The Wild Blue Yonder

Arthur Godfrey was complaining that the newspapers had declared "open season" on him. Two weeks ago, he made the front pages when Liggett & Myers (Chesterfield) dropped its seven-year sponsorship of his radio & TV shows. Last week he was making headlines because of charges that he had endangered life, limb and property by buzzing the control tower at Teterboro (N.J.) Airport after taking off in his DC-3 for Virginia.

Flight for Life. Nor was that all. When he flew on to Miami to broadcast from his favorite Kenilworth Hotel. Godfrey scented another conspiracy: some prankish

TV engineer was deliberately fading out his voice on the transmission between Miami and Manhattan. On the air, Godfrey demanded: "I wonder who the guy is . . . Wonder who that could be? I wonder if he likes his job? Maybe he doesn't like what he's doing, huh? Maybe he should get out of this business, huh? Maybe he should take up shoveling snow--we'll see if we can't arrange that." But the charge of "flat-hatting"*against aging (50) Airman Godfrey was not so easy to dismiss as an errant engineer. The charge was made by Fred M.

Glass, director of aviation for the Port of New York Authority, which operates Teterboro Airport. Citing airport witnesses, Glass told the Civil Aeronautics Administration that on take-off Godfrey gained an altitude of 20 to 30 feet, then made an abrupt left turn, narrowly missed three planes that were warming up on the taxiway, skimmed over a hangar, and thundered directly toward an 87-ft. control tower, whose occupants fled for their lives.

Demanding a full investigation, Director Glass charged that "it would appear that the aircraft was operated carelessly and recklessly." Into the Fray. Over the air, Godfrey kept explaining all week to his audiences that he was forced into the left turn by a gusty crosswind. He complained that he had been refused the use of another runway heading into the wind. He alternately joked about the incident ("Who is this fellow Glass? Maybe he wants to run for governor") and darkly warned that the airport was being mismanaged. In Manhattan, columnists leaped into the. fray.

The New York Post's Earl Wilson concluded that this just wasn't Godfrey's year, urged that he "take a long rest." Ed Sullivan of the News reported that the Teterboro control tower had immediately called Godfrey to ask if his plane was out of control, and Godfrey had flippantly replied: "No, that's just a normal Teterboro take-off." The Mirror's Nick Kenny came valiantly, if ineptly, to Godfrey's defense. Kenny vaguely hinted that there was still another conspiracy, this time by "the proCommunists who do too much of the hiring & firing in radio and TV and haven't been able to touch Godfrey," and begged his public to remember that Godfrey "rates the patience of the audience because any doctor will tell you that no man is emotionally stable until a year after an operation such as the one Arthur went through." Colonel Ora Young, regional administrator of the CAA, who received the protest from Glass, promised reporters that he would do his duty, that he had written Godfrey and was patiently awaiting an answer, but that he did not think anyone --"especially a man of Mr. Godfrey's standing"--would deliberately fly a plane close to a control tower. Godfrey, however, had already taken his appeal to the highest court of all--his millions of listeners. Said Arthur emotionally: "Just so long as the people who count don't lose their faith in me, I'll never, never, never let you down. I never have and I never will. I'll die first."

* Navy slang for "irresponsible or playful acts in flight."

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