
A. Godfrey: A Man for a Long, Long Season

Dick Cavett on his career in show business, and more.
You may feel that this column should bear the cautionary label, “Warning: Oldies Only.”
Because its subject is largely forgotten.
The astute Andy Rooney, who worked for him, predicted that despite decades of huge stardom Godfrey would be forgotten, adding that his effect on broadcasting would be indelible.
He was a colossus of the entertainment world to a degree that may never be equaled; if only for the fact that he had — count ’em — three network shows at the same time on CBS: a simulcast talk show in the morning, and not one but two (live) prime-time shows every week, consistently in the top ten.
Arthur Godfrey was not just an entertainer. If the phrase ever applied to a human being, he was an industry.
Advertisers so craved his then-revolutionary and greatly successful practice of personally delivering, live and ad lib, each and every commercial that sponsors waited in line. He was top salesman in radio and television — so it is said. So large was his take for the network on his morning show that it was avowed in the ad industry that by the time William Paley (Mr. CBS) finished his breakfast, Arthur had paid the network’s bills for the day.
He had vowed he would never praise any product he didn’t totally and genuinely believe in; ironic in the case of the unfiltered Chesterfields with which he was virtually synonymous in the public mind and ear as he intoned the words, “Chesterfields . . . They satisfy.” As he was first to later admit, they also helped kill him, and his guilt over urging them on the populace stayed with him.
Somehow he took a shine to me when I was but a struggling comedian in Greenwich Village and had me on the remnant of his career, the morning radio show. He would have to press the “cough button” frequently, muttering “damn this emphysema” before releasing it.
Starting out from less than nowhere, he achieved immense fame, wealth and success, and lived well past the eventual fading of the epic-length career. In his later years, he self-educated himself (as he had in everything, having had no schooling) on a whole new subject: he became an ardent — and effective — ecologist. He repented in later life about what his enthusiastic boosting of the charms of Florida ultimately (over)did to the area. On the accompanying video he mentions first hearing the word “ecology.”
(Speaking of aviation, by the time he died he had piloted every variety of military aircraft except, to his great regret, a jet helicopter.)
Godfrey’s vigorous opposition, on a show of mine, to the development of the then-controversial Supersonic Transport and what it would do to the atmosphere (“We need that gook in the atmosphere about as much as we need another bag of those clunkers from the moon”) contributed mightily to the pollution of my relations with the Nixon White House. (For creepy verificationsee YouTube’s “PRES. NIXON WANTS REVENGE AGAINST TALK SHOW HOST DICK CAVETT”).
Although other guests had denounced the SST on my show, losing Godfrey, aviation’s great supporter and practitioner (“When Arthur’s not on the air, he’s in it” — Fred Allen), was one too many for the resident criminal of Pennsylvania Avenue.
John Gilroy, my late producer, came into my office a bit shaken. “Guess what,” he said. “The Nixon White House keeps a scorecard on our show.” A grim and humorless voice on the phone, heralded by the chilling words “White House calling,” had informed John that they had counted the times the SST had been denounced on the Cavett show, were seriously miffed, and would be sending a spokesman to praise the SST.
Having my show booked from the White House produced an eerie sensation. It was subtly suggested that Mr. Cavett would, of course, be nice to him.
They sent a crew-cut gent — Nixon liked, in his words, “real men” — named Magruder (not the W-gate one, Jeb). With bone-breaking attempted amiability, Magruder was permitted to do his pitch for the SST, uninterrupted by his, with difficulty, amiable host. When he had said his piece, I thanked him, made clear to the viewers that he had been booked by the White House’s own talent agency, and merely added the few words, “I certainly hope the SST is defeated. But thanks for being here, Mr. . . . Magruder, is it?”
The fan was hit. The city of D.C. was not delighted with D.C.
The Great Unindicted Co-Conspirator (in one of his favorite illegalities), saw that my entire staff was audited, cruelly in the cases of the lesser-paid ones. This, combined with my formal protest of the administration’s attempt to deport John Lennon (henchman H.R. Haldeman, more in tune with pop culture than his boss, had poured into Nixon’s ear, “This guy Lennon could sway an election”) made me persona less than grata at the famous address. Hard to believe I was once earlier invited to a big Nixon do in the East Room — cordially greeted by henchman Haldeman and by Henry Kissinger, in the days before permanently sullying my welcome with the gang.
Much journalistic ink was spilled over the Magruder show, and Arthur called. “Sorry, Richard, if I made trouble for you.” The famous chuckle followed my assuring him I’d enjoyed every minute of it.
(Going through an old box of accreted stuff the other day, I was reminded that each time I had Arthur on a show he immediately penned a cordial thank-you note.)
In my improbable life, which has included meeting nearly all my heroes and heroines in show business and in many other fields, meeting Arthur Godfrey strained credulity. It seemed only a few years earlier that he emerged from our old Majestic, slow-to-warm-up radio five days a week, while I was a school kid in Nebraska. When I interviewed him, I told him that on a scorching Great Plains summer day, without air-conditioning, you could stroll past house after house and hear, through June-bug inhabited screens, the amiable voice, uninterrupted.
A Colossus of the Entertainment World
A portion of the May 8, 1972, appearance of radio and television legend Arthur Godfrey on Dick Cavett's show. Godfrey discusses how he got into show business -- and what he was up to before he did.
By None None onPublish DateJune 25, 2010.Notice on the video the vigor of Arthur’s entrance. With effort, his limp is not noticeable. The briskness is an act, having to do with the strong will of a man smashed to pieces in a head-on car crash in his younger days. After six months in the hospital, he defied the medic’s assurance that he would spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair; in middle age — on chronically painful wounded hips and knees — he learned to ice skate.
You may have to excuse me now. This column is due and, with the A/C on the fritz, the act of typing is producing moist secretion. (I hope you’re not eating.) So may I close, for now, on a subject I hope will be a pleasant nostalgia trip for many readers old enough to remember Pearl Harbor?
The video excerpt is from a full show with Arthur, and I apologize for the teaser at the end — the one about the Statue of Liberty. I can make it up to you at a future date. And as for the video that will go with that one, if you have a tear, prepare it for shedding.
P.S. Thanks for valuable info on Arthur to a man who survived the sometimes stormy seas of being his longtime agent, Peter Kelley, and to Arthur J. Singer for his excellent book, “Arthur Godfrey: The Adventures of An American Broadcaster.”
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The host of “The Dick Cavett Show” — which aired on ABC from 1968 to 1975 and on public television from 1977 to 1982 — Dick Cavett is the author, most recently, of “Talk Show: Confrontations, Pointed Commentary, and Off-Screen Secrets.” The co-author of “Cavett” (1974) and “Eye on Cavett” (1983), he has also appeared on Broadway in “Otherwise Engaged,” “Into the Woods” and as narrator in “The Rocky Horror Show,” and has made guest appearances in movies and on TV shows including “Forrest Gump” and “The Simpsons.” Mr. Cavett lives in New York City and Montauk, N.Y.
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