Some years ago in a fortnight I saw biographical documentaries on four men who became very important figures in the mid twentieth century as a result of the modern electronic media: Arthur Godfrey, Walter Winchell, Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite. The first two lost their power and influence in their own lifetimes and when they are thought of at all it’s not usually in a very positive light. The later two are icons of their profession and their influence continues to this day. But we seem to have more people like the former two today than the latter two and I feel that’s to our discredit and disadvantage.
Godfrey was about to get out of the Coast Guard when a friend who was also about to leave said he was going to audition for an announcer’s job at a radio station. Godfrey tagged along and, on a lark, auctioned as well. He bumbled his way through it but his folksy manner was somehow agreeable to the station manager and launched him on a career in broadcasting. At that time the field was full of “announcer” types who delivered the news in a rote fashion whereas the friendly, very human Godfrey appeared to be talking directly to the listener. He worked his way up the broadcasting ladder until he was assigned to cover the funeral procession of President Roosevelt, during which he openly cried. The professionals in the field were appalled but the public ate it up.
When television started, Godfrey became a super-star. At one time he had both the #1 and #3 shows on TV, “Arthur Godfrey and his Friends” and “Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts”, an early version of American Idol. He also had a hugely successful radio show, “Arthur Godfrey Time”. He was arguably the most beloved man in America to the broadcast audience. President Eisenhower actually had him record a series of announcements that would be played to the American people in the event of nuclear war. Per Wikipedia, “It was thought that viewers would be reassured by Godfrey's grandfatherly tone and folksy manner.”
People who worked with him had a different view of him. He was an insecure man and responded to his great success by trying to micro-manage everything and everyone around him, seeing threats to his continued success everywhere. He wanted to control the lives and careers of all the people on his shows, whom he called “The Little Godfreys“. When they rebelled against him by seeking careers of their own, he regarded them as ungrateful to him. It all boiled over in 1953 when he fired one of the “ingrates”, Julius LaRosa, on the air for his “lack of humility”. LaRosa had many fans and the public outrage over his firing encouraged others who had been fired or mistreated by Godfrey to go public. His popularity, entirely based on his public manner and image, collapsed.
This prompted the creation of two excellent films, Jose Ferrer’s The Great Man (1956), about a reporter asked to do an article on an iconic figure who has been killed in a car crash, only to find that he was far from the admirable figure the public believed him to be, and Elia Kazan’s A Face in the Crowd. Budd Schulberg’s script for the latter was also based on Will Rogers, the folksy humorist and political commentator of the 1930’s and to a lesser extent on Tennessee Ernie Ford, another popular TV entertainer of the 50’s with a well-disguised drinking problem.
The central character of A Face in the Crowd is Lonesome Rhodes, played by Andy Griffith, a drifter who likes to play the guitar. TV talent scout Marcia Jeffries, (Patricia Neal), discovers him in jail and, with the help of writer Mel Miller, (Walter Matthau), and sponsor executive Joe DePalma, (Tony Franciosa), he becomes first a local and then a national TV star, beloved for his folksy humor and “down to earthiness”, (to coin a term). As his popularity and confidence grows, so does his ego and ambition.
Some political insiders see him as a source of power and convince him to back a Senator running for President who is lagging behind because of his rather stiff and formal image. Rhodes invites him on his show and delivers folksy stories suggesting that he would be the answer to the country’s woes. He’s now convinced he could become the “power behind the throne“.
Jeffries and Miller decide they’ve had enough. Miller writes an expose but it will take some time to be published, especially once Rhodes gets wind of it. Jeffries, on the spur of the moment, conceives an alternative plan. She switches on his microphone when Lonesome thinks the show’s over and broadcasts his condescending statements about the stupidity of his public. His popularity collapses like Godfrey’s and Rhodes is left in his penthouse playing recorded applause and screaming to Jeffries not to leave him because he needs her help. There’s a suggestion he might jump from the high place in which he lives but that is not depicted.
One wonders how this would play out today. People seem so loyal to someone like Rush Limbaugh, despite his antics and drug addiction that maybe a modern Lonesome Rhodes would have survived his exposure as a cynic.
