Here's an excerpt from Bandstandland:
Background: Bandstand started as a local show on WFIL-TV in Philadelphia in 1952. In this excerpt, Bob Horn, the show's designated host, has just been told he won't be the only host of Bandstand.
"In the nearly two decades Horn had been in the broadcast business he’d never had a partner. Now, the WFIL-TV brass were telling him, he’d be tethered to a cohort on the air at least two hours every day. Lee Stewart, no less.
Stewart had become a local celebrity with his manic on-air sales pitches for Muntz television sets.
Earl “Madman” Muntz, a former used car salesman, high school dropout and self-taught engineer, turned to making television sets in the post-war era. His $99.95 specials were engineered to work within eyesight of the transmitters, which he figured was just fine for his urban markets. The flamboyant Muntz sold TVs the way he sold cars – loud and fast.
“I’d love to give these away, friends, but my wife won’t let me,” he’d deadpan to the camera. “So I buy ‘em retail, and sell ‘em wholesale.”
Stewart, a 41-year-old with a big nose and thick, horned-rim glasses, followed Muntz’s lead, delivering a frantic line of patter. He was a comical, and successful, salesman in Philadelphia. Madman Muntz was the sponsor Stewart would bring to the show.
WFIL staffer Shelley Gross, a distant relative of Stewart’s, minced no words in describing the diminutive, bespectacled pitch man. “He was a strange little guy,” he said.
WFIL intended Horn and Stewart to be the televised version of [popular radio duo] Grady and Hurst, with Horn playing the straight man to the hopefully comedic Stewart. The station began touting the duo through local newspapers and on-air plugs. Staff member Nat Elkitz started building a set for the program, which would originate from the station’s new Studio B, a 3,100-square-foot addition that was the crown jewel of the station’s recent expansion, which also brought the radio studios to the West Philadelphia location.
Elkitz and his crew constructed a stage for Horn and Stewart that would let cameras shoot over the heads of the dancing teens that were expected to fill the studio. A canvas backdrop painted to resemble the interior of a record store was resurrected from the Paul Whiteman show and the name Bandstand was added to a faux window. Pennants of local high schools were attached to curtains flanking the stage and a lectern resembling a store counter was built, with space in front to list the top 10 tunes of the week. Collapsible bleachers were installed on one side of the studio, giving it the appearance of a high school gymnasium."
Photo: Bob Horn and Lee Stewart on Bandstand.
Did you know? Within six months of its debut, Philadelphia newspapers were calling Bandstand a "beehive of teenage jive." Read more in this excerpt from Bandstandland. 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.
Excerpted from Bandstandland: How Dancing Teenagers Took Over America and Dick Clark Took Over Rock & Roll, now available from Sunbury Press. 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.
© 2019 Larry Lehmer