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THE
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It was manager Ritchie Lisella (1.) who guided Bill straight to his big moment with Godfrey (r.). Now in the big time. Bill tries it tune (below) with program-mates Janette Davis, Archie Bleyer.
By BILL LAWRENCE
WHEN Arthur Godfrey offered me a chance to stay with his show for thirteen weeks, I was so astonished that I just stood there in front of the mike with my mouth open and nothing coming out. I had two good reasons to be surprised. In the first place, I had just finished the last of three appearances I had won through my try-out on his Talent Scouts Show, and was ready to say goodbye. In the second place, we were still on the air, and business is not usually done with 30,000,000 people listening in.
So I just stood there, and I guess the radio audience took in the news before I did.
My mother was listening in from East St. Louis, and when she heard the offer she laughed and then she cried and she was running out to tell the neighbors while I was still just gaping at Mr. Godfrey.
Then the studio audience started to applaud, •and I realized that it was the real thing . . . that I was not dreaming of getting on the big time . . . that this was my chance at last.
It still seems like a dream, however, because things have been happening so fast ever since. Within a week of the time I arrived in New York on borrowed money, I had a thirteen weeks contract to sing five mornings a week on The Arthur Godfrey Show, at what seems to me like an awful lot of money. I was signed to sing every Tuesday night on The Morey Amsterdam Show, and I had offers for two night club dates. There have been wires and letters of congratulation from friends and from people I never heard of, too. I have fourteen fan clubs and Radio Mirror has asked me to write my life story. What more could a guy want?
That last — the story — is almost the hardest to handle. Naturally, everything that has happened in my twenty-one years is interesting to me, but it isn't much {Continued on page 78)
Bill Lawrence ^was "discovered" on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts, Mon., 8:30 P.M. EST, CBS. He is heard regularly on Godfrey's A. M. show, 10:30 EST, CBS.
26
For a beginner, it's a long, hard road. Unless — like Bill — you bump into Arthur Godfrey on the way.