Radio: Like a Divorce

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Whenever he is displeased by public curiosity. Arthur Godfrey disappears behind a velvet curtain of pressagents, vice presidents and well-rehearsed secretaries. Godfrey did his vanishing act once again last week when Liggett & Myers (Chesterfield cigarettes) withdrew its $4,000,000-a-year sponsorship from his Friday radio show, his Monday and Wednesday radio & TV shows, and the Wednesday night Arthur Godfrey & His Friends TV show.

Backstage Battle. What had ruptured the seven-year association between Godfrey and Chesterfield? Arthur's great & good friend Walter Winchell rushed into print with an explanation: "Godfrey quit his ciggie sponsors. They didn't quit him. He didn't like the commercials." New York Journal-American Columnist Dorothy Kilgallen had a different version: "Around CBS they say the split . . . was preceded by a sizzling backstage battle just before airtime," but Dorothy failed to say what the sizzling battle was about or whom it was between. Fred H. Walsh, president of the advertising agency concerned (Cunningham & Walsh), insisted that he was completely in the dark: "Nobody here knows anything. It's a matter between Liggett & Myers and CBS." At Liggett & Myers, Advertising Manager Lawrence Bruff was not answering his phone.

The whispers grew louder in Manhattan. Godfrey was reported to have said that he was giving up smoking. Alternatively, he was said to have switched from Chesterfields to a pipe. Some pundits sagely viewed the incident as a sign of Godfrey's decline: "Coming after the LaRosa rumpus, it's another blow at Godfrey's prestige." Godfrey was rumored to be leaving CBS for NBC. to be retiring from radio & TV, to be thinking of entering 1) the Government or 2) a monastery.

Hidden Bodies. By week's end the dust was settling a little. General Motors eagerly jumped in to fill the sponsor's gap on the Godfrey & His Friends show and other advertisers were lining up to replace Chesterfield in the open radio &. TV "segments. CBS President Frank Stanton saw the rupture merely as a matter of personalities: "There are no hidden bodies. It was just a lot of little things. For over two years we couldn't get together on renewing a contract. It's a little like a divorce is sometimes—I don't know who called who what first. There has been an accumulation of small irritations, but I couldn't point to any one thing." What about the rumor that Godfrey was giving up smoking? Replied Stanton: "If he said that, it was probably as a joke. I can't believe Arthur would be that rude to a personal friend like Ben Few [Liggett & Myers president]. And there's nothing new about his smoking a pipe—he does it every now & then."

Lioness in the Living Room

Tallulah Bankhead last week made most TV screens seem far too small. On the U.S. Steel Show (alt. Tues. 9:30 p.m., ABC-TV), starring in a production of Hedda Gabler, Tallulah turned Ibsen's devious, subtly evil heroine into a flamboyant, shouting hussy. It was like a lioness playing Puss in Boots. To TV audiences educated to the quiet underplaying of such shows as Dragnet, watching Actress Bankhead was a startling experience.