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. "When I walked through those doors, that was the only place I wanted to be," said Gibson, 66, an actress who now lives in Los Angeles. I knew I was different early on, but being with all these [Bandstand] friends, I came to terms with my feelings. . Early in 1964, the show moved from Philadelphia to Los Angeles, where it remained through its final season in 1989. However, musicians such as Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, and Sam Cooke all made national appearances on American Bandstand during the late 1950s. But . Barbara finally came back and said I had to come to the front because the back was only for colored people. She also mentions a gay dancer who was pushed in the train tracks, and another who was dangled over an elevator shaft. "We all did. She was 13 but lied about her age. Her partner Frank Spagnuola and her won 1st place in dance Cha Lypso contest and 2nd place in Jitterbug Contest . Broadcast only on Saturdays after 1963, American Bandstand lost the homegrown vitality of the daily program in West Philadelphia. Ray first attended Bandstand in the summer of 1956. Where Are the American Bandstand Regulars Now? From its earliest days, the show featured young people dancing to a rock-and-roll soundtrack or other popular genres of the day. Teenagers and young adults ran home from school to watch them jitterbug and stroll while they copied their fashions, fads and dance moves. The History of American Bandstand. [2] Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Paylola and Sponsorship Identification, Federal Communications Act, Amendments, 1960. Like Rick Pierce, Bandstand dancer Sandra Mae Dawson, who died Feb. 25, 2008, at age 66, was into car racing. In 1960, he attended Penn State as an English major. Ohio. Filmed in the cramped quarters of the WFIL Studios at 46th and Market Streets in Philly, Bandstand is such a part of Americana that Dick Clarks podium now resides in the Smithsonian. Oddly enough, I have never checked with the other Regulars to get their feedback. 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. I imitated all the dance steps, sometimes with the refrigerator door as a partner. When she was 10 years old, the woman now known as Sharon Sultan Cutler would rush home from school in the town of East Meadow on Long Island in New York. Briefly it was part of the USA Network with new host David Hirsh but went off the air in 1989. Were goin hopin today Pat Molitteeri was credited with inventing the dance, "The Hop" by combining elements of the Slop and the Bop, Pat died in the mid -1970s of a heart attack at age 36, Carmen Jimenez still lives in Philadelphia today and recollects the fun she had being on the show. Conceivably, this helped promote racial equality and intercultural understanding. Rare photo above is a 1959 Press photo of Pat when she was writing for Teen Magazine. . She calls it her one night out.. Known then as Carole Scaldeferri, Mrs. Spada was among the teens who jitterbugged and slow-danced their way to fame in a TV studio in Philadelphia, while host Dick Clark spun what are now oldies. In the wake of the quiz show scandal, however, a subcommittee of the House of Representatives set up hearings to determine if the practice should be made illegal. Sharon Sultan Cutler, of Chicago, talks about "Bandstand Diaries," the book she co-authored with Ray Smith and former American Bandstand participant Arlene Sullivan remembering the shows early days. By then, he was a big-time television producer. EARLY BANDSTAND VIDEOS. Shore, Michael, with Dick Clark. Delmont, Matthew. They wrote. Kenny Rossi and Arlene Sullivan, Bunny Gibson and Eddie Kelly, Pat Molittieri, Carmen Jimenz, Joyce Shafer. The soft, almost cooed vocals of singer Katie Haley bring a pop veneer. Frani Giordano is still loved by American Bandstand fans almost 60 years after she stopped going to the show in 1960. Click here to see some of your favorites back in action. At the time, unless a broadcaster failed to report under-the-table income (federal income tax evasion), payola wasnt illegal in federal law. I purchased this from Historic Photos. It was shot live from Studio B at Forty-Sixth and and Market Streets, where the two-and-a-half-hour show was broadcast regionally on WFIL-TV Channel 6. American Bandstand (TV Series 1952-1989) - IMDb Making Philadelphia Safe for WFIL-adelphia: Television, Housing, and Defensive Localism in Postwar Philadelphia. Journal of Urban History, 38, no. While the teens, all homegrown talent, rocked onstage, two cameras homed in on them for close-ups. Carole Scaldeferri Spada, 'Bandstand' dancer, dies