Word: godfrey
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...more cynical observers think that Godfrey's greatest audience bait is the faintly smutty double meaning. "Godfrey can do more with the lift of an eyebrow than De Maupassant could with a volume," says one adman. "Whenever he ad-libs he talks himself right into the bathroom." Such scatological shockers as the miniature outhouse he used as a TV prop invariably explode titillated giggles in his studio and television audiences...
...Godfrey himself can find but one explanation for his success: "It's because people believe in me. How the hell else can you explain it?" To CBS Board Chairman William Paley, Godfrey "is the kind of guy the average man would like to behe's a wistful projection of the average guy." An NBC vice president says enviously: "Berle's a comedian, but he's only good once a week. Godfrey could go on seven times a week and you'd never get tired looking...
Harry Butcher, wartime aide of General Eisenhower and an old friend of Godfrey's, explains earnestly: "Arthur conducts a two-way conversation all by himself. It's more than a soliloquy: it's a great art. What do you call it-? Empathy.* You know, the ability to get inside other people, to understand exactly how they're feeling...
Short-Handled Broom. In California, bag-eyed Fred Allen handed in a sour' minority report. Said Allen (in 1942 Godfrey was dropped from the Allen show after a six-week experiment): "He's sweeping the country, and, Lord knows, it needs to be swept. But I think Arthur must be doing it with a short-handled broom-he's nearer the dirt than most people." To Allen, Godfrey is a sign of the times: "Millions of people think he's the funniest guy alive, but their standards are open to question. This...
Though Arthur Godfrey believes, as did Mark Twain, that half the art of American humor consists in keeping your face straight, he scores heavily with the precision mugging of his Huck Finn features. He is a master of the mildly distasteful grimace, the quizzical brow, the shrug of simulated incomprehension. His personality has elements of other U.S. entertainers who have won a peculiarly affectionate place in American hearts. Like Will Rogers, Godfrey is the embodiment of the homespun debunker; but where Will fired salvos at Congress, Godfrey snipes at the lesser game of admen and pressagents. Like Bing Crosby...