who were the original dancers on american bandstand

These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads. Now Blanc was running for election to a full term and he sought a hot campaign topic. WebAmerican Bandstand (1952-89) was a massively popular music television program with strong Philadelphia roots, storied national success, and the power to shape the music But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience. Rodgers recorded his first record under Ralph Peer in Bristol, Tennessee the day after the original Carter Family recorded theirs. But I had to take a double-take when they showed black people in the stands, she says. ABC gave, Theres a dramatic difference between the description of Horn by his adult co-workers and what we hear from his teenage fans. WebHappy 60th anniversary of the 4th anniversary of Bandstand going national! That didnt compare with what Horn was doing. However, you may visit "Cookie Settings" to provide a controlled consent. Bob Adleman, the public relations man for WPEN, arranged an elegant event at Longchamps Restaurant on Rittenhouse Square where Allison would accept the honor. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary". Every day after school, we would head for the TV studio which was near my high school , For those of you that question or challenge this please try and recall a scene from the shows in Philadelphia where the girls were not wearing Catholic school uniform dresses and the boys were not wearing the white shirt and tie Catholic school boys uniform. Clark moved the show to California in 1964, but many fans remember it as a Philadelphia phenomenon. He announced that the luncheon was being postponed because there was a labor dispute at the restaurant and city officials didnt want to cross any possible picket line. In the song originally sung by country music legend Kenny Rogers (1938-2020) and released in 1979, the real name of the Coward of the County is Tommy, though he is generally known by his nickname of Yellow. I didnt know anyone who had sex. Everyone in the country knew Kefauvers smiling image; virtually no one knew the ordinary, middle-aged face of Vic Blanc. Horn usually brought an entourage of men with him to the studio, and sometimes additional girls. To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories, To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories. This model, a 17-year-old mother named Dorothy who was separated from her husband, later testified that the controversialist took her upstairs to the record library after he signed off his show and they performed sexual acts on each other. It became a national institution and Dick Clark a celebrity. In 1966, in Houston, Horn died of a heart attack at the age of 50. To get in the studio, boys must be wearing a suit jacket and tie. ET. We recapped the night and ordered big bowls of pasta along with every French food you could imagine, Sofia says. The Inquirers publisher supported the work of the House Un-American Activities committee and its crusade against Communist sympathizers in the entertainment field. This is but one of the many bitter memories that I and many of the people that I grew up with have about American Bandstand.. A big studio was on the ground floor, which WPEN used for the 950 Club in the afternoon and for Steve Allisons talk program at night, while the stations offices were on the second floor. American Bandstand started life as a Philadelphia TV show in 1952, with Bob Horn as master of ceremonies. 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. It was filled with comedy. 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. She says there would always be a long line. Legally we had to get married in the States beforehand, so right before [we left for France], we got married at home with just our parents. Maybe this break-through occurred because that show was not broadcast nationwide, but only in California. He was born Lee Shulman and started his career as an ad salesman. Barbara Marcen Wilston danced at the show from 1953 to 1959. From 1965 to 1967 Dick Clark also produced a show called Shebang which spotlighted a Mexican-American regular, Manuel Acosta, who slow-danced with a blonde white girl named Lynn. In any event, he struck another car and left a 5-year-old occupant of that car paralyzed. It has always been a dream of mine to have Chanel design my wedding dress, Sofia says. That becomes understandable when you learn that its original host led a sordid life that included a sexual affair with a teenage girl. He said Name your salary. So we asked our station manager for a release and he said hed talk to the stations owner. We had it all timed, and it felt like someone was looking out for us up above because it was a very cloudy day and then the clouds parted., Walking down the aisle with her father was something Sofia had always dreamed about. In the first year Carole Ann Scaldeferri Spada, 70, of Newtown Square, a regular dancer on American Bandstand from 1957 to 1961, died Sunday, Dec. 8, of congestive heart failure at a Springfield hospital. "I spread the Beehive across America," said Bunny Gibson, 56, on the show from 1959 to 1962. But when I got closer to the aisle, I looked up and thought:Is that Stephen Sanchez? Weekday afternoons were spent with the kids in Philly, the kids on American Bandstand. His career was brought down by a teenage girl, but she did not come from the studio audience at Bandstand. The Buddy Deane Show was taken off the air because home station WJZ-TV Horn, on the other hand, didnt show such warmth to colleagues. They My favorites have always been Hello and Stuck on You, Sofia says. The engineers and announcers looked on with a mixture of envy and horror, and none of them reported what they saw to management. Horn was a pioneer when he made the youngsters the stars of the show, and when he gave teenagers a forum to set their own standards of music, dance steps and style. 