Bandstand Beat

Bandstand Bits: 16's Steve Brandt had inside track with Bandstand regulars

“Don’t be too surprised if there’s an engagement announced by Arlene Sullivan and Joe Wissert. They got together a month ago, when Steve Brandt was in town and took the two of them to dinner. They’ve been seeing each other every night ever since.” - Bandstand Newsletter, 16 magazine, from Richie Cartledge.

16 magazine loved to print gossipy little items like that about the regulars that danced on American Bandstand when it was based in Philadelphia. For the record, Arlene Sullivan and Joe Wissert never married but Steve Brandt, who was never actually a Bandstand regular, was a frequent visitor to the Bandstand set in those days.

Brandt was a quirky young man who had been hired by 16 editor Gloria Stavers to work himself into Bandstand’s inner circle and provide photos for the magazine. Disc jockey Clay Cole described Brandt as “a slight, pockmarked, intensely nervous young man” who lived in an expensive suite at the Beverly Hotel on Lexington Avenue in New York.

Brandt became friends with several of the regulars, including Sullivan, Wissert and Larry Giuliani and his Bandstand photos did, indeed, pop up in 16. Brandt was sometimes described as “16’s private eye photographer,” but his contributions weren’t limited to the visual. He often wrote articles, like The Story of My Life by Mike Balara “as told to Steve Brandt.”

His days at 16 magazine were just a stepping stone for Brandt, who went on to be a well-known gossip columnist for Photoplay magazine, working out of Southern California. Brandt was assimilated into the jet set culture of L.A. in the late 1960s and was a good friend of actress Sharon Tate, even standing up at her wedding to Roman Polanski.

After Tate and three other Brandt acquaintances were among the five people murdered in suburban Benedict Canyon on August 9, 1969, Brandt feared that he would be next. That November, he attempted suicide by swallowing a bottle of Tylenol, but was rescued after he made a phone call from his West Hollywood apartment to the secretary of a good friend, singer Eddie Fisher, who was performing in Las Vegas. Brandt was hospitalized in “very critical” condition, but recovered.

Later that month, Brandt attended a Rolling Stones concert at Madison Square Garden in New York City with some friends in the Andy Warhol cohort. He split from the group and retired early to his room at the Chelsea Hotel. When a concerned friend, actress Ultra Violet, called to check on him, Brandt said he had taken a bunch of sleeping pills. By the time help arrived, he was dead.

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.

 

Photo: Steve Brandt with Sharon Tate. 

 

Bandstand Bits: Some viewers came for the music, but stayed for the fashion

There were plenty of reasons for a teenager to watch American Bandstand. There was the music and the artists that performed it. There was the dancing and the teenagers who showed off the latest steps. There was also the fashion, which for some viewers was every bit as important as anything else on the show.

How many of these fashion statements from that era do you remember?

• Cardigan sweaters worn backwards so it buttoned down the back.
• Girls wearing dog collars over their white bobby sox - one ankle for girls with a boyfriend, both ankles for those who were still looking.
• The chemise (or sack) dress.
• Sweater guards.
• Angora collars with pom poms (sometimes in pastel colors) that tied in the front.
• Pendleton skirts and cashmere sweaters.
• Three-button bennies.
• Jumper dresses.
• Calypso shoes.
• Billy Eckstine collared shirts (Mr. B shirts).
• Peg pants.
• Skinny white belts.
• Angel blouses.
• Cuffed blue jeans with white socks.
• Triple rolled white socks.
• Ben Casey shirts.

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: Murder on Tour ... the truth behind 'Dick Clark's rock 'n roll novel'

During the end of his stay in Philadelphia, Dick Clark was often seen toting a leather briefcase. When asked about its contents, Clark claimed it held the manuscript of a book project he was working on. The book, he said, would be a novel, all about a young man in the music business.

Although Clark was listed as author of several books during his career, he apparently never finished that novel about the music business. He was credited with one work of fiction, however - titled Murder on Tour: A Rock-N-Roll Mystery. Although the title page clearly says "By Dick Clark" and the back page of the book's dust cover features a huge photo of Clark, his actual role in the book's publication was minimal.

To begin with, Clark didn't write the book, which was published in 1989. Nor was it even his idea. The whole project stemmed from the fertile mind of Bill Adler, sometimes described as "the P.T. Barnum of books." Adler, who was six months older than Clark, had built a career by conceptualizing a book, rushing it through the production process then unabashedly hustling it in the marketplace. He was cranking out as many as 25 books a year in the 1980s, including books on the wit and wisdom of Richard Nixon, Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan.

Adler  had worked with Clark previously, on the little-read Dick Clark’s Easygoing Guide to Good Grooming and Looking Great, Staying Young. This time around, Adler's original notion was to dash off a mystery novel about a game show. When Clark nixed that idea, Adler replied "Well, how about a rock 'n' roll tour?" With Clark's consent, Adler went in search of a ghost writer.

