Goodwin Jess "Goodie" Knight (9 December 1896-22 May 1970) was the Republican Governor of California from 5 October 1953 to 5 January 1959, succeeding Earl Warren and preceding Pat Brown.
Biography[]
Goodwin Jess Knight was born in Provo, Utah in 1896 to a Mormon family, and he was raised in Los Angeles, California. He served in the US Navy during World War I before serving as a Los Angeles Superior Court judge from 1935 to 1947 (overseeing weddings and divorces for Hollywood starlets), as Lieutenant Governor of California from 1947 to 1953, and Governor from 1953 (following Earl Warren's appointment to the US Supreme Court) to 1959. Knight was a moderate Republican who was sympathetic to organized labor, and he was present at the opening of Disneyland in 1955 before launching a failed US Senate bid in 1958. He endorsed Nelson Rockefeller for President in 1964, and he died of a stroke in 1970, three months after discovering his daughter's suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning in her garage.