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The Yell Leader. As a towheaded toddler, Goodie never had to be urged to climb up on a chair and sing or recite for guests. When he reached Manual Arts High School, Goodie swam in his natural element. There was plenty of competition (among his class of 1915: General Jimmy Doolittle, Frank Capra, Lawrence Tibbett, former Lieutenant Governor Buron Fitts), but Goodie rose like a bubble in a glass of beer to the head of the class. He was yell leader, composer of school songs, star of the debating team, an enthusiastic member of the glee club and the dramatic society, a perennial master of ceremonies and, naturally, president of the student body. In the yearbook the class prediction cast him as governor—of New York.
By the time Goodie graduated, his father was in financial difficulties, unable to send him to college. Goodie went to work as a single jacker in a Nevada mine, pounding out blast holes with a sledgehammer ("Very good for the shoulders,'' says Goodie) and saved enough money to enter Stanford University. During other college summers, he shoveled coke for the Santa Fe ("Very good for the arms") and drove a delivery truck. At Stanford, doing what came naturally, he quickly became a big man on campus. "He was the eternal sophomore," says Fellow Alumnus Earl Behrens, who became the San Francisco Chronicle's political pundit and a close friend of the governor's. "Everyone knew he was around." In college Goodie learned to tapdance, won a gold medal for debating, permanently dented his nose as a halfback on the rugby team, and was elected class orator. Among the coeds, he was a fickle Apollo.
In 1921, after a year in the Navy during World War I and a semester at Cornell, he passed the California bar examinations (without ever receiving a law degree) and settled down to practice law and accumulate a fortune in gold mining.
"But let's face it," says Goodie. "I never forgot about being governor." In 1924, as a promising young lawyer and the proprietor of a Stutz Bearcat, Goodie met Arvilla Cooley, a dazzling blonde, at a dinner dance in Santa Monica. A year later they were married, and in due course Goodie became the doting father of two more dazzling blondes, Marilyn and Carolyn. Goodie, a mellow and indulgent parent, was surprised when he occasionally struck flint in his daughters' dispositions. When Carolyn was a student at U.S.C., he was curious to know why she had not joined a sorority. "Unlike you, Father," retorted Carolyn, "I feel no need for mass adulation." Life With Father. Around home, according to the girls, Father was lovable but incompetent. "Every Sunday he would be mumbling about getting out in the back and doing some work," recalls Carolyn, "but all he ever did was walk around with some Soilax and wipe fingerprints off the doorknobs." Goodie apparently suffered the fate of most men who must live in a feminine household.
"The most fun we would have," reports Marilyn (now the wife of Los Angeles Attorney Robert Eaton), "was peeking into his bedroom at night when he was getting ready for a speaking engagement.