On December 27 Bunny Gibson, American Bandstand Regular from 1959-1962, married Duke Tirschel in Chattanooga , Tennessee. 4/8/1989 10/7/1989 Syndicated and scheduled the program at 3:30pm ETalmost in the middle of Bandstand. Fiorentino, whose mother died when he was 12, said Clark became a role model. While Bandstand fans across the country imagined a true romantic relationship between Sullivan, who secretly liked girls, and her on-screen companion, Rossi, who was straight, she says it was little more than made-for-TV puppy love. We were the first reality show, she adds. He molded the image of the American teenager so America would accept rock-and-roll.". In fact, she was "the first female car racer at Cecil County Drag Strip," according. Never, did I ever think that I would be with him, holding his hand when he passed away. sign up for our monthly Nostalgia e-newsletter or other e-newsletters tailored for boomers. She told me she got so many letters from fans who thought I looked like her and [with our dark hair], we did look alike. We moved around the floor the way our parents did in the 40s. One time, Kenny and I went to visit one of the other regulars up in North Philadelphia, and we were leaving her apartment and were headed to the El, and I heard car doors slamming, and I looked back, and all these guys were coming up the steps, and they started beating up on Kenny, Sullivan says. A funeral director in Newtown Square confirmed Monday night that Mrs. Spada had died, but declined to divulge the details before meeting with her family. Fundraiser for the renovation of the original American Bandstand Studio Floor She acknowledges that some of the other girls she knew on the show were also gay. A Philadelphia, PA 19133, BONUS PAGE Come and join us two weeks from today for an hour version of American Bandstand on Saturday, September 19. As Sullivan puts it: The boys danced. This version was canceled after 26 weeks, and its final show (with The Cover Girls performing "My Heart Skips a Beat" and "We Can't Go Wrong") aired on October 7, 1989,[37] thus ending the show's 37-year run.[38][39]. I still really didnt know who I was. The Monday-night version aired its last program in December 1957, but ABC gave Clark a Saturday-night time slot for The Dick Clark Saturday Night Beech-Nut Show, which originated from the Little Theatre in Manhattan, beginning on February 15, 1958. Stewart was the owner of a TV/Radio business in Philadelphia and even though he was an older gentleman, his advertising account was a large one for WFIL-TV, so he was put on the program to appease the account. John Lithgow filmed a mockumentary episode before it was c 11-year-old reads aloud from 'pornographic' book he checked out from library at school board meeting, Influencer refuses to switch business class seats so family can sit together, Ousted Chicago mayor blames loss on racism, gender but not her tepid response to crime, Chaka Khan blasts Rolling Stone, Adele, Mariah Carey in podcast talk, Disgraceful Meghan, Harry provoked King Charles to evict them: royal expert, Kanye West and wife Bianca Censori look surprisingly happy on dinner date, Sunny Hostin Points Finger at China for COVID Crisis: Did Not Cooperate With the International Community, Prince Harry, Meghan Markle confirm they were asked to 'vacate' Frogmore Cottage. Teen idol Bobby Rydell, whose music career is still going strong 60 years after American Bandstand, wrote the books introduction; but former Regular Arlene Sullivan, who shares her memories and personal images, is a standout as well as a co-author of the book. Elgart's version was released as a single in March 1954 (Columbia 40180) as well as Curb's theme (by "Mike Curb & The Waterfall") in October 1969 (Forward 124). Once a week, she goes to a hop thrown by another Bandstand original, 76-year-old Philadelphia radio and TV personality Jerry Blavat, who bills himself as The Geator with the Heater and The Boss with the Hot Sauce.. , True love The Buddy Deane Show aired on WJZ-TV until January 4, 1964. He kept his distance, she says. Finally, we got away and jumped over the turnstile. The reality behind the scenes ofAmerican Bandstandwas quite different than what viewers saw on national television. The news hit hard. We may earn a commission from links on this page. REGULARS Gallery 2. Out filmmaker Christopher Landon spills the spooky tea on his new movie and working with the 'White Lotus' star. In Philadelphia, however, WFIL opted to tape-delay the game show for later broadcast in another time slot, and to continue on with Bandstand, though only for the local audience. 