Each weekday, from early morning until sunset, television turns loose an avalanche of masculine charm that would overwhelm any audience less hardy than U.S. housewives. TV's charm boys range from such veteran network stars as Arthur Godfrey to such local Lotharios as The Continental, who lounges about in a silken robe, sipping champagne at midday, breathing love poems and casting hot-eyed glances calculated to burn right through TV screens.
Folksy & Sincere. Godfrey, of course, is the unquestioned king of TV's matinee idols. Last week, telecasting from Florida, he sat on a Miami beach with the Atlantic rollers surging behind him, while his cast shivered in Manhattan. Using the split-screen technique, Godfrey chatted with each member of his team and listened approvingly while they told him how wonderful he was. Arthur operates on the disarming assumption that every viewer is at least as absorbed in Godfrey as he is, and he spends much of his 90-minute show in discussing such items as his own weight, what he ate for dinner, what he did before the broadcast, what he expects to do after it.
In varying degrees, most of the other charm boys pattern themselves after Godfrey. His most faithful imitator (and occasional stand-in for Godfrey) is CBS's Robert Q. Lewis, 32, a slick-haired man who wears sharp suits and horn-rimmed glasses. His cast, like Godfrey's, sits at one side of the stage. In the Godfrey manner, Lewis chuckles interminably at his own gags, and talks heedlessly until he is cut off the air by the station break. But Robert Q. is not too proud to imitate other stars. A day after Charm Boy Garry Moore had a bucket of water dumped on his songstress Denise Lor while she was warbling Stormy Weather, Lewis dumped a bucket of simulated snow in the face of his songstress Jaye P. Morgan while she sang Let It Snow!
All the charm boys labor hard to achieve a mysterious TV ingredient known in the trade as "sincerity." Crew-cut Garry Moore gets his by half-closing his right eye and crossing his fists in front of his chest; for emphasis he uses the waggling forefinger and the forward head bob. Du Mont's Paul Dixon strikes the folksy note by chewing gum, rubbing his nose and garbling his syntax. Bob Crosby is a hands-in-pockets man, but he also shoots his eyebrows, ducks his head winningly and rocks on heel and toe. His cast struggles to be homespun, and his young singer, Allan Copeland, is loaded with boyish humility.
Candy-Coated Chuckle. Many of the boys prop up their fan appeal with wholesale giveaway of wristwatches, electric blankets, home freezers and sports shirts. Standouts in this field are Art Linkletter and his House Party, Welcome Travelers' Tommy Bartlett (noted as the possessor of the "candy-coated chuckle"), and Johnny Dugan of Breakfast in Hollywood, which last week was dropped from TV because of lack of sponsors.