Maine Soul

Falmouth High School, Class of 196 Dave Astor interviews Joh1l LaPla, (jar right). "When report cards can out, Dave had to know what you got says former show regular Pat Archan bault. "He still calls every once in while to see how 1am

BY DEREK NELSO~

IN THE BEGINNING, there were clunky chrome-laden cars, white socks, pageboy hairdos, the we look, nerd specs, and skirts below the knees. It was a pre-bikini, Tri-Hi- Y dream. At the end, therl was a triple-wide, paisley, go-go-booted swoon. In between was the Dave Astor Show.

It ended its spirited run on Maine television almost 20 years ago, but residents still have vivid reruns playing in their memories. "Ooooh!" a former Portland High cheerleader squeals at the mention of Dave Astor. "I re member THE that show! It was real exciting!" She recalls the host as a large man wid a bald head. HOh, golly, he was very friendly, and he really liked doing thing with the kids," she says. Fred Nutter, a WCSH newscaster working in radic then, remember the show vividly "It was tee vee a its live, loca best," he says "Three-quarter: of the people In Portlanc now be· tween3( and 4( eithel watchec: it or wen partICI' pants." Mainers remember the show as clearly as the Prom anc the Homecoming Game. If tnere is anyone who doesn', grin at the memory, he hasn't surfaced. Jack Dexter (Cape Elizabeth High, '61) earned $1.25 ar hour as floor manager for Channel 6 back then. He watchec the show even before that. "That's where you sawall the: good-looking girls," he recalls. Dexter is now president oj the Maine Chamber of Commerce and Industry. From our vantage point in these high-tech times, the: notion of a homegrown television show in the late 1950s sounm quaint. The Dave Astor Show exceeded expectations. "It was a lot of things to a lot of people, a lot of razzledazzle." The show' raised thousands of dollars for charities such as cerebral palsy centers and high school bands. Five Miss Maines in a ro\V were regulars. The show and its host received a multitude of awards from churches, high schools, even the American Legion, the Maine State Highwa~ Safety Commission, and the state legislature. Governor John Reed credited his 1960 appearance on the show, dancing and mingling with the TV teenagers, with winning him reelection.

Astor once hauled a tape of his show to a station in Miami and asked for an evaluation. "They figured, 'Here's this hayseed from Portland,''' Astor recalls. But the manager watched a little, then called his entire staff in. "He wanted them to see what you could do at a small, local station," Astor says. "I didn't get out of there for two-and-a-half hours."

The Dave Astor Show was not a slice of average life. It was the slice with the most frosting on it. The show offered a super-groomed expression of high school spirit.

Drawing teens from Waterville to southern Maine, from North Conway, New Hampshire and even Vermont, Dave Astor showcased a different school or theme each week. For the platoons of kids who grinned and cheered and gyrated on the show, the chance to appear was a highlight of the school year. Some had never ridden an elevator. Invariably, all would dress up. "We'd see new shoes, new suits, new dresses," Astor remembers.

The kids sat on bleachers, a standard part of the controlled informality on the sixth-floor set at the old WCSH studio in the Congress Square Hotel. Some of them would lip-synch a popular song, there' dbe a couple of production-type dance numbers, even live ads. The cast included some regulars. "To be a regular, you had to pass certain criteria," Astor explains. "You had to have talent, a look, but the final choice was up to the school principal. Grades were important, too. If you went down in a subject, you were dismissed. You could get a D and play football, but you couldn't get a D and be on my show."

So the delinquents and dropouts, the hoodlums and smart alecks were banished. So what? They probably had the show pegged as the corniest concoction in the Free World, anyway. Every Saturday, 40 weeks a year, the show was a subtle background for the endless struggle between realism and idealism. The latter won by several touchdowns every time.

Astor figures he and his wife, Esta, hosted 5,000 participants at their home during those years. "We always had supper," he says. "Two things with Dave - you had to eat and laugh a lot." The house had a huge game room, where the kids would sign their names on the wall.

Pat Archambault, sales service director at WCSH, was a regular from her sophomore through senior years. "It was exciting, sure," she recalls. "It was a great chance to meet students from other schools, and that wasn't easy

INN MOTEL SHORE DINING YACHT SAIFS & MARINA ~ NORRAD SAILING SCHOOL

129 130

Pemaquid Point

e ~

%COVESIDE ~ .._...~ CHRISTMAS COVE • _ : • ~ SO. BRISTOL, ME. 04568 ~ ••• -. TELEPHONE 207-644-8282

• /)f.

: ._ 'M.~~

.,.- ~ Barbara and Mike Mitchell, proprietors ~ ••••

THE UGIITING COILECIlON

~&Lls~

back then." Archambault specialized in doing commercials, Benoit's in particular. The show's other sponsors included a veritable commercial buffet: Coca-Cola, Jordan's Meats, Circus Time Potato

Chips, a bakery. "We ate it all," Archambault says.

Traditionally, Astor raised local eyebrows by inviting the football teams and cheerleaders from both

Portland and Deering high schools over to his house at the same time - on the Saturday preceding the supercharged Thanksgiving gridiron clash between the schools. .

The two groups were in the

Montague-Capulet league of rivalries back then. No rumbles ensued.

Why Dave Astor? Why this avuncular antithesis to Dick Clark?

Why this former Marine whose full-time business (which Astor maintained during the show's run and to which he returned after it ended) was operating an automobile service center? It certainly wasn't rock 'n' roll music that lured

Astor to television. "People were . the big thing with me," he says.