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. Don and Bunny had two daughters: Angel and Maria and four grandchildren: Lea & Christopher Di Vello, Alexis Karanzalis & Nicole Weiss. Don married Bunny. . News Shows History goes back and forth with the timing and motives of the integration, but nevertheless, American Bandstand socially impacted teenagers' opinions regarding race. we were like a little family together, and we all had something in common, and we all stuck together, and that made it easier for us.. His latest book, The Kardashians: An American Drama, will be published in September. But this one was different. He debuted in Studio 3B at WFIL-TV, near the El train stop in West Philadelphia, in 1956 when he was a 13-year-old junior high school student. American Bandstand Fundraiser Pictures, To my knowledge, no VHS tape of American Bandstand is commercially available. I had asked Norman to dance when it was a ladies choice. Sullivans co-author, Ray Smith, recently retired after 40 years as an Emmy-winning Today show producer. . . He will never forget one of his first days on Bandstand. As she puts it, being a Regular entailed holding a WFIL-TV Bandstand Club membership card and dancing every day on the show. Carole Ann Scaldeferri Spada, 70, of Newtown Square, a regular dancer on American Bandstand from 1957 to 1961, has died. To many of you, it was about the music and the artists. How a Beloved Tori Amos B-Side Transformed 'Of An Age'. TV Ratings - US & UK, Quiz Shows But back in the Bandstand days, Smith was one of the shows secretly gay dancers. And whereas 135 ABC-affiliated stations carriedAmerican Bandstandon a revenue-sharing basis in 1960, the stations were bailing out of this relationship in 1963. That might have had something to do with the scandal that surrounded the departure of his predecessor, Bob Horn, who faced a drunken-driving arrest and morals charges. When cute young teenagers Arlene Sullivan and Kenny Rossi slow danced together on "American Bandstand" back in the late '50s and early '60s, kids across the country swooned. July 9th, 1988", "Retro Request: Sat 10/31 & 11/7 and Sun 11/1, 1987", "AB now in syndication: Jody Watley, Dan Hill, David Spade", "Clark ends long-playing spin on bandstand", "On 'Bandstand,' Dick Clark Says Goodbye", "AGELESS CLARK STILL STANDS FOR THE 'AMERICAN' BAND", "Hits Prove Hard to Find at Dick Clark Productions: Entertainment: Performance has been mediocre since the company went public in 1987. Sullivan, 74, wrote Diaries with Ray Smith, another dancer who was closeted during his Bandstand years. Determined, Don got Bunnys number from one of the regulars and he met his dream girl. She danced the "push" - a "type of jitterbug . Squeaky clean commercial pitchman and deejay Dick Clark inherited Bob Horns locally broadcastBandstandin July 1956 and revamped it for a national audience of teenage consumers as ABCsAmerican Bandstand, which first aired in August 1957. For a brief time in 1973, Bandstand alternated its time slot with Soul Unlimited,[10] a show featuring soul music that was hosted by Buster Jones. 2023 Viacom International Inc. All Rights Reserved. Charlette Russo danced on American Bandstand from 1955-1959. . He still had that in him until the evening before he passed away. Special Features: He said funeral services are pending. Duke is a premier photographer of the martial arts as well as being an expert. In August 1963, ABC reassigned American Bandstand to Saturday afternoon. In an interview with the New York Post, Sullivan says that she and many of the gay male dancers would congregate in the Gayborhood, Rittenhouse Square, and there were rumors that Clark sent producers to spy on them. We'll see you the next time on American Bandstand. We sent some 15,000 fan letters each week. 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. 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. The Slop. JUSTINE AND BOB. ", Songs she liked to dance to, Mrs. Spada wrote online in June 2010, included "Little Darlin'," "Sixteen Candles," "Tears on my Pillow," "Splish Splash," "Never on Sunday," and "Let's Do The Stroll.". From 1963 to 1987 Bandstand was on only once a week, on Saturday. The Bop. Due to the size of the studio, the need to have as much dance space as possible, and the size of the cumbersome color camera compared to the black-and-white models, it was only possible to have one RCA TK-41 where three RCA TK-10s[4] had been used before. She wasnt immediately successful, but with the help of a new southwest Philly friend, she eventually got in. (Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images), Spice on Her Favorite 'Drag Race' Season 15 Moment and Her Sweet Reunion With Sugar, "I did win the hearts of these girls somehow and the love was just so felt. In 1989, Clark, aged 59, retired fromAmerica Bandstand, and the show ended that year. Some of the stories I heard are heartbreaking, Sullivan recalls. [36] Clark remained as executive producer. Clark was a disc jockey at the student-run radio station at Syracuse University (1951), and he worked at radio and television stations in Syracuse and Utica . The big teenybopper magazines of the era Sixteen and Teen plastered Bandstand dancers on their covers and wrote glowing, gossipy stories about their lives in Philadelphia, where Dick Clark produced the show. And while Smith knew he was gay, he was shocked to learn that most of the guys on Bandstand, so many of them, were gay, he told The Post. Dick Clark was a TV personality known for the shows 'American Bandstand,' '$25,000 Pyramid' and 'TV's Bloopers and Practical Jokes,' among others. Bunny and Duke met several months ago and now are