Editing Goodwin Knight (section)

==Biography==

===Early years===
Knight was born in [[Provo, Utah]], but his family moved to [[Los Angeles, California|Los Angeles]] when he was a boy. His father, Jesse Jasper Knight (nephew of mining magnate [[Jesse Knight]]), was a mining engineer, but Goodwin followed in the footsteps of his maternal grandfather, John B. Milner, who was a [[judge]] in Provo.

Knight attended [[high school]] in Los Angeles, at [[Manual Arts High School]]. One of his classmates was [[Jimmy Doolittle]]. He earned an [[Bachelor of Arts|A.B.]] in [[Law]] and [[Business]] from [[Stanford University]], where he was a staff member of the ''[[Stanford Chaparral]]'' in 1919. Knight also attended [[Cornell University]]. He served in the [[United States Navy|U.S. Navy]] during [[World War I]].

===Career===
[[File:H. H. Van Loan and Bozena Grotte are married to each other for a second time by Judge Goodwin Knight.jpg|thumb|left|H. H. Van Loan and Bozena Grotte are married to each other for a second time by Judge Goodwin Knight, 1935]]
Knight was a [[judge]] of the [[Superior Court]] in [[Los Angeles, California|Los Angeles]] beginning in 1935. He was reelected in 1936 and 1942 without significant opposition. His case load varied from the glamorous to the mundane.  He oversaw weddings and [[divorce]]s for [[Hollywood (film industry)|Hollywood]] starlets.

===Political career and Governor of California===
Knight began his political career in 1944, when he pursued the [[Republican Party (United States)|Republican]] nomination for the [[United States Senate|U.S. Senate]]. He bowed out early, though, to back [[Frederick F. Houser|Fred Houser]]. He was elected as the [[List of Lieutenant Governors of California|35th Lieutenant Governor of California]] to serve under Governor [[Earl Warren]] in 1946, then reelected in 1950. He became governor himself when Warren resigned to become [[Chief Justice of the United States]] in 1953.

While Lieutenant Governor, he made a guest appearance on [[Jack Benny show|Jack Benny's radio show]] which aired on May 10, 1953, an episode from San Francisco. He appeared on Benny's TV show four years later, on February 10, 1957.<ref>[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0613582/ Imdb.com – The Jack Benny Program (TV Series): "Goodwin Knight/George Jessel Show" (1957).]</ref>

[[Image:Goodwin Knight and Dwight Eisenhower.jpg|thumb|right|upright=1.3|Governor Knight and President [[Dwight Eisenhower]] riding in a motorcade]]

As governor, Knight fought for control of the [[Republican Party of California]] with [[United States Senate Majority Leader|U.S. Senate Majority Leader]] [[William Knowland]] and [[Vice President of the United States|Vice President]] [[Richard Nixon]]. In 1954, Knight was easily elected to his own full term. At first Knight seemed to make an alliance with Knowland, but this began to sour in 1956 when Knowland supported Nixon for renomination as vice president. In 1957, Knowland announced that he would challenge Knight in the 1958 [[Republican Party (United States)|Republican]] [[Partisan primary|primary]] for governor. Knight, known as a [[moderate]], and sympathetic to [[labor union|organized labor]], faced a serious threat from more [[conservatism|conservative]] challengers. In November 1957, induced by [[Norman Chandler]] (GOP-friendly publisher of ''[[The Los Angeles Times]]''), old enemy Nixon and [[President of the United States|President]] [[Dwight Eisenhower]] (among others), Knight announced he would run for Knowland's Senate seat instead of running for governor again as a way to prevent a tough fight between two California Republicans in a political race.<ref>{{cite web | url=https://time.com/archive/6805531/california-party-truce/ | title=CALIFORNIA: Party Truce | date=11 November 1957 }}</ref> Both Knowland and Knight went down in defeat in 1958, with Knowland losing the gubernatorial race to [[Pat Brown|Edmund G. "Pat" Brown, Sr.]] and Knight losing the Senate race by over 10% to [[Clair Engle]], severely weakening the heretofore-dominant Republicans in the state. This left Nixon in control of the California party and in line for the presidential nomination, which Knowland and Knight had also desired.

Knight was present at the July 17, 1955, opening of [[Disneyland]], and gave a speech following [[Walt Disney]]'s famous dedication.

In September 1961, Knight announced a bid for a return to the governorship. He later dropped out of the race for the Republican nomination which was won by Nixon, who was in turn defeated by Brown.<ref>{{cite news |title=Goodwin J. Knight of California Dies |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1970/05/23/archives/goodwin-j-knight-of-california-dies-governor-19531959-ran-for.html |work=The New York Times |date=23 May 1970 |page=22}}</ref>

In 1964, Knight endorsed [[Nelson Rockefeller]] for the Republican nomination against [[Barry Goldwater]]. Rockefeller was unsuccessful in stopping Goldwater, the darling of the party's growing conservative wing. Knight never ran for political office again.

===Personal life===
Knight's first wife, Arvilla, died of a heart attack on October 29, 1952; the couple had two daughters. He married Virginia Carlson (born Virginia Piegrue on October 12, 1918, in [[Fort Dodge, Iowa|Fort Dodge]], [[Iowa]]), the widow of an Army lieutenant, on August 2, 1954, at the Episcopal Church of Our Savior in [[Los Angeles]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Knight |first1=Virginia |last2=Stein |first2=Mimi Feingold |last3=Sharp |first3=Sarah |title=California's First Lady, 1954–1958 |date=1987 |publisher=Regents of the University of California |location=Berkeley |url=https://archive.org/details/califirstlady00knigrich}}</ref>  The couple had no children.

===Death===
On May 22, 1970, Knight died three months after his 36-year-old daughter Carolyn Knight Weedman committed suicide. She took her life by carbon monoxide asphyxiation from her car in the garage of her home in the [[Hancock Park, Los Angeles|Hancock Park]] neighborhood of Los Angeles and left behind two sons, Jonathan and Robert Weedman. Knight discovered his daughter a day later, and this is believed to have contributed to the stroke that ultimately ended his life. His widow, Virginia, never remarried; she died at age 92 on November 29, 2010.<ref>{{cite news | author=Valerie J. Nelson | title=Virginia Knight dies at 92; former first lady of California | url=https://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-1201-virginia-knight-20101201,0,3305521.story| work=The Los Angeles Times | page=AA7| date=December 1, 2010 | access-date=5 December 2011}}</ref>

Goodwin Knight's funeral took place in Saint James Episcopal Church in Los Angeles, with full military honors. The funeral was attended by then California Governor [[Ronald Reagan]], U.S. Senator [[Barry Goldwater]] from Arizona, accompanied by his son, U.S. Representative [[Barry Goldwater Jr.]] from California, General of the Army [[Omar Bradley]] and numerous Hollywood and civic leaders. Knight was initially interred at Hollywood Memorial Park Cemetery, but one year later disinterred and his remains moved to [[Rose Hills Memorial Park]] in [[Whittier, California]] after his second wife, Virginia Knight, learned he had purchased a crypt next to his first wife, Arvilla.