3:20 PM. A low-budget sexploitation film called Models, Inc. was distributed by Philadelphia film executive Jack Harris. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. On one of those jobs Lois gave oral sex to one of the Allison crowd for $40 and on another job had sex with a man for a hundred dollars, all this when she was 15 and in the midst of her relationship with Horn. Theres an El stop there and we used to watch the kids line up. All of these singers were white, and their style was pop, not rock n roll. 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? In the course of his probe Blanc discovered connections between many disparate people. Maybe he was on edge because the vice trial was about to start a few days later. Celebrities including Cameron Diaz, Benji Madden, Paris Hilton, Nicole Richie, and Joel Madden descended upon the iconic hotel in the South of France for the whirlwind wedding weekend, which took both Instagram and TikTok by storm. Bob Horn complimented me on my dancing ability and for the way I dressed. Seven months after his first DUI incident, and just before he was to go on trial on the morals charges, Horn was charged again with drunk-driving when he sped his Cadillac the wrong way up a one-way street in North Philadelphia. For example, Bernie Jacobs, the man who ran the modeling agency and set Steve Allison up with his accuser, also arranged modeling jobs for Lois, Horns accuser. 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. Most people around the station found him less than charming. She was an attractive brunette who sat with Bob at a table in a small studio while engineers observed their behavior from behind glass. Channel 6, WFIL, was owned by Walter Annenberg, whose newspaper, the Philadelphia Inquirer, campaigned against drunk driving, so he didnt want to let Horn off lightly. Watch for Part Two of our copyrighted story, which involves an election for District Attorney and the campaigns emphasis on teenage sex with radio and TV personalities. Dick Clark took over as host in 1956, and the show made its network debut on ABC-TV on Aug. 5, 1957. When Horn got busted, the teenagers were shocked. From the start I was also terrified because what had happened to Horn. Dick Clark. PHILADELPHIA (AP) - In the late 1950s and early '60s, everyone knew Bob and Justine, Kenny and Arlene, and Ed and Bunny. 2023 Cond Nast. Harris also made the films title more suggestive by changing it to Teenage Models, Inc. Harris replaced the Kefauver footage with Blanc so he could get on the good side of the district attorney especially since Harris distributed sexually-suggestive films. He also played show tunes and interviewed Harold Rome, the composer of the Broadway musical Fanny when it played its pre-Broadway try out in Philadelphia in 1954. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other. When it came to the rehearsal-dinner look, the team worked to re-create a gown worn by Stella Tennant in the 1997 Chanel couture fall show. To avoid this, co-producers Horn and Tony Mammarella implemented two strategies. Horn asked his dancers to recommend new songs. The makeup for the entire weekend is super-simple and clean, Sofia says. He died in 1968 at the age of 71. A similar program later went on the air in Baltimore, and that inspired a John Waters film and the stage musical Hairspray. I talked to the kids on the same intellectual level. Courtney Bennett, Dancing on Air: Dance Shows, Communications, and CommunityBefore Tik Tok and YouTube dance crazes dominated youth culture, televised dance shows like American Bandstand and Soul Train gave the youth at home a socially distanced glimpse into the latest music, dances, and fashions happening in clubs. But then some people at the station worried that the program could become identified as a black show. WebGary U.S. Bonds. We read our vows then because we felt it was very personal, something for just our families to hear and experience in the privacy of our home., Afterward, guests gathered for cocktails, dinner, and speeches, with the brides sister Nicole emceeing the entire evening. Horn bragged to song-pluggers that he had to shove this music down the throats of station management, but he was unjustly trying to claim credit for himself. See production, box office & company info, Bandstand Boogie (The Theme of 'American Bandstand'). Tony Mammarella had to calm them down. The American Bandstand dancers ended up living all across the United States and followed a variety of careers. As we remember Dick Clark, were highlighting a few Bandstand dancers whove died in recent years. American Bandstand dancer Richard Pierce served in Vietnam before settling in Anchorage, Alaska, in the early 1980s. 