married. My favorite dance was the Jitterbug the last dance where people danced together. Soul Unlimited was not well-received among its target audience of African-Americans, ostensibly due to its being created by a white man (Clark), and because of its alleged usage of deliberately racial overtones despite this fact. In addition to his other ventures, Clark maintained a virtual lock on New Years Eve television withDick ClarksNew Years Rockin Eve. . We were like sisters. The most memorable day for Norman and me was April 13, 1961, the day we won second place in the Pony Dance Contest. The Regulars, also known as The Committee were only a part of the Bandstand story. Both were ratings disasters. Two weeks later, Bandstand moved to first-run syndication. Dick Clark, wherever you are, we miss you. 8-9; quote from unpaginated photo section. American Bandstand aired five days a week in live national broadcast until 1963, when the show moved west to Los Angeles and began a 24-year run as a taped weekly program with Dick Clark as host . One older brother survives Norman. This investigation targeted the practice of payola, and it was most likely triggered by rumors circulating that charged Dick Clark with promoting records in which he held a financial stake onAmerican Bandstandand taking kickbacks from record companies to include their records on the shows playlist. . The TV exposure, plus the profiles some of the dancers were given in Teen magazine in the late 1950s, made them instant celebrities. On May 3, 2002, Dick Clark hosted a one-off special 50th anniversary edition on ABC. If it wasnt assaults from outside haters, some of the Bandstand kids suffered in their own homes. When WFIL-TV moved to a new facility on City Line Avenue (one that did not have a studio that could accommodate the show), ABC moved production of Bandstand to the ABC Television Center (stage 5) in Los Angeles (now known as The Prospect Studios) on February 8, 1964, which coincidentally was the day before the Beatles first appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show. He was also reportedly involved in a prostitution ring and brought up on morals charges. [8] In the fall of 1961, ABC truncated American Bandstand's airtime from 90 to 60 minutes (4:005:00pm ET), then even further as a daily half-hour (4:004:30pm ET) program in September 1962; beginning in early 1963, all five shows for the upcoming week were videotaped the preceding Saturday. at 3:30pm, then rejoin Bandstand at 4pm. She also mentions a gay dancer who was pushed in the train tracks, and another who was dangled over an elevator shaft. Brancaccio says thats what attracted him to it. "Dick Clark introduced records, and the camera followed teenagers as they selected partners to dance," writes historian Matthew Delmont. This development created a sometimes heated rivalry between Dick Clark and Buddy Deane, when performers who appeared first on Deane's program were refused booking on American Bandstand. All rock'n roll and most owned by Dick Clark himself. The "ab" logo was replaced with the iconic stylized "AB" logo (shown at the top of this page) used for the remainder of the show's run. Does Alan Cumming Really Live in a Scottish Castle? . Clark now eyed California as where the action is. And in February 1964 Clark moved to Los Angeles, where it would continue until 1989, though lacking its West Philadelphia spontaneity. We would roar, roll over with pain from laughing so hard. The show stayed on the air until 1989. Many local Philadelphia teenagers became household names by appearing and dancing on American Bandstand on a regular basis from the '50s to the early '60s: As Bandstand moved towards the 1980s, the ratings began to decline. She is a Marco Polo member of the Society of American Travel Writers, a past president of Virginia Professional Communicators and a member of the Virginia Communications Hall of Fame. I never had a crush on her. I was trying to hit them over their heads with my pocketbook, but they just wouldnt give up. 2023 NYP Holdings, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Later, in hindsight, I guessed that made me the first white Rosa Parks. However, the couple will shortly be returning to Los Angeles, which will be their permanent residence. , Puppy love The Philadelphia high school Regulars who danced on Dick Clark's American Bandstand in the late 1950s and early 1960s became national celebrities and America's first reality stars. The use of videotape allowed Clark to produce and host a series of concert tours around the success of American Bandstand and to pursue other broadcast interests. .When he spoke to us off-screen, it was usually from the podium; it gave him command over his domain, and as I have learned over the years, Clark liked and wanted to be in command.4, Smith recalls the closetingof American BandstandsLGBT youths. M Marsha Early American Bandstand Wallet type photos of Dancers/Regulars Sisters Mary Rosalie Susan 50s Susan Beltrante (on left) and Mary Beltrante on the right. Jax Spills the Tea on That "Shocking" Lip-Sync LaLaPaRuza, "In those lip-syncs, I fend for myself. A case in point is Arlene