The real FACE IN THE CROWD

It's Arthur Godfrey birthday time on 8/31. He'd be 107. Why do we still remember him? Because overnight on November 19, 1953 Godfrey managed the extraordinary feat of going overnight from being the most beloved figure in show biz to, in all likelihood, the most reviled. Read all about it here: www.juliuslarosa.com/julie'sstory.html

From this blog of a while ago:
Such a bastard, in fact, was Godfrey that his wife of 40-some~odd years divorced him on her deathbed in 1983. Talk about having the last word!

Maybe Gertrude Stein never really replied, “What is the question?” to Alice B. Toklas’ “What is the answer“?“ And perhaps it's not true that jazz drummer Buddy Rich, when asked by a doctor, “ls there anything you’re allergic to?” replied “Yes, county and western music.“ One would like to think, though, that these are not apocryphal true stories.

And it's also "nice" to think that, according to singer Julius LaRosa, when Godfrey was on HIS deathbed and a nurse inquired, “Is there anything we can get you, sir?” “Yes,” he is said to have answered. “Get me some friends.”

LaRosa told me that one a while back in an e-mail, He also wrote to me at the time: “And another display of the man‘s personality/character, which recollection still stuns me. It‘s a Thursday afternoon, he's just flown me and [singer] Ian Davis to his farm in Virginia, At the airport, his wife and son, I guess 9 or 10 years old, are there to greet him. As the "Old Man" steps off the ladder his son comes up, extends his hand and says, “How do you do, Sir?" To his father!! An image which still astonishes mel”