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Harry Butcher, wartime aide of General Eisenhower and an old friend of Godfrey's, explains earnestly: "Arthur conducts a two-way conversation all by himself. It's more than a soliloquy: it's a great art. What do you call it—? Empathy.* You know, the ability to get inside other people, to understand exactly how they're feeling."
Short-Handled Broom. In California, bag-eyed Fred Allen handed in a sour' minority report. Said Allen (in 1942 Godfrey was dropped from the Allen show after a six-week experiment): "He's sweeping the country, and, Lord knows, it needs to be swept. But I think Arthur must be doing it with a short-handled broom—he's nearer the dirt than most people." To Allen, Godfrey is a sign of the times: "Millions of people think he's the funniest guy alive, but their standards are open to question. This is an age of mediocrity. Anything mediocre is bound to be a success. As we get more regimented, there are fewer Tiffanys and more Woolworths."
Though Arthur Godfrey believes, as did Mark Twain, that half the art of American humor consists in keeping your face straight, he scores heavily with the precision mugging of his Huck Finn features. He is a master of the mildly distasteful grimace, the quizzical brow, the shrug of simulated incomprehension. His personality has elements of other U.S. entertainers who have won a peculiarly affectionate place in American hearts. Like Will Rogers, Godfrey is the embodiment of the homespun debunker; but where Will fired salvos at Congress, Godfrey snipes at the lesser game of admen and pressagents. Like Bing Crosby, he blends urbanity with the slippered ease of a small-town family man. Like George M. Cohan, he is a Yankee Doodle flag waver.
Love & Hate. Close associates say that Godfrey's contrariness is his outstanding characteristic. His Girl Friday, Margaret ("Mug") Richardson, says: "Arthur's contradictions are the only thing close to talent he's got." He is confusingly shy one minute and brash the next, sentimental and savage, generous and stingy, as quick to unreasoning affection as unreasoning dislike. Said one bruised ex-friend: "Arthur either starts off with great loves and then hates people, or with great hates and then loves them." He also has a sense of proportion that is all his own. The man who wept while broadcasting from Washington a moving account of Franklin Roosevelt's funeral procession is capable of equally sincere tears on hearing an all-girl quartet sing Down by the Old Mill Stream.
Every confirmed Godfrey fan knows that from one moment to the next he may erupt into ribaldry, beery pathos or waspish exasperation. When a joke lays an egg, he will pettishly blame his writers. And he reacts sharply to criticism: hearing that William Paley thought the Godfrey TV show "lacked movement," Arthur brought on a line of hula dancers and leered into the TV camera: "Is that enough movement for you, Bill?"