Blogpost #24

Hello, hello, hello! This week's program is an hour-long salute to one of the most infamous names in broadcasting history. Arthur Godfrey was born August 31, 1903, and I'm remembering his birthday with a collection of rare clips from his various TV and radio shows covering the years 1939 to 1981.

Arthur began his radio announcing career in 1930 and became known for his casual, folksy style of broadcasting. Listeners found him extremely charismatic, which helped make him one of the most effective commercial spokesmen of radio's golden age.

President Roosevelt was a big fan of Arthur's, and he regularly tuned in to his early-morning radio on WJSV, Washington, D.C. There's a story that Roosevelt liked him so much that he arranged to have one of his shows recorded on September 21, 1939 for the National Archives. That recording is available online from archive.org. It's also been digitally restored and is available for purchase from radioarchives.org.

Arthur was offered a morning variety show by CBS Radio after he received critical acclaim for his emotional live eyewitness coverage of Roosevelt's funeral procession on April 14, 1945. You can hear it online on the Eyewitness To History site.

At the height of his popularity in the early fifties, Arthur had a daily radio show and several weekly TV shows. Sadly, his public image as a friendly, trustworthy broadcaster took a beating in the newspapers following his controversial on-air farewell to cast member Julius LaRosa on October 19, 1953. YouTube has several clips from Arthur's TV shows, including an episode of Biography that features Julius looking back on the incident decades later.

Arthur appeared as a guest on many TV talk shows in the sixties and seventies, including one memorable appearance with David Frost when he proudly announced that he'd had a vasectomy. He recorded a single called "This Is All I Ask" in 1964 which he performed on many TV programs, including the Jack Paar Program. That performance is available on DVD from Amazon.

Arthur's farewell appearance on TV came on a 1981 PBS special titled "The Fifties: Moments To Remember" when he reminisced about his career, played a 1953 clip of his show, and performed his 1947 hit "The Too Fat Polka" in the Grand Ballroom of New York's Waldorf-Astoria.

Next week's show will mark the seventieth anniversary of the start of World War II. We'll feature a hard-to-find documentary from a 1959 LP in which the late Walter Cronkite dramatically recaps the events in Europe during the thirties that led up to it. Your homework assignment for next week is to listen to the vintage radio news reports from the BBC Archives to determine why Britain's government declared war on Germany even though their country hadn't been attacked yet. Thanks for listening and thanks for reading.