1953 was our last year in Marion and on October 19th, of that year, everybody in town was talking about the same thing.

Arthur Godfrey fired Julius La Rosa ON THE AIR!  Right in the middle of his show!  Julius had made a couple of records that did fairly well on the charts and he was so popular on the Godfrey show that he was getting more fan mail than Arthur was.  Then Julius, against Godfrey's wishes, hired his own manager.

No doubt about it, Arthur was a ego maniac and all that attention Julius was getting didn't sit well with the boss.  So, after singing a song on the show, on October 19th, Arthur said, "That was Julie's swan song with us" and, in front of the huge audience watching the show told La Rosa he was fired.

That little stunt did Godfrey a lot more harm that it did to La Rosa.  Ed Sullivan immediately signed Julius to appear on his "Toast of the Town" show where he made about 13 appearances.  He also hit #1 on the music charts with "Eh, Cumpari" and he got a TV show of his own as the summer replacement for Perry Como for two seasons.  Julius always gave credit to Arthur Godfrey for giving him his chance is show business but he also always added that Godfrey wasn't a very nice man.  A lot of people agreed with him.

This video is from earlier days when Julius was still in Arthur's good graces.