Word: godfreys
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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During the last year, as Godfrey told it, Julius began to change into an "obstreperous" boy. He eyed outside offers, lost interest in the ballet and tap-dancing exercises for the Godfrey cast. "Julius went completely berserk, haywire." His signing with an agent was "the straw that broke the camel's back...
Said he to his TV audience: "That was Julie's swan song with us. He goes now out on his own, as his own star, soon to be seen in his own program, and I know you wish him Godspeed same as I do. Bye-bye!" Godfrey's abrupt sacking of Crooner La Rosa, which was news to Julius, was also a Page One story to newspapers across the country.* It was quickly made even juicier by the added information that Bandleader Archie Bleyer, 44, a longtime Godfrey regular, had been fired the same day from the daytime...
...days later Godfrey told the press why he did it. "When I take on a new entertainer," he said, "I look for a special quality, kind of indefinable, but the nearest I can come is a form of humility. It has something to do with being lovable, likable and wholesome ... I go a little crazy over that quality." That's the way Julius had been, "a shy, bashful, scared-to-death...
...Archie Bleyer, said Godfrey, all choked up: "I love that man. He's a gentleman." But Archie, too, had lost his humility. Bandleader Bleyer had spent part of a recent vacation by going out to Chicago for his own record company and cutting some songs with the star of a rival network-ABC's Don (Breakfast Club) McNeill. "It's like being married to a woman for 20 years," said Godfrey mournfully, "and then coming home and finding a cigar butt in the ashtray...
...Cute? Although Godfrey tossed in a slurring remark on his Wednesday night show ("I'm sure you have noticed through the years that those who are the great ones stay with me"), his two ex-great ones were careful to show no rancor. Bleyer kept his peace. La Rosa appealed to reporters as a mixed-up kid: "It was Mr. Godfrey who kept telling me I was humble and to stay that way . . . He kept harping on that humility thing . . . This guy-pardon me-Mr. Godfrey -Mr. Godfrey has one of the best shows...