If you wanted to be on American Bandstand, you had to follow certain rules.
One of those rules was the age requirement - no one under the age of 14 and no one over the age of 18. Of course, rules are meant to be broken. Dozens - probably hundreds - of kids got into the show by lying about their age.
But Pam Brinker got into the WFIL studio at age 12 without lying or resorting to any other deception. She just followed her dad through the door.
Dad was Edgar S. Brinker. He didn't work at WFIL, never was in business with Clark and he never recorded a record. Yet, in the late 1950s he was a good enough friend of Clark's that the Brinker and Clark families occasionally got together for dinner in Clark's home.
Brinker was a photographer and WFIL was a client. That meant Brinker was often summoned to the station to take photos of celebrities when they popped into town, whether with Sally Starr, Chief Halftown ... or on American Bandstand. In the case of Bandstand, that meant he was on set a couple of times most weeks.
If you've seen any of Dick Clark's American Bandstand Philadelphia-era yearbooks, you've seen Brinker's work. Although he only received credit in print for the first yearbook, most of the studio photos in the books were taken by Brinker.
Born in West Philadelphia, Brinker learned his trade in the U.S. Navy. After the war, he set up a small photo shop in a bank building at Broad and Chestnut. With his wife Beatrice managing the shop, Brinker found clients. Besides WFIL, there was Schmidt's Beer, Yellow Cab and the Philadelphia Golf Association.
But it was American Bandstand that held the interest of 12-year-old Pam Brinker, who sometimes tagged along to work with her dad. Although she later attended the show legitimately as a student at McDevitt High School in Glenside, she still relishes the unique underage perspective she had as she watched the show from a folding metal chair among cameramen back in the show's production area.
She noticed that "Dick Clark had control," and didn't let the kids on the show get away with anything. "Some of those kids were snots," she said, while acknowledging that others, like Justine Carrelli, stood out in different ways. "Even in a [school] uniform, she looked good." A fringe benefit of knowing Clark was that he often sent home disc jockey copies of 45s to the eight Brinker kids.
She said Clark and her dad enjoyed a long friendship.
“Even when Dick Clark got short with him, which happens in any business, dad would just joke with him or say ‘I’m not taking your picture today.’ I think there was respect there."
Although the family has a handful of photos that Brinker shot on Bandstand (including the one of Brinker with Clark on the Bandstand set that accompanies this post), it is believed that the Clark archives contain hundreds of them, each one painstakingly shot.
“He was a photographer’s photographer because he wanted to catch people and things in their natural state,” Pam said. "And he could always catch them in that moment. That’s what made him good.”
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.
