Operation Godfrey

Some fifty women of assorted ages had been waiting all day at Boston's Logan Airport. When the plane landed, the women, joined by reporters, photographers, bystanders and a parcel of schoolchildren touring the airport, broke through the barriers and streamed out toward the blue-trimmed DC-3. On the plane's side was the neatly printed legend CAPTAIN ARTHUR GODFREY. Pilot Godfrey promptly took off again, leaving his flock of fans in a cloud of dust, propwash and indignation. Half an hour later he made another landing, taxied away from the crowd to the distant control tower, made his escape in the tower operator's Chrysler.

At Massachusetts General Hospital, Arthur Godfrey had to sneak by another crowd of well-wishers to get up to his $65-a-day, two-room suite. There he settled down to await operations on his hip which he hopes will repair the effects of a serious auto accident suffered 22 years ago. Next day, conscious of his duty to his public and perhaps alarmed by a hint of bad publicity, Godfrey gave an interview to 16 members of the local press. Wearing a boldly patterned aloha shirt ("I never sleep in anything else"), Godfrey posed for pictures. He hugged his nurse and hung Tarzanlike from an overhead bed trapeze. He explained away the business at the airport by saying: "I didn't want any one hit by a propeller." The press departed to fill their columns with emotional stories and headlines (TV PHILOSOPHER IN PAIN -- JOKES) and sentimental cartoons.

Godfrey's arrival was as unsettling to staid Massachusetts General Hospital as his absence is to 13 sponsors and his fans.

His radio & TV audience must get along with a triple replacement (Robert Q. Lewis, Gary Moore and guest stars, e.g., Jackie Gleason) over the 13 1/2 hours a week on CBS that Godfrey seemed to carry with ease. The hospital telephone operators have been flooded with calls from Godfrey fans, and three sacks of mail were waiting when he checked into the hospital.

Aware that it was dealing with a very special case, Massachusetts General (with the help of a CBS man) broke a 142-year-old tradition and began issuing daily bulletins about a patient. Mostly they were newsy items, like the report that Godfrey frequently plays his ukulele, but "softly so that he in no way disturbs the other patients." At week's end, when the first of Godfrey's two scheduled operations was successfully concluded, the hospital director himself, Dr. Dean A. Clark, revealed the first words Godfrey spoke on coming out of the anesthesia: "Bless you all."

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