Bandstand Beat

Bandstand Bits: 16 magazine's first issue, WPEN's popular 950 Club

 I wrote earlier this week about Pat Molittierri's dismissal as an American Bandstand regular for writing a column in 'Teen magazine. Dick Clark wasn't fond of 'Teen, but he was fine with plenty of the other fan magazines around, particularly 16.

You'll be able to read plenty about Clark's cozy relationship with 16 in my book, Bandstandland, but for now I just want to mention that the 16 magazine that was featuring American Bandstand regulars in 1959 was much different than the first issue of 16, which hit newsstands in May 1957, when Bandstand was still a local show in Philadelphia.

That first issue was pretty much all Elvis. Fortunately, you can check out that first issue for yourself online; just click here.

You may recall that when WFIL-TV launched Bandstand in 1952, it was patterned after the popular radio show at WPEN, The 950 Club. In fact, WFIL officials tried to steal the show's hosts, Joe Grady and Ed Hurst, to bring the format over to television. When that didn't work, they went with Bob Horn and, eventually, Dick Clark.

By the time Clark replaced Horn, Grady and Hurst were gone from the 950 Club, too. Holding down the fort at the iconic WPEN show in 1956 were Larry Brown and Cal Milner. As was typical of radio pairs of the era, the two complemented each other. Brown was the more rambuctious of the two while Milner was the easy-going sidekick.

Playing a role came more naturally to Brown, a native New Yorker whose uncle Willie Howard was a well-known old-time comic. He studied journalism at Columbia University but was bit by the acting bug with part-time roles in daytime serials  Myrt And Marge, Little Orphan Annie and Jack Armstrong.

After three years in the service, Brown turned to radio and landed in Philadelphia in 1948 where he met his wife and set up housekeeping in Broomall.

His partner every afternoon from Monday through Saturday was Milner, a native of Spencer, Nebraska, who grew up in Sioux City, Iowa, and majored in music at Long Beach State in California. He met his wife at the Jersey Shore following World War II and settled in Philadelphia for a time before moving on to Miami and, eventually, back to southern California. He was the nephew of famed Notre Dame football coach Frank Leahy.

Brown died March 24, 2005, at age 83. Milner died Feb. 25, 2012, at age 83.

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.

 

 

 

Pat Molittieri's column in 'Teen highlighted magazine's feud with Dick Clark

It should not have surprised Dick Clark that one of American Bandstand’s most popular dancers would pop up in a magazine aimed at teenagers. Teen magazines were hot in 1959 and no teens were hotter than those Bandstand kids that most of America could watch from the comfort of their own living rooms every weekday afternoon.

It was only natural that the fan magazine trade would latch on to the emerging teen market, given its huge numbers, relative affluence and seemingly insatiable appetite for all things rock and roll.

The radio and movie fan magazines of the 1930s and 1940s had barely begun edging onto the television arena when the rock tsunamii hit. By 1959, it had swept into magazine stands and drugstores with full force.

The teen magazine culture actually has its roots in Philadelphia as Walter Annenberg’s Triangle Publications — owner of WFIL-TV, birthplace of American Bandstand — launched Seventeen magazine in 1944. Seventeen was aimed at young girls ages 11-17 and was a major force in recognition of the then-new term “teenager” and the demographics the term represents.

But Seventeen was too conservative to fully embrace the rock movement of the 1950s. That ground was claimed by the new kids on the block — like ‘Teen, Dig, 16, the myriad song hit magazines published by Charlton or the dozens of other magazines that sprung like the first crocuses of spring and were gone nearly as quickly.

Pat Molittieri had aligned herself with one of the more successful of the upstarts.

Charles Laufer, the 30-something founder and editor of ‘Teen saw in the teenage publishing market the same golden promise that motivated Dick Clark in the popular music field. A high school basketball star from New Jersey, Laufer was lured to California by a high school classmate. There he graduated from the University of Southern California before becoming a high school journalism and English teacher in Norwalk, Calif.

Dismayed that his students weren’t reading enough, Laufer launched a teen-oriented magazine called Coaster in 1955. He changed the name to ‘Teen in 1957 and by the time he got around to hiring Pat Molittieri two years later to be a star columnist, he was locking horns with Clark.

Excerpted from Bandstandland  © 2019 Larry Lehmer

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.

 

Bandstand Bits: Lt. Bradley Clark, a real-life hero to his little brother, Dick

When Dick Clark was growing up, he found a hero. He didn't have to look far. He was right across the room, in the bedroom they shared.

Bradley Clark was everything Dick Clark wasn't as World War II unfolded, well beyond their comfortable home in Mount Vernon, N.Y. Dick Clark was a shy, insecure junior high student when Brad graduated from A.B. Davis High School, a solidly built 6-2 captain of the football team.

Brad Clark was destined for future success, but those days would have to wait. First, there was a war to be won. After graduation he enrolled in the U.S. Army Air Corps and began training to become a fighter pilot. By late 1944, he was a P-47 Thunderbolt pilot with the 371st Fighter Group's 406th Fighter Squadron.

Within a month of joining the 371st, Lt. Clark had a reconnaissance mission on December 23, 1944, in support of the Franco-American 6th Army Group, which was operating along the southern edge of the western front of the Battle of the Bulge. After taking off from Tantonville Airfield in France, the nine Thunderbolts were jumped by German fighter planes near Mannheim, Germany.

