Arthur Godfrey
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About This Person
From All Movie Guide: Running away from home at the age of 15, Arthur Godfrey
held down scores of short-term jobs, sleeping on park benches whenever
funds ran low. Despite his itinerant lifestyle, Godfrey was extremely
ambitious, gleaning his formal education from the International
Correspondence School and twice attempting to launch a naval career.
Along the way, he discovered that he had an innate skill for
self-promotion and salesmanship, a combination that enabled him to tour
as a vaudeville musician despite a minimum of musical talent. In 1929,
"Red Godfrey, the Warbling Banjoist" went to work for a Baltimore radio
station WFBR. This led to a better job at NBC's Washington, D.C.
affiliate, thence to a disc jockey at CBS' Washington outlet. Eschewing
the declamatory style prevalent among radio pitchmen, Godfrey adopted
what he called the "one guy" approach, delivering commercials,
introducing songs, and casually dispensing small talk as if talking to
one person rather than thousands. In the early '40s, he gained
nationwide popularity as a staff announcer at CBS, briefly serving as
announcer for Fred Allen's show.
His career turning point came with his
emotional coverage of President Roosevelt's funeral in 1945, which
attracted the attention of network bigwigs and resulted in his own
coast-to-coast morning program. Immediately winning a huge audience with
his calm, straightforward style, Godfrey used his program to introduce a
whole slew of talented newcomers, which he dubbed "the Little
Godfreys." At one time or another, his staff of regulars included Julius
LaRosa, Marion Marlowe, the McGuire Sisters, Pat Boone, Anita Bryant,
announcer Tony Marvin (who stayed with him the longest), and orchestra
leader Archie Bleyer. In addition to his morning show, he also hosted
Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts; and in 1949, he moved into television,
gaining ever greater success.
At one point, it was estimated that
Godfrey's programs generated 12 percent of CBS' TV revenues, making him
one of the most powerful men in show business. As his influence grew, so
did his ego; he held court over his "Little Godfreys" like a banana
republic dictator, and made grandiose, arbitrary demands upon his home
network. Publicly the soul of affability, the private Godfrey was a
volatile, unpredictably temperamental man, forever reminding his
minions, "I made you all and I can break you at any time." On October
19, 1953, Godfrey's huge radio and TV audience received its first real
evidence of their idol's despotism when he fired singer Julius LaRosa on
the air. As other members of the Godfrey entourage got the ax over the
next few years, his disillusioned audience began to dwindle.
Further
nails in his coffin came with two à clef films
inspired by the Godfrey phenomenon, The Great Man (1956) and A Face in the Crowd,
both of which centered around powerful media icons with feet of clay.
Godfrey's popularity enjoyed a short resurgence in 1959 when he survived
a delicate operation for lung cancer, but public sympathy can sustain a
career only so long. By 1960 he was completely off television save for a
hosting job on Allen Funt's Candid Camera. Making his screen debut with a guest spot in 1963's Four for Texas, he played his first full-fledged screen role in The Glass-Bottom Boat
(1966), playing Doris Day's father.
On April 30, 1972, 27 years to the
day after its debut, Godfrey's daily radio program was canceled by
mutual agreement between the star and his network. He continued
appearing on TV as a commercial spokesman, earning a short flurry of
press coverage when he broke his contract with the Axion company because
he felt that the product was a pollutant. He made several attempts in
the 1970s at a TV comeback, but was never able to achieve that goal,
partly because he was incapable of compromising his own values, and
partly because he'd made too many enemies over the years. When Arthur Godfrey
died in 1983, his obituary, which once upon a time might have been a
headline story, was tucked away in the back pages -- an ignominious
finale for a man who, for better or worse, was a true television giant. ~
Hal Erickson, Rovi
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