Education
Swarthmore High School.
Swarthmore High School.
Born in Philadelphia, Butterworth aspired to be a singer from an early age. He took singing lessons and after graduating from Swarthmore High School as president of his class, went on two successful singing tours in Canada and the eastern United States. Butterworth auditioned for the role as an announcer for National Broadcasting Company radio in New York City in the early 1930s.
He got the job and was stationed in Chicago, Illinois.
He covered the Chicago Civic Opera, the Symphony, football games and livestock parades. After a stint in the Navy, he was hired as the announcer of Vox People’s, but in 1936, co-host Jerry Belcher left the program, and Butterworth took over as host.
In 1939, the show moved from National Broadcasting Company radio to Columbia Broadcasting System radio. His work on Vox People’s led Butterworth to host and create other quiz programs, some of his own design.
This continued from the late 1930s until the early 1960s.
Butterworth lost a lawsuit against General Electric over a contract for a television quiz show he felt was directly modeled after one of his radio programs. The lawsuit between Butterworth and General Electric lead him to become politically active. He broadcast a radio program in Atlanta on which he opposed the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People convention and attacked blacks, non-Christians and Catholics.
The show was cancelled after two weeks, and the resulting lawsuit he filed against the radio station ended unsuccessfully.
Around 1961, the Georgia offshoot of the Ku Klux Klan, the National Knights of the Ku Klux Klan used recordings narrated by Butterworth to spread its pitch. Butterworth also organized the Defensive Legion of Registered Americans in 1962, and narrated a series of spoken voice recordings for the Christian Voters and Buyers League, promoting anti-Semitism, racism, and boycotting of Kosher products.
Butterworth died in Pennsylvania on February 24, 1974.