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. What were the results of this elaborate investigation? He had become District Attorney when Richardson Dilworth resigned that office to successfully run for mayor in 1955. On one of those jobs Lois gave oral sex to one of the Allison crowd for $40 and on another job had sex with a man for a hundred dollars, all this when she was 15 and in the midst of her relationship with Horn. It was great! For Sofia, it served as the ultimate reflection of how she approached the celebration as a whole. 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. The reunion gossip even included a love story. Who was the first black dancer on American Bandstand? Horn said he went to her home once for a party. Between my dad and Good Charlotte, it was unbelievable. Several wore miniskirts, others donned sneakers and pedal pushers. This was her unique moral code. I was so innocent that I thought they wouldnt stand in our way. When Horn was arrested for drunk-driving on June 21, 1956, hardly anyone aside from station staffers and music industry insiders knew about his sexual life, and it didnt come to light even then. Family and friends stayed at the iconic Hotel du Cap in the South of France for the whirlwind wedding weekend, which began with a rehearsal dinner on Friday night. 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. He picked his own employee, Bob Horn, and copied from WPEN the idea of teenagers in the studio. 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. Courtney Bennett, Dancing on Air: Dance Shows, Communications, and CommunityBefore Tik Tok and YouTube dance crazes dominated youth culture, televised 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. Abortion was illegal, and scandalous. In all, 27 men were arrested. A postscript was added a decade later in California. 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. It was just his, Horn, on the other hand, didnt show such warmth to colleagues. We werent very worldly. Both of these women admit they were naive kids who even gave out their home addresses to fans without fear of being stalked. As host of American Bandstand, Clark introduced rock & roll to many Americans. It was their thing. We just sat around recapping until the morning. Mayor Dilworth and his administration had a reputation for honesty, but the citys officials did socialize with media people and Blanc feared that information about his crusade with leak out. Oral sex was labeled an unnatural act and people went to jail for doing it. It was hysterical, Sofia says. 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. It was very important to Elliots family and to me, now that Ive converted, that it be a traditional Jewish ceremony, Sofia says. (There never was any picket line. Bow Wow Wow. (I was in his office as he wrote it. The disc jockey might have gone back on the air after a few days, however, if the citys district attorney hadnt made a phone call to the station. Her husband, Richard Spada, said Mrs. Spada was recovering from a minor stroke she had suffered earlier when she became ill on the way to church. I found her to be a cheerful person, eager to please, up to a point. 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. Sun | T.G.I.F. If Clipp couldnt get those people, he nevertheless could steal their format. Consequently, if a majority of the attendees came from the Catholic schools, that made the audience overwhelmingly white. When Horn admitted that he knew her, Annenberg ordered him to resign from the station. If ABC had not been the poorest of the networks, unable to provide daytime programs to its affiliates, Bandstand would never have been born. Kevin Stewart: Old School Shirt Makers New York, Alexandra Rouvet Duvernoy: Trumpisms Commentary by A.H. Scott, Dean Rosenzweig: Cats and QueensUfos and Other Things, Kitchie Ohh: Resolution Revolution - Tony Ward. Required fields are marked *. It was odd that Blanc replaced Kefauver in Teenage Models, Inc because Kefauver was the DAs role model. Public high schools were more integrated 72% white when Bandstand started, according to Philadelphia School District statistics, while blacks were 28% while Asians and Latinos were less than 1%. WebThe Buddy Deane Show was a teen dance television show, created by Zvi Shoubin, hosted by Winston "Buddy" Deane (19242003), and aired on WJZ-TV (Channel 13), the then-ABC affiliate station in Baltimore from 1957 until 1964. The program, starting in 1952, originally was simply named, Fortunately for the station, the clean-cut Dick Clark was on staff and able to take over. It was common for promo guys to give bottles of whiskey as Christmas gifts. 