigarettes and many more.

He found one way to enhance his pitches was to extemporize his commercials, poking fun at the products, at the company executives and at the advertising agency types who wrote the scripted commercials that he regularly ignored and, if he read them at all, ridiculed them. His popularity and ability to sell brought a windfall to CBS, accounting for a significant percentage of their corporate profits.

In 1949 Arthur Godfrey and his Friends, a weekly variety show, began on CBS TV in prime time.

His affable personality on the radio combined a warmth, heart and bits of ornery, occasional double-entendre repartee, but earned him adulation from fans who felt that despite his considerable wealth, that he was really "one of them," almost a friendly next-door-neighbor type. His ability to sell products, insisting he would not promote products in which he did not personally believe, gave him a level of trust from his audience, a belief that "if Godfrey said it, it must be so." When he quit smoking in the early 1950s, he spoke out against smoking and merely shrugged off Chesterfield's departure as a regular sponsor.

Eventually he added weekend "best-of" program culled from the week's Arthur Godfrey Time known as Arthur Godfrey Digest. He began to veer away from interviewing stars in favor of a small group of regular performers that became known as the "Little Godfreys." Many of these artists were relatively obscure, but were given colossal national exposure, some of them former [[Talent Scouts[[winners including The McGuire Sisters, the Chordettes Hawaiian vocalist Haleloke, veteran Irish Tenor Frank Parker, Marian Marlowe and Julius LaRosa, who was in the Navy when Godfrey, doing his annual Naval reserve duty, discovered the young singer and offered him a job upon his discharge.

LaRosa joined the cast in 1951 and became a favorite with Godfrey's immense audience, who also saw him on the prime-time weekly show Arthur Godfrey and his Friends. He also had a regular announcer-foil on the show: Tony Marvin. Godfrey preferred his performers not use personal managers or agents, but often had his staff represent the artists if they were doing personal appearances.

In his own way, Godfrey was a social pioneer. One of the "Little Godfrey" acts were the Mariners, an integrated vocal group of white and African-American Coast Guard veterans. When the act appeared on TV and Southern CBS affiliates and racist Southern politicians complained, Godfrey was quick to respond caustically, decrying the racism and refusing to remove them from the cast.

Meanwhile Talent Scouts performers included Lenny Bruce, Don Adams, Tony Bennett, Patsy Cline, Pat Boone, opera singer Marlyn Horne, Roy Clark and Irish vocalist Carmel Quinn. Later, he promoted "Little Godfrey" Janette Davis to take the management position as the show's talent coordinator. One notable performer that was turned down by the "Talent Scouts" show was Elvis Presley, while he was still a local performer in Memphis.

Godfrey used his pervasive fame to advocate a strong anti-Communist stance, to pitch for enhanced strategic air power in the Cold War atmosphere, but also became a strong advocate for his middle class audience to consider vacationing in Hawaii and Miami Beach, formerly enclaves for the wealthy. An expert pilot who flew his own fully-equipped DC-3 airliner to his huge Northwestern Virginia farm on weekends, he also became a powerful advocate for commercial airline travel. On occasions, he broadcasted live from his farm, the signal carried by microwave towers built on the property.

Godfrey had been in pain since the 1933 car crash which damaged his hip. In 1953, he underwent pioneering hip replacement surgery in Boston using an early plastic artificial hip joint. The operation was successful and he returned to the show.

But behind Godfrey's warmth was a cold, controlling personality. He insisted that his "Little Godfreys" attend dance and singing classes, believing all of them should be versatile whether or not they possessed the aptitude for those disciplines. In staff meetings, he could be abusive and intimidating.

When he and LaRosa had a dispute over the singer missing mandatory dance lessons, LaRosa retained an agent and manager to renegotiate Godfrey's contract with him or, failing that, receive an outright release. Miffed, Godfrey consulted with CBS President Dr. Frank Stanton.. Stanton, noting that Godfrey had hired him on-air, suggested firing him on-air. On October 19, 1953, after lavishing praise on LaRosa in introducing the singer's performance of "I'll Take Manhattan," Godfrey thanked him, then announced that was LaRosa's "swan song" with the show. LaRosa, who had to be told what the phrase "swan song" meant, was dumbfounded since he had not been informed beforehand of his departure. Stanton later admitted the idea may have been "a mistake."

It began an era of controversy that swirled around Godfrey. LaRosa had become a hit recording artist beloved by Godfrey's fans, who saved their harsh criticism for Godfrey himself. After a press conference was held by LaRosa and his agent, Goidfrey further complicated the matter by hosting a press conference of his own where he responded that LaRosa had lost his "humility." The charge, given Godfrey's sudden baring of his own ego beneath the facade of warmth, brought more mockery from the public and press.

He would fire others, including bandleader Archie Bleyer, who'd formed his own label, Cadence Records, which recorded LaRosa. Godfrey was also angered that Bleyer had produced a record for Godfrey's Chicago counterpart Don McNeill, host of the "Breakfast Club," which had been Godfrey's direct competition on the Blue Network and ABC since Godfrey's days at WJSV. Despite the McNeil show's far more modest following, Godfrey was unduly offended at what he felt was disloyalty on Bleyer's part.

A significant number of other Little Godfreys including the Mariners and Haleloke, were dismissed from 1953 to 1959. In January 1954, Godfrey buzzed the control tower of Teterboro Airport in his Douglas DC-3. His license was suspended for a time. Occasionally, he snapped at cast members on the air.

Godfrey's problems with the media and public feuds with newspaper columnists like Jack O'Brian and newspaperman turned CBS variety show host Ed Sullivan were duly documented by the media, who began running critical "exposé" articles on him full of scandal, linking him to several female "Little Godfreys." Two films, 1956's The Great Man, starring Jose Ferrer, who also directed and produced, and the 1957 classic A Face in the Crowd starring Andy Griffith and Patricia Neal, were reputedly inspired by Godfrey's now-controversial career.

Nonetheless, he still commanded a strong presence. Talent Scouts lasted until 1958.

But in 1959, he began suffering chest pains. Closer examination revealed a mass in his chest, possibly lung cancer. In 1959, Godfrey left Arthur Godfrey Time and Arthur Godfrey and his Friends after revealing his illness.

Surgeons discovered cancer in one lung involving his aorta. One lung was removed as was the other cancer, and despite the disease's high mortality, after radiation treatments, it became clear Godfrey had beaten substantial odds against him. He returned to the air on a prime-time special, and resumed the daily Arthur Godfrey Time morning show, but only on radio, not TV. He would continue the show, reverting to guest stars like Max Morath and Carmel Quinn, with a live combo of first-rate Manhattan musicians, until 1972 when the show ended.

Godfrey by then was a US Air Force reserve Colonel and still an active pilot. He made three movies: Four For Texas (1963), The Glass Bottom Boat (1966), and Where Angels Go...Trouble Follows (1968). He briefly co-hosted Candid Camera with creator Allan Funt and appeared in various guest appearances.

In retirement, Godfrey wanted to find ways back onto a regular TV schedule. He appeared on the rock band Moby Grape's second album and despite his political conservatism became a powerful environmentalist who identified with the youth culture as opposing the "establishment," as he felt he once did. He was a master at dressage, made charity appearances at horse show and did commercials for Axion, a detergent, only to clash with the manufacturers when he found the product contained phosphates, implicated in water pollution. Godfrey's presence ebbed considerably, despite an HBO special and an appearance on a Public TV salute to the 1950s. Emphysema became a problem in the 1980s and he died of the disease in New York City. He is buried in Leesburg, Virginia, not far from his farm.

In 1988 he was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame.

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