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The Mariners—Loyal, But Off The 'Team' Reminiscing about their eight-and- a-half years as Godfrey’s “Friends,” The Mariners answered questions in¬ dividually and in unison. They dis¬ agreed on a few minor points, but agreed wholeheartedly on these: 1. Godfrey is a man of many moods and paradoxes. 2. In firing them, “He helped us much more than he helped himself.” 3. By cutting loose so many of his cast, Godfrey is sacrificing the one feature of his shows which made them unique—the warm feeling of “family.” 4. He definitely favored some cast members, notably Janette Davis. 5. He treated the cast like children by compelling them to take dancing, ice-skating and bicycling lessons. 6. The Mariners felt they were among Godfrey’s most loyal support¬ ers—and yet, when he fired them, he never asked them to come back to see him some time, or to drop in, as old friends might do. This especially saddens them, be¬ cause they feel that, in several inci¬ dents stemming from the fact that two of The Mariners—Tom Lockard and Martin Karl—are white, and two —Jim Lewis and Nat Dickerson—are Negro, Godfrey went to bat for them in a manner above and beyond an employer’s duty to his employes. Godfrey, they thought, gave them ample reason to believe that Arthur Godfrey and His Friends was more than just a show title. “The Wednes¬ day night show took a direction of its own on this family angle, a direction bigger than Arthur or any of us,” they claim. “And when he started to dissipate that family feeling by firing people, the show inevitably started to decline.” At one time, they say, Godfrey wel¬ comed ideas from the cast, but that stopped. “He used to discuss our per¬ sonal lives on the air. He’d ask us That 'family' feel¬ ing: Godfrey enter¬ tains The Mariners' children at a Christmas party. 14