White Hunter

"People are concerned for your health and want you to come home," the announcer pleaded.

"Blip blop bleeeeep," returned the voice over the CBS radio-TV "simulcast" from 6,000 miles away. "Who wants me to week wawk come home bureeek?"

"The people," said the announcer. The bleeeeep was Arthur Godfrey amid the flora and fauna of French Equatorial Africa, where he was stalking wild game and piping an occasional short-wave transmission into 4,000,000 American homes. Before he left the U.S., Godfrey got FCC and French government authority to make his broadcasts, and rival RCA assigned him four of its commercial frequencies. ("A helluva favor," said Godfrey. "Fine thing for good will, too.") This week Godfrey was flying home with a big surprise for "the people": a bristling red mustache and beard.

Bloop to Blurp. With some bush jackets, high boots, a helicopter, a CBS engineer, a LIFE photographer and correspondent, four guns, two of "the very latest" single sideband 1,000-watt transmitters, a rotary antenna, a truck, a jeep, a DC-3, generators, an electric refrigerator, eleven other white men and 48 natives, Godfrey and SAC's General Curtis LeMay trekked through the jungle for four perilous weeks. By last week White Hunter Godfrey had bagged a water buffalo, an elephant (with one shot), a hippo and a leopard. "I'm completely exhausted," he confided by phone to Peter Lind Hayes, who is substituting on his morning radio and TV shows. Peter occasionally let viewers hear the familiar adenoidal wheeze: "It looks bloop bleep like Wyoming. It's 123 degrees. You get headaches from the heat. But boy, that Bufferin [a sponsor] has been a godsend. By George, it's wonderful."

In the smoldering jungle, Godfrey's party was also using a lot of Ban, a new underarm deodorant (and Godfrey sponsor) : "We're the first white people who've ever been seen in this part of the country, and these natives and animals are really getting a load of how nice white people smell." Godfrey was also introducing the natives to such civilized amenities as Blue Bonnet Margarine (sponsor): "We are crazy about it here; we're making blueberry pancakes and frying the liver from the wart hog with it. Everything tastes better with bloop blurp margarine."

Between commercials, the airline and travel-agency plugs and the ejaculations of the transmitter, Godfrey occasionally described an average day. Viewers could look at a map of Africa on their TV screens as he spoke: "Started out into the bush just after daylight. After buffaloes--more dangerous, some say, than elephants. I stalked one by crawling on my belly. LIFE shot it so I'll be able to show you that. Now I'm back at the main base--you got that?"

Love to Everyone. Godfrey was impressed with the jungle sounds. "Beautiful as an orchestra," he said--but he was also concerned about the noise he was making back home. "Nothing worse than listening to a lot of chatter on the air if you can't make out what I'm saying." He was right. TV Critic John Crosby said he sounded like "Gerald McBoing Boing doing a rock-'n'-roll number with a trio called The Three Sunspots," and what Godfrey didn't know was that back home the studio audience was walking out in droves when he tuned in (cracked Hayes: "The natives get restless in the basement"). The great white hunter was undaunted. "I'm going off to shoot lions tomorrow," he signed off. "I'll call you next week. Goodbye and God bless you and give my love to everyone." Adjusting his bush-jacketful of Ban and oleomargarine, he beat back into the wilds.

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