Bandstand Beat

Pat Molittieri: One of American Bandstand's earliest teen dancing stars

Pat Molittieri had a blast on American Bandstand.

At 5-3 with brown eyes and dark brown hair, Molittieri was a hit with TV watchers of the show practically from the moment she burst into their living rooms as a hyper-charged 14-year-old in 1957. Whether doing her personalized version of the bop with dancing partner Lou Salino or the push with Bill Ettinger, Molittieri commanded a viewer's attention.

For two years she was one of the more popular Bandstand regulars, until Dick Clark booted her from the show in June 1959.

Molittieri was one of Bandstand's "Southwest Philly kids," attending Bartram High School and living with her family on Passyunk Avenue. Among her Bandstand friends were several of the show's teen stars - including Justine Carelli, Bill Cook, Frank Brancaccio and Peggy Leonard. Like many of the teen dancers on the show, she had a national fan club.

Her popularity was given a big boost when on August 9, 1957 - just as Bandstand was wrapping up its first week as a national show - she was rushed from the studio for emergency surgery following an appendicitis attack. Fans eagerly tuned in during her recuperation.

But Molittieri's Bandstand days came to an abrupt end on June 24, 1959, when Clark asked her to stick around after the show.

It was a big week for Clark. That night his life story was to be showcased on the season finale of the popular TV show, This Is Your Life. Although the show typically surprised the show's subjects on the evening of the telecast, Clark's appearance had been leaked to ensure a large teen audience. Clark was also hard at work preparing for his first live prime-time TV special on ABC-TV on Sunday, Sept. 29.

But Clark had something else on his mind when he called Molittieri into his office. He wanted to know about the column she had begun writing for Teen magazine. Publisher Charles Laufer was paying Molittieri a small sum for each column she wrote about her Bandstand experience.

Since this flew in the face of Clark's iron-clad rule that amateur dancers on his show not benefit financially from their Bandstand exposure, Molittieri was told she was no longer welcome on the show.

Molittieri continued her column for a time and in the October 1959 issue of Teen she wrote about her ejection, calling the day she went home to school instead of to Bandstand "the loneliest day of my life."

But Molittieri rebounded quickly, moving to California to capitalize on her popularity. She continued her column, babysat Laufer's children and enrolled at Hollywood Professional School, where she counted former Mouseketeer Cubby O'Brien and the Adrissi Brothers as classmates.

She recorded for 'Teen Magazine records, including a 45 featuring The USA, written by Paul Anka, a record that is a collectors' item more than 50 years after its release. She attempted an acting career, but her most famous role was as an extra, appearing early in the film Where the Boys Are. She dated several of Hollywood's most eligible young men, including Don Adrissi, Mike Clifford, Tony Cosmo and Bobby Burgess.

But Molittieri eventually returned to her Philadelphia roots, where she married and had two daughters before dying at age 32 of either a heart attack or a stroke.

Author Larry Lehmer's book about Dick Clark and American Bandstand --  Bandstandland: How Dancing Teenagers Took Over America and Dick Clark Took Over Rock & Roll --is available from Sunbury Press. Go here to learn the story behind the writing of Bandstandland or here to listen to the Pennsylvania Cable Network's interview with author Larry Lehmer.

Larry Lehmer's book about the last tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens -- The Day the Music Died -- is available at Amazon.

 

Here's a video of The USA:

 

 

 

 

Thanks to Joe Smith, here's a glimpse into 'the real Dick Clark'

For virtually all of Dick Clark's on-air, professional television career he was known as "America's oldest teenager." This was almost certainly due to his youthful appearance and his carefully crafted "aw-shucks" persona.

But, to hear Clark tell it, it was also because he created the term.

In more than one interview, Clark claims that when he took over Bandstand from Bob Horn in 1956, "there wasn't any such thing as a teenager. We didn't have a name for them."

That, of course, is preposterous. The term had been around for a while - some sources say as far back as 1921. Perhaps Clark forgot his own duties as an announcer on Paul Whiteman's TV Teen Club program on WFIL-TV in Philadelphia a few years earlier.

Clark was often prone to exaggeration when it came to his role in TV history, such as his outlandish claim that he integrated the dancers on Bandstand from the beginning "because it was the right thing to do."

Thus, it's a rare occasion when the general public gets a glimpse of "the real Dick Clark." But, thanks to former record executive Joe Smith, it's possible. Smith included excerpts of an interview he did with Clark in his 1988 book, Off the Record. The Clark interview is among the 238 hours of interviews with more than 200 people in the music industry that Smith did in the 1980s and donated to the Library of Congress last June. Some of the interviews are expected to be available for on-line streaming later this year.

Here's part of the stunningly candid Clark interview about the early years of Bandstand, as it appeared in Smith's 1988 book:

"I never gave a moment's notice to the impact we were having on people's careers. I was too busy with my own life, trying to figure out how I was going to do the shows and also do 14 record hops a week.

“We made 75 cents a head on the record hops. We used to buy rolls of quarters, take in a dollar from each kid, and then give them a quarter back. The dollars we would stuff into a 45-rpm record box.

“Eddie McAdam, may he rest in peace, worked with me at the time. He used to sweat profusely. Literally, he would perspire all the time. By the end of the night, the sweat would drip off the end of his tie and into the box with all the money, which was coming in hand over fist.

“We’d take the boxes of money and stick them in a spare bedroom. Two or three weeks would go by and then my wife and I would try to straighten out all these crumpled, sweaty one-dollar bills.

“It was a cash business and we kept immaculate books. As a matter of fact, we reported that income. Friends of mine would say, ‘You’re what? There’s no way in the world anyone’s going to know where that money came from.’

“But I was terrified. I was making a killing, racing around trying to get all the money I could. My tentacles went in every direction. I didn’t want to let an opportunity go by.”

Author Larry Lehmer's book about Dick Clark and American Bandstand --  Bandstandland: How Dancing Teenagers Took Over America and Dick Clark Took Over Rock & Roll --is available from Sunbury Press. Go here to learn the story behind the writing of Bandstandland or here to listen to the Pennsylvania Cable Network's interview with author Larry Lehmer.

Larry Lehmer's book about the last tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens -- The Day the Music Died -- is available at Amazon.