Arthur Godfrey (nicknamed „The Old Redhead“) in 1920 became a radio announcer and gained enormous popularity with different entertainment formats. In 1948, he began a television career as showmaster. He was one of the highest paid advertisers. In addition, he successfully performed as an ukulele player and singer and thus ensured the further dissemination of this instrument. His advertising contributed to the commercial success of the plastic ukuleles of Mario Maccaferri (1900–1993), which he developed in 1947 at Godfrey's suggestion and sold under the brand name Islander.

He sang like a frog and played his ever present ukulele like a hunt-and-peck typist. He talked with his mouth full and tossed aside his script to ad-lib whatever came into his head. He had no talent but folksiness. For Arthur Godfrey, that was enough. At his peak in the 1950s he was, after President Eisenhower, perhaps the best-loved man in America. Godfrey's daily radio show and two weekly TV shows on CBS brought the network as much as 12% of its total revenue.¹⁾

Although Godfrey could not sing, dance, act, or play the ukelele very well, he was an expert at ad-libbing and rarely scripted his material. He also smoothly wove his audience into his daily morning program by directly addressing the studio and home viewers and by making the reading of his fan mail a regular routine. Yet, the authenticity of his persona was also a product of larger discourses on the inherent aesthetic qualities of and social role played by television during these years. ²⁾

Godfrey was a perfect identification figure for the American petty bourgeoisie.³⁾ This even gave him a political role.

By every measure, he was the best-known figure in all of broadcasting for decades, and, in the view of President Eisenhower, the most trusted American. At Eisenhower's request, Godfrey had secretly recorded a series of announcements that would interrupt all TV and radio programming in the event of a nuclear attack. The idea was that Godfrey's unparalleled fame and reassuring, folksy manner would stave off panic and tell people how to save themselves.⁴⁾

[publist|page:bibtex:ukulele|wiki:file:dokuwiki_sht.tpl|only:mypath=7532000060157] pp. 187–201