Word: godfreys
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Cardiff Giant. Sullivan started on TV in 1948. Where Milton Berle and Arthur Godfrey had their time of glory and then fell back exhausted, Ed has thrived and grown stronger in the heat of conflict. The battleground of TV is strewn with entertainers who could not quite stay the course-Red Buttons, Wally Cox, George Jessel, Ed Wynn, Ray Bolger, Bing Crosby. Sullivan is the first to admit that any one of these entertainers makes his own talents seem dim indeed. On camera, Ed has been likened to a cigar-store Indian, the Cardiff Giant and a stone-faced monument...
...says, "The best ones are those where two different kinds of people play against each other: if Lily Pons and Pearl Bailey do a duet, Lily sings it straight while Pearl clowns it up." His added ingredient is a shrewd combination of news and human interest. When Arthur Godfrey fired Baritone Julius La Rosa, Ed had the young singer on his show the same week ("There's nothing personal in it-if Arthur got fired, I'd hire him"). The human interest touches are usually emotional. Sullivan presented Helen Hayes shortly after the tragic polio death...
...each night viewers must make the decision whether to watch Robert Montgomery Presents, or Studio One, I Love Lucy or Medic, Disneyland or Arthur Godfrey, George Gobel or Gunsmoke. Shrewd Pat Weaver made these decisions even more difficult by spotting his 90-minute Spectaculars in places calculated to do the most audience harm to rival CBS. This year, NBC is back with 47 more Spectaculars, and CBS is replying in kind. Some TV families, rent with quarrels about which show to turn to, have ended in the divorce court...
Sylvester also delights in taking cracks at TV, Madison Avenue admen (one of them worried so much that his hair turned charcoal grey), and the big names of show business whose egos outgrow their talents (favorite targets: Arthur Godfrey, Eddie Fisher, Frank Sinatra). "Wouldn't it be wonderful," observed Sylvester one bright morning, "if Arthur Godfrey hired Mario Lanza and Lanza quit before Arthur could fire...
Having been grounded six months last year for buzzing the Teterboro, N.J. Airport control tower, TV's humbly arrogant Arthur Godfrey buzzed himself into another jam with the Civil Aeronautics Administration. The charge: flying so close to an airliner over Chicago's Midway Airport that he forced the plane to reduce its speed. "Oh, for Christ's sake," cried Godfrey. "We certainly weren't endangering him. I merely dipped my wing to say hello. It's like tipping your hat. How close could I have been, if the pilot had to call the tower...