What’s interesting is that Kazan depicts the political insiders as conservatives, with the Senator trying to be folksy while decrying Social Security. He, (and Schulberg), seem to be lashing out at the very sort of people they felt compelled to testify before to save their careers. At the same time, Rhodes can be seen as a McCarthy-like figure, riding a wave of popularity while exploiting the politics of the time to a position of undeserved and uncontrolled power. They must have resented the position they had been put into by such people as much as the condemnation they received from the left after they testified.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rP1RM4k7hV8&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJ5RZWttmoA&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edpz9f5LVaY&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaLQMs_VDLw&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SlobJX_Fl8
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Face_in_the_Crowd_(film)
One of the celebrities who appear in A Face in the Crowd commenting on Lonesome Rhodes is Walter Winchell. Winchell was a failed Vaudevillian who started writing a column for a trade paper just to say in the business. He found that this was what he was really good at and built his column into the most popular in America by the 1930’s, the first real “gossip” column. He had a flamboyant style and coined many phrases, including “the Big Apple”.
He soon found that his column gave him the power to make or break the careers of people in show business and even beyond that sphere. People sought his favor so much he developed the habit of dropping coins on the sidewalk so he could watch people scramble to pick them up and hand them back to him. He had no reservations about accusing people he didn’t like of things like being a communist or a drug addict. He reveled in his power but also made many enemies.
In the 50’s, he tried to switch to TV but his corny style didn’t go over there, (although it did seem to fit as the narrator of “The Untouchables”). He tried taking on Jack Paar, who had become popular with this boyish storytelling on TV. But Paar’s report with his audience won the day and Winchell’s popularity and power faded. It got so bad late in his life that he was actually printing his column on his own paper and selling it on street corners. When he died, one person came to his funeral.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Winchell
Ernest Lehman had been an assistant to a New York press agent in the 40’s and wrote a story for Cosmopolitan about the life of a press agent called “Tell Me About it Tomorrow”. He wanted to call it “Sweet Smell of Success” but the magazine didn’t want the word “smell” in their magazine. He was invited to come to Hollywood to write for the screen and after several successful films Burt Lancaster’s company hired him to adapt his magazine story for the screen. But he became ill and blacklisted playwright Clifford Odets was called in to do the script, which was restored to it’s intended title.
The central characters of the story were a powerful gossip columnist, J.J. Hunsecker and his associate press agent Sidney Falco, who did favors for Hunsecker in exchange for getting his clients a mention in his column. Hunsecker asks him to arrange for a young musician to stop seeing his sister, Susan, whose life he controls. Sidney succeeds but has to save Susan from killing herself. Hunsecker walks in on them and interprets the situation as if Sydney was trying to rape Susan. Susan, in revenge, says nothing. Hunsecker has his lackies on the police force arrest and beat up Falco but he loses Susan who walks out on him. Like Lonesome Rhodes, Hunsecker is left in his penthouse, looking down on the world in pain over his lost power to control events.
The film was too downbeat to be a success in it’s time but it’s reputation has grown with the years. Hunsecker, was, of course based on Winchell. Hume Cronyn was considered for the part because of a resemblance to Winchell but Lancaster took the role for himself and gave a powerful, scary performance. Tony Curtis made a meal of Sidney Falco and should have at least been nominated for an Oscar but wasn’t. The sister was played by Susan Harrison and her beau by Martin Milner of “Route 66” fame, (who does very well).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQjM01pxQi0
After watching the biographies of Godfrey and Winchell and then of Murrow and Cronkite, whose reputations have remained in tact, I concluded that the real difference between them is that Murrow and Cronkite were men who felt they were entering a profession, one that had an important social purpose and a code of ethics designed to make sure that purpose was performed. They lived up to it so well they became a symbol of their profession and an inspiration to people who wanted to enter it.
Godfrey and Winchell were men who stumbled into a source of fame and power. They saw no purpose other than their own gratification and had no ethics other than to use and protect their power. When they lost their popularity they also lost their power and had no friends or admirers left to help them or care about them.
The problem is, the media is a greater source of power than ever. There are so many sources that everyone has a mouthpiece now. It’s no longer controlled by being part of a profession with a code of ethics. There are still Murrows and Cronkites trying to keep the flag of journalistic integrity flying but there are also plenty of Godfreys and Winchells using their access to the public for their own purposes.
The past is a series of presents. The present is living history we are priviledged to witness
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