Volume 46 - No. 24
June 16, 2016
By Friedrich Gomez
Close your eyes for a moment, and then slowly re-open them.
It is suddenly 1950s America again and you are about to re-live historyin-the-making.
A young, slender man fidgets with pencil and paper at a make-shift chair which more closely resembles a stool, behind a modest desk, with the large letters “AB” on the desk front. Workmen pace about in frenzied movements as three large ABC television cameras swing and re-position themselves as a stage foreman directs them in a run-through rehearsal of sorts. The slender show-host, still fidgets with pencil and paper, occasionally looking up from his notes, this time he sees a program director approaching him from his right side, “Mr. Clark, singer Paul Anka is here.” Dick Clark smiles, flashing a megawatt set of teeth and acknowledges with a crisp, “Thank you.”
It is August 5, 1957, a particularly warm day outside “Studio B,” which is located in West Philadelphia, on 4548 Market Street. It is an auspicious day -- the debut of a new concept for “live” television viewers called, “American Bandstand.” The new show’s host, Dick Clark, a 27-yearold transplant from Mount Vernon, New York, appears almost too young of age for such an important position – even boyishly younger-looking than his chronological years reveal. So much so, that his unusual youthfulness and bubbly personality would later earn him a world-renowned nickname: “America’s Oldest Teenager.” Unknown to him at the time, in just two short years, in a surprise television tribute to him in 1959 on “This Is Your Life,” host Ralph Edwards would call him, “America’s youngest starmaker.” That’s how meteoric his rise to fame would be. However, on this summer’s day in 1957, Dick Clark’s thoughts were fully occupied on various concepts on how he would proceed in hosting his first “live” American Bandstand show and its requirements of adlibbing away from printed cue cards. It was only minutes away now and it would be “show time.” Standing erect, Dick Clark surveyed his dance floor one final time before heading off to welcome American Bandstand’s historic first-guest, Paul Anka. Dick Clark’s strengths were that he was a ‘hands-on’ man who knew the desired format for his new brainchild, calculating the dance floor dimensions in his mind one last time, surveying its potential as well as limitations, for a wide televisionviewing audience of perhaps millions. Studio B measured exactly 80’ x 42’ x 24’ but appeared much smallThe Paper - 760.747.7119
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er due to the number of props, television cameras, and risers that were going to be used for the show’s premiere. Clark’s brain was firing on all cylinders as he calculated the need to have as much physical space for the teenagers to dance around the floor and yet enough floor space for the three RCA TK-10 black-and-white television cameras to roam about and survey the dance-action from different angles.
Previous acts of scandal and notoriety on newscasts had brought Dick Clark here, to where he now stood. It seemed almost too painful to reflect back on -- the embarrassment it brought upon a nation of people. Just the previous year, on July 9, 1956, Bob Horn, the original host of a format simply known as “Bandstand” was fired after a drunk-
driving arrest! What heightened the spectacle was that Bob Horn’s Philadelphia television station (WFIL-TV Channel 6) along with coowner, Walter Annenberg, of The Philadelphia Inquirer, had jointly run a series on drunk driving! Adding further insult to injury was that Bandstand host, Bob Horn, was not only arrested as a drunk-driver, but, he was allegedly linked to a prostitution ring and, consequently, was brought up on morals charges! The shame of it all was almost too overwhelming. It all started back in late September of 1952, when a music-format show first premiered locally on Philadelphia television (WFIL-TV Channel 6), under the name “Bandstand.” It was hosted by Bob Horn as part of his radio show of
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the same name. Bandstand had no dancing, rather it only featured short music videos (a forerunner of today’s popular music-video formats, such as MTV, etc.), with an occasional guest to interview. This format quickly caused Horn to feel restricted, so he changed the concept so that it featured teenagers dancing to records, while on camera. It was not an original idea, but a borrowed one, which Bob Horn parlayed to greater success. The DJ playing the records for Horn is none other than Dick Clark, who sometimes substituted for Horn when he was away on vacation.
Horn’s shocking dethronement from Bandstand positioned Dick Clark as his successor and, subsequently, Dick Clark’s eventual coronation would see him catapulted to American Bandstand immortality. He would become the replacement host under