Taking center stage each week was superstar Bandstand couple Justine Carrelli and Bob Clayton, two of the show's most popular dancers. It was filled with comedy. Fortunately for the station, the clean-cut Dick Clark was on staff and able to take over. Public high schools were more integrated , So Horn, in a way, was the good guy who had no ethnic prejudice and who had blacks and whites in equal numbers in the early days of, I used to dance on the original Bandstand. Believe it or not, at that time the show looked like a black blue-light basement party because our crowd would take over the floor when we showed up. The dancers have aged, some have gained weight or grown mustaches, but they continue to follow whats hip in fashion and dance steps. I went to Alan Freeds concerts at the Paramount and black kids didnt show up there either. On Thursday, for the first time in a quarter century, 27 of the original Bandstand dancers, including Joe, Kenny, Arlene, Carole, Flossie and Jim, reunited to rehearse their steps for a rock n roll celebration over Labor Day weekend in Philadelphia. I was really nervous before walking down the aisleit was like I had stage fright, my adrenaline was so high. When Dick Clark found out about it he was furious and banished them from attending his show forever. In 1950 WPEN moved into a modern new building at 2212 Walnut Street. The promotion men who hung out with Horn fed him records by new artists and Horn was open to their suggestions partly because he knew it would help the show, and partly because he liked getting gifts from the song-pluggers. He says that he would have loved to see blacks in the studio, so I could learn their dance steps. When the TV program American Bandstand passed its 50th anniversary, there was no commemoration. They were more interested in stations that played r&b all the time, and they stopped coming by their own choice., Deejay Jerry Blavat says: Blacks didnt go to public music events. While Clark openedAmerican Bandstandsstage to black R&B and rock n roll performers, he and his producers segregated the studios dance floor and white teenagers adapted black dances for white audiences. He had a wife and four children, aged 2 to 7, at home, but visiting them would require an almost-two-hour round-trip to come back for his 11 p.m. radio show, so he stayed in Philadelphia. Required fields are marked *. If ABC had not been the poorest of the networks, unable to provide daytime programs to its affiliates, Bandstand would never have been born. Kathleen Riley, who has been doing her hair for years, was on duty as well. And it was Frees, not any of the original Bandstanders interviewed Thursday, who remembered the words to the shows theme song, written by Barry Manilow. Then it was hosted by Bob Horn and was called Bob Horns Bandstand.On July 9 of 1956 the show got a new host, a clean-cut 26 year old named Dick Clark. Sun | T.G.I.F. Lois testified that Horn took her to apartments where she willingly had sex with him, and she specified four dates starting in 1953 when she was 13. When Dick Clark wrote in his 1976 autobiography, Bandstand was a segregated show for years. When the program went on the ABC network, stations in the South, where racial segregation was the norm, objected to the fact that black dancers occasionally appeared on the dance floor. Clipp contacted Joe Grady and Ed Hurst, the hosts of Philadelphias most popular afternoon radio program, The 950 Club on WPEN and offered them a deal to switch over to his station and be on WFIL radio and TV simultaneously. On the other hand, Blancs total and Blancs margin of victory was not anywhere near what his predecessor, Richardson Dilworth, had achieved in 1951. WebHappy 60th anniversary of the 4th anniversary of Bandstand going national! I found her to be a cheerful person, eager to please, up to a point. People would phone the station if they wanted to attend, and callers were told there was a six-month wait. There are no plans to televise the event. Published April 26, 2023 Updated April 27, 2023, 12:58 a.m. But Horn also was the bad guy who allowed blacks to be systematically excluded when it looked as if their dancing might dominate the show. Maybe this break-through occurred because that show was not broadcast nationwide, but only in California. That belief is persuasively challenged by recent scholarship:American BandstandThe Philadelphia Way not only excluded black teens from the show but also represented black dances as having originated on the show with its white dancers. The Mann Act was law, barring anyone from transporting a person across state lines for an immoral act, even when it was consensual. In the course of his probe Blanc discovered connections between many disparate people. In addition, the show has performances by popular musicians and audience members rate songs. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. WebBy the shows 30th anniversary, almost 600,000 teenagers and 10,000 performers had appeared on the program. Some blacks complained that these cards were sent mainly to all-white parochial schools, but I cant find evidence of that. Even when black artists like Chuck Berry and Fats Domino appeared in live shows, 95% of the audience was white. He took my friend Adam and me out fishing on his boat, along with some of his record-company friends, and asked us for ideas to improve the show. Record promoters, the men who came around and asked disc jockeys to spin their products, told me that he was more demanding of payola than anyone at any Philly station. They felt that if the show was perceived as a Negro show, white teenagers would stay away. Throughout the rest of the 1950s, "American Bandstand" featured a number of famous acts including the debut of Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel (November 22, 1957), One of the regular attendees at the broadcasts was Bernie Jacobs, a man who ran a