On August 31, 1903, Arthur Godfrey was born.

[rog]

4. Dick Cavett emphatically says this is not true (link below).

Dick Cavett is below, but first a small bit about Godfrey's upbringing, from his wiki article.

Godfrey's father was something of a "free thinker" by the standards of the era. He did not disdain organized religion but insisted that his children explore all faiths before deciding for themselves which to embrace. Their childhood included friends of Catholic, Jewish and various Protestant faiths. ... In the book Genius in the Family, written about their mother by Godfrey's youngest sister, Dorothy Gene, with the help of their sister, Kathy, it was reported that the angriest they ever saw their father was when a man on the ferry declared the Ku Klux Klan a civic organization vital to the good of the community. They rode the ferry back and forth three times, with their father arguing with the man that the Klan was a bunch of "Blasted, bigoted fools, led 'round by the nose!"

More of Our Man Godfrey, by Dick Cavett

https://archive.nytimes.com/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/16/more-of-our-man-godfrey/

Then there’s the anti-Semitism matter. At its most fulsome, it goes, “Don’t you know Godfrey owned a hotel in Florida with a sign out front that read, ‘No Dogs or Jews’?” Although purest nonsense, you can still hear it resurrected by seniors from that era.

Unreported was the fact that although he did patronize that hotel, he made a point of checking in with Jewish friends and cast members.

He later bought into the place and abolished the odious policy. Being labeled an anti-Semite was a bum rap that those who knew the man say he emphatically did not deserve. The hotel in question, The Kenilworth, became nationally famous at the time. (I don’t know if it still exists — renamed, perhaps, The Mel Gibson?)

The attacks on Arthur — and on other media giants over time — bring to mind that dreary cliché about how “the press likes to build you way up, just so they can later tear you down.”

This dumbbell notion has been around since I learned to read and has the durability of the great pyramid at Giza. Sure there’s plenty of schadenfreude (all four syllables please) around, but it’s not evil press monsters who, like those envying Greek gods, like to see the mighty tumble; it’s us. Envious us.