R.I.P.: Singer, Broadcaster Julius La Rosa

Julius La Rosa

Julius La Rosa, the celebrated 1950s singer who reinvented himself as a television, stage and nightclub performer after his young career was thrown into turmoil by a bizarre and humiliating on-the-air firing by Arthur Godfrey before a national audience, died on Thursday at his home in Crivitz, Wis.

He was 86, according to the NY Times.

La Rosa had been plucked from obscurity, taken into the “Little Godfrey” family, paid a salary beyond his wildest dreams and exposed to colossal television and radio audiences. For a Brooklyn kid just out of the Navy, it was a dream come true.

With his chunky-cheeked, boyish grin and dark, curly hair swept back from a widow’s peak, he crooned pop favorites for 35 million people from 1951 to 1953 on CBS’s “Arthur Godfrey Time,” a weekday morning television and radio show, and for “Arthur Godfrey and His Friends,” a Wednesday night variety program. The news media explored his life. Fans swooned. His mailbag brought 7,000 letters a day (more than Godfrey’s), and his salary grew to $900 a week.

La Rosa at WNEW-AM

But it all came at a price.

Godfrey — a folksy, sentimental ukulele strummer to his audiences but an imperious, tyrannical boss behind the sets — ordered all his entertainers to take dancing lessons. Mr. La Rosa refused. He also insisted that his performers not work for outside interests and not be represented by personal agents.

Feeling exploited, Mr. La Rosa did both. He signed with Cadence Records, a label owned by Mr. Godfrey’s musical director, Archie Bleyer, and made several recordings, including his first hit, “Anywhere I Wander.” He also hired an agent to renegotiate his CBS contract and manage his outside interests.

On Oct. 19, 1953 — 23 months after Mr. La Rosa’s debut — Mr. Godfrey retaliated in a morning segment heard only on the radio. Mr. La Rosa had just finished singing “Manhattan” when Mr. Godfrey delivered the sentence in his solemn foghorn voice.

“That was Julie’s swan song,” he said.  Godfrey told reporters that La Rosa had been banished because he lacked “humility.”



Far from being a death knell for Mr. La Rosa’s career, however, it opened new doors.

Ed Sullivan signed him, at triple his old salary, for a dozen appearances on his national television variety show, “Toast of the Town.” Soon, Mr. La Rosa recorded “Eh, Cumpari,” the biggest hit of his career, and “Domani.” He went on a national tour, appearing with Perry Como, Patti Page, Nat King Cole and Sarah Vaughan. By 1955, “The Julius La Rosa Show” was on summer television three times a week.

Bill Hickok. Gene Klavan, Andy Fisher, Dick Shepherd, La Rosa

He later worked as a disc jockey for then-WNEW 1130 AM in New York and later for WNSW 1430 AM in Newark, and for many years was a headliner on nightclub and cabaret circuits in New York, Las Vegas and other cities.

(H/T: WNEW courtesy of www.wnew1130.com)