(3 of 9)
On the rare occasions when a minor-league politico confronts him with an unfamiliar name, Goodie lets an inspired look of counterfeit recognition swim into his blue eyes, pokes the pol in the chest and says: "I remember that letter you wrote me." Since virtually every politician in California has written him at one time or another, Knight's gambit almost always works. "He has such a wholesome insincerity," explains Democratic Politician Robert W. Kenny.
Goodie Knight's detractors fault him for acting the clown, for corny jokes and banal speeches, and for talking too much.
The charges have a certain validity, but in California, the land of friendly graveyards, three-ring evangelism and the nut-burger, Goody's antics are surefire, and he makes no apology for them. It is also perfectly true that the handsome governor can (and often does) deliver sober, serious speeches; but Goodie has come to the conclusion that small-town Kiwanians and retired oldsters prefer a joke or a community sing to a dull discussion of the funded debt or the road-improvement program.
"Nine, Ten, Eleven . . ." Goodie's threadbare jokes are famous from Yreka to Araz Junction; hundreds of thousands of Californians have heard them. The governor repeats them endlessly, often in flawless dialect or fluent Spanish, always with chronometric timing. Typical is his celebrated "Train Story": Just before the 1948 election, Goodie was strolling through a moving train when he wandered into a line of lunatics being transported to a mental hospital. The guard was counting them off—"one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight"—when he spotted Goodie Knight. "And who might you be?" asked the guard. Replied Goodie: "I'm the next governor of California." "O.K.," said the guard, "get in line . . . nine, ten, eleven, twelve ..." Goodwin Knight uttered his first word before he was eight months old—fully four months before he learned to walk. He has hardly stopped for breath since. Last September 20,000 Californians crammed into Hollywood Bowl to hear President Eisenhower give a televised address. Preliminary speeches were so tightly timed that a 24-minute hole suddenly and appallingly opened in the program between the last scheduled celebrity and Ike's broadcast time. Into the breach stepped Goodie. While the President watched goggle-eyed from the wings, the governor clowned, hammed, strutted, ad-libbed, and mesmerized the sardine-packed audience for precisely 24 minutes. As he stepped onstage, the President turned to his escorts and remarked: "This is like sending a batboy in after Babe Ruth." Sometimes Goodie's talkativeness works against him. Earl Warren, a quiet man, oftentimes referred to his garrulous lieutenant governor as "my walkie-talkie." Once, during his first campaign for lieutenant governor, Knight and Al Kleinberger, his perennial campaign manager, called on a canning tycoon in San Francisco to ask for a campaign contribution.
Kleinberger suavely brought the conversation around to money, and the prospect produced his pen and checkbook. Then Goodie took over, talked uninterruptedly for an hour on the virtues of Goodwin J.