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. WebAmerican Bandstand Tidbits. Sort of healthy trouble. Horn would tell them that he wanted, His career was brought down by a teenage girl, but she did. At least three factors are important to note regarding the last three years ofAmerican Bandstandin West Philadelphia: the 1960 payola scandal, the reality behind the shows happy faces, and developments in the pop music industry that affected the show and compelled its relocation in 1964 to Los Angeles in a reduced version. But he was an ambitious politician. Barbara Marcen, a white regular, remembers a day when one black teenager tried to slow-dance with a white girl. When the TV program American Bandstand passed its 50th anniversary, there was no commemoration. What is a 7 letter word that starts with O? This is but one of the many bitter memories that I and many of the people that I grew up with have about, Henry Gordon said in 1995 as he looked at an old photo of the kids at, Anything that looks like a black face in this picture is probably a white face in the shadows. The DA announced his indictment of Horn and Allison at the same press conference, in October of 1956. Every day after school, we would head for the TV studio which was near my high school West Philly High. I knew sooner or later I would get to go on the show. Some of the regular boys all white started talking angrily among themselves about how theyd like to beat up the boy after the show. Dave Feldman also started coming in 1953. Clarks daily afternoon program pioneered in musical television by showcasing a range of black and white pop music performers, including R&B, rock n roll, and country. Prosecutors decided there werent strong enough grounds to indict the man for that, but Maxines story about what went on at the party triggered Philadelphia District Attorney Blancs investigation of sex involving radio and TV personalities. What are various methods available for deploying a Windows application? We re-created the Claudia Schiffer corset dress from the early 90s, she explains. From there, the wedding planning quickly commenced. 6 Who were the first guests on American Bandstand? By 1973, the show drew many of the top R&B performers and competed with American Bandstand for viewers on Saturday afternoons. One example is Bob Menefee, the top-paid disc jockey at WIP. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance". Clark looked like one of the kids. (Horn was 40 when he left Bandstand and Clark was a babyfaced 27.) People would phone the station if they wanted to attend, and callers were told there was a six-month wait. Clipp called Grady and me to his office, Hurst related, and asked us to start in two weeks. The latest fashion news, beauty coverage, celebrity style, fashion week updates, culture reviews, and videos on Vogue.com. When I saw him socially, he did not seem like a zealot or a crusader. Horn played mainstream singers like Doris Day and Frankie Laine. Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. American Bandstand, abbreviated AB, is an American music-performance and dance television program that aired in various versions that aired regularly from 1952 to 1989, [1] and was hosted from 1956 until its final season by Dick Clark, who also served as the program's producer. There are no plans to televise the event. The era was one of sexual repression. Created by black deejay Don Cornelius as a black dance show, Soul Train started in Chicago in 1970 before being picked up by stations across the country the following year. For the reception, I wore drop-diamond earrings by Kwiat, Fred Leightons parent company, and for the party, my chandelier aquamarine stone earrings were by Fred Leighton and served as my something blue., Elliot wore a Ralph Lauren suit at the rehearsal dinner and a Tom Ford tuxedo for the wedding day itself, while the seven bridesmaids were in all black. Any place theres dancing, Ill still go, said Joe Fusco, who was 15 when he joined the Published April 26, 2023 Updated April 27, 2023, 12:58 a.m. Horn produced alibis for those dates and Horn got a break when the judge refused to allow testimony about any other times. First, there was a private Ketubah signing in the mother of the brides hotel room, where both families met and acted as witnesses. He was the first performer to be introduced on the Grand Ole Opry, the first African-American performer on the show, and the first performer to have his music recorded in Nashville. The dancers have aged, some have gained weight or grown mustaches, but they continue to follow whats hip in fashion and dance steps. She enjoyed seeing the TV series American Dreams, produced by Dick Clark in 2002, because it recalled one of the best periods in her life. Pat Boone. The sexual relationship, however, was not revealed until later. At the time, I didnt know it was racism to go somewhere and not get let in. He certainly didnt do it because Blanc had greater public recognition. Philadelphias Carole Scaldeferri, a regular on the show from 1957 to 1961, met Richard Spada in 1957, when he was a fan who traveled to Philadelphia to see the show in person. Horns radio program was called The Bob Horn Bandstand, which had a nice, alliterative sound. Making out in the back seat or copping a feel is the most that any of us ever did.. Clipp contacted Joe Grady and Ed Hurst, the hosts of Philadelphias most popular afternoon radio program, Clipp called Grady and me to his office, Hurst related, and asked us to start in two weeks. This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Cameraman Vince