Andy Rooney_ 60 Years of Wisdom and Wit - Andy Rooney [105]
At his best, when Godfrey has finished a commercial, he has: 1) pointed up his own honesty; 2) made certain that everyone knows the name of the product; and 3) made clear that he, an honest man, thinks the product is the best there is.
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Godfrey is as independent of CBS as he is of sponsors. At fifty-six, he is not completely tactless, but the network does not push him anywhere he doesn’t want to go. There have been times when his relations with the network have been close to the breaking point. Frank Stanton, CBS president, would gladly have made an usher out of Godfrey in 1952 when Godfrey advised his Talent Scouts audience not to buy a television set until color sets were on the market in quantity. Color was years off, and CBS’s own television manufacturing subsidiary, DBS-Hytron, was up to its ears in black-and-white sets on which the network was spending an advertising fortune.
Anyone who has ever worked for Godfrey is asked, with monotonous regularity, “Is he hard to work for?”
The answer is that Godfrey is hard, but good, to work for. Because he does not like to think that anyone can really help him, he often belittles people’s efforts on his behalf.
He demands constant confirmation from the people around him that he is everything he wishes he was. He suspects himself of being a fraud— which he is not—and insists in a hundred little ways that his staff convince him that he is not.The Godfrey capacity for adulation is a bottomless pit.
“How was it?” he will ask after a show, and for an hour, people will sit around thinking of new ways to say that a real stinker was great. He leaves knowing in his heart that it was a stinker.
Godfrey is thoughtful, concerned about his employees’ personal problems, tight with a buck but free with a bankroll. He demands loyalty, but he returns it. Any employee of reasonably long standing who finds himself in trouble can get sympathy and real help from Arthur.
The greatest satisfaction in working for Godfrey is that he affords a refuge from all the petty pushers in the business. He takes no nonsense and protects those working for him from it. Within the limits of his absolute dictatorship, there is complete freedom, and next to getting to be the dictator, that is about all an employee can hope for.
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At this point in his career, he has a nagging sense of unimportance. He underrates what he has accomplished. For instance, in 1951 Godfrey was brought into the Republican movement. He and automobile executive Charles E. Wilson had breakfast with Eisenhower in December while the general was still president of Columbia University, and Godfrey and Wilson also met with the late Sen. Robert A. Taft. “We’re looking for the right guy,” Arthur said one day, a little grandly but in the confines of his office.
When the Republicans decided on Eisenhower, Godfrey started on a “get out and vote” campaign that rivaled any selling job he ever did for a sponsor’s product. He never said who to get out and vote for, but his sentiments were clear. Anyway, he was speaking to women on his morning shows, and in 1952, it was easy to forecast that if women got out and voted, it would be for Eisenhower. They did just that, of course, in record numbers, and Godfrey’s campaign was at least partly responsible.
He has been important in another area too. He is the most genuinely open-minded man I have ever known when it comes to another’s race
Harry Reasoner 231
or religion. His attitude must have had a healthy influence on his audience. As a matter of fact, one of the words Godfrey dislikes is “tolerance.” To be “tolerant,” he feels, suggests a superior attitude on the part of the tolerator.
I don’t know what historians may say about Godfrey at some future time, but I hope they understand