(6 of 9)
We'd watch him stand before the mirror in his shorts, dance around like a boxer with his fists cocked and muscles flexed. He would pull in his stomach and examine his physique from every angle. Mother and us girls would almost die restraining our laughter. I don't think he ever knew we were looking."
In 1952 the laughter came to a tragic end when Arvilla Knight died suddenly of a coronary thrombosis. Goodie was distracted with grief. After months of brooding in a Sacramento hotel room, he finally went about once more and looked up an old acquaintance, Virginia Carlson, the pretty widow of a World War II bombardier, and a poetess of modest talents (TIME, May 16). Goodie's prim idea of a big date with Virginia was to take her to the Ontra Cafeteria on Wilshire Boulevard and then to the movies. Eventually, the Knight daughters prodded Goodie into taking Virginia on more romantic evenings, and in time, says Virginia, "he finally took a look at me. Up to then, he had just been talking to me." Goodie and Virginia were married last summer. Their honeymoon, on a borrowed yacht off Catalina Island, was hectic.
A LIFE photographer accompanied the happy couple, and after 24 hours Goodie began to spend most of his time on the ship-to-shore telephone, receiving bulletins on a developing power struggle between Knight's men and supporters of Nixon at the state G.O.P. convention.
Within four days, Goodie called the honeymoon off, raced back to the convention. "I hardly saw him at all," lamented the bride. But Virginia Knight recovered in time to compose a poem, which Goodie used as a campaign song.
Keep California's spirits high, Put your X beside our guy.
He's the one for whom we cry, It's Goodie, Goodie, Goodie!
In Search of Fun. As a lawyer, Goodie was always prosperous. In 1925 he formed a partnership in Los Angeles with Tom Reynolds, a Stanford classmate. By the time the firm was dissolved in 1934. Knight and Reynolds reportedly had the largest practice in California. But as his legal fees rose, Knight's interest in his business declined. Besides, he was independently wealthy from his mining interests. "After we got prestige, we couldn't afford to accept cases from little people who needed our help. We didn't have any fun." In search of fun, Goodie quit his lush practice and accepted Governor Merriam's appointment as a $9,000-a-year judge. But in spite of occasional sensations that came his way, e.g., the Barbara Stanwyck-Frank Fay divorce trial, the Mary Astor child-custody case, Judge Knight found the bench as dull as the bar. "I knew exactly how the cases I was trying were going to come out an hour after they began. But a judge can't shut a lawyer up. I used to sit on the bench and write letters, or anything, just to keep occupied. There came a time when I had to get out of it."