The Paper 10-11-18

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Volume 48 - No. 41

By Friedrich Gomez

We are about to leave our present 2018 world and journey backward in time. Don’t be left behind. Come with us on our imaginary Time Machine. Now, 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 The The Paper Paper -- 760.747.7119 760.747.7119

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October 11, 2018

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 reposition 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 mega-watt 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 youngerlooking 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 star-maker.” 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 min-

Dick Clark - See Page 2


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