at 70 - Inquirer.com Millions of kids from Brooklyn to Beverly Hills ran home from school every weekday to watch them dance, imitate their styles and fantasize about their lives. Later, in hindsight, I guessed that made me the first white Rosa Parks. Duke is a premier photographer of the martial arts as well as being an expert. She would learn their names but, like all of us and them, she would mature, and those images on the screen and her affection for "those kids" would fade. Of course we didn't realize it at the time but these kids were really the first reality stars.". At 74, Sullivan still dances once a week at a party thrown by another Bandstand dancer. In its later years the show was challenged by the diversifying tastes of fragmented audiences. Click here to see some of your favorites back in action. Such white Philadelphia-area teens (many from South Philadelphia or near the shows production site in West Philadelphia), among others, regularly appeared on American Bandstand. We ended up spending weekends together when she came to New York and D.C. to perform We went to lunch together and had fun, but Annette had to rest and perform, so we didnt have time for anything else., Sullivan never felt like a superstar, even when the Regulars averaged 100 to 150 fan letters a day. Photo taken on October 27, 1981. Hes a heckuva good dancer who does a mean jitterbug! The 50 record albums are packed away for safekeeping., Normans passing Another component of the show was its Rate-a-Record segmentwhere people evaluated a record on a scale of 35 to 98which originated the saying, Its got a good beat and you can dance to it. For this eras music industry, American Bandstand was arguably the most significant television venue in the country. (Twentieth Century Fox), Soft Science extends that legacy on its third album, Maps (Test Pattern), and adds its own twists. He fell in love with her. It was horrible., Smith says he was lucky to have escaped a beating. H.E. e9 = new Object(); Back in July, I received a most endearing email from Duke which told of his experiences in life. ", "I was shaking like a leaf," Colanero recalled. (Test Pattern). Clark suffered a heart attack while at St. John's. Follow Backgrounders on Twitter ", California residents do not sell my data request. Sophie Turner as Jean Grey, anger management student, in "Dark Phoenix." The show epitomized many important aspects of ever-evolving American popular culture: mass communication, popular music, youth culture, dance and fashion trends, as well as race and gender relationships. London: Omnibus Press, 2006. They are extending the honeymoon in Stone Mountain, Georgia, where Duke has called home. Clark felt such conventions helped boost the perception of rock-and-roll, which in the 1950s was a controversial genre often disliked by older generations. 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. Bob's bio in Bandstand Diaries was very candid. They wrote thousands of letters. But I didnt have any crushes on any of the straight girls. We have lived in NJ ever since. Some solo dances had animal names, for example, "The Pony" and "The Monkey"; others were named for . AMERICAN BANDSTAND BLOG. Many subsequently became celebrities (albeit temporarily), appearing in other media, receiving fan mail, and starting fashion trends. Clark and producer Tony Mammorella (1924-1977) dubbed this group The Committee, led from 1954 to 1956 by future DJ Jerry Blavat (1940-2023). NEW PAGE! 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. ), Special Collections Research Center, Temple University Libraries. 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. When American Bandstand became the most popular daytime television program in the late 1950s, a group of ordinary Philadelphia high school students who loved to dance suddenly became a national phenomenon. He is a man of God and over the years has established both karate and prison ministeries. The Hand Jive. . "This man had the strongest personality that I had ever seen as a young boy," he said. Sullivan and the other dancers often congregated in Rittenhouse Square, the historic epicenter of what is known as the City of Brotherly Loves Gayborhood. There even was chatter and fear that Clark, who died at 82 in 2012, sent members of his production staff to spy on them and report back the names of the suspected gay regulars. His name is, Champion Polar Images Namron O My-Joy, as recorded with the AKC. 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. The kids who showed up every day (Bandstand aired every weekday afternoon for the first six years) knew all the most popular steps. Wagon Train Website,