modeling agency. Lets consider these other events in 1956: The era was one of sexual repression. Breakfast ended at around 11 a.m., and the group went straight into hair and makeup. It seems curious that a public official needed to rent a private headquarters, but Blanc felt that some city officials, if they knew what he was doing, would tip off their friends who were being investigated. Beach Boys on American Bandstand. Ive been dreaming of meeting Stephen Sanchez and had asked my fianc several times if we could go to one of his gigs, Sofia explains. People who hung out at WPEN learned that Allison had a yen for women who wore white, like waitresses and nurses. Allison then moved to California. The Bandstanders invented steps that are still given a whirl: the bunny hop, the chalypso and the stroll. With the help of Clark and his wife, Richard contacted Carole and the two were married six months later. The DA spent considerable time and money on his probe, renting a center city storefront as an unmarked headquarters instead of using his own office in City Hall. Dick Clark, a television host and entrepreneur who sold rock-and-roll to Middle America on the dance show American Bandstand and counted down the new year with millions of TV viewers as emcee of an annual celebration in New Yorks Times Square, died April 18 at a hospital in Santa Monica, Calif., after a heart attack , PHILADELPHIA (AP) In the late 1950s and early 60s, everyone knew Bob and Justine, Kenny and Arlene, and Ed and Bunny. The Mann Act was law, barring anyone from transporting a person across state lines for an immoral act, even when it was consensual. Elliot surprised me with a trip with all our best friends in April of 2022, Sofia remembers. Whose Culture? The next morning, I woke up with all of my bridesmaids and my sister and we went to an 8 a.m. rehearsal. Harris replaced the Kefauver footage with a new opening that he shot with Vic Blanc talking into the camera and warning the public of the dangers of sex. Each girl chose her own dress, ranging from YSL to Rodarte., The night before the wedding, Sofia slept in a villa on the property with her bridesmaids. He certainly didnt do it because Blanc had greater public recognition. In 1975 Proctor won the American Bandstand dance competition with partner Sharon Hill. Allison and Horn were each acquitted, but neither one of them got their jobs back. Valino was convicted of arranging an abortion and his singing career virtually ended. From the start I was also terrified because what had happened to Horn. University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, Starting Local: WFIL-TV, Bob Horn, and Philadelphia's Bandstand, Going National: Dick Clark and ABC's American Bandstand, Whose Music, Whose Dances? He asked a bunch of us to be on a committee to act as examples to other teenagers, and he gave birthday cakes and Christmas gifts to all of us on the committee. Elliot asked Sofia to marry him in Hawaii after a year of dating. Other results: Some of the men were convicted of participating in unnatural sex. Others were charged with corrupting the morals of minors, but the judges in the majority of these cases decided that the men were dealing with girls who were already corrupted, so they either acquitted the men or gave them light punishment. But Dorothy provided some shocking testimony, saying that she and Allison repeated their sexual acts on several other nights, and that he once asked her to drink some water and try to urinate on him. We had over seven minutes to chat, though, and he said: Youre the love of my life, and Im so happy for you. It was very emotional, and I feel so lucky that I have my parents. What were the results of this elaborate investigation? Theres a new kid working in the record library, he told his listeners, and listen to the junk he picked for me. Then Menefee came into the record room and said he hoped I wasnt angry with him for making me the butt of his joke. Also, the kids danced to Whitemans band, not to records. It said that his guests that night were movie star Denise Darcel and crooner Johnny Desmond and that he went home immediately after the broadcast. Blitz, author of Bandstand: The Untold Story, defends Horn against accusations of rudeness and says that Horn avoided friendships with co-workers because he had more experience and knowledge and didnt need to learn from them. These were the guys I met during my first job in radio, in the music library at WIP, and whom I saw accompanying Horn during his nighttime radio show when I later worked at WFIL. On Thursday, for the first time in a quarter century, 27 of the original Bandstand dancers, including Joe, Kenny, Arlene, Carole, Flossie and Jim, reunited to He had become District Attorney when Richardson Dilworth resigned that office to successfully run for mayor in 1955. The sex-with-minors angle was too shocking for public consumption, and the station didnt dare to reveal it. Bob was a PR pro who really knew how to spin a story. Clark revamped Horns show for national broadcast by ABC. Well, Blanc won his election, and that was the reason for all this, wasnt it? A low-budget sexploitation film called Models, Inc. was distributed by Philadelphia film executive Jack Harris. This system permitted the show to legally turn away anyone without the pass while at the same time maintain the lily white studio audience since the passes were only distributed at the all-white West Catholic High School For Boys and the all-white West Catholic High School For Girls. Segregation such as seen on Bandstand during the late Fifties and early Sixties was characteristic of American society during that time, when separate but equal was still viewed as legitimate by many Americans., Black composer Leroy (After the Lights Go Down Low) Lovett is from an older generation and looks at things more benignly.

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