Don Juan in Heaven
(See Cover) The sharp, rhythmic tattoo of a fast buck and wing ricocheted off the tile floor of a Sacramento bathroom one day last week, and echoed through the door. Visitors in the adjoining suite of offices heard distinctly the merry foot-tapping and understood the message it telegraphed: The governor of California was happy.
At 58, Goodwin Jess Knight had most of the things that make men happy: a handsome young wife, two beautiful daughters, a pleasant home, money in the bank. Although half his stomach was removed in an ulcer operation three years ago, he had the health and strength of a Poland boar. He had the job he had always pined for, and was happy in his work.
And, despite smog, earthquakes, problems of water supply and the japes of Democratic and Republican politicians, "Goodie" Knight was proving himself a successful, if unusual, governor. California had never--even in the golden age of Earl Warren--been in better shape.
Bats at Twilight. The drum-thumping, backslapping governor had another reason for dancing. For weeks, the rumors that President Eisenhower might decline to run again in 1956 had flittered through Washington like bats at twilight. At the governors' conference, early this month, Goodie had heard them--whispered in Washington corridors, murmured over the transoms of closed doors--and, while he doubted the rumors, he was vastly disturbed. But Goodie Knight, never glum for long, found a silver lining. Last week he made a big decision: if Ike declines the Republican nomination, then Goodie Knight will seek it for himself. "I would certainly like to be President," he told a TIME reporter. "Any politician who is forthright, honest and candid must confess that it is the greatest honor which can come to a citizen. I'm not going to lie to the people, and I'm not going to be coy." In the political sawdust of California, Goodie Knight is not the only or the leading presidential possibility. Vice President Richard Nixon and Senator William Knowland both have ambitions for the highest office too. The Senator, preoccupied with Asian policy and sometimes out of step with the Eisenhower Administration, is--for the moment--the least favorite son. At his age (46) Bill Knowland can afford to wait until 1960 or 1964. Nixon's hopes are pinned on a possible endorsement by the President in 1960; he is wholeheartedly hopeful that Ike will run again in 1956--and will urge Republican leaders to pick Nixon again for Vice President. Knight, virtually unknown and with no visible support outside California, is a very big question mark. But of the three, he is in the most strategic position: with control of California's delegation, he could severely damage any nomination moves by Nixon or Knowland. If Ike is not a candidate next year, Governor Knight may well become to the 1956 Republican convention what Pennsylvania's Governor John Fine was to the 1952 convention.
Although he was admittedly dancing in the dark, Goodie felt his chances for the nomination would be as good as anybody's in the general melee that would follow an Eisenhower retirement. As governor of the largest Republican state, he expects to go to the 1956 G.O.P. convention with 70 strategic favorite-son votes in his hip pocket. He will have the added psycho logical advantage of playing host to the convention in his own backyard, at San Francisco's Cow Palace. And if Ike does choose to run -- well, the 70 votes might possibly be parlayed into a vice-presidential nomination. In any case, Goodie could wait. He had played a waiting game most of his political life, and he had not really planned to be President before 1960 anyway.
The Baby Kiss. Goodie has never been shy about his political ambitions. In 1934, as a young and prosperous Los Angeles lawyer, he campaigned vigorously for Frank Merriam, a colorless, conservative long shot in the G.O.P. gubernatorial sweepstakes. In a stroke of fate, Merriam's opponent, the favored "Sunny" Jim Rolph, died. When Merriam became governor, Knight was paid off with an appointment as Superior Court judge in Los Angeles. "I asked for the job," Goodie admits frankly. "Nobody ever gave me a job in my life. Any man who wants a political job gets it because he asked for it." The governor is not content with merely asking politely; he seeks what he wants with a whirling, all-out showmanship that horrifies his more conservative colleagues, depresses Democrats, and wins California votes in ever-increasing numbers. Politically, Goodie belongs to an old breed: he is an adroit practitioner of the crushing handshake, the baby kiss, the bellowed platitude, the corny joke, the remembered name. He likes nothing better than an oldfashioned, razzle-dazzle political campaign, and he campaigns every year all year round. His harried staffers estimate that when he is in good form, the governor makes more than 30 speeches a month; during active campaigns, his monthly par rises to a breathless 250 orations. In the 19 months since October 1953, when he first sat down in the governor's green leather chair, Knight has traveled 95,000 miles around the state and delivered himself of 1,500-speeches. Goodie can think of only three towns in all of California where he has not stumped at one time or another.*
He is known personally by more local politicians and by more average voters than Earl Warren, Bill Knowland and Dick Nixon put together. "Whenever two Californians get together," says Democratic National Committeeman Paul Ziffren glumly, "up pops Goodie Knight." "Wholesome Insincerity." When the gubernatorial DC-3, The Grissly, is set down on a California runway, Goodie can always count on a welcoming swarm of local Republicans waiting eagerly on the apron. Goodie has a remarkable memory for names, delivered with a personal greeting, a quip and a hefty whack on the back.