Sullivan, a popular Regular who has described her own emerging lesbian sexual orientation, which she says was masked by her dance partnerships with boys. Director Goran Stolevski talks assembling his gay indie's stellar soundtrack, from The Cardigans to Nelly Furtado and more. "Studio 'B'" measured 80 by 80 by 24 feet (24.4m 24.4m 7.3m), but appeared smaller due to the number of props, television cameras, and risers that were used for the show. They even invented a few the Stroll, the Circle and the Chalypso. Normally, I do not forward mail to the Regulars. Thats all we did dance and every part of the city had its own style. We've received your submission. Teenagers dance on an episode of Dick Clark's television program, 'American Bandstand,' 1950s. Dick Clark took over as host in 1956, and the show made its network debut on ABC-TV on Aug. 5, 1957. I think [the shows success] even surprised Dick Clark.. After school in the late 1950s, millions of American teenagers raced home to watch the gyrations of fellow teens on their parents tiny black-and-white televisions in the living room. [42] American Bandstand was a daily ritual for many teenagers throughout the nation. Bob retired after being in the shoe business and the chemical business, where he often worked 18 hour days. 1950s/1960s POLLS. Television host Dick Clark presides over the set of his show American Bandstand in 1957. The program that preceded Dick Clarks American Bandstand at WFIL-TV was deejay Bob Horns locally popular Bandstand. [4] Ray Smith, Dancing on Air, in Arlene Sullivan, Ray Smith, and Sharon Sultan Cutler, eds.,Bandstand Diaries: The Philadelphia Years, 1956-1963(Chicago: Cony Island Press, 2019), 35. It became a national institution and Dick Clark a celebrity. Or sign up for our monthly Nostalgia e-newsletter or other e-newsletters tailored for boomers! "[5] In one humorous segment broadcast for years on retrospective shows, comedians Cheech and Chong appeared as the record raters. From 1974 to September 6, 1986, Bandstand featured another instrumental at its mid-show break: Billy Preston's synth hit "Space Race". After dispelling rumors of his death, which circulated on social media on Thursday, Blavat's representative confirmed in a Facebook post on Friday morning that he had died at 3:45 a.m. at. Where Are the American Bandstand Regulars Now? [7] The Diary of Arlene Sullivan, in Sullivan, Smith, and Cutler,Bandstand Diaries, 43-63. from CBS in November 1957, they renamed the program as Who Do You Trust? (7/21/2011) I just received this from Bunny Gibson and certainly thought it was appropriate to mention here: Anna Russo, formerly Anna Banani, went to American Bandstand 1963 until AB left Philly for Los Angeles, lost both of her legs to diabetes and is in need. Last edited on 22 February 2023, at 03:03, The Dick Clark Saturday Night Beech-Nut Show, Top of newscast salutes to Clark deserved, "Did the Beatles kill America's radio stars? "I put a lot of my mom's makeup on and stuffed my bra," said Gibson. Attempts continue to launch a successful game show or sitcom", "Final American Bandstand: The Cover Girls", http://nicestkids.com/nehvectors/nicest-kids/bandstands-backyard, "Remembering American Bandstand's 50th [Photos]", Son of Svengoolie - 'Good Morning, Sven' (Opening,Show #218) (verse occurs at the 1:35 mark), https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=American_Bandstand&oldid=1140855641, American Bandstand's 20th Anniversary (1973), American Bandstand's 25th Anniversary (1977), American Bandstand's 30th Anniversary (1982), American Bandstand's 33 1/3 Celebration (1985), American Bandstand's 40th Anniversary (1992), American Bandstand's 50th Anniversary (2002), The show was featured prominently in the 20022005, This page was last edited on 22 February 2023, at 03:03. ", "I was shaking like a leaf," Colanero recalled. American Bandstand will be back someday, I assure you. They joined Arlenes and Kennys fan clubs. He practiced dancing with his niece, Robin, but when he went down to the show, they wouldnt let him in because he was over the age of 18. My mother thought I was nuts. From 1969 to 1974, "Bandstand Theme", a synthesized rock instrumental written by Mike Curb, opened each show. Dick Clark 1929 2012, Dick Clark with Johnny Crawford. . The marker stands opposite 4548 Market Street (not shown here), which once housed WFIL-TVand its Studio B, the original home of American Bandstand. He was six weeks shy of his 47th birthday. Bunnys mom, Betty, made her promise that she would graduate. Years later, when Clark was asked whether any of the dancers had died of AIDS, he stated that one had, Smith recalled. Ray Smith says he was upset when Dick Clark claimed only one of the dancers had died from AIDS when asked about it in an interview. [1] John A. Jackson,American Bandstand: Dick Clark and the Making of a Rock n Roll Empire(New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), chaps. A funeral director in Newtown Square confirmed Monday night that Mrs. Spada had died, but declined to divulge the details before meeting with her family. View Our Classic TV Shows Directory Wagon Train Website,
