After Godfrey
The firing did not hurt La Rosa's career in the short run. Ed Sullivan immediately signed La Rosa for appearances on his CBS Toast of the Town TV variety show, which sparked a feud between him and Godfrey. La Rosa's first appearance on Toast of the Town following the firing got a 47.9 Trendex rating, and La Rosa would appear 12 more times on Sullivan's show that year.
Shortly after he left Godfrey, La Rosa's third recording, "Eh, Cumpari", hit #1 on the Cash Box chart and #2 on the Billboard chart, and La Rosa got an award as the best new male vocalist of 1953. "Eh, Cumpari" was followed by another major hit, "Domani." During the summer of 1955, La Rosa had a three-times-a-week television series, The Julius La Rosa Show, featuring Russ Case and his Orchestra. The series lasted only 13 weeks.
La Rosa tired of revisiting the Godfrey affair, in part because it had been rehashed so many times, but he was also known to declare publicly that Godfrey was, indeed, the individual who made his career, but always adding, "He wasn't a very nice man."
Read more about this topic: Julius La Rosa
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