On the rare occasions when a minor-league politico confronts him with an unfamiliar name, Goodie lets an inspired look of counterfeit recognition swim into his blue eyes, pokes the pol in the chest and says: "I remember that letter you wrote me." Since virtually every politician in California has written him at one time or another, Knight's gambit almost always works. "He has such a wholesome insincerity," explains Democratic Politician Robert W. Kenny.
Goodie Knight's detractors fault him for acting the clown, for corny jokes and banal speeches, and for talking too much.
The charges have a certain validity, but in California, the land of friendly graveyards, three-ring evangelism and the nut-burger, Goody's antics are surefire, and he makes no apology for them. It is also perfectly true that the handsome governor can (and often does) deliver sober, serious speeches; but Goodie has come to the conclusion that small-town Kiwanians and retired oldsters prefer a joke or a community sing to a dull discussion of the funded debt or the road-improvement program.
"Nine, Ten, Eleven . . ." Goodie's threadbare jokes are famous from Yreka to Araz Junction; hundreds of thousands of Californians have heard them. The governor repeats them endlessly, often in flawless dialect or fluent Spanish, always with chronometric timing. Typical is his celebrated "Train Story": Just before the 1948 election, Goodie was strolling through a moving train when he wandered into a line of lunatics being transported to a mental hospital. The guard was counting them off--"one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight"--when he spotted Goodie Knight. "And who might you be?" asked the guard. Replied Goodie: "I'm the next governor of California." "O.K.," said the guard, "get in line . . . nine, ten, eleven, twelve ..." Goodwin Knight uttered his first word before he was eight months old--fully four months before he learned to walk. He has hardly stopped for breath since. Last September 20,000 Californians crammed into Hollywood Bowl to hear President Eisenhower give a televised address. Preliminary speeches were so tightly timed that a 24-minute hole suddenly and appallingly opened in the program between the last scheduled celebrity and Ike's broadcast time. Into the breach stepped Goodie. While the President watched goggle-eyed from the wings, the governor clowned, hammed, strutted, ad-libbed, and mesmerized the sardine-packed audience for precisely 24 minutes. As he stepped onstage, the President turned to his escorts and remarked: "This is like sending a batboy in after Babe Ruth." Sometimes Goodie's talkativeness works against him. Earl Warren, a quiet man, oftentimes referred to his garrulous lieutenant governor as "my walkie-talkie." Once, during his first campaign for lieutenant governor, Knight and Al Kleinberger, his perennial campaign manager, called on a canning tycoon in San Francisco to ask for a campaign contribution.
Kleinberger suavely brought the conversation around to money, and the prospect produced his pen and checkbook. Then Goodie took over, talked uninterruptedly for an hour on the virtues of Goodwin J.
Knight. When he had finished, the pen, the checkbook, and the smile on the prospect's face had vanished. Goodie left emptyhanded.
Most Californians, however, are far from disenchanted with Goodie Knight.
His autographed portrait beams from thousands of desks, mantelpieces, and the walls of meeting halls all over the state ("Our little billboards," smiles Kleinberger, who distributes them by the truck-load). Knight's name has become, in the most literal sense, a household word: Los Angeles teenagers, when they say farewell at night, say "governor," not "good night." Running for the governorship last year, he demonstrated his political prowess with a landslide (551,151 votes) victory over Democrat Richard Graves.
The Silver Fount. He has been fascinated by politics as long as he can remember. At the age of ten, he was attending political speeches. Once, he cut school and bribed a janitor with $2.50 to let him into an all-female meeting in Pasadena, where William Jennings Bryan was pouring out his oratorical silver. Before he cast his first vote. Goodie had heard Bryan a dozen times--as well as Woodrow Wilson, Hiram Johnson, William Howard Taft, Champ Clark and Theodore Roosevelt. Much of Goodie's political technique derives from his hooky-playing days with the great spellbinders. Says he: "Public speaking meant something in those days. Those men had to speak without microphones to huge crowds.
They had to have something to say, and know what they were talking about. It was a system that eliminated phonies.
Hell, with the radio, any idiot can make a speech if he can read. It has hurt the country, too. We don't know our candidates like we used to." Ten Carloads of Horses. Knight's parents both came of solid, pioneer, Mormon stock. His maternal grandfather, Judge John Milner, was a British lawyer who went to Provo, Utah for his health, became Brigham Young's secretary, a Mormon, and a fount of culture and learning.
