[1][2][3] The infamous on-air firing of cast member Julius La Rosa in 1953 tainted Godfrey's down-to-earth, family-man image and resulted in a marked decline in his popularity which he was never able to overcome.

[4] Over the following two years, Godfrey fired over twenty additional cast and crew members, under similar circumstances, for which he was heavily attacked by the press and public alike.

An older Englishman, the senior Godfrey was a sportswriter and considered an expert on surrey and hackney horses, but the advent of the automobile devastated the family's finances.

Godfrey's mother, Kathryn, was a gifted artist and composer whose aspirations to fame were laid aside to take care of her family after her husband, whom she called "Darl'", died.

During a Coast Guard stint in Baltimore he appeared in a local talent show broadcast on October 5 of that year and became popular enough to land his own brief weekly program.

Godfrey was the station's morning disc jockey, playing records, delivering commercials (often with tongue in cheek; a classic example had him referring to Bayer Aspirin as "bare ass prin"), interviewing guests, and even reading news reports during his three-hour shift.

Performers who appeared on Talent Scouts included Lenny Bruce, Don Adams, Tony Bennett, Patsy Cline, Lu Ann Simms, Pat Boone, opera singer Marilyn Horne, Roy Clark, and Irish vocalist Carmel Quinn.

The Friday shows were heard on radio only, because at the end of the week, Godfrey traditionally broadcast his portion from a studio at his Virginia farm outside of Washington, D.C., and TV cameras were unable to transmit live pictures of him and his New York cast at the same time.

Godfrey's skills as a commercial pitchman brought him a large number of loyal sponsors, including Lipton Tea, Frigidaire, Pillsbury cake mixes and Liggett & Myers's Chesterfield cigarettes.

Many of these artists were relatively obscure, but were given colossal national exposure, some of them former Talent Scouts winners, including Hawaiian vocalist Haleloke, veteran Irish tenor Frank Parker, Marion Marlowe and Julius La Rosa, who was in the Navy when Godfrey, doing his annual Naval reserve duty, discovered the young singer.

In 1951 Godfrey also narrated a nostalgic movie documentary, Fifty Years Before Your Eyes, produced for Warner Brothers by silent-film anthologist Robert Youngson.

During his recovery, CBS was so concerned about losing Godfrey's audience that they encouraged him to broadcast live from his Beacon Hill estate (near Leesburg, Virginia), with the signal carried by microwave towers built on the property.

Godfrey's immense popularity and the trust placed in him by audiences was noticed not only by advertisers but also by his friend, President Dwight Eisenhower, who asked him to record a number of public service announcements to be played on American television in the case of nuclear war.

Godfrey used his pervasive fame to advocate a strong anti-Communist stance and to pitch for enhanced strategic air power in the Cold War atmosphere.

In addition to his advocacy for civil rights, he became a strong promoter of his middle-class fans' vacationing in Hawaii and Miami Beach, Florida, formerly enclaves for the wealthy.

[citation needed] His continued unpaid promotion of Eastern Air Lines earned him the undying gratitude of good friend Eddie Rickenbacker, the World War I flying ace who was the president of the airline.

He was such a good friend of the airline that Rickenbacker took a retiring Douglas DC-3, fitted it out with an executive interior and DC-4 engines, and presented it to Godfrey, who then used it to commute to the studios in New York City from his huge Leesburg, Virginia, farm every Sunday night.

The original Leesburg airport, which Godfrey owned and referred to affectionately on his show as "The Old Cow Pasture", was less than a mile from the center of town, and local residents had come to expect rattling windows and crashing dishes every Sunday evening and Friday afternoon.

He noted that black and white troops were serving together in the Korean War, and he attacked critics including Democratic Georgia Governor Herman Talmadge.

Godfrey's attitude was controlling before his hiatus for hip surgery, but upon his return, he added more air time to his morning shows and became critical of a number of aspects of the broadcasts.

He claimed Bleyer simply shrugged off the dismissal and focused on developing Cadence, which found significant success with hit records by the Everly Brothers and Andy Williams.

Godfrey subsequently fired other producers, writers, and cast members including Marion Marlowe, Lu Ann Simms, Haleloke, and The Mariners.

The integrated quartet (two members of the foursome were African-American) believed Godfrey had acceded to continued criticism from CBS affiliates in the South over the group's presence on the show.

Eddie Fisher, in his autobiography, Been There, Done That, discusses the rumor: One of the best-known anti-Semites in show business was Arthur Godfrey, the host of radio's most important amateur talent contest.

He returned to the air on a prime-time TV special but resumed the daily morning show on radio only, reverting to a format featuring guest stars such as ragtime pianist Max Morath and Irish vocalist Carmel Quinn, maintaining a live combo of first-rate Manhattan musicians (under the direction of Sy Mann) as he had done since the beginning.

Godfrey's political outlook was complex, and to some, contradictory; his lifelong admiration for Franklin Roosevelt combined with a powerful libertarian streak in his views and his open support for Dwight D. Eisenhower as president.

(Cavett claims that Godfrey's statement also earned tax audits from the Richard Nixon-era Internal Revenue Service for the show's entire production staff.

)[32] Although Godfrey's desire to remain in the public eye never faltered, his presence ebbed considerably over the next ten years, despite an HBO special and an appearance on a PBS salute to the 1950s.

The collection contains hundreds of kinescopes of Godfrey television programs, more than 4,000 audiotapes and wire recordings of his various radio shows, videotapes, and transcription discs.

The collection also contains Godfrey's voluminous personal papers and business records, which cover his spectacular rise and precipitous fall in the industry over a period of more than 50 years.