Astor's goal was to "make people feel good. I believed that if you could take the problems of the world off of everyone's shoulders for an hour - that was success." "Astor was very people-oriented, a good front man,:' WCSH newscaster Clif Reynofds recalls. "He demanded a lot from the kids and he got what he was after, but he gave a lot back." "We had a really good time," doing the show, Jack Dexter says. "There was some horseplay, but when Dave said go to work, we

INTERIOR AND EXTERIOR FIXTURES TRACK AND RECESSED LIGHTING LANDSCAPE LIGHTING LAMPS AND LAMP SHADES

CONSULTANTS FOR RESIDENTIAL LIGHTING

did. It was a very happy crowd." Astor referred to the show as "a happy little island."

Only the competitors were unhappy. "We beat anything that was against us," Astor says. Did it really trounce the competition on other local stations? "I don't think there was any competition," Reynolds says evenly.

Astor began his show in 1956 on Channel 13. In 1963, it moved to Channel 6. The show was so wellestablished that the late 1960s lapped against its fou~dations like a calm Casco tide. Didn't anyone with long hair sneak on during the Summer of Love? A large sideburn, perhaps a nascent moustache? Nope. "The show was on during some tough times," Astor says. "It never changed. It was sometb,ing people could be proud of. I was going to end the show after 10 years, and I called my son Ken, at Colby College, to tell him;] thought he'd be glad, but he said not to stop. Ken said he thought the show helped hold things together. 'Y ou show things the way they should be,' he told me."

The Dave Astor Show finally wilted on June 26, 1971. "I was a grandfather," Astor says. "My kids had gotten married while I was doing the show. The last broadcast was a tearjerker" - complete with reminiscences, old clips, and farewell hugs.

The Astors since have moved to Falmouth, leaving behind the wall the kids signed like a page of a giant yearbook.

Astor remains, in Dexter's

SENSIBLEI

Post & Beam made a lot of sense to the barn and bridge builders of yesterday ... it will to you today.

Solid strength, secure joinery, evident craftmanship. Yours to appreciate and. enjoy. Cozy and secluded or spacious and flowing., Timberpeg. Post & Beam co'!'phments every kind of decorating - formal or Informal, active or contemplative.

,•• ~'.J ~_. TIMBERPEG

Authorized Dealers:

David Burton Timberpeg Cooperative P.O. Box 217, 15 School St. Freeport, Me. 04032. 207-865-4893

TIMBERPEG

Please mail $10 for our 50-page Design Portfolio to the authorized dealer nearest your site.

Name

Address

City

Zip

Site location Phone State _

PMj6

The Timekeepers of the Sea

TRUSTED JEWELERS SINCE 1870 580 Congress Street, Portland 772-5404. Bath. Portsmouth, NH Springer's Charge/MasterCard/VISA/ American Express/Discover

NEW ] Oltay, we'U admit it: we're biased. We [ REVIEW have dined at Alberta', so weUand so often that we have lost all critical distance. We don't even mind the Saturday night crush at the bar. The decor, complimenu oflocal artistS, changes almost as often u the aJv~i:~lresome menu, a masterpiece that

on . a l'ttCili ~'1m l>":!llded Ori~ul. :~ri!"lP'"U'd-Chiclten Egl.!-roU.ii•.~,;-.;·'I Oyster ;:,...: ,;.,•.!rdOl.!lt~. eggplant piua~ aud fehucine with scalIo~1. 1\;!:I.r~r. ~ppen, and pme nurs. The food is fresh, th: s..;~,,\;. , gs apen, and our devotion complete. ----

New England Monthly

Demand for a Dave Astor Show reunion could increase thanks to the popularity of the movie Hairspray, directed by John Waters (above), which recreates an almost identical dance show in Baltimore during the 1950s.

words, "very, very well-known in greater Portland." He sees Astor a couple of times a year; Astor still calls him Jackie, a nickname that only Dexter's grandmother ever used. .The other alumni are ubiquitous. An editor for Gannett who used to model clothes. A local lawyer. The owner of a company that manufactures sleds. If Portland ever needs . an event, the city could do worse than hold a Dave Astor Show reunion. They could have a lipsynch contest. "We've had many, many requests to do a [televised] reunion," observes the 68-year-old Astor, who has spent the past year recovering from a hip replacement.

"Dave hel~ an awful lot of kids through the years," notes Pat Archambault, seated far right in this ·1964photo. Also in the picture, seated (left to right): Gail Snow, Scarborough; . Donna Pierce, Falmouth; Jackie McCurdy, Portland; Pam Johnson, Portland. Standing (left to right): Roger McKinny, Cape Elizabeth; Dottie Jensen, Deering; Jim Bishop, Falmouth;

Kathy Baker, Cape Elizabeth; and Willie Steward, Deering. "I got a letter from a station manager last week. But I'm not sure if it would work. When we had someone on the show, he was 16 or 17 years old, all-American looking, and now he is bald and fat." Best to leave the time capsule buried.

During the show's run, Astor recalls, "we never realized just how important it was. We didn't realize we were part of history." No doubt he's earned his hyperbolic pride. "There was nothing that could ever touch it or ever will," he says. The Dave Astor Show is safe now, a bright Portland memory, a dream of what we'd like our teenage memories to be.

Derek Nelson writes for Washingtonian, Ford Times, The Cousteau Society, MD, and the Smithsonian Institution's Air and Space magazine.