Arthur Godfrey and His Friends

I don't understand Arthur Godfrey's apparently huge power and popularity in the early 50's that propelled him to several shows including a weekday morning series, all with the same cast of singers, Marion Marlowe, Julius LaRosa, Haleloke, Frank Parker, The Mariners Quartette, The McGuire Sisters, etc. He was on the cover of TV Guide dozens of times, second only to Lucille Ball, and maybe more times if you counted in the pre-national(1953) issues.

He was ppresented as a quirky, folksy guy who loved to play a ukelele. He was just a regular kind of guy who charmed sponsors by gentle kidding. His cast were referred to as his "Family" or "The Little Godfreys".

In reality, that's not the story. Arthur Godfrey is to this day probably best known for his live, on-air firing of Julius LaRosa for his "lack of humility". This was seen as quite shocking to the audience, but if you spend any time with the old Kinescopes of the programmes, you will see that Godfrey and his performers are closer to a cluster of scared court jesters trying to keep their king amused.

The set of him morning show, "ARTHUR GODFREY TIME" has Arthur on an elevated chair and desk as his cast sits in rows of theatre type seats facing him. They do all their numbers in a certain sequence, and quitely, politely return to their seats. Arthur seems to have them riveted to whatever topic he rambles on and on about, until he runs out of steam. Nobody interrupts him, nobody kids around with him. they speak only when spoken to. Things that his "Family" do say to him are often held to ridicule, though they aren't ridiculous people. They're scared people.

One often can't tell if he's happy with them or not; he speaks in a monotone, and wears a sleepy, half smirk all the time, as if he's endlessly sizing up his next opponent.

The fake smiles and nervous laughs of the cast is unpleasant. In one extant segment, Arthur has Frank Parker called up to the mike, and says he thinks that there's going to be some changes made around here. the poor guy's fake happiness desolves, he visibly sweats and swallows hard. It's chilling. Arthur doesn't say what he's got in mind, and moves on to new business. Maybe he just needed a mini-power trip to get through the hour. Maybe that was considered high dramatic entertainment. Eventually he sacked nearly everyone on his shows. It's clammy televiewing.

Conversely, when "Artha" is absent for the day, and substitute M.C.s like Robert Q. Lewis or Peter Lind Hayes take over, Everyone is bright and cheerful and having a good time; they laugh and can talk freely with their guest host, and a relaxing feeling of sheer relief can be felt. When Godfrey imploded on himself, and dropped from the tube, It was all for the better.

I don't actually remember a whole lot about Arthur Godfrey and his Friends. I was literally still in diapers, still small enough to be confined in a playpen in the afternoons so my mother could get dinner on the table.



My recollection of Arthur Godfrey was that he was a soft spoken, gentle sort of fellow, who sat around and talked to a lot of people and smoked cigarettes. I was an early, articulate talker, so I suppose at least a little of that is attributable to Ah Ga and his friends. I also remember that someone would sing - I guess that would have been Pat Boone, though I didn't know that at the time.



What a strange show to be counted among one's childhood favorites! And yet, Arthur Godfrey and George Gobel were two of my heroes. I am not sure how the two were related, perhaps I saw George Gobel on the show one time.



I reviewed this mainly because I wanted it to have at least one good rating, figuring that the people who rated it so far were under 15 and think that everything earlier than 1990 may as well be from the Stone Age.