Arthur Godfrey

===Post-retirement===
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In retirement, Godfrey wanted to find ways back onto a regular TV schedule. He appeared on the rock band [[Moby Grape]]'s song "Just Like [[Gene Autry]]: A Foxtrot", a 1920s-pop-style piece from their album [[Wow/Grape Jam|''Wow'']]. Godfrey's political outlook was complex, and to some, contradictory; his lifelong admiration for Franklin Roosevelt combined with a powerful [[Libertarianism|libertarian]] streak in his views and his open support for [[Dwight D. Eisenhower]] as president. During his later years he became a powerful voice for the environmentalist movement who identified with the [[youth culture]] that irreverently opposed the "establishment", as he felt that he had done during his peak years. He renounced a lucrative endorsement deal with [[Colgate-Palmolive]] when it became clear to him that it clashed with his environmental principles. He had made commercials for [[Colgate (toothpaste)|Colgate]] toothpaste and the detergent Axion, only to repudiate the latter product when he found out that Axion [[Phosphates in detergent|contained phosphates]], implicated in [[water pollution]]. He did far fewer commercials after that incident.

While Godfrey was a great fan of technology, including aviation and aerospace developments, he also found time for pursuits of an earlier era. He was a dedicated horseman and master at [[dressage]] and made charity appearances at horse shows.

He also found in later years that his enthusiasm for high-tech had its limits when he concluded that some technological developments posed the potential to threaten the environment. During one appearance on ''[[The Dick Cavett Show]]'', Godfrey commented that the United States needed the [[supersonic transport]] "about as much as we need another bag of those clunkers from the moon." The concern that the SST contributed to [[noise pollution]], an issue Godfrey was instrumental in raising in the United States, is considered to have effectively ended [[Supersonic transport|SST]] interest in the U.S., leaving it to Britain and France. ([[Dick Cavett|Cavett]] claims that Godfrey's statement also earned tax audits from the [[Richard Nixon]]-era [[Internal Revenue Service]] for the show's entire production staff.)<ref>{{cite web |url=http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/25/a-godfrey-a-man-for-a-long-long-season/ |title=A. Godfrey: A Man for a Long, Long Season |first=Dick |last=Cavett |publisher=New York Times Blogs |date=June 25, 2010 |access-date=May 9, 2013}}</ref>

Although Godfrey's desire to remain in the public eye never faltered, his presence ebbed considerably over the next ten years, despite an [[HBO]] special and an appearance on a [[PBS]] salute to the 1950s. A 1981 attempt to reconcile him with La Rosa for a Godfrey show reunion record album, bringing together Godfrey and a number of the "Little Godfreys", collapsed. Godfrey had initially resisted the idea, floated by his agent, but finally relented. At an initially amicable meeting, Godfrey reasserted that La Rosa wanted out of his contract and asked why he had not explained that instead of insisting he was fired without warning. When La Rosa began reminding him of the dance lesson controversy, Godfrey, then in his late seventies, exploded and the meeting ended in shambles.