Weren’t they on the Arthur Godfrey Show and he treated them so awful? If I remember correctly, he never recovered his popularity after that.
You may be thinking about Godfrey’s on-air firing of Julius LaRosa in 1953. Godfrey had discovered LaRosa during his service as a Naval Reserve officer and offered the singer a job when he left active duty.
LaRosa became very popular as a member of the Godfrey cast and began to eclipse his boss in terms of fan mail. So, after LaRosa sang on Godfrey’s radio program on the morning of October 19, 1953, the host announced the appearance marked LaRosa’s “swan song.” Most of the other cast members were eventually replaced as well; Godfrey had a massive ego and had no tolerance for anyone who represented a potential threat to his own career.
Godfrey’s folksy, on-air personna masked a cold, manipulative and even cruel personality. In fact, Godfrey’s “dual” personalities inspired two films of the 1950s, “The Great Man,” and “A Face in the Crowd.” However, the writer of that second film (Budd Schulberg) always maintained that the character of Lonesome Rhodes in “Face” (played by Andy Griffith) was based more on Will Rogers, Sr., than Godfrey.