Arthur Morton Godfrey

 Arthur Morton Godfrey (August 31, 1903 – March 16, 1983)

Godfrey was a radio and television broadcaster and entertainer who was sometimes introduced by his nickname, The Old Redhead. Godfrey served in the United States Navy from 1920 to 1924 as a radio operator on naval destroyers, but returned home to care for the family after his father's death. Additional radio training came during Godfrey's service in the Coast Guard from 1927 to 1930. He passed a stringent qualifying examination and was admitted to the prestigious Radio Materiel School at the Naval Research Laboratory, graduating in 1929. It was during a Coast Guard stint in Baltimore that on October 5 of that year he appeared on a local talent show and became popular enough to land his own brief weekly program. At the peak of his success in the mid-1950s, Godfrey helmed two CBS-TV weekly series and a daily 90-minute television mid-morning show, but, by the early 1960s, his presence had been reduced to hosting the occasional TV special and his daily network radio show, which ended in 1972. One of the medium's early master commercial pitchmen, he was strongly identified with many of his sponsors, especially Chesterfield cigarettes and Lipton Tea. Having advertised Chesterfield for many years, during which time he devised the slogan "Buy 'em by the carton", Godfrey terminated his relationship with the company after he quit smoking, five years before he was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1959. Subsequently, he became a prominent spokesman for anti-smoking education. In a dramatic turnabout, he became a controversial figure, especially after firing the handsome Julius LaRosa on-air in October 1953. He said the singer had gotten to be too big a star and lost his humility. Audiences were stunned and shaken. Soon, the ax fell on other Friends, including the popular Chordettes, Breyer, Marlowe, Haleloke and the Mariners. He had running feuds with Ed Sullivan and columnist Dorothy Kilgallen, and his ratings began to fall. Later, he was co-host for Candid Camera in 1960-61 and continued his radio show, "Arthur Godfrey Time" from 1960 until a tearful farewell in 1972. Emphysema, thought to have been caused by decades of smoking and the radiation treatments for Godfrey's lung cancer, became a problem in the early 1980s.

He died of the condition at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan on March 16, 1983 at the age of 79. Godfrey was buried at Union Cemetery in Leesburg, Virginia, not far from his farm in Waterford, Virginia.