Gasbarro said: Horn was old-looking. When Horns personal indiscretions led to his ouster from Bandstand in 1956, he was replaced by the more youthful, slimmer, squeaky clean Dick Clark. With Clark, the program became more popular than ever. But when it came to rock n roll music, he was not a pioneer at all. If only this man stopped where Maxine drew the line, then she wouldnt have gone to the cops, then Horn would not have been investigated, then he would have remained on Bandstand and Dick Clark may not have become a star, etc, etc and so on. The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. Also, the kids danced to Whitemans band, not to records. I never saw black people dancing on the show early on, but that didnt faze me. Other deejays of that time, however, were more gracious than Horn. For those of you that question or challenge this please try and recall a scene from the shows in Philadelphia where the girls were not wearing Catholic school uniform dresses and the boys were not wearing the white shirt and tie Catholic school boys uniform. We blacks watched from across the street. Bob Horn complimented me on my dancing ability and for the way I dressed. It was their thing. Hed take me home to spend weekends with his family in Levittown and in the summer Id be the cabin boy on his boat at Stone Harbor., Dave Feldman also started coming in 1953. One example is Bob Menefee, the top-paid disc jockey at WIP. Fortunately for the station, the clean-cut Dick Clark was on staff and able to take over. But some things still didnt change. Because of the sex accusations, the drunk-driving and a jail term, there was no chance hed get another chance on the air in Philadelphia. I always said it would be a dream to do our first dance to Stuck on YouHello was a surprise, and the whole room was singing along., The after-party, which had a nightclub-inspired vibe, featured a performance from Good Charlotte, who both Sofia and Elliot grew up listening to. They wouldnt get up unless the bunny hop was playing. 5 What was the real name of the Coward of the County? Bandstand began as a local program on WFIL-TV (now WPVI ), Channel 6 in Philadelphia on October 7, 1952. Dick Clark hosts a daily to weekly dance show that features the latest hit music for the attending teens to dance to. Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. At the very beginning, Horns Bandstand had some racial integration. Although Horn wanted to run it solo, Clipp insisted on copying the 950 Club format with two hosts, and picked a partner for him the short, bespectacled Lee Stewart. Yet, as the third and fourth stories in this collection show, there was a downside toAmerican BandstandsPhiladelphia years., The longstanding popular belief aboutAmerican Bandstand, promoted by Dick Clark in the later years of his career, is that the Philadelphia version of the show racially integrated the Studio B dancefloor and bleachers. All the photos from Horns last two years show nothing but white kids in the studio. I didnt know it at the time, but Blanc must have been on his way to or from his secret lair on some occasions when he stopped by to see my dad. Catholic schools in those days were 99% white. ! Sofia recalls being stunned. Well, Blanc won his election, and that was the reason for all this, wasnt it? These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc. Dave Feldman, a, Catholic schools in those days were 99% white. Girls chased ya; the guys hated ya, said Fusco. Dick Clark, at podium at upper left, is surrounded by teen-age fans on his nationally televised dance show "American Bandstand" in Philadelphia in this June 30, 1958, file photo. The Bandstanders invented steps that are still given a whirl: the bunny hop, the chalypso and the stroll. When our planners, Banana Split, asked me what song I wanted to walk down the aisle to, it was a no-brainer. Any place theres dancing, Ill still go, said Joe Fusco, who was 15 when he joined the show. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. In addition, the girl who accused Joe Valino of arranging her abortion was one of the models who attended the Allison show and met men there. Our parents didnt teach us what was going on.. Famous Hooks had known Clark for 40 years and says he never saw the man so upset. During breaks, they grabbed cameras and cigarettes and tried to catch up with each others lives before Joe called them back for another try at Rock Around the Clock or Oh, Carole.. Recalling the days when a secretary handled her fan mail, Arlene Sullivan of Washington Township, N.J., said, They still remember, they still remember.. But they werent there. When I told Hooks the details about the fall of Bob Horn, he said it suddenly made him understand why Clark felt so strongly about drunkenness. To me, it embodies the classic elegance and femininity that Karl Lagerfeld was such a genius at. The brides sister, Nicole Richie, designed a pair of diamond earrings to complement the rehearsal dinner dress. All rights reserved. Mary Ann Colella Baker was a freshman at Hallahan Catholic High School who started attending in 1952 when Bandstand was new: Horn was a perfect gentleman, the nicest person, she says.

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