Eight of the Thunderbolts made it back to Tantonville safely, but Brad Clark's plane had been hit and was separated from the group. As he limped back to the airfield, a fog had set in, making it difficult to find a place to land. The only thing visible through the fog above the village of Omelmont was a church steeple.

Brad Clark circled the church twice, looking for a place to land, when his plane crashed into a building, throwing him into a ravine where he died. He was 20 years old.

Although Dick Clark never was able to duplicate his brother's athletic accomplishments, he later said he always strived to emulate his brother's confidence and leadership skills.

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.

Bandstand Bits: Here are some Bandstand dancers you may have forgotten

Bob and Justine. Kenny and Arlene. Eddie and Bunny. These are just a few of the better known couples who regularly appeared on American Bandstand. There are many more, of course, but today I want to reflect on some people who once stood in the Bandstand spotlight but are not so well known today.

Ronnie Caldora was a teen who often visited a cousin in South Philadelphia and had a huge crush on Bandstand regular Frani Giordano. He eventually met Giordano and became a regular himself. He was fully aware of Clark's rule that the teens who danced on the show were not allowed to financially capitalize on their fame.

"There had been a scandal over some of the kids getting paid for touring with [Bandstand] sock hops across the country. I was part of that group but I didn’t get caught," Caldora told Margit Detweiler of the Philadelphia City Paper for an article published on April 3, 1997. "We’d take limousines to places like Wilkes-Barre and get $500 for dancing at these things."

Bill Bradley was not a Bandstand regular, but the future NBA star and U.S. Senator from New Jersey once persuaded his parents to drive him to Philadelphia so he could dance with a regular he'd been watching for two years. The 6-5 Bradley finally got up the nerve to approach her.

"I asked her to dance and she said. 'No, you're too tall'," Bradley told Jill Lawrence of USA TODAY in a Sept. 8, 1999, article.

For about five years, 16 magazine devoted space each issue to gossip about American Bandstand. This includes a few months of news about the Philadelphia regulars even after the show moved to California in 1964.

A Bandstand Beat column from that time of transition mentions a girl who may have been the only regular to follow Dick Clark to L.A.:

“Watch for Laura Codimat when Bandstand tapes some shows on the West Coast! She has moved to California and will once more be a regular on the show.”

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.

Photo: Bill Bradley

Bandstand Bits: Whatever happened to that American Bandstand movie?

American Bandstand has never been quite able to elevate from its small-screen glory to full feature film status, although it's come close in some cinematically curious ways.

For one thing, there was National Bandstand on Grease (which also featured Rydell High). Then there was the Corny Collins Show in Hairspray, but its influence was Buddy Deane, not Dick Clark. The Idolmaker was a thinly-veiled portrayal of Chancellor Records' Bob Marcucci and his development of South Philly stars Frankie Avalon and Fabian. The In Crowd was set in Philadelphia, but host Perry Parker was more Jerry Blavat than Dick Clark.

 Given all his other successes, its surprising that Clark wasn't able to maneuver the Bandstand story to the silver screen. In 2001 he almost got the job done.

Clark's push began in 1997 when he announced that he was working with Danny DeVito's New Jersey Films in creating a feature film about Bandstand. The original script was written by John Logan, a then mostly unknown screenwriter from Chicago. In the years since, he's become well-known in Hollywood, having penned screenplays for Gladiator, The Aviator, Sweeney Todd, Rango and Hugo, among others.

Logan's script apparently didn't past muster, though, so another screenwriter was given a shot. That screenwriter, Linda Woolverton, is well-known for her work with Disney, including scripts for Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King and Maleficent. Woolverton's script also didn't make it onto the screen and in 2001 Clark went to a third writer, Duane Adler, who has a solid background in writing and directing dance-themed movies. Adler's attempt met the same fate as the first two. What gives? I recently talked to Adler about the project.

"It just didn't come together," Adler said, adding that all three scripts were well-written. “All three scripts were very different. All three scripts were in different ways trying to capture different eras and dynamics of the show.”

“John’s draft, as I recall, focused a lot on Dick’s point of view and Dick didn’t like that. He didn’t want the story to be The Dick Clark Story. He thought the most important thing was the kids dancing and what the dancing and the music meant."

"Linda’s draft, if I recall, was from the point of view of a group of dancers and kids on the show and it transcended eras. You experienced both the show and the kids lives through different eras. It was an ensemble piece and her draft was a lot less about Dick himself and much more about the kids. My job was to shrink those kids and eras down to a specific group of kids and a specific era and that’s what I did. So each draft sort of evolved.”

 It looked for a while as if the project might take off. Jersey Films was excited about it, then Universal was enthusiastic.

"All three of us – Jersey Films, myself and Dick – went into the studio to present how I would tackle the script and what kind of movie we might try to make," Adler said.

It was a real challenge, Adler said, to shrink more than 40 years of history into a 2-hour movie and "still have its essence, its appeal, its impact on society and all of those things. I think each draft was close in its own way.”

But interested faded quickly. Adler thinks it may be because the TV show American Dreams was in production about the same time.

 “He [Clark] was developing that at the same time as the feature," Adler noted. "I never knew if one canceled the other out.”

 Nevertheless, Adler said “my experience working with Dick and with Jersey Films on it was one of the most enjoyable experiences of my career.”

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.

Photo: Duane Adler