When Lillie, the judge's golden-haired daughter, caught the eye of Jess Knight, a local farm lad, Judge Milner influenced Jess to get a law degree after he got Lillie's hand. Jess and Lillie obediently went off to the University of Michigan.
Goodwin Jess,* their second child, was born in a tiny house in Provo in 1896. Father Knight was restless and bored with the law, and when Goodie was still a small boy, the family moved on to Los Angeles, taking along ten carloads of mountain horses to sell in California as a grubstake.
In California Father Jess Knight made a comfortable living as a street and grading contractor who built miles of Los Angeles County's roads. During World War I, he lost his business and nearly $250,000 in a disastrous municipal-bond investment, but later recouped and became a successful mining speculator.
Goodie's boyhood was spent in substantial middle-class ease. His father indulged Goodie and his older sister Dolly, but Lil Knight, an ambitious, talented woman (she was variously a concert singer and a suffragette), preached total abstinence to her children and made free with the peachtree switch she kept in the kitchen.
The Yell Leader. As a towheaded toddler, Goodie never had to be urged to climb up on a chair and sing or recite for guests. When he reached Manual Arts High School, Goodie swam in his natural element. There was plenty of competition (among his class of 1915: General Jimmy Doolittle, Frank Capra, Lawrence Tibbett, former Lieutenant Governor Buron Fitts), but Goodie rose like a bubble in a glass of beer to the head of the class. He was yell leader, composer of school songs, star of the debating team, an enthusiastic member of the glee club and the dramatic society, a perennial master of ceremonies and, naturally, president of the student body. In the yearbook the class prediction cast him as governor--of New York.
By the time Goodie graduated, his father was in financial difficulties, unable to send him to college. Goodie went to work as a single jacker in a Nevada mine, pounding out blast holes with a sledgehammer ("Very good for the shoulders,'' says Goodie) and saved enough money to enter Stanford University. During other college summers, he shoveled coke for the Santa Fe ("Very good for the arms") and drove a delivery truck. At Stanford, doing what came naturally, he quickly became a big man on campus. "He was the eternal sophomore," says Fellow Alumnus Earl Behrens, who became the San Francisco Chronicle's political pundit and a close friend of the governor's. "Everyone knew he was around." In college Goodie learned to tapdance, won a gold medal for debating, permanently dented his nose as a halfback on the rugby team, and was elected class orator. Among the coeds, he was a fickle Apollo.
In 1921, after a year in the Navy during World War I and a semester at Cornell, he passed the California bar examinations (without ever receiving a law degree) and settled down to practice law and accumulate a fortune in gold mining.
"But let's face it," says Goodie. "I never forgot about being governor." In 1924, as a promising young lawyer and the proprietor of a Stutz Bearcat, Goodie met Arvilla Cooley, a dazzling blonde, at a dinner dance in Santa Monica. A year later they were married, and in due course Goodie became the doting father of two more dazzling blondes, Marilyn and Carolyn. Goodie, a mellow and indulgent parent, was surprised when he occasionally struck flint in his daughters' dispositions. When Carolyn was a student at U.S.C., he was curious to know why she had not joined a sorority. "Unlike you, Father," retorted Carolyn, "I feel no need for mass adulation." Life With Father. Around home, according to the girls, Father was lovable but incompetent. "Every Sunday he would be mumbling about getting out in the back and doing some work," recalls Carolyn, "but all he ever did was walk around with some Soilax and wipe fingerprints off the doorknobs." Goodie apparently suffered the fate of most men who must live in a feminine household.
"The most fun we would have," reports Marilyn (now the wife of Los Angeles Attorney Robert Eaton), "was peeking into his bedroom at night when he was getting ready for a speaking engagement.
We'd watch him stand before the mirror in his shorts, dance around like a boxer with his fists cocked and muscles flexed. He would pull in his stomach and examine his physique from every angle. Mother and us girls would almost die restraining our laughter. I don't think he ever knew we were looking."
In 1952 the laughter came to a tragic end when Arvilla Knight died suddenly of a coronary thrombosis. Goodie was distracted with grief. After months of brooding in a Sacramento hotel room, he finally went about once more and looked up an old acquaintance, Virginia Carlson, the pretty widow of a World War II bombardier, and a poetess of modest talents (TIME, May 16). Goodie's prim idea of a big date with Virginia was to take her to the Ontra Cafeteria on Wilshire Boulevard and then to the movies. Eventually, the Knight daughters prodded Goodie into taking Virginia on more romantic evenings, and in time, says Virginia, "he finally took a look at me. Up to then, he had just been talking to me." Goodie and Virginia were married last summer. Their honeymoon, on a borrowed yacht off Catalina Island, was hectic.
