System Mechanic - Clean, repair, protect, and speed up your PC!Arthur Godfrey
1903 - 1983
Radio and television talk show host Arthur Godfrey died March 16, 1983. He was 79.
Godfrey was born August 31, 1903 in New York City. The oldest of five children, Godfrey grew up in a poor family. He had to drive a bakery wagon while going to school to help the family pay its bills.
Godfrey quit school in 1918. He traveled the country, working at odd jobs. He joined the Navy shortly after World War I, becoming a radio operator. Godfrey spent six years in the Navy, and upon discharge went to work selling insurance. Later he was an auto assemblyman, a cemetery plot salesman, and short order cook.
Godfrey didn't find his calling until 1929, when he became a radio announcer on WFBR in Baltimore.
He and his first wife Catherine divorced in 1930. Godfrey became an NBC radio announcer in Washington, D.C., but had to put his career on hold in 1931 when he spent four months in the hospital recuperating from an automobile wreck that left him with injuries which plagued him the rest of his life.
When he resumed his announcing job, Godfrey became a popular host with his folksy manner of talking to people. By the late 1930's he was earning a comfortable living.
Godfrey wanted a network radio job. After impressing CBS executives with his coverage of the Franklin Roosevelt funeral, he got one, and was not without a network job for the next 27 years. He made an easy transition into television. Soon Godfrey's show was generating 12 percent of CBS revenues.
When he fired singer Julius LaRossa in 1953, Godfrey's popularity began to fade.
The network and the public began to lose favor with Godfrey, but he still had an audience and continued to host his own show until 1972.
He was in declining health in early 1983, and died of complications of emphysema and pneumonia in New York City on March 16, 1983.