He found one in Paul Engleman, a Chicagoan with strong writing credentials. Engleman, who received half of the $15,000 advance, began work on an outline for the book, which he thought was to be called Murder on American Bandstand. Adler summoned him to a meeting with Clark in New York.

Clark couldn't make it, but Adler and Engleman hammered out details for the book. The book should have nothing to do with Bandstand, Adler said, adding that Clark would be happy with a mystery with a story line built on the rock music business. In addition, Adler promised that Clark would handle promotion of the book and Clark's production company would have first refusal of movie and TV rights.

Adler and Engleman would share the advance (Clark took nothing) but author credit would be shared by Adler and Clark "with Paul Engleman." Suspecting that the project may not further his writing career, Engleman opted to used the pseudonym "Paul Francis."

Engleman's dealings with Clark consisted of a few phone calls. Clark was cordial and supportive, Engleman said in an article about his experience in the Nov. 21, 1991, Chicago Reader, but his fears about the project being a potential career albatross were borne out by reviews after the book was released in January 1989.

Publishers Weekly said Murder on Tour had "a so-so plot and thin characterizations." People magazine was more blunt, describing the characters as "finger painted" and the dialogue as "stilted," adding "the book's most annoying trait is the way clunky pop music references are dropped into the text from a great height."

Dick Clark, as it turned out, didn't promote the book at all. He told Engleman that he wouldn't feel right claiming ownership of a book he didn't actually write. That position was likely solidified by the book's quick route to bookstores' remainder bins. Despite the book's short shelf life in 1989, it was resurrected briefly in 2004 in a new edition by Grand Central Publishing.

Adler didn't skip a beat after the disappointment of Murder on Tour. In 1995, he put together what would be the biggest hit of his publishing career, the immortal Cats' Letters to Santa. He died in March 2014 at age 84.

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: No Bandstand, no problem for this Southwest Philadelphia teen

Like millions of her 1950s teenage peers, Kathryn Sacchetti spent hours watching American Bandstand on television every weekday afternoon. Unlike the vast majority of those peers, however, she lived just a few miles from the Philadelphia studio where the show originated and knew many of the kids who were regulars on the show.

But, despite her many "Bandstand friends," Sacchetti never appeared on the show herself.

“My father was a very strict Italian," Sacchetti explains. "He said I don’t want my daughter shaking her you-know-what on TV. She’s got to come home, do her homework and help her mother in the kitchen.”

That's not to say that Sacchetti didn't enjoy dancing. She and her friends learned the latest steps by watching Bob Horn's Bandstand well before the show went national. They practiced those steps at neighborhood gatherings, often in the basements of the rowhouses of her southwest Philadelphia neighborhood near 64th and Buist.

It was at such a gathering, Sacchetti says, that she taught a young Kenny Rossi how to dance. Rossi's mother loved having the neighborhood kids hanging around her house. That included some of the most popular teenagers in the nation -- Justine Carrelli, Pat Molittieri, Arlene Sullivan and Dotty Horner.

Among Sacchetti's Bartram High classmates were Danny Rapp, Joe Terranova and Dave White of Danny & the Juniors. Sacchetti's mother was a close friend of the mother of Peggy Leonard, another American Bandstand regular. Carole Higbee lived up the street and would come over to the Sacchetti home after Bandstand and tell Kathryn who she had danced with that day. Rossi's cousin was the maid of honor at Sacchetti's wedding and other Bandstand regulars like Frankie Lobis, Joe Fusco and Mary Anne Cuff also showed up at Rossi's house.

Sacchetti, who sang in the school choir, tried to bring a future Philadelphia recording icon into the group. Patricia Holt was already a popular member of the Beulah Baptist Church choir when Sacchetti approached her.

“I asked her, ‘Patti, why don’t you come and sing in the choir?’ She said ‘Oh no. I don’t have the nerve.’ She sang in her father’s church and she was shy in school. Life is so funny.”

A few years later, Holt would be popular recording star Patti LaBelle.

Sacchetti said she misses growing up in her "tight Italian and Irish neighborhood" during what she described as "an innocent time for us." 

Although she never appeared on Bandstand, people who saw her dancing as a young adult assumed she picked up her dancing skills on the show. She said you could tell where a person was from by the way they danced.

“You could tell a South Philly dancer by the steps. It was recognizable. Like North Philly did a lot of hand and arm movements. South Philly was more shaky, like from the hips. In Southwest Philadelphia it was like a combination of that.”

She once winced while watching a group in a club performing At the Hop.

"They had the choreography all wrong," she said.

She went to the lead singer and gave a quick lesson on the proper steps. “I said, if you’re going to do Danny’s songs …"

Sacchetti misses the music of the early Bandstand era, and the lifestyle.

“It was a foundation that you had when you were growing up, with your parents and your home. The mother wasn’t out working. It was a different era. I feel bad because today it’s not like that."

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: Patti LaBelle & the Bluebelles