A LIFE photographer accompanied the happy couple, and after 24 hours Goodie began to spend most of his time on the ship-to-shore telephone, receiving bulletins on a developing power struggle between Knight's men and supporters of Nixon at the state G.O.P. convention.
Within four days, Goodie called the honeymoon off, raced back to the convention. "I hardly saw him at all," lamented the bride. But Virginia Knight recovered in time to compose a poem, which Goodie used as a campaign song.
Keep California's spirits high, Put your X beside our guy.
He's the one for whom we cry, It's Goodie, Goodie, Goodie!
In Search of Fun. As a lawyer, Goodie was always prosperous. In 1925 he formed a partnership in Los Angeles with Tom Reynolds, a Stanford classmate. By the time the firm was dissolved in 1934. Knight and Reynolds reportedly had the largest practice in California. But as his legal fees rose, Knight's interest in his business declined. Besides, he was independently wealthy from his mining interests. "After we got prestige, we couldn't afford to accept cases from little people who needed our help. We didn't have any fun." In search of fun, Goodie quit his lush practice and accepted Governor Merriam's appointment as a $9,000-a-year judge. But in spite of occasional sensations that came his way, e.g., the Barbara Stanwyck-Frank Fay divorce trial, the Mary Astor child-custody case, Judge Knight found the bench as dull as the bar. "I knew exactly how the cases I was trying were going to come out an hour after they began. But a judge can't shut a lawyer up. I used to sit on the bench and write letters, or anything, just to keep occupied. There came a time when I had to get out of it."
For Goodie Knight, the only way out was up. As a judge, he had been quite successful (only 14 reversals in 7,000 decisions), but soon he began to make political noises. If he had a speaking engagement, he simply adjourned court early. In California, as in many states, there are laws about judges dabbling in politics, and it was not long before Democrats and his fellow judges complained about Knight's political activities. But Goodie knew the letter of the law. "Sure, they prohibited it," he snapped, "but they didn't make it illegal."
Knowing the full value of publicity, Goodie took on a couple of radio shows, including one tearjerker, an airing of personal problems known as "Knight Court" ("It was better than Mr. Anthony"). In 1946 Goodie turned his back on the bench, employed the formidable public-relations firm of Whitaker & Baxter (which taught Earl Warren to smile) and ran for lieutenant governor. Goodie gave the voters a sizzling exhibition of stumping and easily slid past his Democratic opponent on election day. But in Sacramento, he discovered that his job was no more exciting than being a judge. As presiding officer of the state senate, he frequently garbled the parliamentary rules and confused the statesmen. When such mixups occurred, Lieutenant Governor Knight was unabashed. "My parliamentarian says I'm wrong," he would genially admit. "I overrule myself."
When the boredom became intolerable, Goodie cracked jokes from the chair and interrupted debate to address the galleries. "Ladies and gentlemen," he sometimes boomed with the aplomb of a circus ringmaster, "I want you to know that just because your able and distinguished Senators down here are sitting with their feet on their desks, reading newspapers, it does not mean they do not know what is going on." "They Also Serve . . ." Such horseplay earned Goodie his reputation as a jester. But the job of heir-apparent to the governor was almost too much for his patience. Once, in a mood of despair, he told Republican Assemblyman Tom Caldecott: "I get up every morning, go out on the front porch, unfold the paper, look at the biggest headline and fold it up again. The only news a lieutenant governor of California could possibly be interested in would be that headline." Goodie and Warren got along tolerably, but Knight was never a real member of the Warren team. On a few issues, e.g., Warren's state health-insurance program and F.E.P.C., Knight openly differed with his chief, but the two were closer politically than many Californians suspected.
Through the years, Knight had collected a large following of right-wingers who were opposed to the liberal Warren policies and who figured Goodie was their Knight in armor. Goodie rarely discouraged the reactionaries until he became governor. Then he announced: "I guess the state is just going to have to get used to the fact that I'm no Joe McCarthy." In 1948, when Earl Warren was the vice-presidential candidate, Goodie decided his time had come. His dismay on the day after the election was acute. "If you think Tom Dewey and Governor Warren are disappointed," he wailed, "think of me. I had the furniture in the governor's mansion rearranged a dozen times." In 1950 Knight, spurred on by his right-wing supporters, announced that he would run against Warren. But when Warren announced his own candidacy, Goodie prudently withdrew.
"Where Can They Go?" When Goodie's great day arrived at long last, and Earl Warren went off to the U.S. Supreme Court, Californians of liberal persuasian expected a calamity. Reactionaries looked to a period of Garfield normalcy.
Instead, Knight gave California his own version of Warren liberalism. He proved to be a skilled hand at running the legislature, and, in contrast to the austere, disciplined regime of Warren, he installed a happy, relaxed bipartisan staff (five of his ten top aides are registered Democrats). Last year he openly wooed the labor unions with a promise to veto a proposed right-to-work bill. His courtship won the A.F.L.'s endorsement--to the amazement of the Democrats--and after the 1954 election Goodie kept his promise: the bill was stifled quietly in committee. Wealthy ranchers, who had pushed the bill, were furious and frustrated.
"Where can they go?" grinned Lieutenant Governor Harold ("Butch") Powers.
Goodie's biggest fight since becoming governor has been his struggle to save California's "rainy-day fund," a savings account accumulated from wartime surpluses, and which now amounts to some $70 million. Legislators have eagerly sought to tap the fund for vote-getting largesse. In an effort to save the rainy-day fund, Goodie doggedly proposed added taxes on luxuries. Recently, while Knight was attending a funeral, the assembly passed an amendment that would have drained off $40 million from the rainy-day fund. Next day Goodie sprang to action, summoned his key legislators for a dressing-down. The assembly meekly killed the amendment on a motion to reconsider. It took the legislators about three hours to eat their defiance.
The governor walks with a springy step these days. His appetite is big, but between his morning setting-up exercises and the calorie-consciousness of his wife, he has recently trimmed his weight to a muscular 182 Ibs. No longer athletically inclined, Goodie keeps in trim by tap-dancing and shadow-boxing whenever and wherever the fancy strikes him. His blond hair has silvered satisfactorily, and his craggily handsome face is tanned and as well-creased as an heirloom Gladstone bag. Goodie gave up smoking after he got ulcers; instead, he chews up to two packs of Doublemint gum a day. He drinks sparingly, and, like many Californians, he is a health-food addict. One of his favorite beverages: cabbage juice.
Pursuit Is All. As Goodie Knight sees his horizon, there is only one threatening cloud: Richard Nixon. Publicly, the governor and the Vice President are on crisp good terms, but in private, Knight regards Nixon as a political upstart. The coolness between the two began when Dick Nixon returned to California in triumph after the 1952 Chicago convention. Goodie dutifully turned up at the airport to greet him, but when Nixon's supporters pushed Goodie out of camera range, he felt slighted, and huffed back home. The bad blood is still simmering.
Last summer's power struggle at the state convention centered around two candidates for assistant state chairman--one a Knight loyalist, the other a Nixon insurgent. Goodie Knight easily managed (with an able assist from Senator William Knowland) to get his man, Multimillionaire Howard Ahmanson, elected.
This month Goodie took a resolution from the California G.O.P. organizations to the President urging him to run again in 1956. Conspicuously, the resolution made no mention of Nixon.
In California, a state where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by 1,000,000 voters, there is no such thing as a party machine, and politics are played by ear. Nixon has a small following of his own and so has Knight, but the rank-and-file of voters are not organized in factions. Before next year's convention, Goodie Knight, as governor, will probably be able to pick the California delegates personally; if he does, they will be Knight's pawns. Should Nixon force a showdown for control, Goodie will almost certainly beat him and mire down the Nixon-for-President bandwagon. "The best we can do," concedes a Nixon stalwart, "is maybe slip some sneakers in on him."
"Goodie lives in the future," says Democrat Paul Ziffren. "He is a first-rate example of the Don Juan complex in men: the pursuit is everything. Once they get what they're after, they find that having it is not nearly so much fun as chasing it." Goodie's obvious enchantment with his job as governor belies the statement, but much of the fun he gets out of the governorship is the stimulation it gives to his keen anticipation of 1956. If Ike should step down, Goodie will be off in mad pursuit.
* The three: Tulelake (pop. 927), Eagleville (pop. 425), Solvang (pop. 800). * The governor's name was no capricious pun; he was named for C. C. Goodwin, a famed editor of the Salt Lake City Tribune, and his middle name, like his father's, was a shortened tribute to Great-Uncle Jesse Knight, a multimillionaire mine owner, and one of early Utah's most colorful citizens. One night in a dream, Uncle Jesse received instructions through a "manifestation" (a Mormon expression for a message from on high) to stake a claim at the supposedly worthless Humbug property. He struck gold, silver and lead, made $30 million, then gave most of it away to the church and various charities, was known for the rest of his life as "The Dream Man of Utah."
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